Weird Tales, Volume 51

by Ann VanderMeer

  Most of all, he listened to them, all of them, their laughter, their weeping, their shouts, their whispers, their silence.

  He was not playing, but somehow, he was back at that ancient place of wildness and peace.

  And Constance! Watching Constance was best of all. John had always known Constance was pretty, the way a book might know a character in the story printed on its pages was pretty. But now, he actually saw it: she made her way through the tables like a dancer, dodging glances and lusty grabs with equal ease, never losing her poise or that joyful gleam in her eye, laughing at something unheard from a customer, returning gamely with a witty remark that could bring either laughs or blushes but never animosity or rancor (which, John realized with delight, were two very different words for the same sort of thing).

  For the first time in his life, John Bastion was aware, and awareness, astonishingly, brought him joy and delight (two more words that were different, but were both very good at saying pretty much the same thing: which was, to be plain, what he felt at that particular moment).

  There was something unusual about Barney, when he finally brought John his tonic water. Barney always hobbled over with the air of someone quite comfortable in the grotesquerie of himself, and would speak in a booming voice that belittled whatever the world could possibly think of a one-armed, one-legged ex-pirate with at least one glass eye.

  It was not obvious to John, but it would have been to anyone else: Barney was shaken, and when he spoke, he spoke soberly, without the affected slur he imagined ex-pirates always spoke with, and, most of all, he spoke in a whisper.

  “Drink up, John. Here, why don't you let me add a little something to your drink, give it a little kick?” Barney gestured with the bottle of gin in his hand. John blinked back at him with that look that never told Barney anything.

  “I like it fine the way it is, thank you.”

  John never called anyone by their name, if he spoke at all, and tonight he was surprised by his own voice, as though he'd never heard himself before, and, quite possibly, never really knew he had the knack for it. He thought about it, and decided it wasn't quite so bad, saying things, and decided to try saying some more.

  “The place is jumping tonight.”

  He didn't know what that meant, but he'd heard it often, from customers who seemed more than passing familiar with Barney, and he thought it had a rather pleasing sound to it. Friendly, he thought, was just how the line sounded.

  “I wouldn't doubt it. Listen, John, there's something you should know.” Barney again gestured with the bottle of gin, letting the open bottle hang poised over the lip of John's glass.

  “I like it fine,” John said again.

  Barney turned over a glass from behind the counter, and poured himself a straight. Double. Make that a triple. Hell, he filled the glass, would probably have filled two the way he held the bottle upturned like it was. This was something new as well; John had never seen Barney drink anything more than tap water when he was working.

  He knocked it back, taking one large swallow to empty the glass.

  “See that stiff over there? The cocky-looking one in the slick grey suit?” John looked but didn't seem to get what Barney was saying. “Talking to the giddy young blonde in the red dress.”

  John had to squint a bit for the tigers to come out. The blonde certainly did look “giddy.” He wasn't quite sure he knew what the word meant, but he thought it was a good word for the way she looked and moved and laughed, like somehow she wasn't quite herself; “beside herself” was the phrase that followed “giddy” in John's mind.

  The “stiff” was a bit harder to pick out of the jungle. Most of the gentlemen wore grey suits anyway, but it finally became clear only one of them was actually paying the blonde the kind of attention that could be called “talking to her,” though a lot of the other gentlemen, and quite a few ladies, were looking as well, albeit from a distance.

  When he finally did notice the gentleman, he wondered why he hadn't picked him out sooner. There was something about the fellow that certainly made him stand out quite conspicuously from the rest, even when he was just leaning over the blonde in the red dress, whispering in her ear as she giddied. Something about him made the word “confidence” pop into John's head.

  He continued to be delighted at his newfound awareness, but when he looked back at Barney, he felt something else he didn't quite have the word for, though it was definitely less pleasant than anything he'd experienced before that night.

  He thought about getting back to playing then, the sensation was making him so uncomfortable (he realized just then how much he didn't like that—being uncomfortable), but something inside him insisted that he stay and listen to what Barney had to say, though he could think of no reason at all why he should. Perhaps it would give Barney pleasure, he thought, and make the discomfort go away. Barney had poured himself another glassful (John wasn't sure it was only the second since he'd looked away) and knocked it back with no less alacrity than the previous one.

  “I've been 'negotiating' with that 'gentleman' for over a month now. District Attorney for the City Planning and Development Office.” Visions of Unstoppable Power swam in John's head at the title, though he'd never heard it spoken before. “Seems there was a bit of an oversight when the deed to the Orpheus passed into my hands. Says it was never meant to be owned privately, that the Orpheus rightfully belongs to City Administration, and the public for which they stand.”

  He knocked back yet another drink, saluting his own irony.

  “Apparently, it's been decided that a new public throughway is much more essential to the City than the Orpheus, and that shithead is telling us they're tearing us down, and want us out of here by tomorrow.”

  John recognized one of the words from Barney's pep talk, and a bright smile played on John's lips.

  “Essential. That would be a good thing then.” But Barney's response made him a little less certain of his statement, and he added, “To the City.”

  Barney kept knocking back drinks. The bottle was almost empty.

  “Suppose you could say that.” Something in his voice sounded very much like the word “grudging” was meant for it, and John felt another twinge of delight at the realization that he was getting quite good at that, the meaning of things, but was brought down by Barney's next words: “And maybe you should go work for them then.”

  John frowned at that. He took a gander at all the astonishing things he'd become aware of that night. Looked around at the Orpheus.

  “I like it fine the way it is, thank you.”

  Barney's look was pitying, though the effect was lost on John, to whom it was just another “look,” a particular configuration of features that, while unique to other such configurations, remain the general size and shape, being inevitably made of the same composite parts, as Barney's face.

  “Listen, John, I know this is difficult, but the negotiations were just fluff while the Office waited for the plans to come through the pipeline. They were never gonna give us anything. Far as they're concerned, the Orpheus is theirs, and they don't owe us anything.

  “Tonight, the Orpheus closes for the last time.”

  John thought that over, looking around at the Orpheus one more time. The displeasure he had assumed was emanating from Barney alone had taken root somewhere inside of him, and he felt it filling him and shoving out all the delightful things he'd been feeling up to that point.

  “Come back tomorrow, then.”

  “The City's made its decision, John, they aren't giving us an extension. I didn't tell you sooner because, well, there was never really a lot you could do about it, and I didn't want it getting in the way of your work. We only have the rest of the night.”

  John's face fell with all the weight and sturdiness of a porcelain jug, filled to the brim with curdled milk, and hit the floor with the exact same effect, assuming porcelain jugs could shatter without actually breaking, without, in fact, exhibiting any formal change at all
.

  “Well, look, John, it can't be so bad for you. I mean, you still work the street; you've practically never left it. You can always go back to your old corner, playin' the crowds the way you always have. Sure, you'd have to do without the free meals, or the roof, or the tonic water. . .”

  John looked at his glass, which he hadn't yet touched, and was still full of tonic water, though slightly less chilled than it had been.

  “Or me.” Barney knocked back one last drink, tried to pour himself another, but found the bottle, at last, empty.

  “Constance,” John said, though he wasn't quite sure why.

  “She'll have it worse than either of us, I expect. Me, I'm a wrinkled hand up the withered arse, if you know what I mean.” (Which John didn't.) “I'll find my way, old fart that I am. But Constance? Young as she is, she's never known another life, and never wanted any other. I've always said: if there's anything stands a good chance of outliving me, it will be the Orpheus, with Constance waiting at the tables.”

  Barney shrugged his one remaining shoulder, shaking off the sobering effect the alcohol seemed to have on him. “But, I s'pose, 's the way of the world, and I've been wrong afore.”

  John didn't want it to be “worse” for Constance. And he didn't care if Barney's been wrong before; he wasn't even quite sure what Barney was wrong about then and what he could be wrong about now, but he knew he didn't want to take any chances with Constance, or with the Orpheus. In one night, he'd fallen hard, harder than any human being has ever been known to fall (and human beings, well, they can fall pretty damned hard), and he knew he had to do something, would never be able to go on if he didn't.

  “John? Wake up boy, time for you to play.”

  Yes. That was it. It was time for him to play.

  John stood on the dais like he always did, trumpet in both hands, head bowed slightly. He closed his eyes, turning them inwards, and thought of all the things he'd seen, become aware of, that night. The feel of the tonic water sliding down his throat. Barney's grotesque but endearingly familiar one-legged hobble. The gentlemen. The ladies. The giddy blonde and the District Attorney for the City Planning and Development Office. Constance waiting tables. The Orpheus and all its noise, its own sweet music; he'd never realized it before, but he knew it then; he never played alone: the Orpheus played with him.

  All the delight and comfort and joy and sadness and numbness and drunkenness and sobriety: he thought them all in his head, balled them up tight and put them in the pit of his stomach.

  He opened his eyes. Constance was standing at the back of the room, watching him.

  When he seemed to hesitate, he saw her jaw tremble slightly, as though she'd said something. He imagined he heard her whisper one word: “Play,” she might have said.

  “Play.”

  He brought the trumpet to his lips, letting it linger there, as though savoring his first kiss; which, in the way of things that night, it may as well have been. Keeping his eyes on Constance, on all the ladies and all the gentlemen, on the giddy blonde and the District Attorney and the ex-pirate behind the bar, on everyone and everything that was the Orpheus that night, he played.

  Your music keeps them, toys with their imaginings of time, I reckon, and while you play, they stay and drink and flirt as though all the time in the world was theirs for the takin'.

  The first note started softly, and grew. It was long and mournful, and seemed to fill the Orpheus with its sorrow. Several hearts broke that night, but no one dared even breathe to interrupt that note.

  You give our customers something special. You take 'em places they've never been, and could never be; you give 'em a piece o' the street they never woulda seen for themselves.

  The bar grew quieter with each passing second, and all at once became silent. All eyes were on John as he started his last set. How many were there? Fifty? A hundred? All of them were listening intently, as though incapable of anything else: jaws were slack; eyes glazed. Everyone stopped to hear the last mournful song to ever be heard from the trumpet of John Bastion.

  The customers never spend a mite less time than they intend to, and, more often than not, they spend more.

  John just kept right on playing, through the night, straight up through dawn; standing right there at the heart of the Orpheus, he just kept right on going like nothing in this world could ever stop him. And everyone in the Orpheus, they just kept right on listening.

  And City Administration, they went right on and built that throughway.

  Now no one ever gets to go to the Orpheus; but that's OK, John Bastion thinks as he plays, because now, no one ever has to leave. if you ever find yourself happening across that particular throughway, take a moment to listen; it's a quiet place for all the cars driving by, but if you listen, and listen hard, you just might hear John Bastion playing.

  They say it's lovely stuff. Me, well . . . I've never had an ear for the like, you understand.

  When asked to write about himself, chiles samaniego enjoys using lowercase letters and the third person: “Easier to make things up that way,” he says. As a writer of fictions, he wonders if everything he writes might be true, and therefore not to be trusted. He is originally from the Philippines but is currently living in Singapore.

  * * *

  BLEAKWARRIOR MEETS THE SONS OF BRAWL

  by Alistair Rennie

  In Which the Metawarriors Wreak Great Havoc Upon One Another

  The folly of brawl is a tower of disproportionate girth, besmirched at the base with festering lichens and nettled clumps. Venomous ivies scale its roughshod masonry. Dripping vines encircle its mildewed heights. The bloated misalignments of its elapsing stiffness represent an ominous departure from the orthodoxies of architectural form. Below its corroded lintel a single door of blanched iron offers sole access to its interior.

  Lord Brawl himself can be heard proclaiming aloud from the un-turreted heights of his Folly in the arboreal wastes. The various species that flock to his abode, feeding on discarded body parts of victims, will cease their scavenging and stare up at him, blankly, as if to listen.

  “My fifty Bastard Sons!” he cries, with a voice that carries through the veins of his offspring. “Bring me the living body of a chief rival. I tire of these sops of linear flesh. They are sources of amusement only: but I need the pain of one after my own kind.”

  It is a regular summons which the fifty Bastard Sons of Brawl will readily obey, as they travel the world on various missions, in subdivisions of two or three, hearkening to their Father's grim requests, though they are easily distracted by the allure of havoc.

  “My Bastard Brood,” says Lord Brawl, willing his words through the blood of his spawn. “Daily I toil in the midst of my wretchedness, but seldom am I gratified by common atrocity. I have administered every torture ever conceived, and devised many others that no ordinary cruelty could sustain. Yet I receive nothing more than the mild satisfaction of the visible terror on a maiden's face, which, at best, hardly arouses my fancy.

  “Bring me, then, the living body of a rival whose capacity to endure is proof of an unbearable suffering. Do not mock me with the linear kind, but delight your Father with the most infected specimen of our stock. Head Wrecker or Mother of Peril, Hecticon or, better still, BleakWarrior will do. But bring me an idol of misery and I will show them woes that are mine and theirs in unison.”

  Sons 21, 24 and 39 have proved particularly adept at adhering to their missions and, presently, have aligned themselves to a linear usurper by the name of Layman Sohk. Layman Sohk has many spies who have brought reports of a stranger taking residence in the City of Indulgences, whose demand for excessive pleasures exceeds even that of the indigenous people. The stranger shuns the attentions of Free Traders of Interest who wish to sensationalise his achievements which are, to him, the ennui of his removal from ordinary life. Privacy, however, often proves the mother of infamy; and soon word spreads of his exploits which, by the time they have reached the collective ear of the mass
es, are almost legendary.

  He has debauched for several weeks and his appetite for more is like the tide that never wanes, pleasuring himself with harlots of all sexes and types; assaulting his senses with lurid concoctions; and fighting to the death with hired ruffians in the combat clubs. But he lives: and, as he pleasures himself, he feels no pleasure. These pastimes, instead, are a kind of erasure of the need to serve causes which he hates because he does not understand them.

  In the private salon of a leisurely bordello, a prostitute, who does not hire her body but hires her mind, was bathing with him in the juice of stipple berries, which are full of toxins said to relax the muscles and skin. She said to him:

  “Seeing as you will remain nameless–”

  “I have no name worth knowing,” he said.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I might never be seen here again.”

  “So my memory of you will be a nameless one?”

  “Do memories have names?”

  “Memories have people. People have names.”

  “Better to forget, then.”

  She scooped up some stipple berry juice in cupped hands and told him to drink. “The stipple juice is full of chemicals that have the same effect on the brain as endorphins. It will make you feel better.”

  He drank.

  “You do have a name, don't you?” She wouldn't let it go. It was, after all, what she was paid for.

  “What use is a name,” he said, now scooping up the juice and drinking for himself, “when you don't know who or what you are?”

  “A name will begin to make you someone.”

  “But not something.”

  She began to massage his emaciated shoulders.

  “To most people,” she said, “I am something before being someone. Most of them never even think of me as someone at all. I'd say you were lucky.”