by Ian McDonald
“And him? Your twin, is it?”
“Ah. Special story, my twin. It was ultimately impossible that the Compassionate Society could keep us apart. I had always felt him as some unknown presence in my soul, the feeling of another of whom I wasn’t quite certain, and anyway, we were two of a kind. It was inevitable that we would both rebel, and the rebel run is so tightly constrained that of course we would meet.”
“So, what was his story?”
“Sonatas, études, chamber studies. He’s the best chamber music composer this city’s known in centuries. No exaggeration. But the Department of Arts and Crafts does not like chamber music. It likes great symphonic works. It likes towering oratorios. It likes music that hymns the nobility of mass man. It likes music in which the individual submits his will and expression to the corporate body. And Kelso’s music creates space for the expression of individuality and character. The Department hated Kelso’s music. Worse, Kelso’s patrone hated Kelso’s music.”
“Pardon?”
“A witness, like Winston. They support tlakhs financially, but they are not allowed to create for themselves. They take their satisfaction from the creations of others.”
“Not like Winston.”
“Dear Winston, he suffers from frustration. Being Joshua’s patrone, what else could you expect? Kelso tried to get his music approved for public performance, but the Department would return his manuscripts all stamped UNLICENSED FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE. So he had to go underground, literally. Into the pneumatique stations. Tremendous acoustics, all that polished marble. And I saw him there, one day as I was scouting out a site for a new performance, playing this incredible music all on his ownsome, and I knew then what I’d always felt: that I had never been alone, that there was another me, a presence always beside me, and that other me was him, my twin. I’m not sure I can explain it properly unless you’re a twin and have felt it yourself. Anyway, I went back to the others—we were Josh, the Doctor, and Winston in those days—and we did what I used to do in the old Total Media days, we made him the unique audience. And we hit him. All alone one night, as the last train was pulling out. We hit. And he was beautiful. I knew then he was my brother if there had been any doubts before, because he didn’t fall on his knees or run away or gape like anyone else would, he plugged in his keyboard and joined in. He wrapped himself around that performance and made the whole thing complete. As I’d hoped he would all along. Well, of course he joined us; wasn’t he ever surprised to find he had a twin sister?”
Kilimanjaro West pondered upon the stories he had heard. “It seems to me,” he said carefully, “that you are right to call yourselves Raging Apostles. There is so much hurt and anger and hope and frustration that you feel you have to show to everyone.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Kansas Byrne. “Okay, comrade, dinnertime. More hot tofu soup, yum yum yum. Still, it beats working …”
And at last …
“All right, all right, all right! Stop whatever you’re doing, put down your things, this is it! It’s showtime, mes amis! Let’s take Wheldon!”
The wave of cheering voices carried Kilimanjaro West down the rickety back stairs into the alleyway by the dying canal and into the Raging Apostles ’lectrovan (which had changed color in the night—“security precaution” exclaimed Witness Winston, gunning the ceramic engine for all it was worth). Wedged in the front bench seat between driver and director, Kilimanjaro West tried to recite his moves to Joshua Drumm, while in the back V. S. Pyar led the rest of the ensemble through a series of energy-channeling exercises and chants, and the whole improbable circus went careening through the streets of Pendelburg; sending the exotically clad, half-clad, unclad wingers scattering and diving for their doorways, waving fierce nona dolorosas in their wake. And in the midst of all the madness and beautiful mayhem, Kilimanjaro West realized with some hitherto undiscovered faculty of himself that he was having the time of his life.
The ’lectrovan slewed out of Pendelburg into Ranves and thence into Wheldon, a prefecture predominantly populated by prollets, a caste somewhere between trogs and zooks/zillies in that they practiced the former’s familial (in their case, sept) bonding and also the latter’s subjection of the individual to the group will. The Seven Servants employed them in droves; they made a perfect work force. The ’lectrovan whined forward between passing multitudes of visitors; Winston’s swearing was almost as loud as his constantly pumping horn. An excited group of migros were enthusiastically blowing kazoos beside the open window. The van slid into the slipstream of a strolling mariachi band and let the musicians clear a path through the crowd. Finally the density of bodies was too great for any further penetration.
“Look at that—solid,” said Winston, throwing up his/hands in exasperation. “We’ll have to make it to the target on foot.”
“Synchronize timepieces!” reminded Joshua Drumm, opening doors. “Back here no later than sixteen hundred.” The Raging Apostles prepared to swing into anonymity in the manswarm.
“Bror, you come with me.” Dr. M’kuba snagged Kilimanjaro West by the collar of his street jellaba. “Stick closer’n this ’hugger, mah man.” The crowd swallowed the performers as entirely as an ocean does raindrops. The Scorpio wove his apprentice through the spectators like some devious silver snake—’scuse me, cizzens; apologies, bror; so sorry, sib—to the front where lines of Love Police held the people apart from the parading prollets. The two Raging Apostles went slipping up the face of the audience in the gap between people and policepersons. The prollet septs jogged past, chanting, sweating. Kilimanjaro West paused to watch.
Diversity and uniformity. In dress, decoration, even physical and facial features, the septs were all markedly different from each other: red-haired, black-haired, olive-skinned, black, yellow, short, tall. Some carried banners, some paper dragons, some chains of flowers hundreds of meters long, some played instruments, some marched in rapt silence. Some were dressed in costumes of such brilliance that they made Devadip Samdhavi’s creations seem dowdy, others wore sober hoods and habits, others drab work coveralls, others still what looked like blue-and-yellow sports outfits with knee-high stockings and long-billed caps, others yet in black bodysuits painted with mambo-mama skeletons; all different, yet all the same. Within each sept was a rigid uniformity of physical appearance, of costume, of voice, of movement. Even the bearers of the sacred litters (florid juggernauts encrusted with gilt gingerbread and squabbling plastic santrels clambering over each other for the attention of the multilimbed siddhi hovering in freegee fields surrounded by candle flames and stone oil-lamps) all jogged and sweated in unison and wore identical expressions of agonized rapture on their faces.
“Come on, man!” M’kuba tugged Kilimanjaro West away from the Festival of the Flames. “Like we have this performance, nah? In ten minutes, nah?” They continued to snake along the face of the crowd and the saints, santrels, and siddhi jounced past on their biers.
The table at the street café on the Plaza Veneziano had been prebooked for the personal use of one Citizen Kilimanjaro West and guest. His had been the safest name to lynk through the public dataweb. The cafes were popular vantages for the race; small bribes to the Love Police ensured the view went uninterrupted, and at the Festival no one thought anything of citizens of different castes sharing a table. His cup of chocolate sat ignored and solidifying as Kilimanjaro West, suddenly smitten with stage fright, found he could not remember how to work the catches of the synthesizer case.
“Relax, mah man. Cultivate peace of mind.” Dr. M’kuba rocked back on his chair.
“But what if I do it wrong?”
“You not do it wrong.”
“But what if I do?”
“Welcome to the Compassionate Society, mah man.”
Kilimanjaro West could think of nothing but the time on his wrist. Mrmeemrmeemrmee and suddenly it was time, and in a sudden surge of panic he stood up, took the synthesizer out of its case, and walked out into the Plaza Veneziano.
>
Amazing how the panic evaporated! Do not count the eyes. Do not count the faces. They will only bring it back again. Just do what you have to do.
He did.
And bursting out of the crowd at exactly their prearranged places came the Raging Apostles. And it all came together as it had in the beginning, out of chaos, out of nothing. He was no longer alone. Kelso Byrne and Winston were beside him, picking up his backbeat and ramming it through their machines and hurling it in dripping chords and sequences and arpeggios at the crowd as the power-wheelers came scorching in round and round and round, in and out and high and low, weaving smoke and sparks and fire and flashing silver fans like blades, like knives, like light, crossing and recrossing and crisscrossing and crosscrissing trading fans, throw and flash and pass and catch at speeds just under lightspeed, scooping up the music on their metal fans and tossing it high in the air, and Kilimanjaro West saw Kelso Byrne grinning at him through the sweat and the concentration and he grinned back and concluded that this was the time mrmee mrmee mrmee of his life, count one minute forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, forty-five, and change and half the power-wheelers dived into human-wheelers, cartwheelers, kicking off their machine wheels, becoming tumbler-jumblers dangerous dancers as their street clothes, their ragamuffin slubberdegullion rags and tags and bags dissolved (exactly as Devadip Samdhavi had programmed the time-lock fibers), and they were transformed into light and gold and sun in the Golden Section, they were fast, fast fast, faster than reason or criticism or appreciation, blazing along the lightspeed horizon; rolls and spins and dives and lifts and drops so fast it numbed the senses into pure spectating: the people watched, they could do nothing else as the dance became the spin and the spin the spiral and the spiral reached out into a revolving chain of humanity anchored in V. S. Pyar’s mastodon musculature and terminating in Kansas Byrne’s whirling, burling round and round and round and round and round, power-wheels screaming until they became just a function between centripetal and centrifugal forces, the illusion of the defiance of gravity, burning past in a blaze of fans and blue-silver centimeters from the faces of the people who had been expecting to see the Festival of the Flames two-eighteen, two-nineteen, two-twenty … the whole trio of musicians were linked into the rotating, arms to arm to arm, the machines playing themselves as the chant rose: Yan Tra Yan Tra Om Ray Toe Shay, voice to voice to voice down the chain: Om Ray Toe Shay Yan Tra Yan Tra, and it was flung off into the crowds who picked it up piece by broken piece, led by the music and the great spiral, they moved to the rhythm of the galaxy and chanted the mantra: Yan Tra Yan Tra Om Ray Toe Shay, trogs and georges and yulps and tlakhs and wingers and bowlerboys and Scorpios and didakoi and migros: Om Ray Toe Shay, even the Love Policemen all in black and silver and a caste all of their own: Om Ray Toe Shay Yan Tra Tram! eight thousand, nine thousand, ten thousand voices, two minutes thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, and …
… and, “This piece of performance art, entitled ‘Sounding the Ritual Echo,’ has been brought to you by Raging Apostles, a multicaste, nonauthorized alternative arts group comprising of independent artists, musicians, actors, dancers, and writers. We thank you for your participation in this event, and Raging Apostles hopes that it has in some small way brightened your day,” and as they were unfolding from their bows and the applause was being passed from hand to hand to hand, the first prollet sept entered the Plaza Veneziano.
“Follow that,” whispered a breathless, sweating Dr. M’kuba to Kilimanjaro West. While the applause rang on and on and on, the Raging Apostles vanished.
Even the Love Policemen were banging their mock-leather gauntlets together.
Back at the van: jubilation, congratulations. And boundless laughter as each member surfaced out of the soulswarm. All sweat and exhaustion and high high high on applause. Last of all, Dr. M’kuba Mig-15 and Kilimanjaro West came ducking around a Food Corps hot-pancakes stand into the ’lectrovan.
“Presenting!” shouted the Scorpio, “our hero! The one, the only Kilimanjaro West!” More clapping hands. Cheering, laughter. And Kansas Byrne threw herself at him, dared him not to catch her, kissed him on the mouth. Kilimanjaro West could still taste her on his tongue as the van halted and hooted its way back through the slowly dispersing crowds and the cobbled streets of Wheldon.
Chapter 5
THE EXPEDITION TO THE End of the World assembled at eight o’clock Victorialand time at the foot of number 16 cooling tower. The cavernous industrial perspectives of the power plant reduced the explorers to lice crawling upon its concrete toes. From the perspective of the human members, the Expedition to the End of the World was a very proper expedition indeed. There were porters: a score of Tinka Tae bearing poles or goading high-stepping surveillance walkers with electronic prods. There were askaris: an honor guard of twenty Striped Knights armed with crossbows and short swords and armored in impact-plastic body shields. There were guides and interpreters: two bright young raccoons dressed in regal yellow and conversant in the dozen different known dialects of urban racoon. There was Jinkajou the Chamberlain, flexing his fingers into a pair of miniature leather driving gloves. There was Jonathon Ammonier the First King of Nebraska, to the last millimeter pioneer of brave new worlds in white silk suit, canary gloves, bandanna, spats, cane, and banana-leaf topee. And there was Courtney Hall, not quite as lumpy as she remembered herself in a one-piece khaki outfit and solar topee. Slung across her back was a leather folio containing all those things an official expedition artist might require; in her pockets, a handful of doubts. She could not rid herself of the previous night’s dream in which she went plummeting in a blazing hogshead over a kilometer-high waterfall of untreated sewage.
The expedition formed up. Ten warriors in the vanguard, Jonathon Ammonier and Courtney Hall in a small electric jitney liberated from Universal Power and Light and driven by Jinkajou, assorted bearers, porters, and then a rearguard of ten soldiers carrying crossbows. Domino-faces and soft crystal dreadlocks crammed every crawlway crevice and cranny in the foot of cooling tower 16: the Tinka Tae nation come to see off their King. That same King stood up in the small electric jitney and waved his handkerchief. Chattering, squeaking, clicking, ceased. The cooling tower sighed colossally to itself.
“I, your wise and wonderful King, your preserver and defender, your father and friend, am taking leave of you to embark on an expedition never before attempted by any living soul: a journey beyond the ends of the earth to the land beyond the city.” Jonathon Ammonier pointed with his cane out across the sterile industrial vistas. “There I will establish a new kingdom, a new Victorialand, the realm of Arcadia, where peace and happiness and freedom shall reign.”
Courtney Hall had heard this all before.
“I thank you for your loyal service: no king ever had finer subjects than you, more faithful, more dedicated, more trusting.”
She hoped he was not about to cry.
“Therefore, in return for your loyalty, I give you a great and kingly gift; I give you your freedom! You are your own people now.” In the tip of the king’s cane was a small transponder. He pressed it. Nothing happened. Nothing apparent.
In the invisible spirit world of information technology quite a lot was happening, and happening very quickly. It involved virus programs and replication links and ABTE system poisoning and program infection and program defection, molecular reengineering and amino-acid photophoresis. All this took, oh, let’s say, somewhere in the region of two, three hundred microseconds. And so every racoon clinging to every pipe and walkway and stanchion and mesh grid shook its head and was suddenly free from the urge to serve, serve, serve, and serve again the smartly dressed human before them.
Freedom granted in a couple of microseconds takes a lifetime to work out.
“And finally,” said the King of Nebraska, sweeping his cane in a great scything arc, “Good-bye, Victorialand!”
Again the transponder did its small wicked work. Piece by piece, bit by bit, corridor by cor
ridor, the palace of the King of Nebraska switched itself off. The halls of holographic masterpieces flickered and popped like soap bubbles. Every illusion and trompe l’oeil and optical oddity wavered and dissolved into memories. The wave of decreation swept up Victorialand, and it was revealed for the box of deceptions it was until the last projector clicked off and Jonathon Ammonier’s creation was no more than a few tinsel scraps of furniture and lace scattered through the kilometer-high face of a Universal Power and Light reactor, little mouse-holes of art and comfort and the nostalgia of days of graceful living hidden away in the crevices between the great roaring machines.
“A curse on all bad art and holograms!” shrieked the King. “Wagons: roll!” The Expedition to the End of the World turned and marched away from the ruins of Victorialand.
The first stage of the journey was a leisurely morning’s drive through a forest of pulsing, sucking conduits, some wide enough to burp out a municipal passenger dirigible. The plastic sky was busy with scurrying balls of soft blue lightning. At about twelve o’clock it became noticeable that the plastic walls, floors, ceiling were ever so (ever so) subtly sloping to meet each other. By fourteen o’clock the tunnel had slimmed to half its former girth. Courtney Hall, sketching speedy impressions of the journey on a jumbo file-pad in fond-remembered fiberpen, could not rid her mind and her drawings of her impression that it was the expedition that was enlarging, step by step, and not the passage that was dwindling. By Victorialand nightfall the gallery was barely wide enough to admit the electric buggy.