He sighed and laid his hand on the little terminal embedded in the desk. “I’ve checked up on the activities you mentioned, Mr. du Cheyne. The so-called ‘wolfen killpit’ you describe is enrolled as a licensed private gambling club. What they bet on is none of our business, so long as no other laws are broken.”
“And this business with the wolfen...”
He rolled his eyes, classic exasperation. “Mr. du Cheyne, there are more than eight-hundred licensed gambling clubs in Orikhalkos alone. More than sixty of those,” he tapped the terminal screen for emphasis, “involve betting on some kind of combat sport. Boxing, wrestling, fencing... so long as the gambling records are ethically handled, so long as nobody gets killed, what business is it of ours...”
“The wolfen get killed.”
A snippet of involuntary laugher popped out of him before he could stop it. “Mr. du Cheyne. Wolfen are animals.”
Right. I sat silent for so long he started to turn away, apparently figuring I’d come to the end of my business. “Mr. Patrocles.”
Raised eyebrow: “Yes?”
“What about the dollhouse?”
He turned back, folded his hands on the desktop, frowned. “Mr. du Cheyne, there are no licensed ‘dollhouses,” as you so quaintly call them, in the city of Orikhalkos.”
“Really. I know of at least two.”
He stared at me then, eyes quite empty. Finally, “One of the places you mention is listed as the site of a private social club. None of our business.”
“No one here cares about things like that?”
A shrug. “Mr. du Cheyne, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, prostitution is legal in Orikhalkos. It is no business of this city if a woman chooses, through her own free will, to rent out her vagina as a prostitute, any more than it would be our business if she chose to rent out her voice as a nightclub singer. So long as the proper taxes are paid...”
Taxes. Splendid. I said, “What about the other one?”
He brightened visibly, smile flicking on like magic. “Well, Mr. du Cheyne, the property at the site you describe is registered as a warehouse. We’ll send a man to investigate this very day. If it turns out to be an unlicensed social club... well. All appropriate fines will certainly be levied!”
Fines. Great.
I got up and said, “Sorry I wasted your time.”
Mr. Patrocles smiled merrily, and said, “That’s what I’m here for, Mr. du Cheyne.”
o0o
By sunset, Tau Ceti an improbable crimson dome on the edge of a deep indigo sky, upper part separated from the lower by a single black band of cloud, I’d retrieved the camper from the lot and driven back out into the countryside, following the course of the Krijgsgevangene River westward across the Koperveldt toward the setting sun.
Nothing really out here, but... well-rutted dirt roads, occasional run down fences, boerderij houses visible against this vista or that, beneath faraway mountains and hills crowned with clouds. This place is not a wilderness. Hasn’t been for a long damned time. No wolfen left this far north on the Koperveldt. Womfrogs reduced to pitiful, isolated bands. Dollies...
I wonder if the Groenteboeren keep them in their homes? Easily trained, they’d make splendid servants. Vash de dishes, dollie. Polish mijn boots, dollie. Suck mijn dick, dollie. I grinned in the growing darkness. That last’d piss off the vrowvelijk Groenteboeren no end! Or maybe not. Maybe it’d be worthwhile, considering the rest. Hell, maybe your average vrouw wouldn’t mind at all. You want your dick sucked, Hans? Just a minute, I’ll get the dollie for you.
At a bend in the river, hardly a creek compared to the Opveldt’s Somber, I pulled up in front of a big, barn-like building, broad parking lot filled with dozens of ground cars, cheery yellow light streaming from its broad windows, and killed the engine.
Well. Here I am in front of the largest, most influential grange hall on all of Green Heaven. No, sir, the freedom-loving Groenteboeren won’t have anything to do with a nasty old government, like those absurd little weasels in their Compact Cities. Still, no one likes anarchy, no one with property anyway. I got out of the camper and walked across the parking lot, boots crunching softly on the loose gravel.
Inside, it didn’t take long to attract attention, to introduce myself, find the fellow in charge, talk them into letting me be the night’s entertainment. A few drinks, priming myself as well as my hosts. Then, up on the little stage.
I’d planned what to say, of course, composed an impassioned little speech in my head, tried it out on my tongue during the drive, spooling it off into the library so it could be played back, corrected for grammar and pacing, at need.
Felt the AI get ready.
Opened my mouth...
Christ. Look at them out there. Fat little men and women, old-stock Groenteboeren so satisfied with their lives, with their... I felt the passion flow away like water, replaced by... I don’t know. Not fear, really. Just a wish that I hadn’t come here.
With the passion went all knowledge of just why I’d come.
Room full of expectant eyes.
I started to talk, telling them whatever popped into my head, watching individual reactions, pretending I was talking to each person in turn, the rest of the audience vanished. After a while, my voice and breathing steadied.
Hello there, friends. Here I am, this rich man from faraway Earth, remote world of your ancestors, come here to the fairest planet in all the firmament. See them beaming with pride? As though they made the planet, with their own hands. Fine. Tell them a little bit of your life, tell them you’re a working man after all, just like them...
Just like us, Hans?
Well, no, Gerrit. Our work is the management of our proud estates, the stewardship of the wilderness veldt, you see. He seems to be talking about a job, like some kind of omganger drudge...
Talked about my visit to the Blondinkruis boerderij, of how much I’d liked Vrouw Gretel, my hostess... not many hostile looks. Every man likes a pretty girl, and most pretty girls understand the value of male admiration, you see. Told them about the womfrog hunt, here on the Koperveldt. Saw them nod and smile at that, yessirree, good for the tourist trade, you see, and...
I told them about that other hunt I’d seen, away on the Opveldt. Watched them frown. Then I told them about life in the big city. Wolfen in the killpits, relating to wolfen out on the great plains. Started to tell them about the dollhouses of Orikhalkos...
Someone from the audience, a gruff-voiced man, shouted, “What the hell are you getting at, foreigner?” Angry, angry voice.
Translator AI saying, This is no good, Gaetan. Worse than the speech you originally planned. They think you tricked them.
Tricked? I shrugged, and started telling them about the wolfen and dollies, about what I’d seen, about what I thought it all meant.
A different man shouted, “Shut the fuck up, asshole! We don’t need God-damned outsiders telling us how to run our world!”
I tried to keep on talking, telling them what they needed to hear, but a woman in the front row of tables threw food on me, some kind of savory pudding splattering on the front of my shirt, leaving a dark, greasy stain behind as it fell away, and she called out, “Get off the fucking stage! Go on back where you came from if you don’t like it here!”
I stood still for a bit, less than a minute really, staring at them all, a room full of dark, hostile eyes now, then I shrugged and walked away, going out the door and back to the camper. By the time I got the engine started, the door had opened behind me, a handful of men coming out into the night, walking across the parking lot in my direction. I gunned the motor, lifting off and leaving them behind.
o0o
I drove southward then, giving up the path by the river, pulling up into the star-freckled sky, speeding in the direction of the low, dark hills of the Koudloft, where I knew the Kapellmeister and his Arousians would be waiting. Kapellmeister, Arousians, wolfen and dollies...
The thought raised a crawling sensation betwe
en my legs. You’d like to be a nice, fat Groeteboeren, living in a nice, fat boerderij estate, all rustic logs and simple pleasures, wouldn’t you, Gaetan? Imagining a wife? No. Imagining myself with a dollie servant, who’d do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and never complain, never ask for anything in return.
Wish I’d taken time for a whore in Orikhalkos.
What a waste.
Well. I’ve done my bit, I guess. Nobody can say I didn’t try. That’s it. Nobody can say I didn’t try.
Te absolvo, Gaetan du Cheyne.
Fifteen: Just at sunrise
Just at sunrise, eyes vaguely grainy from a night without sleep, I pulled over a familiar rim of metallic green forest and slid down into an irregular bowl of valley, my appointed rendezvous at the edge of the Koudloft, whose white hills rolled to the horizon beyond. I dropped the camper in a swirl of loose debris, not far from the Arousians’ cluster of tents, killed the drive, punched the popup awake, and sat back, watching Tau Ceti pull free of the forest.
I really ought to go in back and get some sleep. Really. Blood symbiotes can compensate for as long as it takes, but sleep is a cultural and physical... shit.
I got out of the cab and stood beside the camper, stretching, feeling an odd, pleasant lassitude in my back, watching the Arousians come out of their tents, one by one, greet each other with a distant creaking of rusty hinges, touching each other, at limbs and faces, then going about the business of getting ready for the day.
Just now, I wish I were one of them. There. Red wolfen peering at me from the nearby vegetation, bronze-colored stuff like tall, thick-bladed grass. There’ll be dollies somewhere close.
Kapellmeister’s voice at my side: “Welcome back.”
I looked down at it, reading welcome in drifting ping-pong ball eyes. Felt a quick surge of pleasure. Felt myself smile, knowing the Kapellmeister would understand. “I might just as well not have gone.”
“Mr. Patrocles posted the minutes of your interview in the city archives.”
I nodded. Turned back to the tent village. Fires burning now, splendidly primitive, red wolfen gathering round, as though enthralled. No dollies yet. I said, “I guess I’d better do something about breakfast.” One of the Kapellmeister’s eyes, the lone aft one, most directly connected to the more primitive portions of its brain, dipped in subtle assent as it turned away, the other six, paired, focusing for the hunt.
I went inside and stood in front of the refrigerator for a while, contemplating the fresh junk food I’d bought in Orikhalkos. Finally realized I wasn’t interested, threw myself down at the bed, awareness drifting back and forth between the square of blue-green sky framed by the window and shadows blending on the ceiling.
Always this formless longing, built up from physical reality, and culture made in reality’s image. I wish that I too had some reason to... rise up and do. Something. Anything. Anything important. Compelling. That whole worthless business now spilling over into my desire for... what? Is it a lover I want, someone who at least pretends... or just an inert female body in which to...
I suddenly fell asleep.
Awoke into sunset.
Lay clasped in the reverberations of a dying dream.
Hot, tacky sweat on my face, inside my clothes. An uncomfortable sense of entrapment in my pants, tightness, gluey itch making me realize the dream had called forth an erection, which had gone about its business of spewing.
I grabbed at the dream then, looking for the afterecho, trying to recapture its substance. A woman. Young. Slim. Not quite faceless. Dark hair on her head rather more nebulous than the woolly black hair on her crotch. Pale eyes, maybe blue. Maybe some other color.
In the dream, I loved her, heart and soul, no name, no body other than those disconnected parts. No voice. Nothing but an essence that left its residue in my underwear. I sighed and let go. Just a dream.
The spacesuit whispered, It’s a dream you dream often, Gaetan.
Funny. I never looked at it that way before. They listen to my dreams. Somewhere in a memory matrix on Random Walk... I wonder if they could...
The library whispered, Yes.
I tried to imagine watching my dreams, exactly as I’d dreamed them, rather than softened by the quick veil of forgetfulness, and felt a horrid chill steal down my spine.
The library whispered, Dream recall was once considered a primary form of noninterventionist therapy. Modern psychiatric engineers, however, prefer normative modal streaming technology.
The quick fix, as they say. Quick memory of my father arguing for just that fix. Equally quick memory of my mother, furious with him, flatly stating that I would be “remedied” by the Grace of Kali Meitner, or by nothing at all.
My God, how I hated Remedial Grace!
To my father’s credit, when he found out about the whippings, he put an end to it, effectively ending his marriage, but I hated him anyway.
I got up then, feeling ravenous, got a bottle of orange juice out of the refrigerator, some kind of chewy pastry covered with tart black jelly. Outside, in the growing darkness, the Arousians had their cooking fires going again. The wolfen were shadows nearby and... there. The dollies stood together near the tall grass, a pale, compact, orderly mass.
Maybe if I had a dollie in here, I wouldn’t have those dreams.
Silly ass.
I got out of my foetid clothing and got into the shower.
o0o
I went outside, only to find the stars had filled the sky once again. There are moments, nighttime moments, when I wish I could look up and see something different, something other than Orion and the Pleiades, something other than the golden stream of the Milky Way and Magellan’s pale ghost clouds.
Maybe if I got on board Random Walk and went far enough...
The library whispered, You’d have to get in toward the core, or go outside the galaxy entirely for the sky’s aspect, as seen from the surface of a truly terrestrial world, to change.
Oh, sure, I could get away from these particular constellations, but it’d still be a sky full of stars, strewn in meaningless patterns my brain’s edge-recognition driver would transform to familiar shapes.
Look around. That tree over there, branches and leaves forming suggestive shadows against the sky. That’s a wizard, isn’t it? Gandalf the Gray come to save you? Or shall we run screaming from some creature of Chthulhu?
I found a rock to sit on, just where the fires’ crawling light seemed to end. Maybe no one will be aware of me here. The Arousians will go about their zoological business. The wolfen will do whatever it is... I felt my attention focusing on the dollies, standing together, turned just so, as if... watching me.
Pheromones on the wind?
Or does that stirring within come from me alone?
There was a rustling in the darkness and the Kapellmeister was at my side. Long silence, then it said, “How are you doing, Gaetan?”
I felt a sudden warmth, sitting out under the familiar stars, sitting with my friend, being asked... I said, “Well.” Realized abruptly that I had no idea how I was doing, could only look down helplessly at the Kapellmeister.
It said, “Everyone who, for whatever reason, wishes to... change things, must try the simplest path first.”
Is that what I was up to, talking to a rooted bureaucrat, being laughed off the stage by a bunch of grange-hall ranchers? And what did I want to change? The lot of the wolfen and dollies? It’s far too late to save the wolfen, who’ll march down the quick path to extinction now whether the City folk use them as entertainment or not. And the dollies? What difference does it make whether they’re fucked for sport by sick human males or merely fucked, killed and eaten by the wolfen?
I said, “I always walk away in the end.”
The Kapellmeister said, “Not always, Gaetan du Cheyne.”
No. Not always. “If those men hadn’t threatened me, I might not have saved your life, back in Orikhalkos.”
“But you did save me.”
So? Did I incur come obligation thereby? Did you?
The Kapellmeister said, “Ultimately, the change must come from within.”
Heady bullshit, when you’re sitting, depressed, under too-familiar stars. I said, “That’s what they say. But one person never matters, even if that person turns out to be Jesus, or Kali Meitner, or something.”
“You have a sense of history in your head, Gaetan du Cheyne. A fascinating human history of isolates interacting.”
I almost didn’t hear its words, muttering, “Not to mention Hitler and Napoleon, Temujin and Attila, Wang Mang, Sargon the so-called Great...”
Across the way, the wolfen were whispering and grinning together, facing the dollies, dollies on their knees, whispering prayers like some flock of ancient Christians facing... By God, Brother Flavius. I think that beast has my name on it!
The Kapellmeister said, “Members of a eusocial species are never alone.”
One of the dollies got up, walked slowly, reluctantly, over to the wolfen. Stood before them, silent for a moment, then kneeled. A male, no doubt. Males, almost by definition, are the ones who die for the good of the group.
I said, “That dollie’s mighty alone, just now.”
“As you are alone. And I.” The foremost wolfen made a little guttural cough, leaned forward and neatly nipped off the dollie’s right arm. It made a high, frightened scream and fell bleeding in the dust, drowning out the other dollies’ whispered prayers.
Sudden memory of images from Salieri, of what a Kapellmeister’s life was like, life in a world of listening, talking hands. I said, “Why are you alone?”
Another wolfen stepped forward and took off the dollie’s left leg, chewing slowly as the image of a little cowgirl howled and struggled on the ground. What do the dollies say in their prayers?
The Kapellmeister said, “Because I... chose a solitary path.”
A third wolfen came forward and took the left arm, leaving the dollie to circle crabwise on the ground, pushing with its remaining leg, gasping, sobbing, no longer able to scream.
“Why? Why are you here?”
Acts of Conscience Page 30