Tales of Old Earth

by Michael Swanwick

  I opened the door from the baggage compartment reluctantly, fearful of the hound that must surely wait just outside. Still, what other choice did I have?

  There was Jackie, spattered from head to foot with shit and gore, and her clothes all in tatters. She stood with her legs braced, a cocky smile on her face, and the butt-end of her cigar still clenched in her teeth. LaBelle crouched by her feet—she shakily stood up when I emerged—staring at something in the distant marshes. Away off behind us, a howl of pain and rage like nothing I’d ever heard before dwindled to nothing.

  The hound was nowhere to be seen.

  First thing the old woman said then was, “Young lady. Do you think it seemly to be walking about dressed as a man?”

  Jackie took the cigar butt out of her mouth.

  “Get rid of that filthy thing too.”

  For an instant, I thought there was going to be trouble. But then Jackie laughed and flung the cigar out into the night. It was still lit and I could see by the way the old lady frowned that she’d noticed that too.

  I offered her my arm again and we made our way slowly up the train.

  She was Sugar’s mother. I never had any doubt about that. As we walked up the train, she questioned LaBelle and me about her son, whether he was well, was he behaving himself, did he have a special lady-friend yet, and what exactly did he have in mind for her and him?

  LaBelle was all in a lather to tell us how Sugar had arranged things. He’d kept in regular touch with the folks back home. So he’d been informed how his mother had spent her life just waiting and praying for the fullness of time so that she could die and get to see her baby boy again. Nobody’d had the heart to tell her about his new job. Sugar and his relations figured that since Divine Providence wasn’t going to bring them together, it was up to him.

  “He got it all worked out. He saved all his money,” LaBelle said, “enough to set himself up in a little place on the outskirts of Ginny Gall. You’ll like it there,” she assured the old lady. “People say it’s not half bad. It’s where the folks in Hell go for a big Saturday night.”

  The old lady said nothing. Something about the way her jaw clenched, though, gave me an uneasy feeling.

  The casino car fell silent when we entered.

  “Mama!” Sugar cried. He ran to her side and hugged her. They were both crying, and so were the girls. Even Billy-B had a strange kind of twisted smile on his face.

  Mrs. Selma Green took a long, slow look around the car and its inhabitants. She did not look content. “Sugar, what are you doing in such raffish company? What bad thing have you done to bring you to such a pass? I thought I’d watched over you better than that.”

  Sugar drew himself up proudly. “I never did a cruel or evil thing in all my life, Mama. You know that. I never did nothing you’d’ve disapproved of.” His eyes swept the room disdainfully, and to the damned and the crew alike he said, “Not because I much cared, one way or the other. But because I knew what you expected of me. There was bad company, at times, tried to mislead me. Wicked women urged wicked things upon me. But never was a man big enough or a woman sweet enough to make me go against your teachings.”

  Personally, I believed it. A man like Sugar—what need had he of violence? People just naturally made room for him. And those who wouldn’t, well, that was only self-defense, wasn’t it?

  But his mother did not look convinced. “What, then, are you doing here?” And there is absolutely no way I could do justice to the scorn with which she said that last word.

  Sugar looked abashed. “I dunno,” he mumbled. “They just didn’t like my looks, I guess.”

  “The truth, boy!”

  “I, uh, kind of mouthed off to the Recording Angel, Mama. That’s how I wound up here.” He grew angry at the memory; you could see it still rankled. “You oughta be grateful we’re letting a roughneck like you squeak by, he said. Don’t bend no rules for me, I told him. I’d expect a little more gratitude than you’re showing, he says. Ain’t grateful to man nor angel, says I, for something I earned on my own right. Oh, that angel was mad enough to spit nails! He wanted me to bow and truckle to him. But I got my pride. I told him I wouldn’t play nigger for nobody. And I guess that’s what brought me here.”

  “We don’t use that word,” Mrs. Green said smartly. Her son looked puzzled. “The N-word.”

  “No, Mama,” he said, all contrite.

  “That’s better. You’re a good boy, Sugar, only sometimes you forget yourself.” She allowed herself a small, austere smile. “You’ve got yourself in another fix, and I guess it’s up to me to see you right again.”

  She yanked the emergency brake cord.

  With a scream of brakes that could be heard all the way to Diddy-Wah-Diddy, the train ground toward a halt. In the blackness of the night I heard monstrous things struggling toward us through the shit and filth of the marshes of Styx. I heard the sound of dangerous wings.

  “Oh, Mama!” Sugar wailed. “What have you done?”

  “Deceit don’t cure nothing. We’re going to have it all out, and bring everything into the open,” she said. “Stand up straight.”

  So there it was.

  The trial was held up front in the locomotive, with two Judges towering over the engine, and the damned crowded into the front cars, climbing up on each other’s shoulders and passing every word back so those in the rear could follow. To one side of the engine crouched Bagamothezth, Lord of Maggots. Two long, sagging pink paps hung limply down over his hairy belly, and living filth dropped continually from his mouth. A rank wind blew off of his foul body. To look upon his squirmily tentacled eyelids and idiot gaze was to court despair.

  The other judge was an Archangel. He shone whiter than house paint and brighter than an incandescent bulb, and to look upon him … Well. You know that awful feeling you get when you look through a telescope at some little fuzzy bit of light that’s maybe not even visible to the naked eye? Only there it is, resolved into a million billion stars, cold and clear and distinct, and you and the Earth and everything you’ve ever known or thought about just dwindles down to insignificance? That’s what the Archangel was like, only infinitely worse.

  I found myself staring at first one Judge and then the other, back and forth, repulsed by the one, repelled by the majesty of the other, but unable to look away. They were neither of them something you could turn your back on.

  Bagamothezth spoke in a voice shockingly sweet, even cloying. “We have no claim upon the sanctified Mrs. Selma Green. I presume you are declaring an immediate writ of sainthood upon her?”

  The Archangel nodded. And with that the old lady was wrapped in blazing light and shot up into the night, dwindling like a falling star in reverse. For a second you could see her shouting and gesturing, and then she was gone.

  “Sugar Green,” Bagamothezth said. “How do you plead?”

  Sugar stood up before the Judges, leaning forward a little as if into a great wind. His jaw was set and his eyes blazed. He wasn’t about to give in an inch. “I just wanted to be with my-”

  Bagamothezth clucked his tongue warningly.

  “I just—”

  “Silence!” the Archangel roared; his voice shook the train and rattled the tracks. My innards felt scrambled. Him and Sugar locked eyes. For a minute they stood thus, longer than I would’ve believed any individual could’ve stood up to such a being. At last Sugar slowly, angrily bowed his head and stared down at the ground. “How do you plead?”

  “Guilty, I guess,” he mumbled. “I only-”

  “William Meredith Bones,” the Archangel said. “How do you plead?”

  Billy-B squared his shoulders and spoke up more briskly than I would’ve expected him to. “All my life,” he said, “I have followed the dollar. It has been my North Star. It has proved comprehensible to me in ways that men and women were not. It has fetched me here where human company would have brought me to a worse place. To the best of my lights I have remained true to it.” He spread his arms.
“Sugar offered me money to smuggle his mother on board. What was I to do? I couldn’t turn him down. Not and be true to my principles. I had no choice.”

  “How much,” asked the Archangel in a dangerously quiet voice, “were you paid?”

  Billy Bones lifted his jaw defiantly. “Forty-five dollars.”

  Those of us who knew Billy roared. We couldn’t help it. We whooped and hollered with laughter until tears ran down our cheeks. The thought of Billy inconveniencing himself for so paltry a sum was flat-out ludicrous. He blushed angrily.

  “So you did not do it for the money,” said Bagamothezth.

  “No,” he muttered, “I guess not.”

  One by one, LaBelle, Afreya, and Sally were called upon to testify and acknowledge their guilt. Then I was called forward.

  “Malcolm Reynolds,” the Archangel said. “Your fellows have attested that, out of regard for your spiritual welfare, they did not involve you in this plot. Do you nevertheless wish to share their judgment?”

  Something inside of me snapped. “No, no!” I cried. I couldn’t help noticing the disgusted expression that twisted up Billy Bones’ lips and the pitying looks that the girls threw my way, but I didn’t care. I’d been through a lot and whatever strength I had in me was used up. Then too, I had seen what goes on in Diddy-Wah-Diddy and points south and I wanted no part of any of it. “It was all them—I had nothing to do with any of it! I swear if I’d known, I would’ve turned them all in before I would’ve let this happen!”

  The Judges looked at one another. Then one of them, and for the life of me I can’t remember which, cleared his throat and passed judgment.

  We got a new crew now. Only me and Goatfoot are left over from the old outfit. The train goes on. The Judges ruled that Sugar’s love for his mother, and the fact that he was willing to voluntarily undergo damnation in order to be with her, was enough to justify his transfer to a better place, where his mama could keep an eye on him. LaBelle and Afreya and Sally, and Billy Bones too, were deemed to have destroyed the perfect balance of their souls that kept them shackled to the railroad. They were promoted Upstairs as well.

  Me, I’d cooked my own goose. They accepted my plea of noninvolvement, and here I remained. The girls were pretty broken up about it, and to tell the truth, so was I, for a time. But there it was. Once these things been decided, there ain’t no court of appeal.

  I could’ve done without Billy-B’s smirk when they handed him his halo and wings, like he’d outsmarted all the world one more time. But it was a pure and simple treat to see LaBelle, Afreya, and Sally transformed. They were good girls. They deserved the best.

  With all the fuss, we were all the way to the end of the line in Beluthahatchie before anybody noticed that Jackie had taken advantage of the train being stopped for the trial to slip over the side. She believed, apparently, that it would be possible to backtrack through three hundred eighty miles of black-water marshes, evade the myriad creatures that dwell therein, the least of which is enough to freeze the marrow in your bones, cross the Acheron trestle bridge, which is half a mile high and has no place to hide when the trains cross over, and so pass undetected back to New Jersey.

  It made me sad to think on it.

  And that’s all there is to tell. Except for one last thing.

  I got a postcard, just the other day, from Chicago. It was kind of battered and worn like it’d been kicking around in the mails a long time. No return address. Just a picture of a Bar-B-Qhut which, however, I don’t expect would be any too difficult for a determined individual to locate. And the message:

  If one boundary is so ill-protected, then how

  difficult can the other be? I have a scheme

  going that should reap great profit with only

  moderate risk. Interested?

  J.

  P.S. Bring your uniform.

  So it seems I’m going to Heaven. And why not?

  I’ve surely seen my share of Hell.

  6

  The Mask

  This is a story they tell in the Communes: That one evening the Lady Nakashima paused atop the Rialto to admire the view, her cloak billowing as if in a breeze, and was accosted by a drunken German.

  Holographic dragons curled in the air over the gondolas and vaporetti, winking in and out of existence as unseen technicians tuned their projectors for some minor festival. A bison, the lions of Saint Mark, the author of the Commedia. The Lady Nakashima let them fade from her consciousness. She had much to think about. ZeissOptik had filed a logo-infringement suit against one of Nakashima Commune’s subsidiaries. An instability in the currency markets was holding up a planned expansion into Brazilian farm biologicals. Just that afternoon Household had discovered Yoshio, her youngest, accessing Malaysian cockfighting magazines. Something would have to be done and quickly to nip this unhealthy appetite in the bud. She also had a business dinner to plan.

  “Fuorisola witch!” A heavy-set man gripped her arm. “I’ve found you at last.”

  “You mistake me.”

  Her voice was as cool and emotionless as the smooth white mask all corporate chiefs wore in public to thwart kidnappers. But the man would not let go of her, would not listen. “Betrayed!” he sobbed. “How could I have been so stupid? What a fool I was to believe you!” His breath stank of Scotch and grappa.

  Four hundred eighty six gigaK of interactivity were woven into the Lady Nakashima’s cloak. She was not afraid of the man’s obvious strength. “In what way have you been betrayed?” Her mask relayed sub-vocalized commands to her security forces along with an image of his red face and close-cropped head.

  He is the engineer Gerhardt Betelheimer, they told her, a defector from Green Hamburg, sponsored for citizenship by the Ritter Commune.

  “I have lost family, friends, and homeland, all for the love of you.”

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “Bitch! I know you all right.”

  “I am not she.”

  He carried a fragmentation pistol; her mask showed his hand, thrust deep within his overcoat, clutching it convulsively. Her political section said he had been recruited by the Lady Christiaana, her ally and sometimes rival in many enterprises. Security directed her to keep him talking. “Were you not well paid?” she asked.

  Betelheimer shook his head bullishly. “I never wanted money.”

  “Everybody wants money.”

  The rhythm of the passing crowds changed ever so slightly as her people eased into position. Maria Delgado had often boasted that her antiterrorist unit was the best on the continent. Now she was proving it. The day-officer urged the Lady Nakashima to draw free of her accoster; her cloak was too subtle a defense to protect her from his crude weapon.

  She stood her ground. “If not money,” she insisted, “then what is it you want? A position, perhaps? The chance to employ your talents to the fullest?”

  Betelheimer stared stupidly at her. His heart rate, perspiration, and mental indices soared. A squat woman with a thin, greasy mustache paused nearby and reached casually into her shopping bag. The Lady Nakashima silently warned her away. “All I ever asked of you was one night. Not even that—an hour! I traded all I had for a taste of something you never meant to give.” He began to pull the gun from his pocket. “Now you can watch me die!”

  An artist by the canal took down his canvas and folded the easel, pointing it casually toward the bridge; three schoolgirls ran laughing through the crowd, silver glints in their hands; an enormously fat African nobody could ever have felt threatened by lumbered up smiling.

  Stand clear! the day-officer cried.

  But the Lady Nakashima did not stand clear, but rather stilled the German’s hand, saying, “I will keep my word.”

  He looked at her long and hard. “Not fucking likely,” he said at last.

  “Release me,” she commanded. “Take my arm as a gentleman would. There is a pensione not far from here which we maintain for visiting dignitaries. I will take you there.”

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nbsp; His hand slowly unclenched. He rocked on his heels with doubt and suspicion. But his instant of resolution had passed. There was nothing for him to do but go along.

  The Lady Nakashima led him away from the Grand Canal and through the narrow calles and sottoportegas of San Polo. Night was falling. For all the people in the streets, she could hear the wind over the rooftops and the chirping of sparrows. One by one the church bells began to chime. She crossed herself.

  Betelheimer snorted derisively.

  “I am constantly amazed by you Continentals,” she said with a touch of asperity. “When your pious, horrified-by-profit representatives come here to negotiate contracts, the first thing they do is visit the casinos. They bet more money than they can afford to lose, and they indulge in drugs they would never tolerate in their own territories. They hire prostitutes of the basest sort. It never occurs to one of you to attend Mass.”

  Political reported that Betelheimer had been involved in power-plant design. He had defected a month ago, leaving behind a wiped laboratory core and many angry colleagues. The Lady Christiaana had completed a tour of vassal corporations in the German Green States and Denmark shortly before. Her people had filed seven related patents since. Industrial espionage with seduction was deemed all but certain.

  How valuable are these patents? she asked.

  The question was kicked over to Jean-Luc Chicouenne in Marketing Analysis. So-so, he said with a Gallic curl of the lips that she could hear in his voice. A few technical flourishes. A useful twist or two.

  “I don’t give a damn about your Papist superstitions,” the German said.

  “The more fool you, then.”

  Espionage was considered sharp practice among the fuorisoli but nothing more, a minor vice that everyone dabbled in from time to time. And the Lady Christiaana was notorious for her flirtations. Most likely she had turned Gerhardt Betelheimer out of simple boredom.

  They entered a courtyard where a Noguchi fountain, acquired at enormous cost from a bankrupt government collective in Duluth, sent sweet water laughing into the air. Sixth-generation filtration systems were the single greatest contribution the new era had given the city and as a result fountains were popular endowments. Down a calle no wider than a doorway was the home of one of the Commune’s junior vice-presidents. His family had been removed, she was told. The rooms had been swept and secured. She was to go up the stairs and to the left. Her people had arranged fresh sheets and flowers.