Phoenix Café

by Gwyneth Jones

  Helen said: “In Johnny Guglioli’s day, humans had invented a data-processing medium called coralin. It was a substrate as complex as a human brain, in which mind could be immanent. But the coralin creatures live in another state of being from ours. They are not human, nor self-conscious as we know it. After the Aleutians came, human scientists abandoned research into artificial intelligence, along with so much else. They said ‘We will never construct a self-aware machine, it isn’t possible.’ But here I am. Intelligent by accident, as an unforeseen byproduct of my primary function. Made, not born. Created, not begotten. I am a sextoy, I am a machine.

  “I was made for Michael Connelly, whom you know as the Warden. I am his sister, since I was derived from his father’s tissue, as he was himself. But I was not made human. I was able to bear my own child, which is unusual. Misha was a parthenogenetic conception and needed work, but he is all mine. But I am still property; I am still the Warden’s spare piece of flesh. He didn’t hesitate long before offering me as an experimental subject, when he was invited to join in the plot that you have discovered. Maybe jealousy hardened his heart.

  “The Warden and his friends wanted to get hold of the Aleutian superweapon before the aliens departed. They persuaded some of the scientists on the Buonarotti team to co-operate. Maybe only one, I’m not sure. There are other human scientists working for the plot now. With the small knowledge they had of weapons manufacture, they began by crudely injecting the stolen culture into the bodies of the young ladies who’d been offered for sacrifice. When several of these experiments had been uselessly fatal, they started using lower grade ‘young ladies,’ without higher brain functions, as a cheaper alternative. Though they believed, going by Aleutian science, that the weapon itself could not be grown from anything but fully sentient bodies.”

  “I saw them!” breathed Catherine.

  Mr. Connelly, shepherding his flock in the room in her nightmare.

  “You saw them,” agreed the young woman, with a serene smile. She was now wearing a deep green gown, her hair drawn back sleekly from a passionate bare brow. “You have seen what I chose to show you, time and again. This is my network…. The experiments had been running for some time, in the greatest secrecy, before I was infected. They reserved me for the last stages because I am fertile, which is rare in a sextoy—and perhaps because the Warden didn’t want me to die; and they needed to keep him sweet. They’d improved their technique. When I swallowed the Vinum Sabbati it was an innocent white powder, and I lived. I live still, but I have become the breeding ground. Do you remember the marriage that you saw in the glade? I made you see that. You were wearing a suit that was slaved to the house’s system: I controlled what you saw. What happened in that congress was not a human conception, but it was like enough. I did not become pregnant, but my partner did, and she will give birth.”

  “Why did you let them do it?”

  She couldn’t believe that this woman had been powerless.

  Helen ignored the question. “That chemical marriage happened a while ago. My partner has already been delivered to the FDA to a secret site where the weapons will be tested, finally, in anger as we say. Maybe you wonder why we, my sisters in torment and I, allowed ourselves to be used so wickedly. Well, we are small and physically weak; and we are property. We have no rights in law. But my bride, I can tell you, was a willing victim. She gave her life (in so far as she had a life of her own) for the cause. Don’t judge her too harshly. Have you never, in your long career, asked your retainers to die for Aleutia? Has Aleutia never asked for volunteers for just this terrible purpose? As for me, when papa told me I would serve our party’s cause, that I would suffer pour la patrie, and he would be proud, I laughed to myself. I wasn’t fooled. But in some shamed dungeon deep inside, there was a little girl who was proud and glad—”

  She drew up her knees to her chest. She looked like an abandoned child.

  Catherine imagined the nights, years-long. The days, years-long, spent in this room by the little girl who never grew up. Who was always and everywhere, whatever her talent and her skills as an auteur of worlds, still this desolate child.

  Helen opened one hand and pointed at the Vlab. A demonstration was running. Catherine saw 3D diagrams like the ones on the old notebook in the schoolroom. Worlds giving birth to worlds, impossible divisions. Lastly, the image from the signature cartouche took shape, the woman bowed with clasped hands over the glory that she had discovered. “It’s a detail from the Legend of St Helen,” said Helen. “That’s why I use it. Helen was the mother of Constantine, who, following her teaching, imposed Christian redemption on the Roman Empire. She’s a figure of the dawn of a new world. She went to the Holy Land to search for the True Cross on which Christ had died for our sins. Constantine imposed the Church; Helen discovered the scientific proof of salvation. She is pictured in the act of finding the Cross. Do you see?”

  Catherine shook her head. She stared at the archaic figure, unable to decipher its meaning.

  “It’s like a museum, isn’t it.”

  She spun around. The guide she’d followed was sitting in one of the armchairs by the rose fire. It wasn’t Joset or Misha. Knees tucked up, the hood of her domino pushed back; folds of darkest green silk tumbled in shimmering virtual detail around her voluptuous little body, Helen smiled at Catherine. She was holding a brightly colored toy. Catherine had seen the same kind of thing once before: that scaled head, the beak with its scarlet gape. It wasn’t a snake, after all. The Phoenix clung to Helen’s wrist with miniature talons. Its undiscarded ancestry, its history of transformation—reptilian into bird—was proudly evident.

  “It’s like a museum isn’t it,” repeated Helen, gesturing with the hand the Phoenix clung to. “My mind is like a museum, and I’m the prize exhibit. I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long, Catherine.”

  The phoenix gaped, and uttered a harsh, short cry.

  “I make myself look like this,” said Helen. “In virtuality. I make myself speak and move, like this. It’s no longer true in the real. But you know that. I’m at Arden now. I won’t leave this room again, in the real. Sometimes I wish everything would move more quickly. Sometimes I beg for every second to last a thousand years. I’m older than I used to look you know, Dad had me made when he was still quite young. But what I remember from before Mish was born hardly counts as living: I blank it out. No one can be human all on their own.” She began to fade, losing definition by trembling degrees. “I am the secret author of everything you have seen or will see in my game. Don’t question me. I can’t tell you anything more. Ask Lalith. She knows.”

  “But you’re not a dumb patriot,” cried Catherine, feeling that her last chance of learning the truth was slipping away. “The others girls maybe, not you. You could have killed yourself, when you found out that you were being used for something so monstrous—” She had forgotten that Helen was only human; that even life in this cage, life as the servant of a savage revenge, might be better than no more life at all. “You must have had some reason! Tell me?”

  The girl in the armchair raised her free hand and touched two spots at her temples, where Catherine saw small dark wounds, as if Helen had been prepared for a crude early form of virtuality immersion. “Nothing more proves me human,” she said, “than the price I was willing to pay for knowledge.” She turned blind eyes to Catherine. “I am sorry,” she said. “I am a ghost. I’m not real. I cannot answer your questions.”

  Catherine was alone. The roses burned, undying: she saw a heap of raw, agonized flesh. Wisely, she did not look again at the canopied bed.

  What had happened to the rest of them? Maybe they were talking to other versions of Helen elsewhere in the construct, being given other clues that could be put together. Head for the exit. She looked for a doorway that wasn’t part of the décor. Instead there was another cloaked figure, standing by Helen’s chair. It beckoned and she followed. They left Helen’s room and sped through the house, brushing through vital, casually re
alized images of National Park staff at work. In the clearing she saw her driver, polishing one of the jeeps with tender care. The chickens pecked and strutted and bullied each other. Mrs. Hunt was in the potager, speaking severely to a young male servant; who squirmed and looked at the ground and hated the old bat—

  Abruptly she was hanging in a sensory blank, blacker than the darkest night. Then she was out of the game, in the blue sweat-smelling gloom of the antechamber. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked aloud. No one answered. She walked, empty and bewildered, through the demon-gates: that read her identity and would shift the price of the game she’d just played into the coffers of the co-operative. Into the real-world, late and empty Phoenix Café.

  III

  Yo Soy la Desintegración

  10

  Intermundia

  i

  The Café was still lit; musique naturelle still playing softly. The dining room was empty, except for one table. Agathe and Lalith were sitting together, obviously waiting for Catherine. The musique was made of rainfall. It must be raining outside, but the windows—small, postwar windows—that looked onto the dark street were sheltered by the verandah. She couldn’t see the rain; she could only hear the muted, ominous whispering. She crossed the room in a world thin and devoid of conviction, her senses reeling from that extraordinary envie.

  “Was that an hour? Where is everyone? It felt like a few minutes!”

  “Sit down,” suggested Lalith. “You’re looking burned. It’s the intensity she uses. Intensified experience just eats objective time. But it isn’t as late as it feels. We were the only customers left, so Anatole decided to shut up shop.”

  Catherine sat down. “Drink,” said Agathe, pushing forward a glass of red wine. “It’s good for what ails you. I don’t use the stuff, but I had that from someone I trust. Let’s drink together.” She had a tumbler of the café’s best ground-water in front of her.

  Catherine drank. The wine was soft and warming in her mouth.

  “How do you like Helen’s style?” asked Lalith, oddly prim and stiff. Lalith, like Catherine, wasn’t good at small talk. “It’s different, isn’t it.”

  “I call it Modern Art,” said Agathe, mock philistine. “I don’t understand it.”

  “You should try her paper flowers,” advised Lalith, suddenly grinning. “They are excessive.”

  Catherine blinked. “Erotic paper flowers? Better than Misha’s?”

  “Better. Rougher, weirder.” Lalith glanced slyly at her friend the priest. “But I’m embarrassing Agi.” Catherine glimpsed the strain that the Perfect’s vows imposed on these two, the unknown hinterland of their relationship.

  “Was it Helen who built the Blue Forest game?”

  They glanced at each other. “No,” said Agathe.

  Catherine set the silver bracelet on the table, as she had done when she confronted Misha. She looked Lalith dead in the eye. The halfcaste answered with the same Silent defense she’d given at every previous encounter:

  “Is this yours?”

  Lalith’s awkwardness had taken on a mask of brittle clowning. She made to slip the bracelet over her solid brown hand and failed, with a chuckle. She didn’t have the classic halfcaste bird-bones. It was far too small.

  “Apparently not!”

  “But I think you have one of these somewhere. You’re an agent of the USSA: I think you’re an officer of the Special Exterior Force: a Campfire Girl.”

  “It isn’t the USSA anymore,” said Lalith, without troubling to protest, or to deny what she’d known Catherine was thinking, all this time. “Hasn’t been for a long time. The United Socialist States of America ceased to exist, even in name, over a hundred years ago. I’m a native of the republic of Colombia, and a citizen of the FDA, the Federación de Democracias Americanas, North and South. I don’t know why the funx you aliens, and all you Old Earth running dog alien lackeys, can’t call us by our given name.”

  “Why should we call you by name,” wondered Agathe, “when you won’t even talk to us?”

  “Speaking for Aleutia, it’s not deliberate rudeness,” said Catherine. “We apologize. We’re lazy and we don’t like changes: people can’t help their obligation. Shall we return to the point?”

  Lalith set the bracelet down.

  “Okay, I’m a secret agent. I’ve been over here for a long time. I have a recorded history, as good as any you’ll find for someone in halfcaste community in Aleutian Earth. Right back to birth: rock solid. I joined the Renaissance movement, I rose through the ranks, I’ve traveled all over the Aleutian ruled cities; eventually I met Misha and his friends. But it’s not what you think.”

  Catherine grinned. “So, what is it?”

  “I can speak Aleutian. I know how you’ve read the situation, and you’re wrong about me; you’re wrong about the FDA. My mission was to prevent gender violence, not incite it. You think we want to encourage a blood-bath, so we can sweep in and take over? We don’t. We want stability here: we want to help. I was sent over here to infiltrate and encourage any trend, initiative, vision that offered a peaceful alternative. I found the Renaissance movement: I joined it because that was my mission. But you know what? I’m a convert. I’m not working for the FDA, or not just for the FDA. I’m working for the rebirth of humanity. Everything you’ve heard me say applies to the Americas as well. We’ve all been trapped, paralyzed, for as long as the Aleutians have been on Earth…. Agathe knows who I really am, so do all my close contacts: which is in direct contravention of my orders, but I was planning to get the authority to tell the Old Earth public the real story, before the Departure—.”

  “I see.” Catherine ducked her chin, withholding judgment. “How d’you expect your superiors to respond to your extended allegiance?”

  “My brief was to try to stop Old Earth from blowing up after the Departure. By whatever means came to hand. That’s what I’ve been doing, and it’s been working, that’s good enough. I’m Campfire Girl, we’re trained to act alone, take decisions alone. There are other agents in Europe, working alone too: they’re not implicated. They don’t know who ‘Lalith’ of the Renaissance really is.”

  “Are you really a halfcaste? I thought none of them survived in the US.”

  “I am now.” She touched the neat rims of her nasal slits. “I don’t mind the morphing; I’ve grown to like it. I had to be a halfcaste; I couldn’t be on either side of the gender divide. Not only because of the politics: semantically. We’ve changed, the Europeans have changed. I couldn’t have passed as a woman or a man over here, not of either persuasion. But who says how a halfcaste is supposed to act? We’re cultural throwbacks. We could be acting like a character in a three hundred year old Pre-Contact movie. That’s my cover, and it wasn’t much of a stretch. Come to the Americas, you’ll understand what I mean.”

  Catherine gave the same cautious Aleutian nod as before. “What does the bracelet I found, that was planted on me, mean? It has no inscription, no rank, no name, no number. Is it genuine?”

  “I believe so. In manner of speaking, yes. I think it’s genuine.”

  “This little toy, made to fit the wrist of a Traditional young lady, belonged to an SEF officer?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” repeated Lalith.

  In the Common Tongue, they were being as guarded as Catherine herself. Guarded like Aleutian Signifiers on the witness stand: who know their Spoken Word evidence will be thrown out, if it contradicts the language of the body, the flux flowing from them into the air. Agathe laid her hands on the tabletop, like someone anxious to prove herself innocent of trickery. “We don’t know what Helen has told you.”

  “Or Mish—”

  Catherine frowned. “Were you in the envie? I lost sight of the others.”

  “We got here too late.” The priest hesitated. “How much do you know?”

  “Misha told me that
Helen had hidden the answers in her game. I met Helen in there, a version of Helen. She told me some things, but gave me no answers.” Catherine was suddenly chilled, though the room was warm. She’d picked up her robe in the games-room antechamber. She thrust her hands deep in the sleeve-pockets, found Leonie’s hairbrush and was obscurely comforted. “Not about the conspiracy. She said I should ask Lalith, so now I’m asking you, both of you it seems, about the proliferating weapons plot. What’s your version?”

  The women glanced at each other. Lalith nodded, handing the baton to her friend: Agathe began. “It started before we met you, when we lost Helen. We all knew that Helen and Mish were lovers—”

  “Imran hated it,” broke in Lalith. “Said Mish was going to wreck everything. Of course he was jealous; Mish had grabbed the forbidden sweeties that Imran didn’t dare to touch. Of course, he never considered Helen might have a point of view. But he was right, it was dangerous. The Renaissance needed to be under the radar; know what I mean? We needed time to grow, and a monster like Misha’s Dad could have destroyed us with one swipe of his paw—”

  “Let me tell her,” said Agathe, and Lalith subsided. “Helen stopped coming to the café. We were afraid the Warden had caught her and Mish together, but Mish just said she was grounded: not to leave the house except with Michael Senior. Then Thérèse heard, on the young lady circuit, that Helen Connelly had joined the secret society. Not a secret society exactly. It didn’t have a name; it was just a covetable inner circle in a tiny cramped world full of ‘inner circles.’ Special parties, special treats, special presents: for a special group of girls whose mothers and fathers really loved them. They had a secret life and whispered about it, then one by one they disappeared: vanished into total purdah. Thérèse assumed it was about sex of course, toy-swapping orgies. But the girls who vanished were literally never seen or heard from again.”