by Ian McDonald
“Does he mean that the humans in this biome are split into two mutually hostile camps?” asked Courtney Hall hastily, ashamedly.
The interpreter put the question.
“That seems to be the implication.”
The captured racoon jigged up and down impatiently and fell into a nervous cringe.
“Instinctive danger reflex. Repeated three times for emphasis. Danger, danger, danger.”
“What sort of danger? Ask him what sort of danger,” Courtney Hall pressed, but the captured animal succumbed to its thrice-emphasized fear and fled into the encircling trees. “I think we should go,” she suggested quietly.
“Nonsense!” crowed the King of Nebraska. He leaped to his feet, sending the folding table crashing over. “Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense! Out of the breast of danger we pluck this bright flower, honor! Honor is the treacle of kings. I can see this land sorely needs the wisdom and guidance of a divinely ordained monarch. Come!” He raised his gold-topped cane. “To me, my knights! Valiant riders of the cybernetic wave, surfers on the sea of sentience, come with me! Order up, order up, Chamberlain! Strike camp! Victorialand is dead and gone, but while her King lives, Victorialand lives, and all the fine art, good food, music, dance, and poetry that was Victorialand. The New Age, my friends, the New Age has come; a light in darkness shining and this benighted darkness will comprehend it not. Forward the Aesthetic Revolution! Come, come, come! Hurry along now chappies!” Porters scurried and hurried, warriors formed up into neat rows of confusion. The King of Nebraska inspected them through a pair of folding lorgnettes. Satisfied, he placed himself at the head of the column. “Strike up the band! Liberty Bells! Chop chop!” He clapped his hands at Courtney Hall, conspicuous by her absence of activity. “Chop chop!”
“No,” said Courtney Hall.
“No?” shrieked the King of Nebraska. “No no no no no?”
“No.” She was not alone in her defiance. Jinkajou the Chamberlain and the interpreter who had interviewed the captive racoon stood beside her. The porters froze in their tasks, tasting the sourness of free will caught between two opposing wills. “You’re sick, Jonathon. You’re not well, you’re not rational. You’re a sick man, Jonathon.”
“A sick man, Your Majesty.” Jonathon Ammonier’s voice was as shrill and stupid and petulant as a bird’s. “So. So. So. This is mutiny, madam! Mutiny! Faithless and perverse creatures! Obey your king!” The undecided Tinka Tae whined.
“Stop that, you bully,” said Courtney Hall. “You gave them free will, let them exercise it.”
The King of Nebraska spat at her. “Faithless and perverse creatures. All of you. Come, loyal friends, loyal servants. We shall go alone. Madam Hall does not want us to have any fun. Sick! Huh! Huh! Huh!” With a petulant toss of his head he marched his phalanx of Striped Knights into the dark forest.
“You are sick, you are sick! It’s true!” Courtney Hall called after him. “Radiation sickness! You’ve been poisoning yourself for years, you vain, stupid man!” The King of Nebraska’s childish voice was raised high in song so he could not hear Courtney Hall’s. A few of the porters abandoned their tasks and fled into the trees in pursuit of their rightful king. Those that remained went mechanistically about their labors. Animals have no need of sentience, even less of free will.
Disconsolately rocking back and forth, back and forth on a folding camp-chair, Courtney Hall filled the postmutiny hours with fantasizing. Not for the first time, and she was certain, not for the last, she fantasized she might wake soon and find herself in her apartment whole and clean and safe and regulated and maybe that little bit too tall and maybe that little bit too heavy, but she wouldn’t mind that, not at all, she’d agree to it readily if it meant her waking up in her floform bed and getting up for a shower and bowing three times to the Lares and Penates and emptying her mind to establish rapport with the Muse of Cartoonic Expression and saying to Benji Dog, purring and humming to himself on his famulus shelf, “What an extraordinary dream I’ve had!”
Damn, damn, damn him; stupid, stubborn man.
Why did she keep imagining she smelt smoke on the wind?
A bird shrieked and beat its way out of the green canopy of trees to flop across the concrete sky.
Damn him, damn him, damn him.
And something came crashing, smashing, rushing out of the greenness: a Striped Knight: Bajinko, captain of the royal guard, all assumed humanity swept away, reduced by animal fear and flight to an animal in a silly costume, a scrap of human affectation. A Tinka Tae no more, the terrified animal could not speak human language. The racoons moaned with excitement and dread: so great was the young interpreter’s agitation that his command of the human tongue kept slipping and sliding away into chitters of racoon primal.
“Woe, grief, folly! Warriors dead, heaps upon heaps upon heaps. Bolts spent, swords shattered, armor cracked. Feeling: blood, black, rage, pain, fury, fear, fire. Out of nowhere they came, out of everywhere: demons, ogres, mandrakes—leaping, whooping, jeering. Jeering, jeering … His Majesty, Bless ’Im, commanded them bow knee, bow head, make obeisance to rightful king. ‘You kneel, you bow, you make obeisance,’ say Demon-King, ‘to me.’ ‘Never!’ says His Majesty, Bless ’Im; then: blood, black rage, pain, fury, fear, fire! War, war, war! His Majesty, Bless ’Im, netted, taken. Brothers netted, taken, only this one is escaped to tell.”
“What?” said Courtney Hall. “What what what?”
“His Majesty, Bless ’Im,” said Jinkajou, “has been captured.”
“Has been what?”
But Jinkajou had covered its head with its paws and began to whine, a keening lament that was taken up by the Tinka Tae as one. The sound of them sent the loose, flapping birds exploding from the treetops. Courtney Hall covered her ears.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it, please.”
The interpreter in yellow, whose name was Ankatiel, stepped forward. “You must help us,” it said. “You must help us regain King. It is disloyalty, faithlessness that has led to this.”
“It was pride!” shouted Courtney Hall. Her shouting voice surprised her. “Reckless arrogance! A sick ego!”
“If His Majesty, Bless ’Im, sick, then thou hast failed in thy responsibility to a sick man by letting him go,” said Jinkajou.
Feeling like a serpent in paradise, Courtney Hall said, “What can I do? What do you expect me to do? I’m an artist, not some Johnny-opera hero on prime time! I don’t know where he is, where he’s been taken, who’s taken him, or why. Come on, we wouldn’t last five minutes in there.”
“I would estimate somewhat less.” The whining keening was cut as abruptly as if a neural switch had been thrown. At the edge of the trees were three figures.
One was male; very tall and thin with a waist-length explosion of dreadlocks. He was dressed in a pair of cycling shorts and an elaborately embroidered chemise over which he wore an extraordinary jacket covered in the skulls of birds and rodents and dangling, jangling silver trinkets.
One was a woman; small and dark with bouncing natty dreads. She was dressed in a half-seen sleek something, camouflaged with tiger stripes so that she phased in and out of the general background.
One was an animal. A cat. A real cat. Not one of Marcus Forde’s flush-away abortions. Sin-black, and lean. Its left eye was artificial; skylight breaking through the clouds caught the eye and found tiny digits and circuits hidden within. The black cat rode the small woman’s shoulder. It yawned and displayed chrome steel teeth.
In one step the dark woman was beside Courtney Hall. The cat stretched and flexed five centimeters of platinum claw from housings.
That one step had covered twenty meters. Without, Courtney Hall was certain, ever traversing twenty meters of space.
“About two minutes if you went that way”—the tall, young man advanced across the clearing, pointing out to his left—“about two and a half minutes that way”—pointing right—“and a good three minutes that way and that way. Because, by some astonishing
quirk of good fortune, you have plonked yourself and your pets right in the middle of the Democrats’ Strategic Defense Initiative Zone. But be of good cheer, my dear. Help is at hand.” He bowed and kissed Courtney Hall’s hand. Twenty-nine years in Great Yu and no one had ever kissed her hand even once. As many days DeepUnder and it had happened three times. “Angelo Brasil at your service, in the company of my pseudosister, Xian Man Ray, and Trashcan, our cat. We would like very much to offer you our assistance, my dear, in getting your king back.”
Cupid, Draw Back Your Bow …
DEAR CITIZEN CARMINE MALAGUENA we at the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships are delighted to present you with your Socio/Sexual Compatibility Rating. Since the age of nineteen months, this has been constantly monitored and where necessary, updated to produce a totally accurate profile of your social and sexual characteristics.
Your SSCR is: Monoghetero7Bintro level12 interact-level 3.6 (Baud Compensated) @Xinf27file£SSCR/PDBXMNfid.7xC
From this data our computers have selected a personal partner for you, and we take the greatest delight in informing you that a meeting has been arranged between yourself and Citizen Marsden O. Henry of Apt 63 Yellow 2113, New South Madrid Center, Las Palorhas on April 30, 450 at Chueco Zembalaya’s Jazz Hot Spot, 919 Shimenevski Prospekt, Los Madres at 22 o’clock
Your prospective partner will be identified for you by the proprietor, Citizen Chueco Zembalaya and, as customary, all expenses of this first joyous meeting will be met with the compliments of the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships.
On behalf of your trusted counselors, it only remains for me to wish you a wonderful, fruitful meeting with your perfect partner.
Jancis Shambala
Ministry of Pain, Department of Interpersonal Relationships
Dear Citizen Carmine Malaguena
we at the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships are sorry to hear that your first meeting with your perfect partner was not to your total satisfaction. Please do not be unduly dismayed by this: it is not uncommon for new partners to fail to achieve perfect synthesis and unity on their first meeting. Many factors account for this: personal body chemistry and pheromone emission, climatic or ionization levels, discrepancies between the partners’ personal biological time frames, even a certain element of stress and anxiety inevitable between two strangers meeting for the first, and most important, time. Therefore, do not be overly concerned that this first meeting was not the wonderful, fulfilling, romantic experience you may have been led to expect. The Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships is never wrong in its matching of SSCRs, and you will be relieved to know that our computers rate you and your partner Citizen Marsden O. Henry to the 98th percentile compatible.
Do not be alarmed that you were unable to arrange another meeting with your partner: our computers have selected another location and date that have been carefully calculated to engender the maximum of benign, romantic influences upon you both as a partnership.
Your new rendezvous is:
The Eloquent Soy Bean Pancake-arium
Lilac Level
Bernardo O’Higgins Undertower Metropolitan Fashion Mall
Las Defensas
on May 2, 450
at 16:44 o’clock
As before, to ensure a specially happy rendezvous, all your expenses for this occasion only will be complimentary from the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships.
We wish you both every success and happiness in your perfect partnership.
Jancis Shambala,
Ministry of Pain, Department of Interpersonal Relationships
Dear Citizen Carmine Malaguena
we at the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships really find it most puzzling that you are still experiencing difficulties with the perfect partner we have assigned you. Your history of socio/sexual analysis indicates that you have a high monogameity rating, matched by our computers with that of Citizen Marsden O. Henry. According to our models, you should at this stage be preparing to enter into a lasting, bonded partnership together. Instead, you are claiming that relations between you and your partner are disharmonious to the point of verging on minor PainCrime. You constantly disagree and argue to such a degree that you and your partner find it impossible to agree on any point, no matter how trivial. This is quite inconsistent with our profile of your psychosexual makeup, and we, as your trusted counselors, are of the opinion that, with regard to the perfect partnership, figures are a far more trustworthy guide than feelings to the future of a relationship. Give it time. These small incompatibilities will be revealed for what they are, petty egoisms. We at the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships have therefore decided that the best way for you to proceed is in accordance with our projected model of your relationship.
Therefore, you have been assigned a dwelling unit at: Style Council House, 116 Rhamjees Road, Todos Santos. This locale has been analyzed to afford you both the best environment for your age, caste, and relationship. Your move has been arranged for May 25, 450, at fourteen o’clock. Please have all your possessions ready for removal from your previous address before that time as your domestic unit will have been reassigned by the Bureau of Housing and Shelter Section for Assignation and Registration to a new tenant.
Time is, in our experience, a great healer of partnerships: you and your partner will find in a new home, a new environment, with time to grow together, that perfect synthesis, that ideal two-in-oneness that is the right of every citizen who approaches the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships seeking a soulmate. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Perfect happiness,
Jancis Shambala
Ministry of Pain, Department of Interpersonal Relationships
Byrne and West
GLORY BOWL DCCLXII MOVES into its Third Epact, Meter Fifteen, Twelfth Meld. The Babazulu Aztecs are going for a High Rubric and the crowds are on their feet in a thunder of noise. Meter Fifteen. Twelfth Meld. Anticipation feverish. Will they call a High Rubric, or take spectators, commentators, broadcasters, opposition by surprise and go for something more straightforward, a Straight Out, or maybe a Mark By? Cloud-sized videowalls debate in flashes of neon logic. The crowd waits.
Arm up. Mark. Trumpets blare: the Twelfth Meld! The Twelfth Meld. And … Snap!
Twenty-three point one eight seven seconds of manic activity: snap! ball to CenterBack snap, ball to Toucher, touch for required one, two, three, four, five senses/seconds, okie okie okie, he can let it go now, and what’re they going to do with it? Yes, yes, it’s what the spectators, commentators, broadcasters, opposition thought, they’re going for a rubric, CenterBack’s calling for a Freeze-Play and the Shift-Back to come onto the field, okie okie okie, where’s the Shift-Back, where the shug is the S-B, he’s only got twelve seconds of Freeze-Play; here he comes, here he comes, oh, nice, nice run, lovely run, oh, he’s a sweetner that one, he’s sweet, he’s neat, he’s fast on his feet (should be, all that de-oxy-phenobarbitol jackin’ up his system): look, not one tassel out of place, that’s goin’ to score high with the Line Justices, and Freeze-Play Unfrozen, snap! long looping passing shot, lookit those Pandas jump hands, reachin’ hands grabbin’, clawin’, maulin’ and Yah-Oh-Yah, he’s got it, the S-B’s got it, now, what’s he goin’ do with it? Well, I never saw that before, that long looping throw high high high into the air, up it goes, up it goes, up it goes, but don’t watch the ball, watch the S-B, oh, that is incredible, single backflip, followed by a backflip/somersault/copterspin combination, howzedooit? oh, lookit that, two pull-backs and a maxi-ford and that’s just got to be a nine-four, nine-five, and the ball’s coming down and he’s right under it … Perfect catch. Perfect catch … and the Panda tagger-backs have just tagged him, they’ve got a tassel but it’s too late and down in the Kop the Babazulu are whoopin and cheerin because a play like that has to get diem a nine-
four minimum, place’ll come apart if it’s anything less, they’ll have to call the Love Police; scenes reminiscent of the quarterfinal three years back when a Rubriced Fifteenth Meld by the Orange Vitamin Locusts averaged 8.3, which led ultimately to the dissolution of the Orange Vitamin Locusts and their amalgamation into the Blue Screamers and the Night Motions and a short spell in West One for their coach Rodrigues Maradonna, remember, Hanno?
Remember it well, Chezz, remember it well. And here come the Line Justices … The trumpets have played the Conclavion and the judges’ litters are being carried onto the field for a conference with the referee because you may not have noticed it but there was a banner up by the Back Left LineWatch signaling a possible infringement of the twenty-meter rule by the Aztecs’ point-convertor that would result in the High Rubric’s being demoted into a two-p6int Snap-Back to the Pandas, so the Back Left LineWatch and the referee are conferring; yes, they’re calling in a replay video and, red light! A red light! Remarkable, quite remarkable, it’s being put to the Team Spirits for adjudication. And the fans do not like it … the computers are conferring and the Back Left LineWatch and the referee are conferring and the Line Justices in their litters are conferring, everyone’s conferring and yes, the Team Spirits have reached a decision; the banner goes down! The banner goes down. No infringement, no infringement, and the home crowd here today are loving it to death … Chezz …
… and one hundred and fifty meters above the laagers of Line Justices’ litters, lying head to head like the six-o’clock hands of one of those old-fashioned novelty watches from Seven Seals Novelties and Gifts on a forty-centimeter plazzed-steel girder, Kansas Byrne and Kilimanjaro West of the Raging Apostles are conferring. On art. On theories of the aesthetic. On creative vandalism.