Jack Faust - Michael Swanwick

by Unknown Author

Faust took a deep breath of the wintry air and felt his head clear. The crisis was over. He would not accept Mephistoph-eles's advice. It was the counsel of a pimp, and the senseless defilement of a love that was pure and true. Better to let Gretchen go altogether than to deform her soul. That was something, he now realized, that he could never do.

  The demon turned and grinned skullishly. (Ah, Faust, how little you understand yourself!)

  * * *

  TABLOIDS

  Gretchen was furious. That horrid photographer and his unspeakable photo essay! What kind of man went searching through the world's nightmares to gather the ripest into a bouquet to drop at her feet? She closed the copy of Die Zeitung lying on the conference table, unable to look any more upon the small deformed faces, and said, "Cancel all our advertising."

  Stabenow, Hoess, and Topf looked uneasily from one to another. Ullmann stared stonily ahead. Bellochs cleared his throat. "It won't look good," he demurred.

  "And this does?" She shook the newspaper in his face. "I don't want these parasites to see another penny of our money ever again."

  "We need advertising," Bellochs said patiently. Her director of marketing was a round little grandfatherly man with

  half-moon spectacles. "It is like a dungheap to the farmer or slavery to the Spanish colonies—an unpleasant but necessary evil. The very factories that these pictures vilify are currently running at full capacity to produce a solid backlog of film. Film which, incidentally, this photographer needs just as dearly as we need the ear of the public." He lifted a sheaf of papers from the table and let them fall a futile inch. "These are the plans for a saturation advertising campaign, with which we hope to put a new box-camera in every household in the Empire. Radio and newspapers; they fit together like this." He joined hands, fingers meshing. "So, yes, by all means, cut off advertising to every paper that offends us. If you wish to shut down three-quarters of your film production. Otherwise ..." He shrugged.

  "The law," Hoess suggested, "might not be entirely unhelpful here."

  Ullmann thumped the table with the hilt of his scabbarded dagger—he liked to fancy himself the target of assassins—and cried, "Yes! Let's take them to court!" Wulf Ullmann was a dark-haired little man, almost handsome, a prig, a bit of a weasel, and Gretchen's own cousin. At times he presumed more on their relationship than she thought warranted. "We'll sue their paper out from under them, and run our advertising for free!"

  So extreme was his passion that by reaction Gretchen found herself moved to a more temperate frame of mind. "Your cousin means you no good," Faust had written. "Watch him well." But he had not commanded Wulf be fired, and until he explicitly did so, she would keep her cousin on the payroll. Treacherous or not, he was still family. Besides, of all her duties, the one she relished least was dismissing an employee. She always cried afterwards.

  Also, he was dangerous. She liked that in a man.

  "I can only imagine what headlines they would run against us while the case was litigating," Gretchen said. " 'Antichrist Corporation Sues Defender of Faith and Freedom' perhaps, or 'Beast 666 Introduces Convenient New Family Camera.' " Then, when the laughter had died down, "Suppose we try this instead. We'll start the radio ads two weeks early—can we have them ready that soon? Of course we can. For two weeks, as many ads as the stations will run— we'll budget more money—and never a move to buy so much as an inch of print. That should shake up Die Zeitungl We wouldn't have to threaten anything; our silence would be eloquence enough. We could wait for them to come to us, hat in hand, wondering exactly how abject a public retraction of their slander we would require."

  Bellochs smiled. "Now, that would not only be possible," he said, "but productive as well."

  A tension went out of the room. Everyone, even Wulf, relaxed visibly.

  Stabenow flipped open his notepad. "I'll prepare a draft of their retraction. What should be the gist of it?"

  "Let them explain that it is a question of the greatest good for the greatest number. Our medicines save countless children's lives. Factory jobs feed thousands more. If ignorant people insist on drinking from contaminated wells, they can hardly fault us for being upriver from them. They have only their own stupidity to blame. Do they expect us to wipe their noses for them? Such ingratitude is simply outrageous."

  "My people will polish it up a little," Stabenow promised.

  After the meeting room had emptied, Gretchen turned to her secretary. "What's next?"

  Anna consulted her clipboard. "It's Friday, so you'll be meeting with your section chiefs to go over their weekly status reports. Then you need the legal department's opinion on the new tabloids. There's a ceremony at the laboratories; the bishop will be present to bless the centrifuges. Finally, there's that impertinent Silesian from the Polish court, Wladislaw Czenski. He refuses to say what he wants."

  "What do they all want? Chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas—I'm sorry we ever got involved in chemical weaponry in the first place. But a most properly made young man, I think. He has such lovely dark curls, don't you agree?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  "I'm running late today. That dreadful pictorial! Have him told that his appointment has been rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon, at my country estate. I'll have Abelard prepare lunch."

  "As you wish."

  "Is my carriage ready? Have it brought around. Do you know," she confided, "I'm actually looking forward to meeting with the lawyers? We've been working on the tabloids so long, and this is the final step before we put them into production."

  She rattled the plate of pills angrily. "Well?"

  "What we are, ah, trying to say," Dreschler said, "is no. We consulted with several priests about the, umm, morality of the product. They were unanimous in their condemnation."

  "Priests! Morality? Allow me to remind you, gentlemen, that priests are not only male but sworn to celibacy. Now either they are true to their vows, in which case they know nothing about the subject, or else they are not. In which case they have no moral standing whatsoever."

  "The legal staff is united in our recommendations as well," he said mildly. "We stand upon litigious grounds. As contraceptives these tabloids are perhaps, just perhaps, acceptable, provided we introduced them quietly, and made them available only to housewives and whores. To ensure they would not degrade public morals. However, your own documentation says that several taken the morning after, ummm, coition will also prove effective, and this means that they are also—" He coughed. "It means they are also an abortifacient. Child-murder is still—well. It's a capital crime, after all. Though they rarely hang the poor wretches. In most cases the judges will listen sympathetically to the woman's plea for mercy, and direct the executioner to employ the sword instead."

  "This would prevent abortions!" Gretchen cried. "Even taken the morning after, the tabloids are strictly contraceptive. The egg isn't properly fertilized by then. The zygote hasn't formed. Surely flushing an unfertilized ovum is preferable to the traumatic expulsion of an embryo brought on by infusions of pennyroyal. I need not remind you how many ignorant women die each year through misjudging the dosage of the oil."

  Dreschler shook his head slowly through her every word, and by this gesture erased them of all merit. "You are a woman—" he began.

  "—and am thus of course particularly eager for the repute and modesty of my sex to be preserved. I thank you for pointing this out." She had learned not to let her subordinates dismiss her arguments, as men would, as arising from her gender. Let them once categorize the tabloids as being of import to women alone, and the pills would be buried forever under the weight of their disregard. But she was too cunning for that. She would outmale their maleness, outlawyer their argumentativeness, and outlogic their objections. "My father, however, would take that for granted, and so must we. How would he analyze this situation? I think, as follows."

  She raised a finger.

  "Imprimis, the tabloids shall be made available only through doctors and mid wives; this will prevent t
hem from falling into irresponsible hands. Secundus, with every packet we shall enclose an insert notifying the buyer of the danger of its being misused as you describe, and spelling out the legal, ethical, and medical problems attendant thereunto."

  Several lawyers raised their hands and voices in dismay. Dreschler, as their chief, said, "But that will only ensure that all users know of this property!"

  "It is regrettable indeed," Gretchen lied. "But what can we do? Since you chose to bring priests into this matter, we can expect strident opposition from the Church. We must, after all, defend ourselves."

  She turned to go, stopped, returned. "Tertius," she said, "we start production tomorrow. I want that package insert written by morning."

  She took the pills with her.

  Men had to be seduced. This was something Gretchen in her innocence had not known. To listen to Mother or Aunt Penniger or indeed any of their generation (which was to say, those old enough to have forgotten), men were rampant and lustful beasts, ready for any nastiness on an instant's notice, and as often again as a woman would allow. They were ever-flowing and self-replenishing fountains of lechery. One had to be eternally on guard; a single indiscreet smile and a girl might be lost in debauchery forever.

  This was, alas, simply not true.

  Czenski was a case in point. Gretchen had seen him only the once. But, provided she was not directed otherwise—it was a letter day—she was determined to have him. Physically, he was pleasant: tall and broadly built, Nature's own bully, with a head of black ringlets so tight they might have been curled around her pinkie, and that fine, almost translucent Polish complexion that went so easily to red when moved by emotion. But it was his intensity she liked best. It reminded her in a lesser way, as a firefly lazily hovering in the evening sky might remind one of the moon, of her own beloved Faust.

  He would not be easy.

  Four days ago he had accosted her at a publicity shoot. She was standing outside Building 47, arm and smile frozen, in front of the new Reinhardt Industries logo (an R-and-I monogram intertwined with oak leaves to symbolize sturdy origins, and circled by a snake devouring its own tail, which represented the carbon ring), when hoofbeats thundered down the street. With a shout, the mud-spattered nobleman had leaped from his horse, tossing the reins to his servant, and run up to her, saying desperately, "The Polish armies are all that stand between Christendom and the Turk. If you—"

  "Excuse me." Anna Emels threw herself before Gretchen and seized the interloper by his arms. "You cannot be here. A photograph is being taken."

  He ignored the tiny woman completely, speaking over her head. "Good men are dying at this very moment to protect you, your factories, your possessions, and all civilization."

  "Good men are dying every moment," Gretchen replied coldly, "somewhere. Since they did not ask my leave to do so, I feel no particular obligation toward them."

  He flushed. "Do not mock my valiant comrades! They are true heroes, and you are only a—"

  "Sir!" Anna thrust her face up at his, as pugnacious as a terrier pup.

  Czenski glanced down at Gretchen's secretary, and froze with sudden shock. She glared up at him with all the ferocity of a small forest creature made bold by a predator's attack upon her lair. Her features taken one by one were wrong: nose too long, chin too weak, the shape of her face long out of fashion; and yet taken together they formed a strange harmony. She was not beautiful, but hers was a plainness that took the breath away. He gazed down into the cedar pools of her eyes, and was lost.

  Gretchen saw his expression and understood, and was secretly amused, for she knew, as he could not, how hopeless was his case. Anna Emels had confided to her once that she was not drawn to men but to women, and, more, that she had on occasion discovered other women similarly inclined and with them acted out these longings.

  Gretchen had never heard of such a thing, and was fascinated by it. She wanted to know every detail: how it was done, which woman lay on top, whether they both enjoyed it. But Anna, suddenly shy, merely stared at the ground and shook her head, that long water-rat hair hiding her eyes, and no amount of wheedling could pry another word from her.

  The Silesian recovered and, reaching past the tiny woman, pressed a bundle of papers into Gretchen's hands. "You must read these. Our need is great, your assistance urgently required."

  "I have business to attend to, sir," she said coolly. Then, handing the papers to Anna, "My secretary can set you up with an appointment, next Thursday perhaps, or the day after. Newspaperman! Are you ready?"

  Then she had smiled and pointed, and the flash-powder had gone off, blinding her. She blinked the small bright suns from her eyes, and it was two days later and the coach came up and carried her home.

  She spent the night at her town house. A servant brought her a letter on a silver platter and for an instant she looked at it blankly, thinking: That's not how it's done. But then she saw that it was from her parents.

  They had written with their usual worries from Heiligen-stadt, where Father stoically endured the sulfur baths and enema cures, refusing the advice of the doctors she sent because they were trained in the new ways of the pharmaceutical in-dustries-sponsored medical colleges, which he mistrusted. He was set in his ways and would undergo no treatment that had not been discredited long before he had been born. Mother fretted that she was working too hard and not taking enough pleasure out of life. Father suggested she sell the factories and buy herself a small estate along the Neckar, where the labor of her peasants would secure her a comfortable, if not luxurious, income. They both were concerned that she had not yet found an appropriate young man and might be doomed to die a maid.

  She ate a light supper and then wrote back as reassuringly as she could, knowing they would not listen. Her mind could not help but wander toward faraway London, but she forced herself to give the response serious attention. They were her parents, after all, and deserved no less.

  When she retired to her room, Faust's letter was waiting upon the pillow of her fresh-made bed. She never knew how it came, but she did not question its presence. Communication was difficult for those who had enemies they had never met.

  Clearly, Wycliffe's agents had suborned one of her servants. But it was scarce worth the effort to find out who; she was better off for this weekly reminder that none of her subordinates could ever be wholeheartedly trusted.

  She took up the letter, and lay back upon her bed to read

  it.

  Bellissima,

  You will be worrying whether to accept the Polish commission for chemical weaponry. Do so. Attached is a draft contract of such terms as you may demand. It is more than they hope to pay, but less than they fear.

  If you charge more, you cannot rely on their honoring their debts ...

  Come morning, she would cut the main packet into shreds, cross out some words, overwrite others, and clip each fragment to a memo to be copied out in a secretarial hand as coming from her and sent to the appropriate underling. These messages were her meat and bread; she read them first, quickly, conscientiously.

  The slimmer packet at the heart of the larger, written in Faust's own hand, she saved until the work had been done. Then she undressed and, after raising the letter to her lips and solemnly kissing it (with just a mischievous hint of tongue), she broke the seal.

  These inserts were her Bible. They never led her wrong. "You will enjoy..." he wrote. Or "The first time will feel strange and unnatural, the second merely strange, but the third a delight." And it was so.

  She had learned to trust his advice implicitly. His understanding of her was perfect. She had no secrets from him. So universal was his comprehension, so attuned was he to the life force—what he called the Geist—that he knew things no other man could know. He predicted events before they happened. He judged people he had never met.

  He was never wrong.

  She remembered the first time he had sent her into the arms of another man. She remembered how the fear, the guilt, the a
nticipation had combined into a bodily excitement second only to that sacred night she had gone to Faust himself. How timid she had felt, and how exalted! How it had roused her blood.

  Now she obeyed these directives without hesitation, recognizing no lord or power above her but Faust and obeying no will but his alone. Occasionally, she wondered about the rightness of some of the things he required of her—but she always put these doubts aside. He understood more than she ever would. But where her comprehension could not hope to match his, her obedience was unparalleled. Never was any man more perfectly obeyed than he was by his own Gretchen. No woman found such fulfillment in the submission of herself as she.

  You will be wondering how to seduce the Silesian

  agent...

  "But why must I change my clothes?" Anna Emels objected. "What I wear is respectable."

  "I desire it," Gretchen said.

  She led the secretary to a quiet room, where a white dress, hat, stockings, and underthings had been laid out upon the bed. She closed the door and drew up a chair.

  "I—I'd rather you didn't stay."

  "Why?" Amused, Gretchen glanced down the front of her own body. "It is nothing I do not see every day."

  With a shriek, the little woman pushed and shoved, until Gretchen, laughing, found herself outside in the hall. The door slammed, and there was the sound of the bolt being thrown.

  They all three walked together from the house down a winding path leading into the arboretum. A light breeze caused Anna's skirts to flutter most fetchingly. Czenski held himself very stiff and formal. He did not once look directly at the secretary.

  "I must explain to you the military situation along the eastern marches," he began, "and the strategic importance of the Silesian coalfields."

  "Sir!" Gretchen cried. "It is a pleasant day, and you are in the company of two ladies. You must treat us with the courtesy due our sex." Then, when he looked puzzled, "There is a time and place for business. It is neither here nor now. Have you no small talk?"