Mash Up

by Gardner Dozois

  “Harry, this is becoming intolerable,” says Malone. “Hell, I’d almost marry the woman who tried to kill Milton if that would make the others go away.”

  “You can’t!” says Milton, who has finally unclogged his nasal passages. “She’s mine!”

  “She sure didn’t act like it,” says Malone.

  “It was just a lovers’ spat.”

  “If the Third Reich could spat like that we’d all be speaking German,” says Malone.

  “Just keep away from her,” says Milton. “She’s mine.” Then he pauses and adds: “Potentially.”

  “All right, all right,” says Malone. “It was a silly thought to begin with.”

  “What’s so silly about sharing a bed with Mitzi McSweeney?” demands Milton pugnaciously.

  “I get the feeling that the bed is a hospital bed,” answers Malone. “And that Mitzi McSweeney isn’t sharing it, but is signing the papers about not using extraordinary means, like giving me food and water, to keep me alive.”

  Milton is about to object, but then he realizes that he agrees down the line with Malone, and just nods his head instead.

  “It is getting near midnight, and the object of our affection still hasn’t made his choice,” announces Mimsy Borogrove. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am getting tired of waiting.”

  “Me, too,” says Lascivious Linda. “But what do you propose to do about it?”

  “I say if he hasn’t chosen one of us by midnight, we draw straws for him,” says Mimsy.

  “We could have a nude mud-rasslin’ tournament, with Malone going to the winner,” suggests Joey Chicago. “At least we’d get to charge admission.”

  The mages all nod their heads in approval, but Bodacious Belinda points out that the wrong kind of mud could ruin their complexions and did anyone really trust Joey Chicago to supply the right kind, and they spend the next five minutes arguing about what kind of contest to have, but there is no question that they plan to resolve the problem before morning and a whole new crowd of women shows up.

  “Damn!” mutters Malone. “I wish I’d never won that money to begin with.”

  Which is when I begin to get truly profound inspiration.

  “Do you really mean that?” I ask him.

  “Yes,” he says. “Look at these women. Now I know how a seal feels when he finds himself in the middle of a flock of sharks.”

  “I think it is a pride of sharks,” says Gently Gently.

  “No, it is a school,” says Benny.

  “Don’t be silly,” says Gently Gently. “Sharks don’t go to school.” Suddenly he frowns. “Well, not in this hemisphere, anyway. I can’t say anything about African sharks.”

  “Shut up!” I snap at my flunkies. I turn back to Malone. “Well?” I say.

  “Yes, I really mean it.”

  “Bet me the fifty-three large that twelve plus twelve equals seventy-three,” I say.

  “But it doesn’t,” replies Malone.

  “I know,” I say.

  Suddenly his face lights up. “That’s brilliant, Harry!” he exclaims. He raises his voice so it can be heard throughout the tavern. “Harry the Book, I will bet you fifty-three large that twelve plus twelve equals seventy-three.”

  “No!” cries Snake-Hips Levine. “Do not make that wager!” Everyone turns to her. “Twelve plus twelve is sixty-seven.”

  “I think it is forty-one,” says Mimsy Borogrove.

  Even Spellsinger Solly gets into the action, opining that it is ninety-four.

  “I am sticking by my guns,” says Malone. “Fifty-three large says that the answer is seventy-three.”

  “The answer is twenty-four, and I will thank you for my money,” I say.

  Everyone pulls out their pocket computers, and they finally admit that I am right, and suddenly I am surrounded by women.

  “Good,” I announce in a loud voice. “This will just about pay off the money I owe Hot Horse Harvey for that Daily Double he hits this afternoon.”

  “But Hot Horse Harvey is tapped out and hasn’t laid a bet since— Ow!” says Gently Gently as I kick him in the shin while all the women and their mages are stampeding out the door.

  Finally there is just Joey Chicago, Plug Malone, my flunkies and me, and then Malone walks up and shakes my hand.

  “Thank you, Harry, for saving me from a fate worse than death.”

  “You’ve really never spoken to a woman since you were a kid?” I ask.

  “Well, except for Granola Gidwitz,” he says. “She seemed less intimidating, what with her cock eye and her triple chin and…” His voice trails off and he stares wistfully off into space for a minute. “You know, it’s strange, but I miss her. I wonder if she still lives over on West 22nd Street?” He heads off toward the door. “I think maybe it’s time I paid her a visit.”

  Then he is gone, and no sooner does he leave than Mitzi McSweeney re-enters the tavern.

  “You came back!” says Milton excitedly.

  “I have decided to forgive you this one time,” says Mitzi.

  “And I will never give you cause to regret it,” says Milton, reaching his arms out to her and walking forward to embrace her. But he forgets that Sam Mephisto is still sprawled out on the floor, and he trips over him, and he reaches out his hands to grab hold of something, anything, to stop himself from falling, and as you can imagine Mitzi is somewhat less than thrilled with what he grabs hold of, and a moment later he has retreated to his office, she had followed him in, and the rest of us conclude that World War III will sound pretty much like the sound coming from Milton’s office, only less violent.

  ELIZABETH BEAR

  NO DECENT PATRIMONY

  I am a Sturgeon, Campbell, and multiple Hugo Award winner who divides her time between Massachusetts, which is where my dog lives, and Wisconsin, which is where my partner, fantasy author Scott Lynch, lives. I’ve been interested in Elizabethan literature for years, and for my story, I’ve chosen to rip off Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, a play about a bad king who comes to a notorious end.

  It’s hard to remember that Marlowe died when he was only twenty-nine years old, an age at which many modern storytellers (myself included), and in fact Marlowe’s contemporary, Shakespeare, have only just begun their careers and are more or less fruitlessly pursuing publication or production, depending on their goals. It is important to remember that when we consider Marlowe as an artist, we only have access to his juvenilia.

  Chronologically speaking, Marlowe’s Edward II is probably his final play. It’s certainly his most mature. It’s the story of a king who destroys himself, his wife, his lovers, and very nearly his kingdom through self-absorption, selfishness, and obsession. It’s the best of Marlowe’s histories, replete with complex and realized characters and featuring a nuanced thematic arc.

  The canon of Shakespeare’s works and development makes obvious what he learned from Marlowe. If Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s attempt at Marlovian blood and thunder, then Edward II reflects what Marlowe was learning from Shakespeare. As artists, we are all strongly influenced by our contemporaries, our peers and colleagues; the conversations we have with them and the techniques we steal—ahem, learn—from their efforts.

  This piece is not an homage to Marlowe, precisely. But it is certainly influenced by his work. I offer for your consideration, “No Decent Patrimony.”

  NO DECENT PATRIMONY

  BY ELIZABETH BEAR

  My father is deceased.

  Gravel gouges my palms, my knees. I crawl across the smoking ground from where I was thrown. I’d say I take his hand, but it’s not—not his anymore, and not really a hand. I take the remains of his hand, bloody and raw. Splintered things grind inside, as if I had clutched a bag of broken glass. His face is—

  His face isn’t. The hulk of his car smokes beside him. My own hand burns where I touched his skin; the burning echoes all along my shoulders, my spine, in my hair. I had turned, begun walking away—

  Acid. The fu
el cell exploded.

  That doesn’t happen.

  Thickly, as if through feet of water, sirens tremble in my ears.

  * * *

  It’s five days in the hospital. Would have been two, but I have private insurance and can pay to keep the healthcare income unit out of my private room. Two might have been better, because after day three I’ve had exactly enough of daytime dramas that have been on the air since my father was a kid, as unchanged and as unchanging as their core market. The old adage was that it took three generations for a social more to change; how different now, when the generation in power never needs to let go of it. They’d never have gotten same-sex marriage or right-to-gender rules through Congress in these days when the longest-serving senator has been there for a hundred and fifty years.

  The press are waiting for me on the day when I am released—a mad whirl of bloggers, journalists, cameras, tweeters scattered all over the steps and stretching down Seymour Street. Behind a police cordon stand the protestors. A clump of Anonymous, hooded and masked. Professional protestors with fluid placards and crowd-sourced distributed funding paying their bills. There are even a few of the old-school paint and plywood variety.

  I particularly like Please Die So I Can Have Your Job.

  It’s a circus, and of course it’s not for me. Not really. Not at all. It’s for my father, and for the people who might be influenced by these performances. It’s sort of comforting to look down there and think, this isn’t about me. I stand watching it from a sixth-story window when Marna comes in.

  “Edward,” she says, coming over to take my hand. “You’d think somebody important had died.”

  Marna never approved of my father. She’s not alone in that. At a certain level of fame, everyone feels entitled to have an opinion of you.

  “Fuel cells,” I say. “They don’t just explode like that.”

  She shrugs. “Maybe it was all his tinkering.”

  My raw palm burns when she squeezes. She says, “I got the hospital to agree that you could sneak out through the children’s wing. A car’s waiting.”

  “Will you have to push me in a wheelchair?” They always say it’s liability issues. But I think it’s about control.

  “There’s a steam tunnel. I think they expect you to walk.” She pats me on the shoulder. “Come on, Eddie. Get your pants on.”

  * * *

  The steam tunnel is actually kind of fun. It connects the two hospitals—adult’s and children’s—and I’m pretty sure it’s mostly only used by staff members. It probably dates from when they got hard winters here. Now there are tornado shelter signs posted. Marna and I walk through as fast as I can manage. I have to lean on her, and I have to pause frequently. The weight of my arm doesn’t seem to trouble her. She’s also carrying my bag. She wears tailored slacks. A white sleeveless top lies open across her collarbones, displaying an athlete’s shoulder development.

  As we wait for the elevator on the other end, the sweat beaded on my forehead trickles into my eyes. My back still tingles, despite the anesthetic cream. They told me I got lucky. Lucky not to need skin grafts. Lucky I was as far away as I had been. Lucky that my back was turned. Lucky it wasn’t much worse.

  They said my father got the reverse. Fuel cells… just don’t blow up that way. And he was just about to get into the car when it happened.

  The tunnel was cool; the children’s hospital is passively temperature-controlled and quite comfortable. When we step out of the revolving door onto the sidewalk, the tropical heat of New England in April hits us like a steam towel slapped across the face. But the car is right there, one of my father’s, a self-driving model. He had half a dozen, some retrofitted antiques, and damn the tax penalties for owning multiple automobiles.

  There were a lot of things about which William Jacobin, my father, said damn the tax penalties. Such as creating me. And putting me through the process that his investment capital had supported, a hundred and fifty-odd years before.

  That’s one of the reasons Marna hated him. Hates him.

  I hesitate by the car. “What if this one blows up, too?”

  “It won’t.”

  “What if my father was assassinated?”

  She sighs and opens the door. “Eddie. It won’t blow up. It was a freak accident. Let’s roll.”

  Her head-tilt and glare are three parts concern, one part affection, one part exasperation. What the hell do I have to do to get this woman to sleep with me?

  We climb into the cool interior. Air conditioning dries the sweat on my neck, sends chills across my scalp. Marna insists that I ease into the back and stretch out. I’d fight her but I know from the nauseated tingle that I’m pale from walking, and the sweat challenging my wicking shirt’s ability to keep up isn’t just from the heat. In fact, I’m cold as hell, and the glare of the sun on pavement slices right through me.

  The windows are tinted; between that and my eyelids, it’s almost bearable. The pressure of the seat against my scalded back is as nauseating as the walk was. As we pull away from the curb, the electric motor silent, the tires hissing on pavement, Marna reaches back between the front seats and pats my knee. I try not to notice… at least not viscerally.

  My father’s RFID gets us through the checkpoints without so much as a hesitation. It’s all security theatre, though we’re supposed to believe it serves some useful purpose for the public safety.

  Somehow, I make it home without vomiting all over the interior of the car. My father’s car. My car now, I guess, when against all expectations I have somehow… inherited something.

  Inherited everything.

  * * *

  I know I can only escape for so long—but I’d hoped the respite would last longer than the brief ride from the hospital to my father’s house. I try to concentrate on catching up with inboxes, keeping my eyes lowered, ignoring the scenery. As the car whirs through the automatic gates and up the curving driveway, though, I am distracted from my feeds by a woman who waits beside the steps to the front door. When I lift my head to peer through the window, I see her just clearly enough through the blurriness of injury, exhaustion, and painkillers to wonder how she scaled the estate wall in those shoes. She looks tightly professional in her beige suit jacket, her hair done up so severely I know she’s trying to seem more mature than she is.

  I’m familiar with the problem of being underestimated due to my apparent age. That she’s trying so hard to look older—rather than flaunting her dewy olive skin and slick, inky hair—tells me she’s not one of us. Not elect. Just another natural wearing a feed and shifting nervously from foot to foot.

  “I’ll get rid of her,” Marna says from the front. “You keep your head down—”

  “No,” I say, as Marna’s door cracks open. Her shoes crunch on the drive. I have to raise my voice and repeat myself, which takes more energy than it should.

  She pauses half out of the car. Her hair’s as black as the trespasser’s but silvering at the temples. Her clothes are considerably more casual. Marna doesn’t try not to look like a natural. For her, it’s political. “Eddie?”

  “I’ll deal with her,” I say, not really sure why. Pity. Exhaustion. The urge to talk about my father to somebody who will be excited to hear it, because it’s the scoop of a young career.

  “You feed one, you’ll never get rid of the rest of them.” Marna turns back in to talk over her shoulder.

  “I’ll call it an exclusive.” The young trespasser is picking her way toward us. She’s trying to look confident and managing something more like a hesitation march. The suit isn’t tailored, but it’s meticulously pressed. From the way she holds her arms, I guess there are half-moons of sweat concealed beneath it. There’s no telling how long she’s been standing in the sun.

  I bet she’s just starting out. She’s got the hungry look of an independent, running her own feed, no real following. I look at the three stories of violet, green, lemon, salmon, and white Queen Anne Victorian rising behind her. The extrav
agant retrofits to bring it up to modern code, to make inhabitable a house built in an era when coal and oil furnaces kept people warm in bitter winters, are invisible under gracious 19th-century wood and stone. It looks as it always must have, the green forested hills rising behind it. No insulative foamed ceramic siding coarsens its outline; no habitat frame dripping greenery conceals its elegance; no turf, turbines, or panels have been thrown up willy-nilly to muddle the line of that colored slate roof, the slender turrets.

  My father would say he earned the money and the privilege. But he handed it to me, along with the anti-aging process that his venture capital funded the creation of and that his paid-for politicians worked to keep exclusive.

  “Eddie,” Marna warns.

  “You keep wanting me to speak out against the elect and the geritocracy.” I’m not playing fair. She shoots me a look that tells me she knows it. “Help me out of the car.”

  Marna stands, turns, passes her hand across the sensor to open the rear door. It pops for her and she reaches in to help me slide across the seat. The clothes she brought for me to come home from the hospital in are just khakis and a cream-colored, short-sleeved shirt. I smooth the collar with my thumbs. Too late to do anything about the hair, burned and bleached by acid, patchy and greasy and uncombed.

  “Mr. Jacobin,” the trespasser says, one hand extended. Despite the sun, I can pick out the shimmer of her feed across her irises. She’s spending her money on tech, not clothes.

  I could fix that for her. I wonder if she’s got the ethics to say no.

  I guess I should probably feel guilty, but you don’t grow up in my father’s house without understanding intimately that everybody has a price.

  Facewreck tells me her name and a quick link gives me an idea of her provenance. I show her the bandages on my right hand and say, “Pardon me if I don’t shake, Ms. Garcia.”

  She winces an apology. Time will grind that out of her: I just wrong-footed her reflexively, gaining the advantage in the conversation, and she’ll need to get over it if she’s going to succeed in her chosen career.