Steel Beach

by John Varley

  "Mario, you never come see me anymore," she chided.

  "The name is Hildy now," I said. "It has been for thirty years."

  "You prove my point. I guess that means you're still working for that bird-cage liner."

  I shrugged, and noticed Brenda's uncomprehending expression.

  "Newspads used to be printed out on paper, then they'd sell the paper," I explained. "When people were through reading it, they'd use it on the bottoms of their birdcages. Callie never abandons a clich, no matter how dated."

  "And why should I? The clich business has suffered a radical decline since the Invasion. What we need are new and better clichs, but nobody seems to be writing them. Present company excepted, of course."

  "From Callie, that's almost a compliment," I told Brenda. "And nobody would line a birdcage with the Nipple, Callie. The stories would put the birds right off their food."

  She considered it. "I don't think so, Mario. If we had electronic birds, your newspad would be the perfect liner.

  "Could be. I do find it useful for wrapping my electronic fish."

  Most of this had gone right over Brenda's head, of course. But she had never been one to let a little ignorance bother her.

  "To catch the shit?" she said.

  We both looked at her.

  "At the bottom of the birdcage," she explained.

  "I think I like her," Callie said.

  "Of course you do. She's an empty vessel, waiting to be filled with your tall tales of the old days."

  "That's one reason. You've been using her as your own personal birdcage liner. She needs my help."

  "She doesn't seem to mind."

  "But I do," Brenda said, unexpectedly. Callie and I looked at her again.

  "I know I don't know much about ancient history." She saw Callie's expression, and squirmed. "Sorry. But how much do you expect me to know about things that happened hundreds of years ago? Or care?"

  "It's okay," Callie said. "I may not have used the word 'ancient'-I still think of the Roman Empire when that word comes up-but I can see it must seem ancient to you. I said the same thing to my parents when they talked about things that happened before I was born. The difference is, when I was young the old eventually had the good manners to die. A new generation took over. Your generation faces a different situation. Hildy seems very old to you, but I'm more than twice his age, and I don't have any plans to die. Maybe that's not fair to your generation, but it's a fact."

  "The gospel according to Calamari," I said.

  "Shut up, Mario. Brenda, it's never going to be your world. Your generation will never take over from us. It's not my world anymore, either, because of you. All of us, from both generational extremes, have to run this world together, which means we have to make the effort to understand each other's viewpoints. It's hard for me, and I know it must be hard for you. It's as if I had to live with my great-great-great-great-grandparents, who grew up during the industrial revolution and were ruled by kings. We'd barely even have a language in common."

  "That's okay with me," Brenda said. "I do make the effort. Why doesn't he?"

  "Don't worry about him. He's always been like that."

  "Sometimes he makes me so mad."

  "It's just his way."

  "Yoo-hoo, ladies. I'm here."

  "Shut up, Mario. I can read him like a book, and I can tell he likes you. It's just that, the more he likes you, the worse he tends to treat you. It's his way of distancing himself from affection, which he's not sure he's able to return."

  I could see the wheels turning in Brenda's head and, since she was not stupid, just ignorant, she eventually followed that statement out to its logical-if you believed the premise in the first place-conclusion, which was that I must love her madly, because I treated her very badly. I looked ostentatiously around at the walls of the barn.

  "It must be hanging in your office," I said.

  "What's that?"

  "Your degree in psychology. I didn't even know you went back to school."

  "I've been in school every day of my life, jerk. And I sure wouldn't need a degree to see through you. I spent thirty years learning how to do that." There was more, something about how just because I was a hundred years old now, I shouldn't think I'd changed so much. But it was all in Italian, so I only got the gist.

  Callie gets a modest yearly stipend from the Antiquities Preservation Board for staying fluent in Italian-something she would have done anyway, since it was her native language and she had firm ideas about the extinction of human knowledge. She had tried to teach it to me but I had no aptitude beyond a few kitchen words. And what was the point? The Central Computer stored hundreds of languages no one spoke anymore, from Cheyenne to Tasmanian, including all the languages that had suffered a drastic drop in popularity because they never got established on Luna before the Invasion. I spoke English and German, like most everybody else, with a little Japanese thrown in. There were sizable groups of Chinese speakers, and Swahili, and Russian. Other than that, languages were preserved by study groups of a few hundred fanatics like Callie.

  I doubt Brenda even knew there was an Italian language, so she listened to Callie's tirade with a certain wariness. Ah, yes, Italian is a fine language for tirades.

  "I guess you've known each other a long time," Brenda said to me.

  "We go way back."

  She nodded, unhappy about something. Callie shouted, and I turned to see her jump down into the breeding pen and stride toward the crew of helpers, who were chivying the two brutes into final mating position.

  "Not yet, you idiots," she shouted. "Give them time." She reached the group of people and started handing out orders right and left. Callie had never been able to find good help. I had been part of that help for a great many years, so I know what I'm talking about. It took me a long time to realize that no one would ever be good enough for her; she was one of those people who never believed anyone could do a job as well as she could do it herself. The maddening thing was, she was usually right.

  "Back off, they're not ready yet. Don't rush them. They'll know when it's time. Our job is to facilitate, not initiate."If I have any skills as a lover," I told Brenda, "it's because of that."

  "Because of her?"

  "'Give them time. We're not on a schedule here. Show a little finesse.' I heard that so many times I guess I took it to heart."

  And it did take me back, watching Callie working the stock again. Of the major brontosaur ranchers in Luna, she was the only one who didn't use artificial insemination at breeding time. "If you think helping a pair copulate is tough," she always said, "try getting a semen sample from a brontosaur bull."

  And there was a rough sort of poetry about dinosaur mating, particularly brontosaurs.

  Tyrannosaurs went about it as you might expect, full of sound and fury. Two bulls would butt heads over a prospective mate until one staggered away like a dusted-up nerg addict to nurse an epic headache. I don't suppose the victor fared a lot better except for the chance to grapple the tiny claw of his lady fair.

  Brontosaurs were more dainty. The male would spend three or four days doing his dance, when he remembered to. These creatures had short attention spans, even when in heat. He would rear up on his hind legs and do a comical samba around and around the female. She typically showed minimal interest for the first two days. Then the seduction moved to the love-bite stage, with the male nipping her around the base of the tail while she placidly chewed her cud. When she finally began rearing up with him, it was time to bring them into the mating pen to pitch some serious woo.

  That was going on now. The two of them were facing each other on their hind legs, doing a little neck-weaving, a little foreleg pawing. It could still be another hour before they were ready, a condition signaled by the emergence of one of the bull's two hemi-penes.

  Nobody ever told me why a reptile needs two penises. Come to think of it, I never asked. There are limits to curiosity.

  "So how long were you involved w
ith Callie?"

  "What's that?" Brenda had drawn me out of my reverie, as she had a habit of doing.

  "She said thirty years. That's a long time. You must have been real serious about her."

  All right, so I'm dense. But I finally got it. I looked out at the primal scene: two Mesozoic monsters, here through the grace of modern genetic science, and a thin brown woman, likewise.

  "She's not my lover. She's my mother. Why don't you go down there with her? She'll see you don't get hurt, and I'm sure she'll be happy to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about brontosaurs. I'm going to take a break."

  I noticed as we climbed down the gate on opposite sides that Brenda looked happier than I'd seen her all day.

  ***

  I assume the mating went off without any trouble. It usually does when Callie's in charge. I imagine the mating that produced me was equally well-planned and carried out. Sex was never a big deal to Callie. Having me was her nod in the direction of duty. But I have no siblings, despite powerful societal pressure toward large families at the time of my birth. Once was apparently enough.

  Paradoxically, I know I didn't spend any time in a Petri dish, though it would have made the whole process much easier for her if she'd availed herself of any of the medical advances that could, today, make procreation, gestation, and parturition about as personally involving as a wrong number on the telephone. Callie had conceived me the old-fashioned way: a random spermatozoan hitting the jackpot at the right time of the month. She had carried me to full term, and had borne me in pain, just like God promised Eve. And she had hated every minute of it. How do I know that? She told me, and anyone else who would listen. She told me an average of three times a day throughout my childhood.

  It wasn't so much the pain that had bothered her. For a woman who could shoulder a reproductive organ almost as big as she was and guide it into a cloaca of a filthiness that had to be seen to be disbelieved, while standing knee-deep in dinosaur droppings, Callie had an amazing streak of prissiness. She had hated the bloodiness of childbirth, the smells and sensations of it.

  ***

  Callie's office was cool. That's what I'd had in mind when I went up there, simply to cool off. But it wasn't working. All that had happened was that the sweat on my body had turned clammy. I was breathing hard, and my hands weren't steady. I felt on the edge of an anxiety attack, and I didn't know why. On top of all that, my neck was hurting again.

  And why hadn't I mentioned the purpose of our visit? I'd told myself it was because she was too busy, but there had been plenty of time while the three of us stood on the gate. Instead, I'd let her prattle on about the good old days. It would have been a perfect opportunity to brace her about taking the job as the Earth-born member of our little team of time-travelers. After holding forth about the generational gap she would have looked silly turning us down. And I knew Callie. She would love the job, would never admit loving it, and would only accept it if she could be tricked into making it look as if she had come up with the idea herself, as a favor to me and Brenda.

  I got up and moved to the windows. That didn't help, so I walked to the opposite wall. No improvement. After I'd done that three or four times I realized I was pacing. I rubbed the back of my neck, drifted over to the windows again, and looked out and down.

  Callie's office windows overlook the barn interior from just beneath the roof. There's a stairway leading to a verandah "outside"-actually, within the small disneyland that is her ranch. I was looking out over the breeding pens I had just left. Callie was there, pointing something out to Brenda, who stood beside her watching the spectacle of two mating brontosaurs. Standing just behind them was someone who looked familiar. I squinted, but it didn't help, so I grabbed the pair of binoculars on a hook beside the window.

  I focused in on the tall, red-headed figure of Andrew MacDonald.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I remembered leaving Callie's ranch. I recalled wandering for a while, taking endless downscalators until there were no more; I had reached the bottom level. That struck me as entirely too metaphorical, so I took an infinite number of upscalators and found my way to the Blind Pig. I don't recall what I was thinking all those hours, but in retrospect, it couldn't have been pretty.

  You might say the next thing I recall is waking up, or coming to, but that wouldn't be strictly accurate. It wouldn't convey the nature of the experience. It felt more like I reconstructed myself from far-flung bits-no, that implies some effort on my part. The bits reconstructed themselves, and I became self-aware in quantum stages. There was no dividing line, but eventually I knew I was in a back room of the Pig. This was considerable progress, and here my own will took over and I looked around to learn more about my surroundings. I was facing downward, so that's where I first turned my attention. What I saw there was a woman's face.

  "We'll never solve the problem of the head shot until an entirely new technology comes along," she said. I had no idea what this meant. Her hair was spread out on a pillow. There were outspread hands on each side of her face. There was something odd about her eyes, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I suppose I was in a literal frame of mind, because having thought that, I touched one of her eyeballs with the tip of my finger. It didn't seem to bother her much. She blinked, and I took my finger away.

  There was an important discovery: when I touched her eye, one of the hands had moved. Putting these data together, I concluded that the hands bracketing her face were my hands. I wiggled a finger, testing this hypothesis. One of the fingers down there wiggled. Not the one I had intended, but how much exactitude could I expect? I smiled, proud of myself.

  "You can encase the brain in metal," she said. "Put a blood bag on the anti-camera side of the head, fire a bullet from the camera's pee-oh-vee. And ka-chow! The bullet goes whanging off the metal cover, ka-blooey, the blood bag explodes, and if you're lucky it looks like the bullet went through the head and spread tomato sauce all over the wall in back of the guy."

  I felt large.

  Had I taken large pills? I couldn't remember, but I must have. Normally I don't, as they aren't really much of a thrill, unless you get your kicks by imagining yourself to be the size of an interplanetary liner. But you can mix them with other drugs and get interesting effects. I must have done that.

  "You can make it look even more real by putting teeny tiny charges in back of the eyeballs. When the bullet hits, the charges go off, and the eyeballs are blown out toward the camera, see? Along with a nice blood haze, which is a plus in masking whatever violations of realism are going on behind it."

  Something was rubbing against my ears. I turned my head about as quickly as they rotate the big scope out in Copernicus, and saw a bare foot. At first I thought it was my foot, but I knew from reports flown in by carrier pigeon that my own feet were about three kilometers behind me, at the ends of my legs, which were stretched out straight. I turned my head the other way, saw another foot. Hers, I concluded. The first was probably hers, too.

  "But that damn steel case. Crimony! I can't tell you what a-you should pardon the expression-headache that thing can be. Especially when nine out of ten directors will insist the head shot has to be in slomo. You give the chump a false forehead full of maxfactor #3 to guarantee a juicy wound, you annodize the braincase in black so-you hope-it'll look like a hole in the head when the skin's ripped away, and what happens? The damn bullet rips through everything, and there it is in the dailies. A bright, shiny spot of metal right down there at the bottom of the hole. The director chews you out, and it's Re-take City."

  Was I aboard a ship? That might account for the rocking motion. But I remembered I was in the Blind Pig, and unless the bar had been cut from its steel catacomb and embarked bodily, it seemed unlikely we were at sea. I decided I still needed more data. Feeling adventurous, I looked down between myself and the woman's body.

  For a moment the view made no sense at all. I could see my own legs, and my feet, as if through a reversed telescope. Then I co
uldn't see them any more. Then I could again. Where were her legs? I couldn't see them. Oh, yes, since her feet were tickling my ears, her legs must be those things against my chest. So she was on the floor, on her back. And that explained the other activity I saw. I stopped my up and down motion.

  "I don't want to do this," I told her.

  She kept talking about the difficulties of a head shot. I realized that she was at least as detached from our coupling as I was. I stood up and looked around the room. She never missed a syllable. There were a pair of pants on the floor; they were a million sizes too small for me, but they were probably mine. I held them, lifted each leg with gargantuan deliberation, and presto! The pants did fit. I stumbled through a curtain and into the main room of the Pig.

  It was maybe twenty steps to the bar. In that distance I shrank alarmingly. It was not an unpleasant sensation, though at one point I had to hold the back of a barstool to keep my balance. Pleased with myself, I gingerly climbed onto a leather stool.

  "Bartender," I said, "I'll have another of the same."

  The fellow behind the bar was known as Deep Throat, for a famous clandestine news source. He probably had another name, but no one knew it, and we all thought it was fitting it should be that way. He nodded and was moving away, but someone sat on the stool next to mine and reached over to grab his arm.

  "Hold the heavy stuff this time, okay?" she said. I saw that it was Cricket. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. I shrugged, then nodded to Deep Throat's enquiring look. His customers' state of sobriety is not his concern. If you can sit at the bar-and pay-he'll serve you.

  "How you doing, Hildy?" Cricket asked.

  "Never better," I said, and watched my drink being prepared. Cricket shut up for the time being. I knew there were more questions to come. What are friends for?

  The drink arrived, in one of the Pig's hologlasses. It's probably the only bar in Luna that still uses them. They date back to the mid-twenty-first century, and they're rather charming. A chip in the thick glass bottom projects a holo picture just above the surface of the drink. I've seen them with rolling dolphins, windsurfers, a tiny water polo team complete with the sound of a cheering crowd, and Captain Ahab harpooning the Great White Whale. But the most popular glass at the Pig is the nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll, in keeping with the way Deep Throat mixes the drinks. I watched it for a while. It starts with a very bright light, evolves into an exquisitely detailed orange and black mushroom cloud that expands until it is six inches high, then blows away. Then it blows up again. The cycle takes about a minute.