Greenhouse Summer

by Norman Spinrad

  Not that sexual jealousy had anything to do with it. That would be laughable. Nor was it a matter of curiosity. The promenade was miked and he could always play back the conversation later.

  But the way Monique had glommed onto Davinda as soon as he was aboard, while interesting on an informational level, was not a pleasant operational omen. It obviously meant that she intended to do her best to keep him occupied.

  To keep him away from the very people Eric was commissioned to lead him to, Stella and Ivan Marenko.

  La Reine de la Seine reached the center of the channel, and, on cue, the band broke into the blithe tune of “Rollin’ on the River.” But somehow Eric doubted this was going to be an easy rollin’ voyage.

  “Strange weather we’ve been having lately . . .” Monique Calhoun ventured, trying to hide her exasperation.

  True enough, even though what had been described as a “freak saturation high” generated by “transient jet-stream anomalies” by the Green spinmeisters and “a symptom of long-term increase in planetary atmospheric humidity levels” by the Blue had rolled out as precipitously as it had rolled in.

  She had approached Davinda via her professional capacity, which, by now, she had almost come to think of as her cover.

  Hello, I’m Monique Calhoun, your VIP services representative, is everything all right, are you having a good time, is there anything at all I can do for you? Anything at all?

  All the while trying to whip entendre on it with an intrusion into the penumbra of his body space.

  But John Sri Davinda had not only been oblivious to such flirtatious subtleties, he had not even turned around to acknowledge her presence.

  “I have no current requirements,” had been the extent of his reply.

  Monique would’ve taken it as an insult to her feminine charms had not Davinda given off such a strong anti-erotic anti-vibration, something that went far beyond what every woman experienced from time to time mistakenly flirting with a confirmed homosexual. She sensed a void in this man beyond the sexual. As someone or other had said about some place or other, there was no there there.

  And so, since this guy was a climatologist and had about as much small talk as a zombie, what else was left but to try the weather?

  “Define the time-frame,” John Sri Davinda now replied in that flat robotic voice.

  “The last couple of days,” Monique snapped peevishly.

  “Within the limits of predictive extremes.”

  “And your forecast for the rest of the week, Dr. Davinda?” Monique said sarcastically.

  “In so short a time-frame, chaotic uncertainty makes meaningful prediction impossible.”

  “Great! You’re a big-time climatologist, but you can’t even tell me if it’s going to rain on Sunday so I know whether to carry an umbrella or not!”

  “A hard rain will fall,” said John Sri Davinda.

  He said it in quite another voice, this one all too colored with some extremity of human emotion that Monique could not quite parse. And perhaps didn’t want to. For now, Davinda did finally turn to face her, and his visage was a deeply disturbing sight.

  The pupils of his heavily bloodshot eyes were hugely dilated. There was a blankness there that seemed both affectless and haunted. As if something had been . . . washed away. Or washed over.

  Yet the muscles of his lips were trembling as if in concentration, as if in desperate concentration, as if he were struggling to control them, as if there were something trapped behind those eyes trying to . . . get out.

  And not quite making it.

  Monique had secured some hallucinogenic cactus for Davinda, and to judge from his abortive performance at the UNACOCS emergency session, he had attempted to speak under the influence of either the peyote or some other drug, perhaps not unmixed with alcohol.

  Was he stoned now?

  Or worse, had permanent damage been done to the neurons or biochemistry of his brain?

  “Hello in there?” Monique said, half sarcastically, half in genuine human concern. “Is there anyone at home?”

  The idea of keeping Davinda away from the Marenkos via sexual dalliance now seemed about as practical as arousing the phallic ardor of a corpse and only marginally more appetizing.

  “Am I interrupting something . . . personal?”

  “Hardly,” Monique found herself blurting truthfully as she turned to the sound of Eric Esterhazy’s voice, so nuanced with all the bantering slyness, the testeronic overtones, the masculine humanity, that Davinda’s lacked.

  Merde! Shit! Damn!

  There Eric stood, big, blond, and handsome, every gram and smirk of him exuding erotic innuendo, the hunky cocksman image of everything John Sri Davinda was not. Even the ways he had of pissing her off, and they were legion, were the mirror image of Davinda’s dead-fish inhumanity.

  On a cellular and hormonal level, she was all too glad to see him. What her body wanted to do was get rid of Davinda and stick with Eric. But her brain reminded her that her professional duty was to do exactly the opposite.

  “Good,” said Eric in his oleaginous phony-prince voice, “it’s always such a charming pleasure to see you again, Ms. Calhoun,” and true to his official persona, made with the hand-kissing act.

  “No offense,” he said, “but it’s Dr. Davinda I’ve been asked to find.” He turned to John Sri Davinda. “And now that I have, Dr. Davinda, I’d like you to accompany me inside to meet some very interesting people who are just dying to offer you their most generous hospitality.”

  “And who might that be?” Monique asked.

  As if she didn’t know.

  From a strictly physiognomic standpoint the smile that Eric gave her might appear to be as bland as the affectless expression of John Sri Davinda. But what lay behind it was anything but.

  “Our magnanimous friends from Siberia,” he said, “Stella and Ivan Marenko.”

  Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true, the sainted Elvis had sung, as Eric remembered, but Monique’s wasn’t exactly, and this bit of cruelty was no worse than the teasing foreplay she had run on him, so . . .

  “Perhaps you’d care to come along, Ms. Calhoun?” he said. “If you’ve got nothing more entertaining to do?”

  Monique Calhoun gave him a long lingering look, half drop dead, half professional control over what must be seething within that Eric found quite admirable.

  “I’d be delighted,” she lied through invisibly clenched teeth.

  What else could she say?

  It was obvious that her mission was to prevent from happening exactly what was going to happen, no doubt to the extent of entertaining Davinda in one of the boudoirs to keep him away from the Marenkos. But she was not going to be able to prevent it. And to show pique now would only make matters worse. Her best course was to tag along like a good little minder and attempt to exercise what damage control she could.

  Though what she or her handlers imagined might now be damaged remained elusive. And there might be tactical advantage in finding out.

  The Marenkos had kept a seat empty between them, and that, of course, was where Eric Esterhazy had to plant John Sri Davinda. The nightly soiree at the Marenkos’ table had only begun to get under way when they arrived; there were several empty seats, and Monique took one as close to Davinda as she could get, which was two chairs away, that of Ivan Marenko, and that of Chu Lun, the Guangdong Minister of Environment. Unbidden, certainly by her, Prince Eric slid in beside her.

  Also at the table were Allison Larabee and Paolo Pereiro, whom Monique had seen together so often that she was beginning to think they were an item, Dr. Braithwaite, who seemed to be a regular, the Qwik-grow biologist Dieter Lambert, three journalists covering UNACOCS for StarNet, NovaNews, and Public Eye, and several other people she didn’t recognize.

  As usual, the table talk was mostly climatological, this being a conference where everyone was trying to do something about the weather at a time when the weather seemed to be suddenly getting ominously stranger,
what with the white tornadoes, the hot humid murk that had enrobed much of France and the Low Countries, the wave of Saharan heat that had rolled over the Midi, the so-called Indian Ocean El Niño, the unconfirmed rumors of monster waterspouts over the equatorial Pacific.

  Ordinarily, such dire disaster talk among the so-called experts would have held Monique’s attention, but now she found herself tuning it out in favor of a dumbfounded personal fascination with the object of her current professional mission—John Sri Davinda.

  Davinda wasn’t taking part in the climatological gloom-and-doom talk. He wasn’t talking at all. The Marenkos were keeping him occupied with other matters.

  Davinda might have all the masculine presence of a human disney, but that didn’t prevent him from guzzling the Marenkos’ vodka like a camel tanking up at an oasis or snorting up their designer dust like a vacuum cleaner.

  His capacity was amazing. Stella stuck the dust-laden mirror under his face every few minutes and Davinda never turned it down. While he snorted, Ivan would refill his glass; when Davinda was finished with the dust, Ivan would clink glasses with him, and Davinda would dutifully empty it.

  There was something bizarrely machinelike about it. The Marenkos were doing their considerable best to get him thoroughly smashed and Davinda offered no resistance. But he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself either. Monique could detect no change in his demeanor, probably because his brain had somewhere somehow been permanently gelatinized already.

  Monique was beginning to have hope that while she had failed in her Posner-given mission to keep Davinda from the Marenkos, the evening might just pass without them being able to grill him, which was to say that Davinda might pass out before he even passed into the conversation.

  No such luck.

  “. . . haven’t said a thing all night, Dr. Davinda,” said the Public Eye reporter.

  “Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen a paper by you in years and years,” said Pereiro.

  “What ever happened to publish or perish?” said Dieter Lambert.

  “He hasn’t published, but he don’t seem t’have perished,” said Dr. Bobby Braithwaite, fixing his gaze on Davinda, snorting up another line of dust. “But at least y’can’t say he’s not tryin’,” he added to less than kindly laughter.

  This at last seemed to return John Sri Davinda to the land of the living. He put down his rolled bill with half a line of dust still before him and looked across the table at Braithwaite. Or at least turned those empty eyes in his direction like twin sat dishes.

  Again that trembling of the lips before he was able to speak in a more or less human voice. “Trying very hard,” he managed to say.

  “T’do what, John, finish a paper, or fry your brain?”

  This seemed to agitate Davinda, to incite him to make an effort to speak more forcefully if not to make more sense.

  “To make it dance,” he said.

  “It? What’s it?”

  “It’s in the bits and bytes,” Davinda said.

  “What’s in the bits and bytes?”

  “The dance.”

  “Dance?”

  “The dance of the bits and bytes.”

  “What are you trying to say, Dr. Davinda?” said NovaNews.

  Davinda seemed to be struggling to say something, or struggling with something, maybe both, and not quite making it.

  “I . . . I . . . say I say . . . I say . . . nothing . . .” he said. He snorted up the rest of the dust.

  And then he spoke in that eerily affectless voice, far flatter than any but the most primitive vocal emulation software.

  “I am nothing.”

  “You’re nothing, Dr. Davinda?” said StarNet. “Can we quote you on that?”

  “It is the voice that speaks from the dance.”

  Merde!

  John Sri Davinda had now become the center of attention. If the three journalists hadn’t been recording before, they certainly were now. Braithwaite looked humanly concerned. Most of the rest of them seemed merely curious. Chu Lun, for some reason, looked worried, but concern for the state of Davinda’s sanity didn’t seem to be it.

  Stella Marenko was studying Davinda intently. Ivan was doing likewise, but, practiced at it as he must be, this did not prevent him from refilling Davinda’s glass with vodka without looking, without spilling a single drop.

  “It, what?” said Stella Marenko.

  “It is real.”

  “What is real?” said Ivan Marenko.

  “Only it is real.”

  “Ah, is riddle!” Ivan Marenko said enthusiastically. “Only it is real. . . ? Dance of bits and bytes . . . ? Speaks from dance . . . ?”

  He pondered thoughtfully for a moment, or at least pretended to; then a metaphorical lightbulb seemed to go on over his head. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Must be . . . program! Must be . . . your climate model, da?”

  Oh shit.

  Davinda turned his empty eyes on Ivan Marenko, blinked rapidly, spoke in what passed for his human voice. “The interface between matter and energy—”

  “—is pattern, da?” said Ivan. “Is neither and both! Dance of bits and bytes!”

  Davinda’s eyes seemed to widen in surprise, no mean feat under their dilated circumstances. Ivan stared back unwaveringly for a moment. Then he broke into the innocent beaming smile of a small boy.

  “Love riddles!” he said.

  “Is very good at them,” said Stella. “Why not? Ivan is one big hairy riddle himself!”

  Ivan Marenko laughed. “I’ll drink to that!” he exclaimed, and clinked glasses with Stella, then Davinda.

  “You’ll drink to anything!” Stella proclaimed, and downed her vodka in a single gulp.

  Ivan did likewise, then nudged Davinda. Without looking away from Ivan, Davinda brought his glass to his lips and drank it down.

  “This climate model of yours is big riddle itself, da . . . ?” Ivan Marenko said.

  “What do you know about climate models, Mr. Marenko?” Chu Lun broke in with suspicious haste, as if trying to do Monique’s work for her by breaking this up before it went any further.

  “I don’t know much about climate models,” Ivan said, “but I know what I like. And freezing ass off in new Siberian winter is not it!”

  “And being stuck with bill for privilege in the bargain!” added Stella.

  “So, Herr Doktor Professor John Sri Davinda, what is big secret hidden behind screens in Grand Palais?” Ivan Marenko said. “Is your secret, da . . . ?” He held up his hand. “Wait! Don’t tell. Is good riddle. We get three guesses first. Stella . . . ?”

  “Is . . . computer, da? Must be some kind of very special computer . . .”

  Davinda turned sharply to stare at Stella Marenko. Other than the speed of his reaction, no emotion showed. But that was enough to elicit a knowing smile from Ivan, to make Chu Lun squirm.

  “So . . .” said Ivan, “what makes a computer special . . . ?”

  “Nothing, it’s not the hardware, it’s the software!” Monique blurted quickly, hoping to deflect the speculation before it could come to the question of the species of any installed cerebral meatware. “The, uh, dance of the bits and bytes. The climate model itself.”

  Chu Lun looked relieved. John Sri Davinda turned to look in her direction but neither spoke nor reacted. Sweat had broken out on his brow. His eyes showed little but giant black pupils floating in marbled pink sclera.

  Maybe the dust and vodka were finally catching up to him. Monique willed Ivan Marenko to pour him another shot. Probably no telepathy was involved or needed, but Ivan complied, and poured himself one too.

  “Two guesses,” Ivan said. “Last one is mine.” He picked up his glass, sipped at it thoughtfully, clinked glasses with Davinda, nodded. “Special climate model program, okay, da, runs on special computer, must be . . . what?”

  Drink it! Monique telepathed.

  John Sri Davinda lifted his glass slowly and mechanically like a good little robot and slugged down h
is vodka. Definitely approaching condition terminal.

  Stella Marenko laid out another line of dust, handed Davinda the rolled-up bill. Yes, yes, Monique prayed hopefully, another line, another shot, and maybe he passes out.

  “Is maybe not digital program, is why it needs special secret machine . . . ?” Ivan Marenko said. “Is analog? Is maybe quantum? Has uncertainty program to roll the bones . . . ?”

  Ivan Marenko paused, refilled Davinda’s glass.

  “Or robot hand to toss the stones for famous LAO TE CHING . . . ?”

  “TAO TE CHING, Ivan,” corrected Stella Marenko, “not Lao.”

  “Ah, is famous I-CHING of Dr. Lao . . .”

  What I tell you three times is true?

  Maybe not true, but not random either, the utterance of the mystery word three times in rapid succession by the Marenkos did not seem like an accident to Monique. Particularly since they had managed to stress it twice.

  All the more so considering the effect it had on John Sri Davinda.

  “Lao is the Tao of the Chao,” he babbled so woozily that it was difficult for Monique to decide which of his schizoid voices was doing it. “The Tao of the Chao is Lao . . .”

  He snorted up the line of dust convulsively. “The Chao of the Tao is Lao . . .” He began to vibrate. No, he was shaking. He slugged down the vodka. It didn’t help. His blink rate went sky-high.

  The vodka, the dust, some sort of engrammatic reaction to a keyword, whatever, sweat was pouring down John Sri Davinda’s forehead now, he had turned an almost greenish pale. Monique had been hoping for the drugs and drink to take effect, but not like this.

  “Dr. Davinda!” she cried, rising clumsily from her seat.

  “Lao is the Tao of the Chao . . . the Tao of the Chao is Lao . . . the Chao of the Tao is Lao . . . Lao is the Tao of the Chao . . .”

  Davinda was chanting this gibberish like a mantra now, as if trying to enter a trance state, or perhaps chant his way out of one which he had already entered . . .

  Monique reached Davinda, put her hands on his shoulders, shook him, tried to raise him—