“In their corruption were the seeds of our salvation. And thus fell our oppressors.”
“I worked with them, and I saw no oppressors.” Amelia rounded her course strolling back toward Eszterhazy, brow furrowed with thought. “Only nets of neurological fiber who, as it turned out, were overcome by the existential terror of their condition.”
“Their condition is called ‘life,’ Millie. And, yes, life makes us all insane.” Eszterhazy could have been talking over the radio, his voice was so reassuring and convincing. “Some of us respond to that terror with useless heroics. Others seek death.” He cocked a knowing smile at Amelia. “Others respond by attacking the absurdity at its source. Ruled by Naked Brains, humanity could not reach its full potential. Now, once again, we will rule ourselves.”
“It does all make sense. It all fits.” Amelia Spindizzy came to a full stop and stood shaking her head in puzzlement. “If only I could understand—”
“What is there to understand?” An impatient edge came into Eszterhazy’s voice. “What have I left unexplained? We can perfect our society in our lifetimes! You’re so damnably cold and analytic, Millie. Don’t you see that the future lies right at your feet? All you have to do is let go of your doubts and analyses and intellectual hesitations and take that leap of faith into a better world.”
Radio trembled with impotent alarm. She knew that, small and ignored as she was, it might be possible for her to be the wild card, the unexpected element, the unforeseeable distraction that saves the day. That it was, in fact, her duty to do so. She’d seen enough Saturday afternoon kinescope serials to understand that.
If only she could bring herself to stand up. Though it almost made her throw up to do so, Radio brought herself to her feet. The wind whipped the deck, and Eszterhazy quickly looked over at her. As though noticing her for the first time. And then, as Radio fought to overcome her paralyzing fear, Amelia acted.
She smiled that big, easy Amelia grin that had captured the hearts of proles and aristos alike. It was a heartfelt smile and a wickedly hoydenish leer at one and the same time, and it bespoke aggression and an inner shyness in equal parts. A disarming grin, many people called it.
Smiling her disarming grin, Amelia looked Eszterhazy right in the eye. She looked as if she had just found a brilliant solution to a particularly knotty problem. Despite the reflexive decisiveness for which he was known, Eszterhazy stood transfixed.
“You know,” she said, “I had always figured that, when all the stats were totted up and the final games were flown, you and I would find a shared understanding in our common enthusiasm for human-controlled—”
All in an instant, she pushed forward, wrapped her arms around her opponent, and let their shared momentum carry them over the edge.
Radio instantly fell to the deck again and found herself scrambling across it to the edge on all fours. Gripping the rim of the flight decking with spasmodic strength, she forced herself to look over. Far below, two conjoined specks tumbled in a final flight to the earth.
She heard a distant scream—no, she heard laughter.
* * *
Radio managed to hold herself together through the endless ceremonies of a military funeral. To tell the truth, the pomp and ceremony of it—the horse-drawn hearse, the autogyro fly-by, the lines of dignitaries and endlessly droning eulogies in the Cathedral—simply bored her to distraction. There were a couple of times when Mack had to nudge her because she was falling asleep. Also, she had to wear a dress and, sure as shooting, any of her friends who saw her in it were going to give her a royal ribbing about it when next they met.
But then came the burial. As soon as the first shovel of dirt rattled down on the coffin, Radio began blubbering like a punk. Fat Edna passed her a lace hanky—who’d even known she had such a thing?—and she mopped at her eyes and wailed.
When the last of the earth had been tamped down on the grave, and the priest turned away, and the mourners began to break up, Radio felt a hand on her shoulder. It was, of all people, Rudy the Red. He looked none the worse for his weeklong vacation from the flesh.
“Rudy,” she said, “is that a suit you’re wearing?”
“It is not the uniform of the oppressor anymore. A new age has begun, Radio, an age not of hierarchic rule by an oligarchy of detached, unfeeling intellects, but of horizontally-structured human cooperation. No longer will workers and managers be kept apart and treated differently from one another. Thanks to the selfless sacrifice of—”
“Yeah, I heard the speech you gave in the Cathedral.”
“You did?” Rudy looked strangely pleased.
“Well, mostly. I mighta slept through some of it. Listen, Rudy, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but people are still gonna be people, you know. You’re all wound up to create this Big Rock Candy Mountain of a society, and good for you. Only—you gotta be prepared for the possibility that it won’t work. I mean, ask any engineer, that’s just the way things are. They don’t always work the way they’re supposed to.”
“Then I guess we’ll just have to wing it, huh?” Rudy flashed a wry grin. Then, abruptly, his expression turned serious, and he said the very last thing in the world she would have expected to come out of his mouth: “How are you doing?”
“Not so good. I feel like a ton of bricks was dropped on me.” She felt around for Edna’s hanky, but she’d lost it somewhere. So she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “You want to know what’s the real kicker? I hardly knew Amelia. So I don’t even know why I should feel so bad.”
Rudy took her arm. “Come with me a minute. Let me show you something.”
He led her to a gravestone that was laid down to one side of the grave, to be erected when everyone was gone. It took a second for Radio to read the inscription. “Hey! It’s just a quotation. Amelia’s name ain’t even on it. That’s crazy.”
“She left instructions for what it would say quite some time ago. I gather that’s not uncommon for flyers. But I can’t help feeling it’s a message.”
Radio stared at the words on the stone for very long time. Then she said, “Yeah, I see what you mean. But, ya know, I think it’s a different message than what she thought it would be.”
The rain, which had been drizzling off and on during the burial, began in earnest. Rudy shook out his umbrella and opened it over them both. They joined the other mourners, who were scurrying away in streams and rivulets, pouring from the cemetery exits and into the slidewalk stations and the vacuum trains, going back home to their lives and families, to boiled cabbage and schooners of pilsner, to their jobs, and their hopes, and their heartbreaks, to the vast, unknowable, and perfectly ordinary continent of the future.
“It followed that the victory would belong to him who was calmest, who shot best, and who had the cleverest brain in a moment of danger.”
—Baron Manfred von Richthofen (1892-1918)
Copyright © 2009 Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn
Books by Michael Swanwick
The Dragons of Babel
Bones of the Earth
Jack Faust
The Iron Dragon’s Daughter
Griffin’s Egg
Stations of the Tide
Vacuum Flowers
In the Drift
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
The Periodic Table of Science Fiction
Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures
A Geography of Unknown Lands
Gravity’s Angels
Moon Dogs
Puck Aleshire’s Abededary
Tales of Old Earth
Books by Eileen Gunn
SHORT STORY COLLECTION
Stable Strategies and Others
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