Glimmering

by Elizabeth Hand

  Tonight? When he licked his lips they were cracked and desiccated; his tongue, too, felt hard and swollen as a parrot’s. Nellie moved her hand to touch him, and shook her head.

  “I can’t go. I’m supposed to be there, but I won’t be. But you’ll be there—” She pointed at his hand. He looked down and saw the faintly glowing outline of a gryphon upon his palm. “And so will Blue Antelope. They’ve planned a terrorist strike against the SUNRA dirigibles.”

  He croaked, “Blue Antelope?”

  Nellie nodded. “They think the sky stations are interfering with God’s plan for humanity. Which is that we should die. Having poisoned His earth and destroyed His creatures, we all deserve to die. They’re going to destroy the Fouga fleet. Assisted cultural suicide. Without the sky stations in place, the atmosphere cannot be repaired. We’ll die, maybe everything will die, but then other forms of life will be ascendant. Blue Antelope doesn’t look upon it as a sin.”

  “How do you know?” Jack’s voice was a ragged whisper.

  “Because I was the one who provided them with fifty-seven sheets of collodion cotton soaked with nitroglycerin, all of which have been incorporated into the Fougas’ outer structure. That was after I got sick.”

  She coughed.

  “They’ll do nothing except destroy eighteen months of work. And the Pyramid. And kill a lot of people. But that will be enough. GFI won’t be able to rebuild the fleet—it was a miracle they could do it in the first place—and eventually most of us will die.”

  “But you’re telling me this—why?” Jack’s voice cracked.

  Nellie grabbed his hand. “Stop them. When I saw you downstairs, I saw this—”

  She stabbed at the glowing gryphon on his palm. “You’ll be inside the arena. Tell someone about the terrorists. Stop them.”

  “You’re—you’re lying, this is some—”

  “No. I am not lying. I was with Blue Antelope for three years, since before the ice shelf collapsed. The glimmering was the best thing that ever happened to them, and all those other radicals. It gave them a focus. It made them stronger. When they learned I’d received the experimental petra vaccine, they threw me out—because I was thwarting God’s will. Because if I was the sort of person who was running any risk of infection, then I was exactly the sort of person God wanted to die. But when I developed petra virus they took me back—because obviously His will was being enforced.

  “And I was so enraged, I hated everyone so much, that I worked for them. In Atlanta and LA and here, in the Pyramid—”

  She motioned at the walls. “I was a plant. There are a lot of us here. That’s how Blue Antelope gained access to the Millennial Ball. And they had plants in the factories where the Fougas were constructed. Everywhere. Blue Antelope is everywhere. Christians—”

  She shook with a spasmodic laugh. “God’s fucking people—they’re everywhere. They’re going to kill me, you know. Because I left. But I won’t let them.”

  Jack swallowed, tasting bile and grit. He turned, looking around for something, anything, that would give the lie to this. His gaze fell upon a silvery film canister pushed against the far wall.

  “Leonard.” The word exploded from him. “Does he—does Leonard know?”

  “Of course he knows. He knows everything.”

  Jack gasped, amazement forcing through despair. “Leonard’s a terrorist.”

  “No. He’s not a terrorist. He’s not a member of Blue Antelope—he hates Fundamentalists, but I’m sure he knows about the attack. His work, recording all the extinctions, donating all that money to the Noah Genome Project—he may not belong to Blue Antelope, but he believes in them. And he’ll be at the Ball, as a guest of GFI. He plays both sides of the fence, Leonard. I think he’s just waiting to see who’ll come out on top. To see who’ll win.”

  “No. You’re wrong.” Jack shook his head. “Leonard Thrope has never given a fuck about winning. He just likes total fucking chaos. In high school he was cast as the Lord of Misrule in some play, and it was so perfect—because that’s what he is. That’s why he’d be a perfect terrorist—”

  “They would never take him,” Nellie broke in. “He’s a loose cannon. A security risk. Your friend is not a terrorist, Jack—”

  He’s not my friend! Jack started to cry out; how could someone who tried to poison me be my friend?

  But as clearly as if he were in the room beside him, he saw Leonard as a boy with a hot small mouth and eyes that broke too easily into tears; Leonard leaving him, a farewell fuck in Athens and that was it. Years later Leonard drinking champagne at Jack’s fortieth birthday party. Leonard in Jack’s bedroom handing him a small glass bottle and saying This is what’s going to change fucking human history…

  Leonard was playing dice with the world; and so were Blue Antelope, and GFI.

  “Stop them,” whispered Nellie.

  “No.”

  Nellie’s voice grew shrill. “Those solar shields are the only chance we have—”

  “Why the fuck should I care? I’m dying! You poisoned me—you and Leonard, your goddamn pharmaceutical corporations! Let them die. Let them all fucking die.”

  His words echoed in the tiny room. He could hear the slurring of Nellie’s breath as she stared at him. He glared back at her, the moisture between the folds of her abdomen, sparks of green and gold there. When she raised her arm he saw that the flesh hung loosely from her bones—not like flesh at all, more like lichen, or shimmering algae; and that her impossibly slender, spatulate fingers held something long and thin and metal, something she looked at very carefully, eyes narrowed. There was the smell of wet leaves, a sharp glitter as her lips parted and he saw she held some sort of capsule.

  “Stop them,” she said. She bit down upon the shining tube. “Just stop them.” Stench of sulfur and almonds. Jack gasped, stunned, as the woman’s body slumped onto the bed. He started to move toward her, then stopped, seeing a fine white cloud of mist about her mouth. Holding his breath he staggered to his feet and stumbled from the room. It wasn’t until he reached the door that he realized he was naked. With a groan he turned back, hesitating at the entrance to the alcove.

  Nellie sprawled facedown upon the futon, motionless. Her body looked badly decomposed, but the smell that hung about the room was fragrant, rain-sweet.

  Like lilacs, thought Jack, as he grabbed his clothes and dressed, fighting horror. She smells like lilacs. He shoved his feet into his shoes and fled.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Heroes and Villains (Alternate Take)

  He had thought that he would be able to see the Golden Pyramid from anywhere within the city. Such a gigantic structure, it would loom over everything else and he would set his course by it, make his way through the streets, how hard could it be?

  I’m an idiot, Trip thought, and glanced at the harbor behind him. The Wendameen was gone. As far as he could see there was only viscous water speared with metal spikes and floating planks, a shattered portico like the prow of a sunken ship. To either side the shoreline stretched, bridge girders and highway overpasses that had been bitten off in midair, eviscerated skyscrapers that tolled as the tide swept inside them. The sky shuddered, and flaming gouts of gold and violet spewed from horizon to horizon. After the silence and solitude of Mars Hill, after the weeks at sea with Martin, it was like waking in hell.

  He pushed against the first hard swell of fear: he was alone in a city, he was alone in The City. I’m a total fucking idiot.

  Wind ripped off the water. He shivered and buttoned the top of his anorak. Surely it had not been this cold on board the Wendameen? The memory of the last few months was fleeing from him, as though it had been a dream recalled in a noisy room. He knew it was not, he knew it had all been real, as real in its way as the shadow of another dream, the dream of drowning that came at him sometimes, a small dark animal nudging to be recognized.

  But he did not want to remember that. What he wanted to remember was the blond girl. Her image was inescapable: it m
ight have been stitched upon his eyelids. Her twilit eyes, her hot thrusting mouth; but more than those things her simple sheer being. The fact that she had been there beside him once, that he had touched her, that she had been real—

  Do you remember nothing? she had asked him in a dream of flowers. Now, with the December wind pressing upon him like a cloak of ice, he remembered nothing else. He was only a vessel, broken and halfheartedly repaired, holding her within him like a flame. He hugged his arms against his chest, forced himself to look at the unpromising landscape before him. The smell of shit and decay was overpowering; he’d have to get away from the water or he’d be sick. He adjusted his backpack and stared at a derelict building that blocked his view of anything but itself. The walls had fallen away from its upper stories, so that he could see inside. Like gazing into a mutated ants’ nest. Heaps of rubble, beams and joists twisted like coat hangers, insulation and drywall hanging from the metal like old clothes. The wind sent crumbled mortar and gypsum dust and ash spinning down, so that Trip stepped back, covering his eyes.

  Throughout the whole god-awful structure, people were living.

  He saw a white-haired woman in black pants, no shirt, no bra, step across a gap in the wall, sheets of plywood spliced together with chicken wire and electrical cord. She was shouting to someone he couldn’t see, her white breasts moving as she stood on tiptoe. He couldn’t make out her words, but then she looked down and her face twisted.

  “Hey! Fucking asshole, get the fuck, what the fuck you looking at, you goddamn fucking—”

  He took off, stumbling along the ruptured spine of what had once been a road. After a few minutes he stopped, not because he felt safe but because his knee hurt too much. When he looked down he saw a rip in the white duck trousers Martin had given him, a leafy smear of dirt and blood.

  “Shit,” he said. They were the only pants he had. “Motherfucking shit.”

  He’d never cursed like that before. It felt good. He looked up and shouted at the woman in the building, though he couldn’t see her anymore, couldn’t even see the building.

  “You fucking piece of cunt shit!”

  When he turned to walk away he saw a figure strolling just a few yards ahead of him, a young man wearing cowboy boots and a long patchwork overcoat. His face was heavily tattooed with spirals. The streaky purple light from the sky gave his flesh a ghoulish cast.

  “Yo, Happy New Year!” The man grinned, gave Trip a thumbs-up, and continued in his direction. Trip tightened his grip on his knapsack. The man stopped, rocking back and forth on his heels. “I’m looking for Avenue B. Know where that is?”

  Trip stared at him, panicked, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t reveal he was totally lost, totally without a single fucking clue.

  “Actually,” the man went on, “I’m looking for a place called Marquee Moon. It’s supposed to be around here somewhere—” He glanced at a lightless alley that ran between two empty buildings, then back at Trip. “Ever hear of it?”

  “No.”

  The guy kept on nodding, a speedy mindless mannerism. He was tall, broad-shouldered, not too much older than Trip, twenty-five or -six. A golden placebit glowed above one eyebrow. His hair was dark and close-cropped, his face despite the tattoos and corpselike coloring amiable, even goofy. Trip had first thought the man’s long overcoat to be shabby and much-repaired, the kind of thing you saw homeless people wearing. In fact it was stitched from hundreds of pieces of fabric—brilliant silks and brocades and jacquards, elaborately embroidered—with here and there mirrored cloth, and prisms, glass beads like eyes, jangly arrays of computer circuitry and feathers. It was, Trip realized, a very expensive coat, and the man’s boots were very expensive boots. Alligator and totally illegal.

  “Yeah, well it’s supposed to be around here,” the man went on genially. He had a pronounced drawl. “A bunch of those places’re supposed to be around here, in the same building even, Magyar and Hit and the Chancery.”

  Trip shifted his knapsack to the other shoulder. Enough seconds had passed, he knew he should either say something or leave, fast, before this guy drew a knife on him or decided to prolong the conversation.

  “You’re not from here, are you?” The man’s gaze fixed on him. His hand moved, and Trip backed away, elbowing him roughly. “Hey, ouch! Jeez, calm down, buddy!”

  His hand continued its arc until it touched Trip’s knapsack, lightly. “I was just gonna say, you probably haven’t been here very long. So you probably don’t know where the fuck you are, either.”

  He gave him a rueful smile, revealing multicolored teeth like tiles.

  Trip stiffened. The guy reminded him of Leonard Thrope. “Fuck you,” he muttered. He spun and started into the alley, walking as fast as he could without breaking into a run.

  “Hey! Hey—”

  As footsteps rattled up behind him, he made a fist, and turned. Fighting was something else he’d never done, but he jabbed at the air breathlessly, his back colliding with a wall.

  “Whoa! Hey, man—” The guy in the overcoat sidestepped, easily avoiding Trip’s lame throw, and raised one hand palm out in a placating gesture. “Calm the Christ down, will you! I was just gonna say, this is not really a part of town you want to go wandering around in by yourself, especially on New Year’s Eve.”

  As he spoke he moved carefully around Trip, holding his gaze as though talking him down from a ledge. “You look a little spooked, but I ain’t gonna jump you. Hell, if I was, I would’ve done it already.” He laughed, his mouthful of colored teeth gleaming. “Man, you’re the first person I seen in a while looks more like a tourist’n me—”

  He plucked at Trip’s knapsack. “You gotta do better’n that, man! C’mon,” he urged, glancing to either end of the alley, “I can’t leave you here, and I ain’t staying.”

  The man shoved his hands in his coat pockets, balanced himself on a cement block, and cocked his head. When Trip said nothing, he shrugged. “Hey, suit yourself, man.” He jumped off the cinder block and strode toward the far end of the alley. Trip watched him, and, when the man stepped back out of the alley, followed at a safe distance.

  Out on the street the man was waiting, perched on the curb. There were junked cars everywhere, and on the other side of the road shuttered storefronts of corrugated iron, yawning doorways, walls pasted over with stripped-off posters. Two bald children hitting something with a stick. A rangy dog nosed at foul bright green water pooling in the sidewalk. He remembered a statistic he had heard once before the glimmering, something about there being a hundred million homeless people in the world, and untold thousands in New York City alone.

  But if anything, the city seemed emptier now than it had a few months before, when he’d been here with the blond girl. What had happened to everyone. Had they died? Been taken off to one of the life-enhancement centers that Jerry claimed were really prisons? He glanced at the man, whose clothes and incongruously amiable confidence disturbed Trip as much as the ravaged streets did, then looked the other way. A few blocks off he could see people crossing streets, the comforting yellow blur of a speeding cab.

  “I think it’s that way.” The man tilted his head. “Yeah. There used to be this club down there.”

  He flashed Trip a Technicolor grin. “Princess Volupine used to play there, and Alex Chilton. Ever see them?”

  Trip shook his head.

  “Well, I’m going.” The man started walking. “See you.”

  Trip stayed where he was. The man glanced over his shoulder, lifted his hand, and waved. Trip marked where he went. About three blocks to the south, the man slowed, then crossed the street and continued for another block, turned, and disappeared down a passage overshadowed by a very ornate old building. Trip waited several minutes, to make certain the guy wasn’t going to pop back out again, and headed the same way he’d gone.

  To either side buildings reared, their windows uniformly dark. A power line bearing a traffic signal sagged across the middle of the in
tersection. A man stood in the shelter of a cracked plastic awning, smoking a cigarette and chanting as to himself.

  “…cat ice hash acid ice cat…”

  Trip walked by quickly, keeping his head down. He passed a few people. Two young women wearing black, faces hidden behind cheap white masks. An older woman, also in black, whose eyes glowed plasmer silver. A man in cracked leathers, his face hidden behind a Mexican wrestler’s mask, cantered past on a white horse. A girl walking an enormous dog: all with enough purpose to their movements that Trip felt reassured. There was order, somewhere. There was food, somewhere, for humans and horses, too. Life was going on.

  Which meant it could be going on at the Pyramid, where he had last seen the blond girl. He shoved salt-corded hair from his eyes and nodded determinedly, glanced at the skyline to see if there was anything like the apex of a golden triangle. No; but he’d find it. If he had to, he’d just take a cab, squander whatever cash Martin Dionysos had given him, and that would be that.

  Because if he could get to the Pyramid, he could speak to Nellie Candry, beg her to help him find the girl so he could do what he should have done before, what he should have done in the first place. He would arrange to see her again, talk to her, spend time getting to know her. He’d contact John Drinkwater and figure out a way to take her home with him to Moody’s Island. He didn’t care about touring anymore, didn’t care about the band, or money, or singing, or God. All he wanted was to find the girl. All he wanted was to take her to the Fisher of Men First Harbor Church and marry her, the way he should have in the very beginning.

  It didn’t take him long to realize that he was lost, way lost: meaning, he couldn’t find the man he had set out to follow, he didn’t see anything that said Marquee Moon, and he certainly didn’t see the Pyramid. He passed a small park, a woman selling water from a blue plastic jug. Behind its wrought-iron fence, the old brownstone building proved to be a branch of the New York Public Library. Wind stirred drifts of dead leaves and papers that had piled up in its corners. Broken scaffolding hung from an upper story, and the remains of a banner. A large cracked wooden sign, much defaced, proclaimed that due to funding cuts this branch was closed, effective June 1, 1997, and that the bulk of its collection had been transferred to the Ottendorfer Branch at Second Avenue.