Transported

by Tim Jones

  THE ROYAL TOUR

  Señor Borges visited the region of orogeny. No mountains grow faster than those of the Southern Alps, he was told, and he felt through the bones of his feet the struggle between the rock pushing upwards and the water washing it away.

  At the high-country station, lunch was followed by a sheep shearing demonstration. The smell of dung and sweat recalled vividly to his memory the estancias of his youth, the gauchos small then large against the pampas. The wool that now passed through his fingers — finest Perendale, finest Romney — was the same wool he had pressed into bales in the warm, dark shed owned by Señor Robles and his two brothers, where he had coughed and sweated his way through the summer. The trees that darkened the mountain valleys also grew in southern Argentina. New Zealand, Tasmania, Patagonia: all one, divided by ocean and time.

  He was returned to Dunedin, where a civic reception supplied everything needed for sleep but a pillow. In the morning, he was escorted to the Royal Albatross colony at Taiaroa Head. The view of the Pacific Ocean was lost on him, and, even supported by the two soldiers who formed his personal guard of honour, he was consumed by the fear of falling. It was a relief to all concerned when the allotted time ended and he could leave.

  En route to the nation's capital, Señor Borges rebelled. He was prepared to visit the institute of penal reform and open the motorway extension, he said, and his meeting with the Prime Minister was inevitable, but what was the point in his attending the dance performance? He was not the titular patron of the Royal New Zealand Ballet, and he would be unable to see the performance, so any praise he might offer could only bring shame to him and mortification to the performers. Let him give his apologies to the dancers and visit the National Library instead.

  On this point, after much consultation with the guardians of protocol, his will prevailed.

  As soon as he entered the dry air of the library, Señor Borges relaxed. The familiar scents of books and readers conducted themselves to his nose. He roamed the research collections, where the rare book librarians, fiercest guardians of the mysteries, permitted him to run his fingers over the ridged and whorled pages of Shackleton, of Cook, of Milton. He descended to the stacks in the basement.

  Elsewhere in the garden of forking paths, the prince was attending the dance performance, his mouth set on Smile as he counted down the moments until he could return to his palace and his bride. Señor Borges also smiled. He murmured to the stacks, who replied in languorous whispers. The dialogue continued until his minders led him away, and though the Prime Minister flaunted her knowledge of Argentine literature and geography throughout dinner, she could not disturb the smile that animated the old man's face.

  QUEEN OF THE SNOWS

  I passed Burgess at two thousand metres, halfway across the difficult traverse between Pearson Col and the Forgotten Icefall. It was clear he was struggling.

  'What's wrong? Altitude sickness?'

  'Briefcase too heavy.' He clasped it to himself and struggled on.

  The icefall is treacherous at the best of times, but today it was rotten with seracs and consultants. I saw a respected senior counsel almost carried off when a great horn of ice crashed down on the ledge he was crossing, and was forced to waste valuable time rescuing the Manufacturers' Association from a crevasse. I barely made it back onto firm snow by nightfall, and had to pitch my tent by moonlight.

  I rose to a fair dawn and lost no time in striking camp. Weather like this was too good to waste. My breath froze before me as, with crampons and ice-axe, I toiled up the slope and onto the summit ridge, my eyes dazzled by the sun and the view.

  I was on the summit almost before I knew it, and there she was: her flashing eyes, her floating hair, her laptop and satellite modem.

  'Name?'

  'Loveridge. I'm here about—'

  'Inquiry, commission, inquisition? Choose wisely.'

  'We were hoping for a select committee.'

  She froze me with a look. 'A Commission of Inquiry will commence on this spot in two weeks, weather permitting. All participants should be represented by counsel. Dismissed.'

  'But—'

  'Two weeks. Be here at dawn.'

  I backed out of the Presence.

  The thought of roping twenty lawyers together and shepherding them up the Forgotten Icefall was so appalling that I didn't notice Burgess toiling upwards until I was almost on top of him. He looked paler than ever.

  'Got a moment?' he gasped. 'How did it go?' He sank gratefully onto the snow.

  'Got what I came for. Back in two weeks.'

  'What was she wearing?'

  'A brown survival suit with a yellow outer jacket. A woolly hat and typing gloves. Is that enough to go on?'

  'You realise that wasn't her?'

  'Wasn't who?'

  'You didn't meet the Queen. That was her secretary. She schedules meetings, but she doesn't make decisions. I', said Burgess proudly, 'am meeting the Queen in thirty minutes.'

  'You'd better hurry, then.'

  Delaying my descent wasn't wise, and I paid for it later with a frantic scramble in the half-dark; but there wasn't room to hide a postage stamp on that summit, and only one route led there. To meet Burgess, the Queen had to pass me. Shivering in the rising wind, I watched him toil upward.

  He was almost at the summit when she came. Borne aloft by her red and green plumage, uttering a single harsh cry, the Queen of the Snows wheeled once in the thin cold air before settling on her mountain throne.

  GOING TO THE PEOPLE

  Mind if I sit down here? Thanks. Haven't seen you around here before — you're from offworld, aren't you? Been down here long — know anybody yet? Didn't think so. Tell you what: buy me a drink and I'll tell you a story, fill in a few minutes for you. It's a true story; a cautionary tale, you might say. Thank you . . . yes, that'll do fine. Your health.

  So. You might not think it to look at me, but about a year ago I graduated from Felsen University — Felsen's Planet, Arcturus Sector — graduated with a degree in Social Organisation and Political Science. Good degree, too, and I was sure it was going to lead to a better job. I could have stayed behind on Felsen, working for the Sector Administration or somesuch, but I'd just broken up with my second medium-term contract and I wanted to breathe some different air for a while. She'll do well there — good career ahead of her. Sensible woman.

  Anyway, I got this idea I'd put my education to practical use in politics somewhere. Not as a candidate, at least for starters, but as a campaign manager or something like that. If I'd had any sense I'd have started small — got a staff post on a major campaign in the Home Worlds, say — but I was looking for a pond where I'd be the biggest fish. I figured that might be in one of the newly colonised areas further away from Terra, seeing as how the good old Sector Admin had been working pretty damn hard to get things out there in some kind of order. Example: ever been to Mazenkis IV? Heard of it, eh? Well, fifteen standard years ago, things were pretty rough even there. They'd been having a lot of trouble collecting Federal taxes thereabouts, so the word was out from on high to tidy things up or else. As part of that process, they'd cobbled together a region based on the Kalphan system and were about to hold elections for a Regional Assembly.

  That was taking tidying up too far, because some of the eleven worlds involved had barely been settled. What's more, there were two non-human species in the region: the Kalphans themselves, who dominated their home system and had a presence in the other five, and the Floort, who were confined to the single inhabitable world in their tinpot little system. I found the situation pretty intriguing, actually — three species, all oxycarbon of course but with fairly different outlooks on life . . . too bloody different! Anyway, these three species, right, but none of them knew the others all that well and here they were being shoehorned into a common administration. Could make a name for myself here, I thought, so I took the next ship out.

  I headed for Pletanar, the main human planet in the region, and when I arr
ived I hunted up as many of the human candidates as I could to see if they needed an expert like myself to sweep them into office. I guess most of them had enough sense to figure that I'd do them more harm than good, but just as I was thinking I'd better register with the local employment office, one of the party HQs put me in touch with their man on Floort. He turned out to be a Felsen Uni type like myself, a lawyer who'd been hauled back from Felsen to the family practice on Floort. Apparently his parents had been paying his varsity bills and wanted some work from him in return. He'd jumped at the chance to say goodbye to Floort as an assemblyman on Kalphan when it arose. As he proudly pointed out, he was a very glib young man, but he needed a master tactician behind the scenes. I said I was just what he needed, and he agreed.

  There were four seats at stake there and my man, Anrac, was the only human candidate. The other three seats were out in the wops from a human point of view, and various Floort were fighting them out, but we had just the one Floort opposing us. The other human parties and the human–Kalphan alliance that was expected to win overall obviously didn't consider our electorate worth bothering about, but Anrac and I had other ideas. Still, I didn't like the way the Floort seemed united behind one candidate. The way I looked at it, although this ought to rally the humans behind Anrac it could mean inter-species strife wasn't far off, and there were more of them than us. I set out to learn all I could about the Floort, but I didn't get very far.

  Pletanar had been settled by us for only thirty years. The humans had their own problems to sort out, and the natives kept themselves to themselves except for a bit of trading, so data on them was very sketchy. A Galactic Survey team had breezed through fifty years back, but at that time we were just making contact with the S'taith Confederacy and nobody had much time for a pack of talking kangaroos. Kangaroos: you must have seen pictures of them? Terran things — bounce around. Yeah, that's right. The Floort are pretty similar to look at, but intelligent. Actually, since they're nomads for most of the year on a planet with plenty of food, it's strange they're so smart. They've got a well-developed culture, language, religion, and so on, but nothing to beam home about in the way of technology, so their main trade with the humans was in food and furs. Floort's blessed with good farmland but little else, so that's what the humans did: farm, drink, fight, and screw. Fought among themselves, mind you, not much with the natives — said they could be nasty when cornered.

  It wasn't really the time and place for sophisticated market research, demographic analysis, and the other stuff I'd found so absorbing back on Felsen. Our basic strategy was to promise both sides a lot and hope they didn't start comparing notes. We told the humans that they needed a voice of their own — to wit, Anrac — and that he'd protect their status as representatives of our great civilization. Not that they were very good advertisements for it. Through our translation machines, we told the Floort that we could bring them development, growth, and a new era of progress: 'a path to the stars', as our slogan for them read in Terran. Since they'd never seen the results of growth, development, progress, and the like on other worlds, and since the few of them that we did some impromptu market research on seemed to like the words, it seemed a pretty safe and maybe profitable course to steer.

  The main problem we had was catching up with the damned things to deliver our spiel. They moved all over the place in their packs, and how the electoral office expected to make sure that the same Floort that were in the electorate when it was drawn up were going to be there on polling day, I'll never know. We were pinning our hopes on a high human turn-out and a low Floort one, though, so we were quite encouraged by their mobility.

  While I was doing my thing behind the scenes, Anrac was performing pretty well in front of the masses. Without too much scaremongering, he'd got the humans convinced that solidarity was the answer to the looming Floort menace. They still had Anrac's parents pegged as a couple of conniving old shysters, but Anrac had them convinced he was a shining beacon of rectitude. Humans out in the backblocks reported that the Floort didn't seem too thrilled by the rather minimal campaign their candidate was mounting, so with a standard fortnight to go Anrac seemed to have things well in hand. Just to be on the safe side, I advised him to make a few forays into Floort territory, particularly as they were gathering in larger numbers than usual for some sort of festival.

  One sunny morning, therefore, Anrac found himself staring out across a sea of about three thousand Floort faces, by far the largest herd of them we'd seen. The Floort candidate was also there. She spoke first. It was the first and only time I heard her, and rendered into Terran her speech seemed to consist mainly of gardening hints. I didn't get it, and by their lack of visible reaction the Floort didn't either. Anrac turned to me and grinned. 'I think we've got this one,' he said.

  He strode to the microphone and started into a most impressive speech. He told them about the poverty of their present lives in comparison with the riches of the Galaxy. Then he explained how he, Anrac, would be personally responsible for transforming each and every Floort from a creature of dust and darkness into a veritable Lord of the Universe. I thought he might be overdoing it a bit, but from the agitation we could all see in the crowd they seemed to be lapping it up. After all, I reflected, he'd be off-planet after the election and could break his promises from a safe distance. Encouraged by their excitement, Anrac seemed to swell as he reached the climax of his speech. Abandoning his lectern, he stepped forward to the front of the stage, flung his arms in the air, and roared, 'I give you — a new tomorrow!'

  At that moment, the commotion in the crowd peaked, the natives erupted in some kind of chant, and before any of us could move, two of them bounded onto the stage and caught Anrac by his arms. Thinking they were supporters come to congratulate him, he drew them close and bent to speak to one. The other raised its free arm, extended its claws, and slashed downwards. A line of blood stood out on Anrac's neck, then spurted skywards as he crumpled forward into the crowd. Still chanting, they bore the body off with them as the arena quickly cleared.

  I sat stunned. It had happened so quickly I could barely take it in. When I finally managed to accept what I'd just seen, my overriding emotion was anger. Anger at the Floort, anger that all my good work had been undone in such an inexplicable manner. When I noticed the Floort candidate slowly hopping across the stage towards me, I wasn't sure whether to attack or to run. She stopped short of me, though, and began to explain.

  'I didn't make them kill him, if that's what you're thinking. All I told them was that I would seek out new methods of growing crops and bring them back to our people. It was all that was . . . appropriate to the occasion. Surely you knew it was one of the great religious festivals of our people? At these times, we gather together to await and celebrate the appearance among us of visionaries, of people with new insights; these insights seem to emerge whenever large numbers of we Floort are gathered together. We celebrate these people, and we draw strength from them.

  'Your Anrac, with his revelations of hope and change, appeared to those celebrating this festival to be a great prophet. I have seen you work and I know that this Anrac was a liar and of little worth, but my people took him at his word. We celebrate our prophets, Mr Genarth, and we draw on them. If the vision is great then the draw must also be great, to restore the balance of our shared existence. We Floort are omnivores like you humans, and sometimes we draw our sustenance from blood . . .'

  I know that little speech off by heart now. I've played our tape of it back several times, trying to figure out where I went wrong. Anyway, I got off that planet as fast as I could after we'd gone through all the necessary formalities. I got as far as this spaceport, which is where my . . . ah . . . severance pay ran out. I guess I'd better get myself back together and get a job, eh? Maybe there's an election campaign on here somewhere? Hey, that's an idea — after all, I can point out that my last candidate received overwhelming support! No, I mean it: profit from your mistakes, that's what I say. Thanks for the dr
ink and the chat, mate; I think it's put me back on the right track. Ta-ra!

  COLD STORAGE

  People want to believe. People want to believe that somebody cares, that love conquers all, that he meant it when he said he'd phone, that the Abdominator will tighten up that flabby tummy — now!, that it's all a giant conspiracy, that Elvis lives, or died to save our souls.

  People want to believe that hideous beings from nightmare dimensions once ruled our Earth and are scheming to get it back. I was told this six months from the end of my minimum four-year sentence for insurance fraud. (Ever heard of Standard Insurance of Nebraska? No? Well, now you know why.) I had just about had enough of stuffing mailers for the day (today it was the Ellen for President PAC who were taking advantage of the competitive rates offered by our privatised prison) when I got the word I was wanted in the Team Leader's office.

  Team Leader Whitley was sitting behind his desk like a man who'd felt a lot happier when everyone had to call him 'Warden'. Beside him stood two Feds. 'Sit down, Cusack,' said Whitley. 'These boys from Washington want to have a word with you.' And he left.

  The Feds kept standing. I kept sitting.

  I'm not good with silence. 'Somebody died, boys?' I asked.

  Travis — Fed. No. 1 — came around the desk fast. He did that thing where they tip your chair back and trap you in it. 'Over to you, Cliff,' he said.

  And Cliff had quite a story to tell. The two of them had been assigned to a bizarre series of burglaries: rare book and manuscript collections at universities and private colleges throughout the north-east had been ransacked. In Providence, RI, a librarian who disturbed the thieves had paid with her life. The thefts and the murder had stirred up certain influential members of the academic community, who were convinced that they were part of some wider plot. They'd managed to get the FBI interested, and now Travis and Cliff were trying to get a handle on the case.