by Rich Horton
Vedrum was headed for the mainland. Things were different there. As his suppression ration wore off, he would be truly plague-exposed for the first time in his life.
Someone else was braving the dock tube. Aerd dove into the cabin with a flood of seawater.
“So you decided to come along,” Vedrum said.
“I talked with Brea.” Aerd grabbed a railing and made for the control deck.
The outcome was rarely good after a Brea-chat. Their repro-sex had resulted in an unscheduled child, and they’d chosen to have it in secret. They were the first couple in a generation to be slapped with the well-known penalty: denial of all contact with the child. Then Brea had done something to get herself locked down. No one knew what, but Vedrum had a theory. The couple resented each other, while suffering the bond that comes from consummating a divergence of ninety or more. “It wasn’t like you’re thinking,” Aerd said. “She convinced me to seize the moment. Not only that, she admitted she was afraid to herself.”
“Are we talking about the same Brea?” Vedrum couldn’t picture her admitting weakness of any kind.
Aerd strapped himself into the couch. “Can’t let you pillage the mainland on your own. You won’t appreciate it.”
Vedrum wiped a screen and checked the assays: grim, no divergence above ten in the Feast. Soon there would be equilibrium, which meant boredom to a Feaster. People would resort to repro-sex. Another season of longing for plague. Vedrum was the first to waken a skiff, but all Feasters were weighing risk against desire. Equilibrium hadn’t loomed so close in a very long time.
He heard someone else in the docking tube and wasn’t surprised to see that Brea had overcome her fear. The woman who followed her into the cabin though: he recognized her from the assays, but couldn’t remember her name.
“Jiang,” Aerd said.
The two women landed in the couch. “Why should you have all the fun?” Brea said to Aerd.
Jiang nuzzled Brea’s neck, ignoring the two men entirely. “I wish we were aligned.”
“Aligned?” Brea giggled nervously. “Revolting!”
The result of her alignment with Aerd was in deep-interface education, as far as Vedrum knew. It would remain thus, like all Feast children, until its coming-out ball. Aerd and Brea would never know its identity. It was even possible they’d immuno-share with it. That kind of thing bothered a small fraction of the population.
Vedrum wondered if it was why they were leaving the Feast.
“Let’s go,” Aerd grumbled. “Four’s enough for this jaunt.”
Vedrum released the dock tube and sealed the cabin. The skiff lurched toward the dazzle of the open sea. It was a twenty-hour crawl to the Alaskifornian coast—just long enough to consummate the small divergences among them. Beautiful sores already perfected their flesh. The couch reshaped to accommodate them, as they stripped, then writhed into the tangle of a foursome.
Vedrum felt drawn to Brea more than the other two. He didn’t know what to make of this. Divergence couldn’t explain it, and he didn’t know how he aligned, repro-wise. It had never come up. Did he want her in the ancient way? Or another way entirely?
Their sores found each other and merged, crusting over to seal.
• • •
4
“The ancients debated this. If immuno-love proliferated, what would become of institutions, parental instinct? But we were young. We’d killed the olds within ourselves, so we killed the old. Call it revolution if you like. I call it a biological event. We made something new.”
—Broichin, Pleasure and Plague
The pop song was based on Broichin, howled by a pretentious mainland idol, a broadcast from the towers of Nova Astoria: “Take off your veil, I’ll take off my armor! Which of us stands more naked?”
The piercing electric music came from cabin speakers, waking Brea first. She’d spent more time than most in Feast archives. How could you characterize mainland culture? The city-states of this tenuous league—from Aleutia in the north to McMurdo in the south—varied greatly, but they had one thing in common: they knew to steer their rusted hulks clear of the Moveable Feast, or risk its EMP.
“Come down from your father’s tower! Why have towers anymore?”
Brea disentangled herself in the pre-dawn gloom. The old sores flaked away. She studied the console groggily, still lost in the mystery of her partners, wandering their immuno-libraries. Fore was the rolling green of the Astorian coast. The skiff offered up a hailing ping.
“Hello?” Brea said.
“Is that the Archipelagic vessel?”
That’s what the Moveable Feast was to the mainland: a roving archipelago. “Yes, who is this?”
“I don’t represent any government. I’m . . . a man of some means. I have land on the coast. I listen for Archipelagic broadcasts. I never thought I’d spot a boat!”
Brea didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t an official envoy. How did one go about becoming a Dionysian god? The gentleman’s laughter interrupted her thoughts. “You’re bringing sport, aren’t you?”
“Pardon me?”
“Novel immunity?”
“We are.”
“How many are you?”
“Four.”
There was a pause. “You’re going to be quite the sensation.” The man sounded mystified. “We haven’t had offshore sport here in a century. I study these things. Your Archipelagic germs are a breed apart, quite determined to crack your defenses. Some of my colleagues think your island is protected by a force field.”
“Of course not,” Brea said. “We have suppression tech. We allow pathogens into ourselves, to inspire immunity. Why live without divergence? But if an infection gets uncomfortable, we suppress it.”
“You can do that?”
Brea wondered how much to reveal. Did it matter? The Moveable Feast was in decline. It had lost the art of suppression but preserved a glowing coal. Suppression was carefully rationed—that’s why she and Aerd had been punished. “Twenty years ago we ran short of suppression,” she said. It was true, after all. “Many of us died. Of course, it was also a season of bliss. We’re like you that way.”
“Pardon?”
“The great contradiction. Pleasure and plague.”
The channel went dead for a long time, minutes. Brea said, “Hello?” She was fully awake now. Her companions were stirring.
“I’ve ordered my beacons lit,” the gentleman said. “My name is Torquil, and I invite you to be my guests. Let me introduce you to society here. You’ll want to bask in the glow before diluting your appeal?”
Brea hadn’t thought of this. She was intrigued: prolonging the inevitable, delaying pleasure. She’d never managed it with immuno-sharing.
“If you fall into the wrong hands, you won’t have the adventure you seek. As I said, I’m a man of means. I can protect you. I ask only one thing in return. Let me be first, with one of you four, when it’s time.”
Brea didn’t want to think about repro-sex anymore. She didn’t want to think about her hack of the Feast archives, seeking her child’s identity. Or the redaction, or her rage. She was tired of wondering if her contraceptive tech—reinforced after it failed—would run out on the mainland, like her plague-suppression would.
She didn’t want to think about her hidden motive for leaving the Feast. She couldn’t look at Aerd without thinking about it. At some point she would have to give him the slip.
She thrust her hand into the control space, scanning the dark hills for Torquil’s fires.
• • •
5
“Why go out into the world? Stay in bed, my love. We have worlds to show each other.”
—Broichin, Pleasure and Plague
Night had fallen on Nova Astoria, and the crowd resembled a twentieth-century pop concert.
Brea had seen video in the Feast archives: girls driven to frenzy, hysteria bordering on possession. There’d been four young men with guitars. She stared out the window of Torquil’s car
at the scrolling multitude. It was hard not to throw open her door. She wanted to leap into their arms. Their pheromones were an atmosphere of lust, and this ancient, oil-fed car was not airtight. Her companions fared no better, huddling in their seats.
Torquil opened a leather case of glass vials. “Tincture? I couldn’t be near you without one.”
A man as ancient as Torquil rocked beside him, a life-mate. They’d obviously consummated a fierce divergence long ago. The old mate was dosed to the gills on a potion.
Jiang glared at Torquil with resentful desire. “You’d better give me one,” she said. Her precious Brea was forgotten now. Of course they all wanted Torquil, and the driver, and the multitude—but Jiang was the boldest of the four.
The shriveled gentleman passed the case. “Try the cannabis indica and opium. Half the vial.”
Aerd ran a hand along Torquil’s bony shoulder.
Brea distracted herself with the scene outside: the legion waifs were like a medium, a context for the adult crowd. They flooded through the city, thieving to live, barely tolerated by their parents, whose instincts were as eroded as Feasters’. But here no provision was made.
Brea suffered a complicated dread.
“We’re almost to the governor’s house,” Torquil said.
Despite his drugged stupor, he succumbed to Aerd and Jiang’s charms. The three languidly fondled each other. Brea wanted to join them, but her stomach clenched. The four were awash in man-made germs, like all of humanity was—but now that they’d left the Feast, their protection would run out. They would have to develop immunity, or borrow it, or die, like mainlanders. How long they had was a mystery. Brea’s fear smothered her immuno-lust.
The crowd broke its barrier and washed against the car, smearing itself on the windows. Brea knew that Jiang didn’t give a damn about the dwindling suppressant levels in her blood. Yet another reason to love her.
Vedrum curled in his seat by the bar, taking shots of whatever ferment Torquil had in stock. Poor sensitive Vedrum.
“What are you looking at?” he said. The spacious car rocked with a crowd current. “At least I’m over Bridio, right?”
“Is that why you came?” Brea said.
Everyone took a draught from Torquil’s case. The car passed through a line of club-wielding thugs, through an iron gate that shut behind them. They were climbing a hill. Brea saw a large house on the summit, a shape against the stars until it blazed with floodlights. She felt relief, with the potion and the distance from the crowd—but she still wanted Torquil, and Torquil’s mummified mate, and the driver. Fear and desire went hand in hand: the faster she acquired mainland immunity, the better her chance of survival.
Just how bad did she want a child?
The car stopped in a courtyard before the governor’s house. The door opened, making Brea dizzy. Someone took her hand. Absurdly-dressed people surrounded her. Which was the governor? She wanted each drugged aristocrat in turn. They ushered her to a stone railing, where she looked down on ecstatic commoners. Their roar came up, and the rising thermal of their scent.
Jiang leapt onto the railing and teetered there.
Brea knew her lover well: Jiang would jump. The crowd was stirred to new ardor. A sea of entreating arms went up, but Jiang’s handlers dragged her from the brink.
Vedrum swooned, and his aristocrats kept him upright. Aerd peered around in amazement. Of the four, only Brea remained self-possessed. She waved at the crowd, evoking screams like some kind of magician. She wanted them as much as they wanted her—but she had their idolatry. This kept her from taking the plunge that Jiang craved.
Torquil and his mate accompanied a haggard woman to the railing. She wore a fur robe and a skullcap over cropped hair. When she addressed her microphone, her voice suffused the town via hundreds of radios: “Astorians, a warm welcome for our guests!”
The people’s response drowned out their governor’s laughter.
“Are we surprised these travelers chose Astoria?”
They replied in the uproarious negative.
“Where else in the League would they find such an enlightened welcome? McMurdo? The Incan Empire? No, advanced societies prefer each other’s company. Tonight we uphold our long tradition of hosting Archipelagics.”
Brea began to sense what she’d stumbled into.
“The new immunity will flow from my house,” the governor said. “It will never be withheld from patriots and friends of Astoria!”
There were gunshots beyond the applause—barely audible, perhaps from outside the town. Brea was ushered inside.
• • •
6
“I looked upon the piled dead and felt joy. Covered in lime, they were smiling, vanguards of the new love.”
—Broichin, Pleasure and Plague
Vedrum strode naked through the chambers of the masked orgy. He stepped among languorous couplings, counting beautiful sores on anonymous bodies. A throbbing drumbeat suffused the governor’s house, lending a primal urgency to Vedrum’s assay. He could reckon the approximate divergence of a couple—or triad or larger grouping—by the number of interface sores. Most of these consummations were of minor divergences between Astorians. Some were more profound. He and his companions weren’t the governor’s only foreign guests. A delegation from plague-wracked Aleutia was at play tonight.
He hadn’t found sores indicating a divergence in the nineties. Maybe his companions were like him, still savoring their uniqueness. Perhaps they’d found lovers and repaired to private rooms.
Vedrum turned in the hall of hearths, facing the crowd of admirers that followed him.
The mask didn’t do him much good, with his Feast scent flagging him. He flung it off and flashed a devastating smile, then took off running, leaping islands of immuno-sex that covered the vast floor. His laughing mob pursued him.
From firelight into dim curtained halls, past alcoves of somnolent revelers. Torquil’s potion wore off. Vedrum emerged from the dream that began in the car. After the governor’s speech there’d been meals, formal introductions. Vedrum had floated through it all, intoxicated, then lost track of his friends.
He knew he’d been moved like a chess piece. He knew he was the pawn of a teetering regime, and he didn’t care.
Something strange happened to a wall mural: one of its oxidized saints vanished, replaced by a masked woman, who beckoned him. He went through the hidden door into a small room of rough stone, which struck him as older than the rest of the governor’s house—something carved into its bones. A dim bulb lit a pile of furs.
“Do you require sanctuary?” the woman said.
Vedrum gulped. “Sanctuary?”
She removed her mask as the sores erupted. She pulled him onto the furs. At such high divergence there were sores everywhere, so interface didn’t need much squirming. Vedrum soared out of Nova Astoria. He sampled ten thousand pleasures, browsing her strange immunity.
She watched him solemnly. They were in the aftermath, back in the furs. “I have to tell you something,” she said.
“Uh oh.” He was himself again, or what was left. He’d only pretended to understand love before. This one was dangerous. “What’s your name?” he said.
“Eidre.”
“I’m at your mercy, Eidre.”
“I’m with the Midnight Dawn. Do you know what that is?”
“No, but I don’t like it.”
She kissed him—a quaint, endearing gesture. “I’m leaving the palace tonight. New immunity belongs in the hands of the people.” She took his hand. “Come with me, darling?”
Their divergence had been high nineties, but she’d sought him for political ends. How could he take the plunge with this intriguer? It had been hard enough with Bridio. And yet he stood with her. She handed him a servant’s uniform, and he put it on.
He saw what her cause meant to her. He prized her happiness above all.
• • •
7
“Ironic that a virus delivered i
mmuno-love to humanity, but the roots of sexual reproduction aren’t so different. Plague and love always walked hand in hand.”
—Broichin, Pleasure and Plague
Brea came to the gate at dawn and performed her magic a third time. The guard looked up from his folded Astorian Gaze. He gaped at Brea, who shivered and sweated before the gatehouse. “You’re . . . the one,” he said, coming down from his post.
“Put that gun down.”
He dropped his pistol on the cobblestones. “Anything!” His passion was kind of frightening.
Brea tried not to swoon, ill with a mainland pathogen. She’d barely managed to voice-command her assembler palette. The implant was a family heirloom, and nearly used up—like all Feast tech.
“Keys,” she whispered.
He gave her the key ring. “Anything!”
It was the last of her divergence-pheromone-booster. She’d used the rest on inner-palace guards, immuno-eunuchs. She was feverish and leaving behind three lovers that rivaled Aerd. Each represented a lifetime. It had been such an intense night that she was seeing through immuno-love. She was tired of its distractions, of bliss and hellish withdrawal. She wanted something more for herself. What did Aerd call Vedrum? A defective immuno-sapiens That’s what she was.
She tried the keys one by one in the gatehouse control panel. She dropped the keys, knelt to retrieve them, realized she was still wearing the homespun gown she’d snatched on her way out.
What had their names been? Three lifetimes in a night, two women and a man. After consummating with the latter, she’d asked him to get her pregnant, but it turned out they weren’t aligned. Now he was probably in love with another. Feast immunity was spreading through the palace like wildfire.
The gate trundled open, and the guard followed her down the hill. As they descended, the screams and alarms of Astoria grew louder. The sun was over the town’s eastern battlement. Heaps of bodies burned in Pioneer Square. A mourning procession in black collided with what looked like a revolutionary march: young people wearing green armbands, brandishing pistols as they chanted. Naked revelers ran through the confusion.