Linda Lee Baxter could take a few lessons from the mermaid, Michelle thought.
Michelle surfaced near the tunnel and raised a hand with the fingers set at
"Are you sure about this?" he asked.
"Oh yes," Michelle replied. "You go first, I'll follow and pull you out if you get in trouble."
He loved her, of course. That was why he panted a few times for breath, filled his lungs, and dove.
Michelle had not, of course, bothered to mention the tunnel was fifteen meters long, quite far to go on a single breath. She followed him, very interested in how this would turn out, and when Darton got into trouble in one of the narrow places and tried to back out, she grabbed his shoes and held him right where he was.
He fought hard but none of his kicks struck her. She would remember the look in his wide eyes for a long time, the thunderstruck disbelief in the instant before his breath exploded from his lungs and he died.
She wished she could speak again the parting words she'd whispered into Darton's ear when he lay dying on the ridge above Jellyfish Lake. "I've just killed you. And I'm going to do it again."
But even if she could have spoken the words underwater, they would have been untrue. Michelle supposed this was the last time she could kill him. Twice was dangerous, but a third time would be too clear a pattern. She could end up in jail for a while, though of course you only did severe prison time for realdeath.
She supposed she would have to discover his body at some point, but if she cast the kayak adrift it wouldn't have to be for a while. And then she'd be thunderstruck and grief-stricken that he'd thrown away his life on this desperate attempt to pursue her after she'd turned her back on him and gone inland, away from the sound of his voice.
Michelle looked forward to playing that part.
She pulled up the kayak's anchor and let it coast away on the six-knot tide, then folded away her wings and returned to her nest in the banyan tree. She let the breeze dry her skin and got her deck from its bag and contemplated the data about Terzian and Stephanie Pais and the outbreak of the Green Leopard Plague.
Stephanie had died for what she believed in, murdered by the agents of an obscure, murderous regime. It had been Terzian who had shot those four men in her defense, that was clear to her now. And Terzian, who lived a long time and then died in the Lightspeed War along with a few billion other people, had loved Stephanie and kept her secret till his death, a secret shared with the others who loved Stephanie and spread the plague among the refugee populations of the world.
It was realdeath that people suffered then, the death that couldn't be corrected. Michelle knew that she understood that kind of death only as an intellectual abstract, not as something she would ever have to face or live with. To lose someone permanently . . . That was something she couldn't grasp. Even the ancients, who faced realdeath every day, hadn't been able to accept it, that's why they'd invented the myth of Heaven.
Michelle thought about Stephanie's death, the death that must have broken Terzian's heart, and she contemplated the secret Terzian had kept all those years, and she decided that she was not inclined to reveal it.
Oh, she'd give Davout the facts, that was what he paid her for. She'd tell him what she could find out about Stephanie and the Transnistrians. But she wouldn't mention the camps that Santa Croce had built across the starvation-scarred world, she wouldn't point him at Sidamo and Green Leopard. If he drew those conclusions himself, then obviously the secret was destined to be revealed. But she suspected he wouldn't—he was too old to connect those dots, not when obscure ex-Soviet entities and relief camps in the Horn of Africa were so far out of his reference.
Michelle would respect Terzian's love, and Stephanie's secret. She had some secrets of her own, after all.
The lonely mermaid finished her work for the day and sat on her overhanging limb to gaze down at the sea, and she wondered how long it would be before Darton called her again, and how she would torture him when he did.
—With thanks to Dr. Stephen C. Lee.
Afterword: The Green Leopard Plague
I was thinking of calling this one "The Pitcher Plant," but editor Gardner Dozois said he wanted a title that was more science fiction-y. I thought about calling it "Sex Kings of Mars," but decided to settle for "The Green Leopard Plague" instead.
Astute readers will note that this takes place in the same future as "Lethe," and features some of the same characters. I decided, some years after the first story, that in "Lethe" I had created a rich future that deserved further exploration, and decided to write another story in what I subsequently decided to call the College of Mystery sequence.
These same astute readers will have also noticed that this story, like "Lethe," involves death, the point being to contrast our own present-day attitudes toward death with those of a society in which death is little more than an inconvenience.
I was also interested in how a young person would fit into a world where practically everyone else had lived for many decades, if not centuries.
I had also got interested in the economics of a world of abundance. In a society where death is impossible, death becomes the rarest thing of all—that was the thought that had prompted "Lethe." But in a world of abundance, what else is rare, and how is it valued?
Labor seemed an obvious answer.
Terzian's fear that the collapse of the markets for food and labor would lead to state intervention amounting to slavery was an insight that I was very proud of. It was only after I'd written the story that I learned that my stunningly original idea had first been explicated by Fred Pohl in his 1965 story "The Anything Box."
Another crucial idea—that of the rise of the Trashcanistans—was borrowed from an article by Stephen Kotkin in a 2002 issue of The New Republic.
The descriptions of Michelle's environment were inspired by a diving trip to the island chain of Palau in 2001. The Rock Islands, Jellyfish Lake, and the other marine lakes are real locations, and my swim in the midst of a swarm of millions of jellyfish remains one of the highlights of the trip.
After I first drafted the story, I submitted it to the Rio Hondo workshop, where Ted Chiang subjected it to a memorable critique. Employing "back-of-the-envelope" calculations (always the best kind), he demolished my original scientific justification for the Green Leopard Plague. Fortunately I was able to call on Dr. Stephen C. Lee, a genuine specialist in nanotechnology, to provide a far more plausible explanation.
The story was awarded the Nebula Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2005. I was recovering from a ruptured appendix and was heavily medicated when the call came from the awards banquet, and at first I was totally confused: I had forgotten all about the story and its nomination.
I celebrated with some champagne, but it didn't agree with the painkillers I was taking, and I had a wretched time.
The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid
What we might call the Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid Situation began in the Staré Mesto on a windy spring day. We were clumped beneath the statue of Jan Hus and in the midst of our medley of South American Tunes Made Famous by North American Pop Singers. The segue from "Cielito Lindo" to "El Condor Pasa" required some complicated fingering, and when I glanced up from my guitarra I saw our contact standing in the crowd, smoking a cigarette and making a bad show of pretending he had nothing better to do but stand in Prague's Old Town and listen to a family of nine Aymara Indians deconstruct Simon and Garfunkel.
My uncle Iago had described the man who was planning to hire us, and this man matched the description: a youngish Taiwanese with a fashionable razor cut, stylish shades, a Burberry worn over a cashmere suit made by Pakistani tailors in Hong Kong, a silk tie, and glossy handmade Italian shoes.
He just didn't look like a folk music fan to me.
After the medley was over, I called for a break, and my cousin Rosalinda passed the d
erby among the old hippies hanging around the statue while my other cousin, Jorge, tried to interest the crowd in buying our CDs. I ambled up to our contact and bummed a smoke and a light.
"You're Ernesto?" he asked in Oxford-accented English.
"Ernesto, that's me," I said.
"Your uncle Iago suggested I contact you," he said. "You can call me Jesse."
His name wasn't Jesse any more than mine was really Ernesto, this being the moniker the priest gave me when the family finally got around to having me baptized. I'd been born on an artificial reed island drifting around Lake Titicaca, a place where opportunities for mainstream religious ceremony were few.
My real name is Cari, just in case you wondered.
"Can we go somewhere a little more private?" Jesse asked.
"Yeah, sure. This way."
He ground out his cigarette beneath one of his wingtips and followed me into the Church of St. Nicholas while I wondered if there was any chance that we were really under surveillance, or whether Jesse was just being unreasonably paranoid.
Either way, I thought, it would affect my price.
The baroque glories of the church burst onto my retinas as I entered—marble statues and bravura frescos and improbable amounts of gold leaf. Strangely enough, the church belonged to the Hussites, who you don't normally associate with that sort of thing.
Booms and bleats echoed through the church. The organist was tuning for his concert later in the day, useful interference in the event anyone was actually pointing an audio pickup at us.
Jesse didn't spare a glance for the extravagant ornamentation that blazed all around him, just removed his shades as he glanced left and right to see if anyone was within listening distance.
"Did Iago tell you anything about me?" Jesse asked.
"Just that he'd worked for you before, and that you paid."
Iago and his branch of the family were in Sofia doing surveillance on an ex-Montenegrin secret policeman who was involved in selling Russian air-to-surface ATASM missiles from Transnistria through the Bosporus to the John the Baptist Liberation Army, Iraqi Mandaean separatists who operated out of Cyprus. Lord alone knew what the Mandaeans were going to do with the missiles, as they didn't have any aircraft to fire them from—or at least we can only hope they don't. Probably they were just middlemen for the party who really wanted the missiles.
I'd been holding my group ready to fly to Cyprus if needed, but otherwise the Iraqi Mandaeans were none of my concern. Reflecting on this, I wondered if the world had always been this complicated, or if this was some kind of twenty-first-century thing.
"We need you to do a retrieval," Jesse said.
"What are we retrieving?"
His mouth gave an impatient twitch. "You don't need to know that."
He was beginning to irritate me. "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" I asked. "I need to know if I'll need a crane or truck or . . . "
"A boat," Jesse said. "And diving gear."
The organist played a snatch of Bach—the D Minor, I thought, and too fast.
If you hang out in European churches, you hear the D Minor a lot. Over the years I had become a connoisseur in these matters.
"Diving gear," I said cautiously. "That's interesting."
"Three days ago," Jesse said, "the five-thousand-ton freighter Goldfish Fairy sank in a storm in the Pearl River Delta off Hong Kong. Our cargo was in the hold. After the Admiralty Court holds its investigation, salvage rights will go on offer. We need you to retrieve our cargo before salvage companies get to the scene."
I thought about this while organ pipes bleated above my head. "Five thousand tons," I said, "that's a little coaster, not a real ship at all. How do you know it didn't break up when it went down?"
"When the pumps stopped working, the Goldfish Fairy filled and sank. The crew got away to the boats and saw it sink on an even keel."
"Do you know where?"
"The captain got a satellite fix."
"How deep did it sink?"
"Sixty meters."
I let out a slow breath. A depth of sixty meters required technical diving skills I didn't possess.
"The Pearl River Delta is one of the busiest sea lanes in the world," I said. "How are we going to conduct an unauthorized salvage operation without being noticed?"
There was a moment's hesitation, and then Jesse said, "That's your department."
I contemplated this bleak picture for a moment, then said, "How big is your cargo again?"
"We were shipping several crates—mainly research equipment. But only one crate matters, and it's about two meters long by eighty centimeters wide. The captain said they were stored on top of the hold, so all you have to do is open the hold and raise the box."
That seemed to simplify matters. "Right," I said. "We'll take the job."
"For how much?"
I let the organist blat a few times while I considered, and then I named a sum. Jesse turned stern.
"That's a lot of money," he said.
"Firstly," I said, "I'm going to have to bribe some people to get hernias, and that's never fun. Then I've got to subcontract part of the job, and the ones I have in mind are notoriously difficult."
He gave me a look. "Why don't I hire the subcontractors myself, then?"
"You can try. But they won't know who needs to get hernias, and besides, they can't do the other things my group can do. We can give you worldwide coverage, man!"
He brooded a bit behind his eyelids, then nodded. "Very well," he said.
I knew that he would concede in the end. If he was moving important cargo in a little Chinese coaster instead of by Federal Express, then that meant he was moving it illegally—smuggling, to use the term that would be employed by the Admiralty Court were Jesse ever caught. He had to get his job done quickly and discreetly, and for speed and discretion he had to pay.
I told him which bank account to wire the money to, and he wrote it down with a gold-plated pen. I began to wonder if I had undercharged him.
We left the church and made our way back to the square, where Jan Hus stood bleakly amid a sea of iron-grey martyrs to his cause. The band had begun playing without me—our Latin-Flavored Beatle Medley. "You'll want to check this out," I told Jesse. "My brother Sancho does an amaaazing solo on 'Twist and Shout' with his malta—that's the medium-sized panpipe."
"Is pop tunes all you do?" Jesse asked, his expression petulant. "I thought you were an authentic folk band."
I must admit that Jesse's comment got under my skin. Just because he'd bought our services didn't mean we'd sold out.
Besides, "El Condor Pasa" was an authentic folk tune.
"We play what the public will pay for," I said. "And there are relatively few Latin folk fans in Prague, believe it or not." I took off my fedora and held it out to him. "But I didn't realize you were an aficianado. If it's authentic folk music you want, then it's what you'll get."
Jesse gave an amused little grin, reached into his Burberry, and produced a wad of notes that he dropped into my hat.
"Gracias," I said, and put the hat on my head. I didn't realize till later that he'd stuck me with Bulgarian currency.
I returned to my chair and took my guitarra in hand. Jesse hung around on the fringes of the crowd and talked on his cell phone. When the medley was over, I led the band into "Llaqui Runa," which is about as authentic folk music as you can get.
Jesse put away his cell phone, put on his shades, and sauntered away.
But that wasn't what put me in a bad mood.
What had me in bad temper was the fact that I'd have to deal with the water ballet guys.
Three beautifully manicured pairs of hands rose from the water, the fingers undulating in wavelike motions. The hands rose further, revealing arms, each pair arced to form an O. Blue and scarlet smoke billowed behind them. The owners of these arms then appeared above the wavetops and were revealed to be mermaids, scales glinting green and gold, each smiling with cupid's-bow lips.
The mermaids began to rotate as they rose, free of the water now, water streaming from their emerald hair, each supported by a pair of powerful male hands. As the figures continued to rise, the male hands were revealed to belong to three tanned, muscular Apollos with sun-bleached hair and brilliant white smiles.
The figures continued to rotate, and then the brilliant clouds behind billowed and parted as three more figures dived through the smoke, arrowing through the circles of the mermaids' arms to part the water with barely a splash.
The Apollos leaned mightily to one side, allowing the mermaids to slip from their embrace and fall into the water. Then the Apollos themselves poised their arms over their heads and leaned back to drop beneath the waves.
For a moment the water was empty save for the curls of red and blue smoke that licked the tops of the waves, and then all nine figures rose as one, inverted, arms moving in unison, after which they lay on their sides, linked themselves with legs and arms, and formed an unmistakable Leaping Dolphin.
The Leaping Dolphin was followed by Triton in His Chariot, the Anemone, the Tiger Shark, the Water Sprite, the Sea Serpent, and a Salute to the Beach Boys, which featured the California Girl, the Deuce Coupe, and climaxed with Good Vibrations. The finale featured more smoke, each of the mermaids rising from the water wearing a crown of sparklers while the six men held aloft billowing, colorful flares.
"Magnificent!" I applauded. "I've never seen anything like it! You've outdone yourselves!"
One of the Apollos swam to the edge of the pool and looked up at me, his brow furrowed with a modesty that was charming, boyish, and completely specious.
"You don't think the Deuce Coupe was a little murky?" he said.
"Not at all. I've never seen a Deuce Coupe in my life, and I recognized it at once!"
I was in California, while the rest of my band was on their way to Hong Kong, where they could expedite their visas to the mainland. I myself was traveling on a U.S. visa belonging to my cousin Pedrito, who was in Sofia and not using it, and who looked enough like me—at least to a U.S. Customs agent—for me to pass.
The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories Page 22