“Wonderful stuff,” said Lewis, remembering his manners. “Might I have a little more?”
“Anything you like,” said Sir Francis, beckoning distractedly at John.
Lewis held the pitcher up. “Another round of this, please, and three or four loaves of bread?”
“With jam, sir?”
“No! No jam. Thank you.”
John took the pitcher and hurried out of the room.
“I don’t wonder you’ve an appetite,” said Sir Francis. “That was an astonishing evening, my boy. We’re all greatly indebted to you. Never saw anything quite like that in my life.”
“But … I received the impression you’d—er, enacted certain rites before,” said Lewis, scraping the bottom of the honey jar with the spoon.
“Why, so we had. But never with such remarkable results!” said Sir Francis. “What an improvement on your predecessor. He was no fit vessel for Divinity at all! Treated the ladies most disrespectfully. I sent him packing; then we discovered he’d helped himself to the spoons. Apprehended him in the very act of boarding the coach with my best silver coffee urn in his trunk, too, would you credit it?
“Not at all like you. Such Olympian presence! Such efficacy! Whitehead looked positively well. ‘How d’ye feel now, Paul?’ I said, and bless me if he didn’t reply, ‘Why, sir, I declare I could pile Mount Pelion upon Mount Ossa, and straightwise mount to Heaven!’”
“I’m gratified, my lord,” said Lewis cautiously. “Though I confess the evening is somewhat indistinct in my memory.”
“I expect it would be, sir. I suspect you were scarcely there at all! Eh?” Sir Francis winked at him. “But I’ll leave you in peace; John will lay out your clothes. All fresh-laundered, though the wig’s at the barber’s for a fresh setting and powdering. It was in a sad state, I fear. And I’ve taken the liberty of having a new pair of shoes made; one of yours seems to have gone missing in the Styx. You’ll find them in the bottom of your wardrobe.”
“New shoes?” Lewis said. “Made overnight?”
“Overnight? Bless you, no! You’ve slept for three days! A very Endymion,” Sir Francis told him. He lingered shyly by the door a moment, his eyes downcast. “You have rendered me a greater service than I can ever repay. Your servant, sir.”
Lewis enjoyed an unaccustomed luxury of idleness over the next few days; the servants tiptoed in his presence, looked on him with awe, and leaped to bring him anything he requested. He used the time to access and review his memory, and found, to put it mildly, some difference between what his conscious mind had perceived and what his augmented perception had recorded.
He was chagrined by this, but his embarrassment was ameliorated somewhat by the relaxation of pressure as regarded his mission for the Company.
DASHWOOD OBJECTIVE OBTAINED, he transmitted on his credenza, long past midnight when he was unlikely to be disturbed by a servant. ATTENDED “ELEUSINIAN RITE” AND CAN REPORT THAT IT IS NOT, REPEAT, NOT AUTHENTIC. DETAILS WELL-KNOWN IN ANTIQUITY WORKED INTO A PLAUSIBLE FAKE. SOURCE SCROLL NOT LOCATED BUT SUSPECT THE EUGENIKOS FORGER. AWAITING FURTHER ORDERS.
He sent the message and relaxed, but almost at once a reply shot out of the ether:
OBTAIN SOURCE SCROLL. CLIENT MADE SUBSTANTIAL OFFER.
Lewis gnawed his lower lip. He sent:
BUT IT’S A FAKE.
IRRELEVANT.
BUT IT WOULDN’T FOOL ANYONE WHO’D ATTENDED THE MYSTERIES.
CLIENT IS MORTAL. WON’T KNOW DIFFERENCE.
With a certain sense of moral outrage, Lewis transmitted:
ACKNOWLEDGED. UNDER PROTEST. VALE.
He knew well enough, now, where the object of his quest was.
With a heavy heart, in the small hours following an evening during which Sir Francis had been particularly pleasant company, Lewis packed his valise. He drew on his cloak and slipped down through the dark house, and out a side door into the garden. He switched to night vision; the surrounding countryside leaped into focus, lurid green, unearthly. Pausing only to hide his bag in a clump of rhododendron, he set out.
He went quickly, though it was a long cold walk just the same. Once, a bat shrieked overhead; he looked up in time to see its smear of red light vanishing into the trees. Once a fox crossed his path, and stopped to regard him with eyes like fire. He missed the little girl walking at his side, and wondered whether he’d be too great a fool if he sought her out once he returned to London. He wondered whether he could bear watching her grow old and die.
This question so preoccupied him that he almost failed to notice that he was being followed. After a while, however, the laboring mortal heartbeat and steam-bellows breath distracted him, and he looked back. There, a great way off, a scarlet blur made its way along the track. Its dark lantern pulsed with heat. A poacher? Lewis shrugged and picked up his pace, until he reached the entrance to the Hellfire Caves.
The gates had been locked; a moment’s work with his cloak pin and Lewis had them open. Fighting panic once more, he hurried into true Stygian blackness, rendered more ghostly by his vision. Emerging from the maze into the banqueting chamber, he nearly shouted at what he took at first to be a lurking figure; but it was only a pair of serving tables stacked up on end, draped with oilcloth.
Muttering to himself, Lewis went on. In the chamber with its altar, he was almost surprised to see no spot of residual heat glowing still from Mrs. Digby’s bum. At the River Styx he proceeded soberly, poling himself across in the little boat with all the dignity of Charon, and stepped out dry-shod on the other shore. There, trampled and forgotten in the chalk, Lewis spotted Persephone’s veil.
He bent and picked it up. He regarded it a long moment before folding it carefully and tucking it away inside his shirt, next to his heart.
In the Inner Temple, he lifted the lid from the sarcophagus. Within was a box of alabaster, something Egyptian from the look of it. He lifted the lid on that and found a box of cypress wood, a modern piece painted with figures of maenads dancing. Within, he found the scroll.
Lewis unrolled it, examined it briefly, and sighed. Yes: the work of the clever Russian. Let him not speak, he who has witnessed the rites sacred to holy Demeter and her slender-ankled daughter! But bear witness, oh furies, that this scribe breaks no oath in relating the true nature of what he has seen with his silent pen … He returned the scroll to its box, tucked it under his arm, and walked back toward the starlight.
He was on his way to the maze when he heard the crunch of footsteps coming. In a panic, he turned back and dodged into one of the alcoves opening off the banqueting chamber. There he stood, absolutely still as the mortal shuffled into the chamber.
It was Sir Francis, peering about by the single ray of light his lamp gave forth.
Lewis held his breath. Do not see me, mortal man … you will not see me, mortal …
A bat swooped through. Sir Francis gasped and dropped his lantern, which unfortunately did not go out; rather, its shutter was knocked open by the impact. The chamber was flooded with light.
Oh, crumbs.
Sir Francis bent to pick up the lantern, straightened with it, and looked full into Lewis’s face. His gaze fell to the box under Lewis’s arm.
“Oh, dear,” he said. “I was afraid of something like this.”
Lewis, ready to babble out an apology, was quite unprepared for what happened next. Scuffing sharp-edged gravel out of the way, Sir Francis knelt down laboriously.
“Please,” he said. “Which one are you? Apollo? Hermes? I was sure I recognized you, t’other night. Forgive my old eyes, I pray; I might have seen you more clearly, once.”
“I am only a messenger,” said Lewis, praying to both gods for help.
“Just as you wish, my lord,” said Sir Francis, and he nearly winked. He regarded the scroll box sadly. “Must you take it away? We were idle merry boys once, and we did blaspheme, but only as boys do. I had rather hoped you had come to dwell among us at last. We need you, we poor mortals.”
�
��But you no longer need this.” Lewis held up the scroll box, wondering if he could wink out without dropping it.
“I suppose not,” said Sir Francis, slumping. He clasped his hands. “Please, tell me, Bright One—will my friend die?”
“You know he must,” said Lewis, as gently as he could.
“Oh, Paul,” said Sir Francis. He said nothing more for a moment, as a tear rolled down his cheek. He looked up at Lewis hopefully. “But if you are here—why then, it’s a sign! The gods are not unkind. They must care for us. It’s all true, isn’t it? We will go to Paradise, and revel in the Elysian Fields, just as She promised us.”
“Believe, it, mortal man,” said Lewis. For all I know, it may be true.
He reached down his hand as though in blessing, setting it on Sir Francis’s head. Concentrating, he generated a pulse designed to have an effect on the temporal lobe of the mortal brain.
Sir Francis gasped in pleasure. He heard celestial choirs, had visions of glory, and knew a sublime truth impossible to put into words. The ecstasy was enough to send him into a dead faint.
Lewis picked him up and staggered out with him, far away through the night fields to the great house, where he laid Sir Francis down before the statue of Bacchus. He paused only a moment, leaning forward with his hand on the wall, gasping for breath; then he knocked, loud enough to rouse the servants.
Long before the fearful mortals had come to the door, he had retrieved his valise from the shrubbery and fled in the direction of London.
No more than a month later, a certain peddler wandered the streets of a certain district of London. The streets were crowded and filthy, even in this somewhat better-class part of the district. The mad king squatted on his throne, the American crisis was going from bad to worse, nay, the whole globe was reeling in chaos that would soon spit forth another age, and the first snow of winter had begun to drift out of a sullen and steely sky.
The peddler’s garments were shabby, not really adequate for the weather, and yet he carried himself with a style making it not outside the powers of imagination that he might in fact be a dashing hero of some kind. One temporarily down on his luck, perhaps. Conceivably the object of romantic affection.
He doffed his hat to all he met and, when meeting any who looked as though he or she might know, discreetly inquired whether they knew the way to Mrs. Digby’s establishment.
Hoping, even as foolish mortals do, for some sign of a compassionate universe.
The Immortals of Atlantis
BRIAN STABLEFORD
Critically acclaimed British “hard-science” writer Brian Stableford is the author of more than seventy-five books, at least fifty of them novels, including Cradle of the Sun, The Blind Worm, The Days of Glory, In the Kingdom of the Beasts, Day of Wrath, The Halcyon Drift, The Paradox of the Sets, The Realms of Tartarus, The Empire of Fear, The Angel of Pain, The Carnival of Destruction, Serpent’s Blood, Inherit the Earth, The Omega Expedition, Dark Ararat, The Cassandra Complex, The Fountains of Youth, Architects of Emortality, The Gateway of Eternity, Streaking, Curse of the Coral Bride, and Kiss the Goat, among many others. His many short stories have been collected in Sexual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution, Salome and Other Decadent Fantasies, Fables and Fantasies, Complications and Other Science Fiction Stories, The Wayward Muse, and Designer Genes and Other Stories: Tales of the Biotech Revolution. His non-fiction books include The Sociology of Science Fiction and, with David Langford, The Third Millennium : A History of the World A.D. 2000–3000. Stableford’s novella Les Fleurs du Mal was a finalist for the Hugo Award in 1994. His most recent books are the novels The Stones of Camelot and The New Faust at the Tragicomique and several new collections, including The Tree of Life, The Haunted Bookshop and Other Apparitions, and The Cure for Love and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution. A biologist and sociologist by training, Stableford lives in Reading, England.
Stableford may have written more about how the ongoing revolutions in biological and genetic science will change the very nature of humanity itself than any other writer of the last decade, covering the development of posthumanity in story after story, including such stories as “Out of Touch,” “The Magic Bullet,” “Age of Innocence,” “The Tree of Life,” “The Pipes of Pan,” “Hidden Agendas,” and “The Color of Envy,” the aforementioned Les Fleurs du Mal, and many others. Here he shows us that in the future, refugees may find some very unusual places to hide, including in your own blood.
Sheila never answered the door when the bell rang because there was never anyone there that she wanted to see and often someone there that she was desperate to avoid. The latter category ranged from debt collectors and the police to Darren’s friends, who were all apprentice drug dealers, and Tracy’s friends, who were mostly veteran statutory rapists. Not everyone took no for an answer, of course; the fact that debt collectors and policemen weren’t really entitled to kick the door in didn’t seem to be much of a disincentive. It was, however, very unusual for anyone to use subtler means of entry, so Sheila was really quite surprised when the white-haired man appeared in her sitting room without being preceded by the slightest sound of splintering wood.
“I did ring,” he said, labouring the obvious, “but you didn’t answer.”
“Perhaps,” she said, not getting up from her armchair or reaching for the remote, “that was because I didn’t want to let you in.”
In spite of the fact that she hadn’t even reached for the remote, the TV switched itself off. It wasn’t a matter of spontaneously flipping into standby mode, as it sometimes did, but of switching itself off. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, so she hadn’t so much been watching it as using it to keep her company in the absence of anything better, but the interruption seemed a trifle rude all the same.
“Did you do that?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “We need to talk.”
The phrasing made her wonder if he might be one of her ex-boyfriends, most of whom she could hardly remember because their acquaintance had been so brief, but he certainly didn’t look like one. He was wearing a suit and tie. The suit was sufficiently old-fashioned and worn to have come from the bargain end of an Oxfam rail, but it was still a suit. He was also way too old—sixty if he was a day—and way too thin, with hardly an ounce of spare flesh on him. The fact that he was so tall made him look almost skeletal. Sheila would have found it easier to believe in him if he’d been wearing a hooded cloak and carrying a scythe. In fact, he was carrying a huge briefcase—so huge that it was a miracle he’d been able to cross the estate without being mugged.
“What do you want?” Sheila asked, bluntly.
“You aren’t who you think you are, Sheila,” was his reply to that—which immediately made her think “religious nut.” The Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses had stopped coming to the estate years ago, because there were far easier places in the world to do missionary work—Somalia, for instance, or Iraq—but it wasn’t inconceivable that there were people in the world who could still believe that God’s protection even extended to places like this.
“Everybody around here is who they think they are,” she told him. “Nobody has any illusions about being anybody. This is the end of the world, and I’m not talking Rapture.”
“I knew this wasn’t going to be easy,” the tall man said. “There’s no point wasting time. I’m truly sorry to have to do this, but it really is for the best.” He put his suitcase down, pounced on her, dragged her to her feet, and bound her hands behind her back with a piece of slender but incredibly strong cord.
She screamed as loudly as she could, but she knew that no one was going to take any notice. He must have known that too, because he didn’t try to stop her immediately. He selected the sturdiest of her three dining chairs, set it in the middle of the room and started tying her ankles to the legs of the chair.
“My boyfriend will be home any minute,” Sheila said. “He’s a bouncer. He’ll break you into little pieces.”
> “You don’t have a boyfriend, Shelia,” the white-haired man informed her. “You’ve never had a relationship that lasted longer than a fortnight. You’ve always claimed that it’s because all men are bastards, but you’ve always suspected that it might be you—and you’re right. You really do put them off and drive them away, no matter how hard you try not to.”
Sheila was trussed up tightly by now, with more cord passed around her body, holding her tight to the back of the chair. The way she was positioned made it extremely unlikely that he intended to rape her, but that wasn’t at all reassuring. Rape she understood; rape she could cope with, and survive.
“I do have a son,” she told him. “He may not be as big as you, but he’s in a gang, and he’s vicious. He carries a knife. He might even have graduated to a gun by now—and if he hasn’t, some of his mates certainly have.”
“All true,” the white-haired man conceded, readily enough, “but it leaves out of account the fact that Darren hardly ever comes home anymore, because he finds you as uncomfortable to be with as all the other men who’ve briefly passed through your wretched life. To put it brutally, you disgust him.”
“Tracy loves me,” Sheila retorted, feeling far greater pressure to make that point than to ask the man with the briefcase how he knew Darren’s name.
The briefcase was open now, and the tall man was pulling things out at a rate of knots: weird things, like the apparatus of a chemistry set. There were bottles and jars, flasks and tripods, even a mortar and pestle. There was also something that looked like a glorified butane cigarette lighter, whose flame ignited at a touch, and became more intense in response to another.
The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007 Page 70