The Best of Michael Swanwick

by Michael Swanwick

  They left for Hartford on the tenth, Maggie sequestered in her com-partment in the last car. Crew members lounged about idly. Some strummed guitars, never quite breaking into a recognizable tune. Others talked quietly. Hawk flipped tarot cards into a heap, one at a time.

  “Hey, this place is fucking dead!” Maggie was suddenly in the car, her expression an odd combination of defiance and guilt. “Let’s party! Hey? Let’s hear some music.” She fell into Hawk’s lap and nibbled on an ear.

  “Welcome back, Maggie,” somebody said.

  “Janis!” she shouted happily. “The lady’s name is Janis!”

  Like a rusty machine starting up, the party came to life. Music jelled. Voices became animated. Bottles of alcohol appeared and were passed around. And for the remainder of the two days that the train spent making wide looping detours avoid the dangerous stretches of Connecticut and New York, the party never died.

  There were tense undertones to the party, however, a desperate quality in Maggie’s gaiety. For the first time, Wolf began to feel trapped, to count the days that separated him from Boston and the end of the tour.

  The dressing room for the first Hartford concert was cramped, small, badly lit—like every other dressing room they’d encountered. “Get your ass over here, Sin,” Maggie yelled. “You’ve gotta make me up so I look strung out, like Janis did.”

  Cynthia held Maggie’s chin, twisted it to the left, to the right. Maggie, you don’t need makeup to look strung out.”

  “Goddammit, yes I do. Let’s get it on. Come on, come on—I’m a star, I shouldn’t have to put up with this shit.”

  Cynthia hesitated, then began dabbing at Maggie’s face, lightly accentuating the lines, the bags under her eyes.

  Maggie studied the mirror. “Now that’s grim,” she said. “That’s really grotesque.”

  “That’s what you look like, Maggie.”

  “You cheap bitch! You’d think I was the one who nodded out last night before we could get it on.” There was an awkward silence. “Hey, Wolf!” She spun to face him. “What do you say?”

  “Well,” Wolf began, embarrassed, “I’m afraid Cynthia’s…”

  “You see? Let’s get this show on the road.” She grabbed her cherished Southern Comfort bottle and upended it.

  “That’s not doing you any good either.”

  Maggie smiled coldly. “Shows what you know. Janis always gets smashed before a concert. Helps her voice.” She stood, made her way to the curtains. The emcee was winding up his pitch.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…Janis!”

  Screams arose. Maggie sashayed up to the mike, lifted it, laughedinto it.

  “Heyyy. Good ta see ya.” She swayed and squinted at the crowd,and was off and into her rap. “Ya know, I went ta see a doctor the other week. Told him I was worried about how much drinking I was doing. Told him I’d been drinkin’ heavy since I was twelve. Get up in the morning and have a few Bloody Marys with breakfast. Polish off a fifth before lunch. Have a few drinks at dinner, and really get into it when the partying begins. Told him how much I drank for how many years. So I said, ‘Look, Doc, none of this ever hurt me any, but I’m kinda worried, ya know? Give it to me straight, have I got a problem?’ And he said, ‘Man, I don’t think you’ve got a problem. I think you’re doing just fine!’” Cheers from the audience. Maggie smiled smugly. “Well, honey, everybody’s got problems, and I’m no exception.” The music came up. “But when I got problems, I got an answer, ’cause I can sing dem ole-time blues. Just sing my problems away.” She launched into “Ball and Chain,” and the audience went wild.

  Backstage, Wolf was sitting on a stepladder. He had bought a cup of water from a vendor and was nursing it, taking small sips. Cynthia came up and stood beside him. They both watched Maggie strutting on stage, stamping and sweating, writhing and howling.

  “I can never get over the contrast,” Wolf said, not looking at Cynthia. “Out there everybody is excited. Back here, it’s calm and peaceful. Sometimes I wonder if we’re seeing the same thing the audience does.”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s right in front of your face.” Cynthia smiled a sad cryptic smile and left. Wolf had grown used to such statements, and gave it no more thought.

  ***

  The second and final Hartford show went well. However, the first two concerts in Providence were bad. Maggie’s voice and timing were off, and she had to cover with theatrics. At the second show she had to order the audience to dance—something that had never been necessary before. Her onstage raps became bawdier and more graphic. She moved her body as suggestively as a stripper, employing bumps and grinds. The third show was better, but the earthy elements remained.

  The cast wound up in a bar in a bad section of town, where guards with guns covered the doorway from fortified booths. Maggie got drunk and ended up crying. “Man, I was so blitzed when I went onstage—you say I was good?”

  “Sure, Maggie,” Hawk mumbled. Cynthia snorted.

  “You were very good,” Wolf assured her.

  “I don’t remember a goddamned thing,” she wailed. “You say I was good? It ain’t fair, man. If I was good, I deserve to be able to remember it. I mean, what’s the point otherwise? Hey?”

  Wolf patted her shoulder clumsily. She grabbed the front of his dashiki and buried her face in his chest. “Wolf, Wolf, what’s gonna happen to me?” she sobbed.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. Patting her hair.

  Finally, Wolf and Hawk had to lead her back to the hostel. No one else was willing to quit the bar.

  They skirted an area where all the buildings had been torn down but one. It stood alone, with great gaping holes where plate glass had been, and large nonfunctional arches on one side.

  “It was a fast-food building,” Hawk explained when Wolf asked. He sounded embarrassed.

  “Why is it still standing?”

  “Because there are ignorant and superstitious people everywhere,” Hawk muttered. Wolf dropped the subject.

  The streets were dark and empty. They went back into the denser areas of town, and the sound of their footsteps bounced off the buildings. Maggie was leaning half-conscious on Hawk’s shoulder, and he almost had to carry her.

  There was a stirring in the shadows. Hawk tensed. “Speed up a bit, if you can,” he whispered.

  Something shuffled out of the darkness. It was large and only vaguely human. It moved toward them. “What—?” Wolf whispered.

  “Jennie-deaf,” Hawk whispered back. “If you know any clever tricks, this is the time to use ’em.” The thing broke into a shambling run.

  Wolf thrust a hand into a pocket and whirled to face Hawk. “Look,” he said in a loud, angry voice. “I’ve taken enough from you! I’ve got a knife, and I don’t care what I do!” The jennie-deaf halted. From the corner of his eye, Wolf saw it slide back into the shadows.

  Maggie looked up with sleepy, quizzical expression. “Hey, what…”

  “Never mind,” Hawk muttered. He upped his pace, half dragging Maggie after him. “That was arrogant,” he said approvingly.

  Wolf forced his hand from his pocket. He found he was shivering from the aftershock. “Nada,” he said. Then: “That is the correct term?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wasn’t certain that jennie-deafs really existed.”

  “Just some poor mute with gland trouble. Don’t think about it.”

  ***

  Autumn was just breaking out when the troupe hit Boston. Theyarrived to find the final touches being put on the stage on Boston Commons. A mammoth concert was planned; dozens of people swarmed about making preparations.

  This must be how America was all the time before the Collapse,” Wolf said, impressed. He was ignored.

  The morning of the concert, Wolf was watching canvas being hoisted above the stage, against the chance of rain, when a gripper ran up and said, “You, pilgrim, have you seen Janis?”

  “Maggie,” he corrected automatically, “No, not recently.�
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  “Thanks,” the man gasped, and ran off. Not long after, Hawk hurried by and asked, “Seen Maggie lagging about?”

  “No. Wait, Hawk, what’s going on? You’re the second person to ask me that.”

  Hawk shrugged. “Maggie’s disappeared. Nothing to scream about.”

  “I hope she’ll be back in time for the show.”

  “The local police are hunting for her. Anyway, she’s got the implants; if she can move she’ll be onstage. Never doubt it.” He hurried away.

  The final checks were being run, and the first concertgoers beginning to straggle in, when Maggie finally appeared. Uniformed men held each arm; she looked sober and angry. Cynthia took charge, dismissed thepolice, and took Maggie to the trailer that served as a dressing room.

  Wolf watched from a distance, decided he could be of no use. He ambled about the Commons aimlessly, watching the crowd grow. The people coming in found places to sit, took them, and waited. There was little talk among them, and what here was was quiet. They were dressed brightly, but not in their best. Some carried winejugs or blankets.

  They were an odd crew. They did not look each other in the eye; their mouths were grim, their faces without expression. Their speech was low, but with an undercurrent of tension. Wolf wandered among them, eavesdropping, listening to fragments of their talk.

  “Said that her child was going to…”

  “…needed that. Nobody needed that.”

  “Couldn’t have paid it away…”

  “…tasted odd, so I didn’t…”

  “Had to tear down three blocks…”

  “…blood.”

  Wolf became increasingly uneasy. There was something about their expressions, their tones of voice. He bumped into Hawk, who tried to hurry past.

  “Hawk, there is something very wrong happening.”

  Hawk’s face twisted. He gestured toward the light tower. “No time,” he said, “the show’s beginning. I’ve got to be at my station.” Wolf hesitated, then followed the man up the ladders of the light tower.

  All of the Commons was visible from the tower. The ground was thick with people, hordes of ant-specks against the brown of trampled earth. Not a child among them, and that felt wrong too. A gold-and-purple sunset smeared itself three-quarters of the way around the horizon.

  Hawk flicked lights on and off, one by one, referring to a sheet of paper he held in one hand. Sometimes he cursed and respliced wires. Wolf waited. A light breeze ruffled his hair, though there was no hint of wind below.

  “This is a sick country,” Hawk said. He slipped a headset on, played a red spot on the stage, let it wink out. “You there, Patrick? The kliegs go on in two.” He ran a check on all the locals manning lights, addressing them by name. “Average life span is something like forty-two—if you get out of the delivery room alive. The birth-rate has to be very high to keep the population from dwindling away to nothing.” He brought up all the red and blue spots. The stage was bathed in purple light. The canvas above looked black in contrast. An obscure figure strolled to the center mike.

  “Hit it, Patrick.” A bright pool of light illuminated the emcee. He coughed, went into his spiel. His voice boomed over the crowd, relayed away from the stage by a series of amps with timed delay synchronization with the further amplification. The crowd moved sluggishly about the foot of the tower, set in motion by latecomers straggling in. “So the question you should ask yourself is why the government is wasting its resources on a goddamned show.”

  “All right,” Wolf said. “Why?” He was very tense, very still. The breeze swept away his sweat, and he wished he had brought along a jacket. He might need one later.

  “Because their wizards said to—the damn social engineers and their machines,” Hawk answered. “Watch the crowd.”

  “…Janis!” the loudspeakers boomed. And Maggie was onstage, rapping away, handling the microphone suggestively, obviously at the peak of her form. The crowd exploded into applause. Offerings of flowers were thrown through the air. Bottles of liquor were passed hand over hand and deposited on the stage.

  From above it could not be seen how the previous month had taken its toll on Maggie. The lines on her face, the waxy skin, were hidden by the colored light. The kliegs bounced off her sequined dress dazzlingly.

  Halfway through her second song, Maggie came to an instrumental break and squinted out at the audience. “Hey, what the fuck’s the matter with you guys? Why ain’t you dancing?” At her cue, scattered couples rose to their feet. “Ready on the kliegs,” Hawk murmured into his headset. “Three, four, and five on the police.” Bright lights pinpointed three widely separated parts of the audience, where uniformed men were struggling with dancers. A single klieg stayed on Maggie, who pointed an imperious finger at one struggling group and shrieked, “Why are you trying to stop them from dancing? I want them to dance. I command them to dance!”

  With a roar, half the audience were on their feet. “Shut down three. Hold four and five to the count of three, then off. One—Two—Three! Good” The police faded away, lost among the dancers.

  “That was prearranged,” Wolf said. Hawk didn’t so much as glanceat him.

  “It’s part of the legend. You, Wolf, over to your right.” Wolf looked where Hawk was pointing, saw a few couples at the edge of the crowd slip from the light into the deeper shadows.

  “What am I seeing?”

  “Just the beginning.” Hawk bent over his control board.

  By slow degrees the audience became drunk and then rowdy. As the concert wore on, an ugly, excited mood grew. Sitting far above it all, Wolf could still feel the hysteria grow, as well as see it. Women shed chador and danced atop it, not fully dressed. Men ripped free of their coveralls. Here and there, spotted through the crowd, couples made love. Hawk directed lights onto a few, held them briefly; in most cases the couples went on, unheeding.

  Small fights broke out, and were quelled by police. Bits of trash were gathered up and set ablaze, so that small fires dotted the landscape. Wisps of smoke floated up. Hawk played colored spots on the crowd. By the time darkness was total, the lights and the bestial noise of the revelers combined to create the feel of a witches’ Sabbath.

  “Pretty nasty down there,” Hawk observed. “And all most deliberately engineered by government wizards.”

  “But there is no true feeling involved,” Wolf objected. “It is nothing but animal lust. No—no involvement.”

  “Yeah.” Onstage, Maggie was building herself up into a frenzy. And yet her blues were brilliant—she had never been better. “Not so much different from the other concerts. The only difference is that tonight nobody waits until they go home.”

  “Your government can’t believe that enough births will result from this night to make a difference.”

  “Not tonight, no. But all these people will have memories to keep them warm over the winter.” Then he spat over the edge of the platform. “Ahhh, why should I spout their lies for them? It’s just bread and circuses is all, just a goddamned release for the masses.”

  Maggie howled with delight. “Whee-ew, man! I’m gettin’ horny just looking at you. Yeah, baby, get it on, that’s right!” She was strutting up and down the stage, a creature of boundless energy, while the band filled the night with music, fast and urgent.

  “Love it!” She stuck her tongue out at the audience and received howls of approval. She lifted her Southern Comfort bottle, took a gigantic swig, her hips bouncing to music. More howls. She caressed the neck of the bottle with her tongue.

  “Yeah! Makes me horny as sin, ’deed it does. Ya know,” she paused a beat, then continued, “that’s something I can really understand man. ’Cause I’m just a horny little hippie chick myself. Yeah.” Wolf suddenly realized that she was competing against the audience itself for its attention, that she was going to try to outdo everybody present.

  Maggie stroked her hand down the front of her dress, lingering between her breasts, then between her legs. She shook her hair
back from her eyes, the personification of animal lust. “I mean, shit. I mean, hippie chicks don’t even wear no underwear.” More ribald howls of applause. “Don’t believe me, do ya?”

  Wolf stared, was unable to look away as Maggie slowly spread her legs wide and squatted, giving the audience a good look up her skirt. Her frog face leered, and it was an ugly, lustful thing. She lowered a hand to the stage behind her for support, and beckoned. “Come to momma,” she crooned.

  It was like knocking the chocks out from a dam. There was an instant of absolute stillness, and then the crowd roared and surged forward. An ocean of humanity converged on the stage, smashing through the police lines, climbing up on the wooden platform. Wolf had a brief glimpse of Maggie trying to struggle to her feet, before she was overrun. There was a dazed, disbelieving expression on her face.

  “Mother of Sin,” Wolf whispered. He stared at the mindless, evil mob below. They were in furious motion, straining, forcing each other in great swirling eddies. He waited for the stage to collapse, but it did not. The audience kept climbing atop it, pushing one another off its edge, and it did not collapse. It would have been a mercy if it had.

  A hand waved above the crowd, clutching something that sparkled. Wolf could not make it out at first. Then another hand waved a glittering rag, and then another, and he realized that these were shreds of Maggie’s dress.

  Wolf wrapped his arms around a support to keep from falling into the horror below. The howling of the crowd was a single chaotic noise; he squeezed his eyes shut, vainly trying to fend it off. “Right on cue,” Hawk muttered. “Right on goddamned cue.” He cut off all the lights, and placed a hand on Wolf’s shoulder.

  “Come on. Our job is done here.”

  Wolf twisted to face Hawk. The act of opening his eyes brought on a wave of vertigo, and he slumped to the platform floor, still clutching the support desperately. He wanted to vomit, and couldn’t. “It’s—they—Hawk, did you see it? Did you see what they did? Why didn’t someone—?” He choked on his words.