“I’m amazed,” said Misha, grimacing at the banal movie clip on his lasagna tray, “by the way we keep everyone fed. We’re not as upholstered as the folk in the old movies, but the common people can still pack out a place like the Car Park, where extra food is sold for fun. Yet they tell us Youro is starving. Have you had enough? Or shall I root you out some moldering bus tickets?”
“Thank you, I’m fine. You believe that Youro is starving?”
“Things are tight, just now. Can you imagine, we once expected to have a population of twenty billions on this planet? It’s lucky the organochlorines got to our fertility, not to mention that inspired invention, the Gender Wars. There simply isn’t room. Did you know, in the last three hundred years, coincidentally happening to be the period of your rule, we’ve lost more than seventy per cent our agricultural land, world wide?”
More like thirty, she thought. The other forty per cent you lost in the hundred years before we arrived, mainly by your own stupidity. Some locals blamed the aliens for the devastating Gender Wars, and that was debatable: but Aleutians were certainly responsible for the climate-improvement projects that had done maybe even worse damage. Catherine looked at her boots, unsullied by the midden at her feet; they were Aleutian make, and she shouldn’t be wearing them outdoors. But nobody cared anymore. She listened to the singing from the temple, and wondered if it was possible for any Aleutian, even an Aleutian in disguise, to make friends with a human.
N’ayons pas peur de vivre au monde
Dieu nous a devancés!
N’ayons pas peur de vivre au monde
où Dieu même s’est risqué…
“I’m sorry,” said Misha, insincerely. “I didn’t mean anything personal.” He stood up. “Now I’m going to take you on the lev.”
“When we arrived—” began Catherine.
“You’re going to have to stop that. The ‘when we arrived’ line. It could get to be a bad habit. Don’t be offended, I’m trying to help.”
N’arrêtons pas la sève ardente
Dieu nous a devancés
N’arrêtons pas la sève ardente
qui tourmente l’univers—
He set off, coat skirts swirling. He didn’t get far. A machine on tracks, a about knee high, came rushing up and began to circle him, yelping.
“Barcode! Barcode!”
“Funx off, you stupid little brute. I’m not stealing anything!”
“Barcode! Barcode! Barcode!”
It was the returnable bottle, a rather pretty pink glass flask, that had held their rose sherbert. Misha had inadvertently tucked it into his pocket. It was too late to hand it over. They were forced to slink back into to the Car Park, yelped there all the way, and Misha had to use his family credit line to pay.
“You wouldn’t believe how many people try to walk off with these,” commented the stallholder happily. “We must be on to a good thing.”
“I wasn’t—” Misha’s delicate skin flushed furious crimson.
The entrepreneur, a Reformer in faded overalls, leered cheerfully. “Naturally! It was an oversight, that’s understood. Thank you, Mr. Connelly Junior. That will do nicely.”
Again they walked, and Misha recovered his temper. They talked a great deal, in the corrupt version of English (Youro, never Europe) that was still a global contact language, thanks to the patronage of the aliens, who’d adopted it for their official communications long ago, and who disliked change. Misha was bilingual in French, but knew no other languages. He wanted to know how it felt to be an automatic linguist. She couldn’t tell him: “I’m not a neurologist!” she protested. “I just do it.” They talked of the ancient sects and cults, stronger now than they had been Pre-Contact. Meanwhile the Church of Self, successful in the Enclaves, made few inroads here. Perhaps they don’t kill their converts in the tropical zone? suggested Misha.
And of the entertainment industry: more and yet more gruesome tele-visual-cortical spectacles (gladitorials, bull-dancing, duels between humans and wild beasts, duels between humans and robot killing machines), where the audience hooked up and shared the violent experience of the performers. Gaming hells, tvc’s main competition, still packed the public in. But the games had become “degraded pap,” said Misha.
A telepresence package tour to Mars was cheaper to provide than a decent meal, he explained; and it was junkfood. Did Catherine realize that the whole of Earth’s space program was run on teletourism? That the only actual humans who went to Mars and the Moon were making the virtual masters? Essentially, B movie actors. A splendid joke, if you were a student of history.
“I did know that,” said Catherine. ‘It’s a shame.’ Aleutia had starved the Mars and Moon projects of funding. The shipworld saw no point in epic discomfort.
“I hate the hells, but I love direct cortical telly. Don’t you? Even the everlasting repeats. How many times have you jumped from Angel Falls?”
Catherine admitted to eleven. She’d been an addict of direct cortical tv before she joined the Mission, to the distress of Maitri’s household.
On the lev they traveled first class. Apparently Misha didn’t mind spending credit when he only had to transact with a machine. Don’t do this alone, he repeated. Only with a male escort. Now she was sleepy, and the shareware food sat heavily and queasily on her stomach. When they emerged she had the same uncanny feeling as when she’d stepped from the closed car into Thérèse’s orchard. She didn’t know where she was. Were they still in Paris? Even still in Youro? The sky had turned a darker blue, pricked by false stars. She’d been told that the real stars were invisible even in the parks or in the middle of food plant: the city’s atmosphere hid them.
It was curfew hour, the projections had closed down. They were in an old ward of indeterminate character: neither rich nor poor; not halfcaste, Reformer or Traditionalist. They descended, between tall old buildings, a long serene prospect towards gleaming water; crossed an ancient bridge set with globe lights that were reflected, shimmering, up and down the dark stream. Neither of them had spoken since they left the station. It was the quiet of two comrades coming back to the lights of home after a day’s tramp in the wilderness. She felt again the mysterious euphoria of the evening when she had first met Misha and his friends. The true city: the old city, not the great Youro sprawl, lay beautiful and still. An owl hooted. A delta plane of feathers, gilded in the dusk, dropped silently. The bird rose carrying a young rat in her claws.
“Hunting,” said Misha. “That’s something else. I’ll take you hunting.”
Not far from the river, they turned a corner and there were tables on the pavement under the branches of a sycamore tree. There were colored lamps, people were talking. Three shallow steps led to a terrace where a dark-skinned Reformer, a low-brimmed hat over her eyes, glanced up as they passed. She nodded to Misha and his companion; and looked away with an odd, rueful smile.
Inside the café more tables, most of them occupied, covered a wide floor of bare, softly shining wooden boards. A few middle aged or elderly couples were placidly absorbed in their evening meals; but most of the clientele seemed young as Misha. She had a sense of shared laughter and glances. She noticed obvious halfcastes, always a sign of general tolerance and good will. She heard the whisper of leaves, the sigh of distant traffic, an occasional clear word of conversation: sampled, mixed down, blended and woven into musique naturelle—the sound that was born in canvas shacks and dirt-floored shebeens in West Africa, and took the world by storm the year the aliens arrived. She stood transfixed, tears of nostalgia stinging her eyes.
“I knew you’d like it,” said Misha complacently. “Welcome to—”
“Miss Catherine?”
The dark-skinned Reformer woman had come indoors. She held out her hands. “Agathe Uwilingiyimana. We’ve met, but I’m sure you don’t remember. I know you’ve met my brother. I won’t make you say Uwilingiyimana even once. Agathe will do. We’re glad to see you. Misha promised us he would bring you. Welcome to the Pho
enix.”
Catherine gripped her hands, and said inadequate things. “Oh yes, Joset. Yes, Agathe, at my guardian’s house, I do remember. Hello.”
Someone shouted: “Mish! Over here!” Rajath had jumped up from a chair, waving. Joset, Rajath, Mâtho and a handful of other young people, filled a long table. She and Misha went to join them, Catherine bewildered and pleased at the warmth of their reception. She could still feel the pressure of the Reformer Councilor’s handclasp. She hoped she hadn’t become a prize of intercommunal warfare, and was glad to see that there were other obvious Reformers, beside Joset, in the group she had joined.
“Do you take your wine simple or complicated?” asked Joset, proffering bottles.
“Huh?”
“The grape; the pure esoteric grape. Or something chemically improved?”
“I’ll take the plain grape.” She thought of orange peel and dogdirt.
“And what will you eat?”
She was still suffering from the maggot lasagna.
“But you m-must break bread with us,” insisted Mâtho.
“Give her bread; let her break it. You don’t have to eat it, Miss,” (They don’t like our “hard food” someone explained importantly to a neighbor: They live on lukewarm soup.)
“Break it over Mâtho’s head!”
Food was ordered, after an intense discussion in which Catherine was not expected to take part. She was assailed by fearless, excited questions.
“What does it mean to be an alien in a human body?”
“Is Lord Maitri your biological father? Are you cloned or engineered?”
“Are you a single malt like Mish, or are you a blend?”
Misha aimed a thump at the speaker, a bird-boned halfcaste, presenting herself as feminine, with slick, black cropped hair and enormous eyes.
“Excuse them! They’ve never been this close to an alien in the real. This is Lois Lane, she’s a bull dancer and she adores you.”
“It’s COWS, dickface. And I’m NOT called Lois Lane. My name is Lydia!”
To Catherine’s astonishment the halfcaste leapt onto the table and aimed a flying kick that sent Michael’s black beret spinning like a Frisbee across the room. She made a neat dismount, into the empty chair beside Catherine.
“I admire you, that’s true. It’s so casual to have yourself translated into another species. Just what I’d do if I was rich. What’s the point in being normal if you’re rich? You don’t know me but I admire you. Maybe we can be friends.”
The two figures opposite Catherine were shrouded in the full chador, but one of them seemed familiar. “Do I know you?” she asked.
The first veiled figure stripped off her hood, revealing the blonde hair and tip-tilted green eyes of Thérèse Khan. She was still wearing butterfly makeup, in a fresh design. “It’s me,” she admitted, grinning. “Yes, I’m here in person. I’m not completely a prisoner—or an idiot. That’s my brother Imran.” She waved a hand towards a smoldering, hawk-faced young male. “This is my maid, Binte, my chaperone.” Thérèse ripped open her servant’s veil, uncovering a round, placid brown face as glossy as polished wood. “I call them all Binte. She’s my bodyguard, my private policeman. Be careful what you say. She’s very aggressive, and awfully strong.” She laughed at Catherine’s expression. “No, I don’t mean that. Say what you like, she’s not human. She’s a surveillance camera. She’s only capable of noticing certain things.”
“Like what?”
Binte smiled and nodded.
Thérèse giggled. “Shoplifting!”
The food arrived, along with Misha’s hat. They had settled on garlic soup, a little roast chicken (it was a very little roast chicken, it looked more like a roast hamster), mamaliga and sour cream.
“We have our own kitchens,” the waiter told her proudly, returning Misha’s beret with a flourish. He was a masculine Reformer, but differently masculine from Joset. “In the pre-Aleutian style. You must see them. We’re a co-operative, everyone does everything. We’re part of a chain; we have branches in every city, two or three in many quartiers. Would you like to learn to cook?” He held out his hands. “Welcome to the Renaissance, Miss Catherine.”
“What a splendid logo,” she said. “The Phoenix. The mythical bird that remakes itself, that dies in a nest of flames and is reborn from its own ashes—”
The waiter laughed. “Actually, it’s the name of the person who opened the first café. He’s called River Phoenix, he’s a halfcaste. Reincarnation of a great Pre-Contact recording star. Maybe you met him in a past life?”
“No.” said Catherine. “I never did. But I love My Own Private Idaho.”
“Never seen it. Nor has River, but it inspired him to be a cook. A whole movie about love and sex and potatoes. We knew about the extinct birds too, of course. Hey, I don’t suppose you remember what they really looked like?”
“Mamaliga is only cornbread.” Mâtho leaned down the table, mortified by this poor scholarship and trying to distract her attention. “You can m-make it very soft with some more sour cream. D-don’t try the meat, it’s very hard to digest.”
“Could I buy some wine?” Catherine offered. “If I can use Maitri’s credit here.” She raised delighted laughter by adding: “If it’s not too uncool to pay for things?”
She ate, to the admiration of all, and found the food excellent. She heard as many definitions of the Renaissance as there were eager faces around the table, and joined a discussion about the metaphysical significance of couture. They wore “native costume,” they told her, because like the Renaissance itself it could not be grown. It must be woven, cut and sewn, by hand or by machine. It must be separated from the world. That was the essence of human art and craft! It must be defined, delimited, distilled, detached, unreal!
Misha, seeing his protégée safely launched, leaned back in his chair to consult privately with Joset. They’d both been wired for years, and were accustomed to commune with each other like this, whether in the same room or apart: a secret cabal in the midst of any crowd.
Joset:
Misha: < Trust me, Jo. The thing is worth several million lakhs of rupees, if it’s the original, and it is sitting in Miss Catherine’s boudoir. You know the way they work. Serial immortality. A baby gets born; the priests of Self establish a chemical identity. Then and only then, they have assigned to them the possessions and rights, or lack thereof, belonging to their serial self. She says it’s hers. If it’s the real thing, she has to be Kevala the Pure. They took names in Sanskrit when they arrived because they thought it was our worldwide sacred language. They still do it. Originally they chose handles that matched the Aleutian person by some salient quality. Guess what “Catherine” means, in this city’s reckoning, Mister Yaweh-Increases? It means “The P
ure.” Are you convinced? Yours ever, Who Is Like Unto God!>
Joset (reads through Misha’s long transfers again):
Misha:
Joset:
Misha:
Joset:
Misha:
Misha closed the screen that had unfolded before his inner eye: no more strange than a train of verbal thought, no more distracting than a daydream. No, it’s not magic, he thought, smug as an Aleutian. Though it’s true I have constant access to the common mind of humanity, in the great library of data storage. I could even, if I were a policeman or a peeping tom, know a lot about what my friend was actually thinking, not merely what he wants to tell me. But please, it’s not supernatural. You wouldn’t understand, Miss Alien. It’s to do with entities, not even real things, too small to be alive, called electrons, photons, muons, quarks, that float in the human air and join us all in one commonalty of un-life. He raised his eyes, slowly panning across the tables. Slowly smiled. We’re on our way, he thought. Stage two. Wonder how she’ll like stage three.
Catherine was thinking that she knew why she had been forced to eat shareware. Misha hated to be reminded that he was a copy of his father, and that happened every time he raised a credit line as Michael Connelly Junior. She would get Leonie to give her some cash, and ask someone less prickly to come to the Car Park with her, so she could really eat potage bonne femme, or moules frites, instead of maggot pasta. She called to Mâtho: “Those news articles you wanted. Could we talk about it?”
Catching Misha’s eye, she sent him a warm and grateful smile.
“How will you settle, ladies and gentlemen?”
Phoenix Café Page 10