by John Barnes
"I didn't think this would appeal to my father and his cronies," Aimeric said, and turned away from the screen to go pour himself a drink from the sideboard—beer, I noticed, the first time I had seen Aimeric take alcohol during working hours. "But this is all nothing. Wait till they hear what they have to do to avoid it."
By now I had grabbed a spare screen and finally gotten to see what they were talking about. The graph showed labor demand down forty percent within three years and production down fifteen percent; shortly after that, production would begin to rise rapidly, dragging employment up with it ... but there would be two straight years of inflation over one hundred percent.
Six or seven years down the road it all stabilized at higher production, steady prices, and full employment, but until then the economy would be off on a wild roller coaster, first plunging and then soaring.
"Isn't this what happened in Nou Occitan?" I asked. "We got through that all right..."
"Sure," Aimeric said. "The shape of the curve is the same for every Connect. It's the magnitude that counts. On Nou Occitan it was almost an order of magnitude smaller in all directions. They just extended some people's vacation for a couple of years, and issued a little more cash through the central bank to help prices stop jumping. Biggest job we ever did at the Manjadorita d'Oecon, but still just a simple management problem. Here—half of the economy is rigidly controlled so that the market gives the theologically 'right' results, so it's too rigid to take the shocks. The other half is completely uncontrolled, again for religious reasons, so there's lots of room for the shocks to build up in. Plus St. Michael is very likely to be able to ride it out by exporting their problems—they've got the whip hand in trade on Nansen, and they've always been willing to use it. And again for theological reasons, I expect Caledony to be very slow and reluctant about self-defense. And on top of all that, the shocks are intrinsically bigger anyway, the biggest they've been since any inhabited planet had Connected. No, it's going to be bad all around, worse than anything anyone's ever seen before. I wish we had someone qualified here to handle this."
"Based on this report," Shan said, "I could get you anyone in the Thousand Cultures, almost overnight."
Aimeric shook his head, drained his glass of beer, and poured another as he explained, "I already checked that. Aside from my knowing my way around these people, and having family connections you can use, you have to remember that the Wilson Connect Depression—back in Nou Occitan—was the biggest one before now in the Thousand Cultures. I'm the best qualified there is." He sighed and drained the glass again.
The Pastor stood up and made a handsign at Aimeric, then turned and left.
Ambassador Shan had been left gaping. "Is she angry at me? Did I say something?"
Aimeric's voice had an odd sound, as if he were reciting something he had memorized long ago. "Did you see her gesture?" Aimeric showed it to us. "It means she's just taken a Silent Oath to pray and meditate. She can't speak again till she's done with that. So she'd gone off to the prayer room. You can com her later today."
Shan sighed. "I'll never get the hang of this culture. Never."
Aimeric made sure everything was locked and saved for the next day's work, gulped the last of his beer, and said, "Well, from her viewpoint, it's the only thing to do. And she may be right—because for all the good economic theory can do here, we might as well just break out the rattles and dance to drive off evil spirits."
FIVE
We got home exhausted, two hours after Second Sunset, but none of us could sleep, so we didn't try. Bruce had accessed a new collection of paintings, just arrived from Buisson in the Metallah system, and was running up the holos of them for Bieris, so the two of them were unavailable for conversation. "Want to come over to my place for a drink or two?" Aimeric asked.
I said yes; with the sun down it was cold outside, though nothing compared to Utilitopia. We didn't bother with the cat, but we did hurry over to Aimeric's house. We had just poured wine when our corns chimed—personal letters for both of us.
It was from Marcabru, finally. I set myself to read it calmly; in Occitan, though you are honor-bound to your friends, there's a lot of rivalry and most people climb to the top over a lot of former friends. So if he were angry at me for any reason—and he might well be—or if he was just writing to brag, the letter might be nasty. It was part of the risk you ran by having interesting, ambitious friends.
Giraut, you silly toszet,
The big news comes first, of course— Yseut is to be the Queen for next year. And you are not here, for whatever silly reason. Did you actually do all that for the love of that flighty little beauty whose name, just at the moment, I can't recall?
"Garsenda," I said aloud. I had not thought of her in days.
Well, you are the veritable donz de finamor, and I shall see to it that your reputation spreads far and wide, for as well you must know any glory I can give you will be returned to me as the friend of a legend. So you will surely have a place among the jovents when you return.
Perhaps it was just having spent the day assembling the Center, but I suddenly felt a lurch of overpowering homesickness. I wanted to drink at Pertz's, to visit Raimbaut's grave, to be hiking in North Polar Spring and sailing on the wide seas of Wilson, or just to lie in the warm red sunlight on the beach south of Noupeitau. I wanted to get drunk, to cross epees with someone over some trivial cause, to be in finamor, to be back in my old apartment. I blinked back tears and read on:
Yseut is absolutely radiant as Queen-elect, and it's affected her writing in the most marvelous way, so that it's become (if such a thing indeed could ever be) even more artificial and epigrammatic, until it's just the sheerest scrim of beautiful shimmering words over an absolutely cold void, like a lace of frost crystals in space. As Queen, she'll surely publish a lot, and I shall immediately send you every volume.
But you mustn't think that's our only activity. We've not even had time to go to the North Polar Mountains— this year the ice is literally exploding downward off the glaciers—some effect from the terraforming heaters. Artificial, of course, and thus not a fit subject for art, but what a splendid thing to see all that ice plunge into the newly rushing rivers. But we've had no time, for where one of the boring old men who would normally be King for this term would simply wear the suit-biz, Yseut must actually set fashions, and so she must decide what suits her best, describe it to designers, have it made—and in my nonofficial role as Consort I must do much the same thing ... it's exhausting and we do almost nothing but talk to tailors and designers and shop for clothes. I find that even though I have to feel that the exaggerated, primary-colored sleeve has about run its course, it will take one more fashion season to kill it, so I am ordering everything just as exaggerated as possible, sot that perhaps in six stanmonths I can suddenly, boldly, go some other way.
I looked at pictures of Caledon clothes but it looks as if the only vus they permit were taken either in their prisons, or on mountain-climbing expeditions. At least all the interior vus looked as if people were dressed for the former, and all the exteriors as if they were dressed for the latter. You couldn't really be wearing such dreadful things, could you? Please, please, in nomne deu, write and tell me that you would never even think of it!
I must report that all is of course not well here; what can you expect since we have acquired this damned, damned infestation of Interstellars? They have moved into and occupy two more of the old familiar places in the Quartier des Jovents— I won't tell you which ones, as they weren't places we went commonly, but jovent places from a century or more ago, enough to break your heart to see them turned over to onstage sadoporn with all the young beauties and the strong young men struggling for their turn on the stage.
I confess that I did lie a bit above, and of course remember Garsenda's name, and her person, perfectly well. I don't know whether you'll take this as good news, or bad, or simply as confirmation, but she is absolutely the social and performing star of the Interst
ellars, with all their clubs fighting to get her. I do trust the news will no longer bring you pain, and no doubt you've already found some delightful young donzelha, her hair clipped close like a man's and a vision of loveliness in her thermal underwear, coveralls, and plastic boots ... now don't be angry, you know how I tease!
At any rate, the great problem with the Interstellars is that they've raised the complaint that none of their ugly lunatic donzelhas were Finalists for the Throne. They tried to complain to the Embassy but were brushed back immediately—that's exactly the sort of thing, as I understand it, that the Council has directed its agents never to interfere with. So, thank heavens, even if their local imitators have taken leave of their senses, at least the bureaucrats of the Thousand Cultures know enough to keep their noses out of such a fine, pleasurable institution as the monarchy!
More serious, to my mind, is the fact that so many of these rude Interstellars, having deservedly received no consideration in a contest that they could not possibly have won, either on style or on personal quality (I say nothing of enseingnamen because they have nothing of it!), now pretend there was nothing to win and mock the winners! Really, nothing stops them, nothing shames them, they do whatever nastiness they wish and their poor battered consciences lie dead or unconscious through all of it. Yseut has already begun to wear something a bit more decollete, and to favor (naturally—you remember her coloring) the light lavender shades; their vile girls wear the same colors, in roughly the same cut, but exposing their nipples and the horrible spiked studs with which they're pierced. I would add that many of the Interstellar boys were swaggering around in tights and boots quite similar to mine (with the exception of one dreadful, obscene decoration that I can't bear to tell you about—oh, all right, they sewed a quite real looking, gigantic phallus to the seat of the tights, but if you're my friend you'll boil with rage rather than laugh)—
I fought down the laughter, but found it impossible to work up any rage at all. Marcabru was so resolutely, crazily hetero that he had never even gone to bed with a man out of friendship or common courtesy. How the Interstellars had sensed what he would be most offended by, I didn't know, but I had to admire their perception.
I looked back to the letter
— boil with rage rather than laugh)—but I have dealt with that little problem of parody most thoroughly.
I encountered four of them on the street just a few days ago, and though I was without friends, I challenged them all to combat in serial. They seemed delighted, but I promptly beat the first two who came at me, leaving them thrashing and then comatose there in the gutter. And then, in the most cowardly fashion, with no trace of honor, the two survivors broke their oaths to fight in serial and rushed me together, with neither salute nor warning.
That was where I did almost explode with rage, my hands gripping the tabletop till my knuckles felt pierced. A friend in danger, long odds, and me not there to share the glory? And the cowardice of that attack—how far had things fallen to pieces back home? Had I even seen it while I was there? What would be left for me when I did return?
I scrolled down and read.
And it was then that enseingnamen told, for naturally I was far calmer and readier than they were. I saw that the one slightly ahead, to my left, had all the same characteristic scars as poor old Raimbaut, and gambled everything on its meaning that he was slow, vulnerable, and had been severely scarred internally like Raimbaut. I ignored the laggard and gave the scarred one three hard cuts with all my strength, finishing with a solid thrust to the heart. He went down without touching me.
I squared off with the sole survivor, calling him every vile name I could think of as he seemed to back away, white, almost fainting with fear, looking for any way to break and run— but I had him cornered against a wall!
It was then I heard the wail of the ambulance, and knew how far I had succeeded. It swooped, just as you imagine, and my last-finished opponent was sprung off to the hospital.
"I hope your friend is really dead," I said, "and I do hope you'll be joining him soon, no doubt as one more bloody greasy turd to pass through the devil's shithole." With that I lunged and disarmed him—truly I don't think he had anything you could call a grip on his weapon, and of course none at all on his enseingnamen—and then began to cut, administering some dozen wounds or so before I finally gave him a coup de merce, forcing him, between wounds, for the amusement of a crowd that was gathering, to confess to all sorts of incest and bestiality, to sing childish songs at the top of his lungs while they roared with laughter, and at last to beg and plead till the snot ran from his nose and he sobbed for breath. By that time he was on the ground, for I had severed most of his major tendons and so he thought he couldn't use his arms or legs. The last cut before the final one was a castration, and he screamed just as if it were really gone ... a tribute to the engineering of the neuroducer, my last pigeon was. I finished him off with a long slow cut across the throat, so that it would take him a long time to believe himself dead, and turned to take a dozen bows before the cheering crowd.
I have no doubt that, even after they release him from the hospital, he will find that the psychological scars are thorough and deep, and that he will ache for years to come.
Ah, Giraut, after a fight like that— it was then I longed for my old friend to be drunk with, to shout and laugh with, to celebrate it all! And where are you? Some six and a half light-years away, and not to return till after Yseut's glorious reign is almost all in the history books! Honestly, as I thought of that, my oldest friend, I nearly wept and spoiled all my triumph.
But at least those insulting costumes disappeared from the streets overnight, and I've noticed that more than one Interstellar has crossed the street when he sees me coming. The bolder ones spit, angry because their idiot, honorless friend really did die— but then, surely he knew the risks going in? Anyway, they took a bit of my honor off by ruling it a neuroducer accident. On the other hand, the one I tortured is still, as I understand it, hospitalized, and it may be literally years before he is past the risk of flashback seizures.
Well, I have boasted and commiserated and told you all the news, so now the only thing I have left to do is to demand that you write me immediately and tell me what has become of you and Aimeric and our angel Bieris!
Fondly te salut,
Marcabru
I felt Marcabru's triumph myself; he had acquitted himself beautifully, and moreover, gratified as he might be to have paid the Interstellars back for Raimbaut, I had no doubt that his thorough, systematic, drawn-out humiliation of that other young ape had done even more to discredit them. My heart ached to be with him and share it, and my throat closed with sadness.
I wondered what my new friend Thorwald would have to say about bragging of having killed someone, let alone Marcabru's beautifully done torture of his last victim? I decided I would bring up such topics only when I had some well-prepared students, and that perhaps I would put off the traditional opening of dueling arts instructions—"cutting off" the student's nose with the neuroducer, then reviving the student, to teach them not to fear it.
In fact, now that I thought of it, perhaps Raimbaut's life would have been happier, and certainly longer, if only he'd had more fear of the neuroducer, or shown more fear of it...
I wasn't sure where all these strange thoughts were coming from, and they rather disgusted me. Perhaps I was just jealous of Marcabru's accomplishments, or more probably just exhausted and homesick. I swirled the warm, clear apple wine in my glass and inhaled the bouquet appreciatively—it was like the blossoms in Field Seven, just now hitting bloom in the rotation, and so sweet it almost pierced the nose, yet the wine itself was dry, without a hint of cloying. I resolved that, when I wrote back to Marcabru, I would also drop a short note to Pertz and tell him that he needed to import Caledon fruit wines—back home, they would surely sell well at almost any price, no matter what the cost of using the springer might be.
"Sounds as if Marcabru is as bloodt
hirsty as ever," Aimeric said, folding his terminal back up.
I nodded, and raised my glass in a toast. "Marcabru!"
"Marcabru," he said, curiously without enthusiasm. He must be homesick too. He raised his glass, and drank with me.
I realized, as I looked around his quarters, that they were contributing a little to my homesickness. Every artifact in there cried out for the rich red bricks and synthwoods, the intricate tight curves within curves, of Occitan architecture, but not even Aimeric's having tuned the lights a deep red could compensate for the off-white starkness of the walls (it only turned them pink) or for the lack of shadowing on the wide expanses of wall. Instead, the clean straight lines of Brace's design made all of Aimeric's furniture and furnishings look overdone and somehow gaudy.
"It's almost cold in here," I said. "Do you mind if we turn up the heat a bit?"
"No problem, I was about to do it myself. More wine?"
"Always," I said. "You must really have missed this stuff when you were first on Wilson."
"I did," he said, seriously. "Nothing tasted right, either— you've surely noticed that food here is always richer, but with milder spices? It's much harder to go the other way, where the food always tastes too scant and too hot. No, it kind of surprises me to realize, after all this time, that one reason I was so antagonistic in my first few stanmonths in Nou Occitan was that I missed home so much." He sat down beside me. "I suppose it's not so different for you, even though you know you'll be going home in a stanyear or two?"