Mabel waved her arm at the door. “If you knew anything about modern urban geography, you’d see this kind of, uh, spontaneous urban renewal happening all over the place. As long as you’ve got naive young people with plenty of energy who can be suckered into living inside rotten, hazardous dumps for nothing, in exchange for imagining that they’re free from oversight, then it all works out just great in the long run.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, zones like this turn out to be extremely handy for all concerned. For some brief span of time, a few people can think mildly unusual thoughts and behave in mildly unusual ways. All kinds of weird little vermin show up, and if they make any money then they go legal, and if they don’t then they drop dead in a place really quiet where it’s all their own fault. Nothing dangerous about it.” Mabel laughed, then sobered. “Lyle, let this poor dumb cracker out of the bag.”
“She’s naked under there.”
“Okay,” she said impatiently, “cut a slit in the bag and throw some clothes in it. Get going, Lyle.”
Lyle threw in some biking pants and a sweatshirt.
“What about my gear?” Kitty demanded, wriggling her way into the clothes by feel.
“I tell you what,” said Mabel thoughtfully. “Pete here will give your gear back to you in a week or so, after his friends have photographed all the circuitry. You’ll just have to let him keep all those knickknacks for a while, as his reward for our not immediately telling everybody who you are and what you’re doing here.”
“Great idea,” Pete announced, “terrific, pragmatic solution!” He began feverishly snatching up gadgets and stuffing them into his shoulderbag. “See, Lyle? One phone-call to good ol’ Spider Pete, and your problem is history, zude! Me and Mabel-the-Fed have crisis negotiation skills that are second to none! Another potentially lethal confrontation resolved without any bloodshed or loss of life.” Pete zipped the bag shut. “That’s about it, right, everybody? Problem over! Write if you get work, Lyle buddy. Hang by your thumbs.” Pete leapt out the door and bounded off at top speed on the springy soles of his reactive boots.
“Thanks a lot for placing my equipment into the hands of sociopathic criminals,” Kitty said. She reached out of the slit in the bag, grabbed a multitool off the corner of the workbench, and began swiftly slashing her way free.
“This will help the sluggish, corrupt, and underpaid Chattanooga police to take life a little more seriously,” Mabel said, her pale eyes gleaming. “Besides, it’s profoundly undemocratic to restrict specialized technical knowledge to the coercive hands of secret military elites.”
Kitty thoughtfully thumbed the edge of the multitool’s ceramic blade and stood up to her full height, her eyes slitted. “I’m ashamed to work for the same government as you.”
Mabel smiled serenely. “Darling, your tradition of deep dark government paranoia is far behind the times! This is the postmodern era! We’re now in the grip of a government with severe schizoid multiple-personality disorder.”
“You’re truly vile. I despise you more than I can say.” Kitty jerked her thumb at Lyle. “Even this nut-case eunuch anarchist kid looks pretty good, compared to you. At least he’s self-sufficient and market-driven.”
“I thought he looked good the moment I met him,” Mabel replied sunnily. “He’s cute, he’s got great muscle tone, and he doesn’t make passes. Plus he can fix small appliances and he’s got a spare apartment. I think you ought to move in with him, sweetheart.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t think I could manage life here in the zone like you do, is that it? You think you have some kind of copyright on living outside the law?”
“No, I just mean you’d better stay indoors with your boyfriend here until that paint falls off your face. You look like a poisoned raccoon.” Mabel turned on her heel. “Try to get a life, and stay out of my way.” She leapt outside, unlocked her bicycle and methodically pedaled off.
Kitty wiped her lips and spat out the door. “Christ, that baton packs a wallop.” She snorted. “Don’t you ever ventilate this place, kid? Those paint fumes are gonna kill you before you’re thirty.”
“I don’t have time to clean or ventilate it. I’m real busy.”
“Okay, then I’ll clean it. I’ll ventilate it. I gotta stay here a while, understand? Maybe quite a while.”
Lyle blinked. “How long, exactly?”
Kitty stared at him. “You’re not taking me seriously, are you? I don’t much like it when people don’t take me seriously.”
“No, no,” Lyle assured her hastily. “You’re very serious.”
“You ever heard of a small-business grant, kid? How about venture capital, did you ever hear of that? Ever heard of federal research-and-development subsidies, Mr. Schweik?” Kitty looked at him sharply, weighing her words. “Yeah, I thought maybe you’d heard of that one, Mr. Techie Wacko. Federal R and D backing is the kind of thing that only happens to other people, right? But Lyle, when you make good friends with a senator, you become ‘other people.’ Get my drift, pal?”
“I guess I do,” Lyle said slowly.
“We’ll have ourselves some nice talks about that subject, Lyle. You wouldn’t mind that, would you?”
“No. I don’t mind it now that you’re talking.”
“There’s some stuff going on down here in the zone that I didn’t understand at first, but it’s important.” Kitty paused, then rubbed dried dye from her hair in a cascade of green dandruff. “How much did you pay those Spider gangsters to string up this place for you?”
“It was kind of a barter situation,” Lyle told her.
“Think they’d do it again if I paid ’em real cash? Yeah? I thought so.” She nodded thoughtfully. “They look like a heavy outfit, the City Spiders. I gotta pry ’em loose from that leftist gorgon before she finishes indoctrinating them in socialist revolution.” Kitty wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “This is the Senator’s own constituency! It was stupid of us to duck an ideological battle, just because this is a worthless area inhabited by reckless sociopaths who don’t vote. Hell, that’s exactly why it’s important. This could be a vital territory in the culture war. I’m gonna call the office right away, start making arrangements. There’s no way we’re gonna leave this place in the hands of the self-styled Queen of Peace and Justice over there.”
She snorted, then stretched a kink out of her back. “With a little self-control and discipline, I can save those Spiders from themselves and turn them into an asset to law and order! I’ll get ’em to string up a couple of trailers here in the zone. We could start a dojo.”
* * * *
Eddy called, two weeks later. He was in a beachside cabana somewhere in Catalunya, wearing a silk floral-print shirt and a new and very pricey looking set of spex. “How’s life, Lyle?”
“It’s okay, Eddy.”
“Making out all right?” Eddy had two new tattoos on his cheekbone.
“Yeah. I got a new paying roommate. She’s a martial artist.”
“Girl roommate working out okay this time?”
“Yeah, she’s good at pumping the flywheel and she lets me get on with my bike work. Bike business has been picking up a lot lately. Looks like I might get a legal electrical feed and some more floorspace, maybe even some genuine mail delivery. My new roomie’s got a lot of useful contacts.”
“Boy, the ladies sure love you, Lyle! Can’t beat ’em off with a stick, can you, poor guy? That’s a heck of a note.”
Eddy leaned forward a little, shoving aside a silver tray full of dead gold-tipped zigarettes. “You been getting the packages?”
“Yeah. Pretty regular.”
“Good deal,” he said briskly, “but you can wipe ’em all now. I don’t need those backups anymore. Just wipe the data and trash the disks, or sell ’em. I’m into some, well, pretty hairy opportunities right now, and I don’t need all that old clutter. It’s kid stuff anyway.”
“Okay, man. If that’s the way you want it.” Eddy leaned forward.
“D’you happen to get a package lately? Some hardware? Kind of a settop box?”
“Yeah, I got the thing.”
“That’s great, Lyle. I want you to open the box up, and break all the chips with pliers.”
“Yeah?
“Then throw all the pieces away. Separately. It’s trouble, Lyle, okay? The kind of trouble I don’t need right now.”
“Consider it done, man.”
“Thanks! Anyway, you won’t be bothered by mailouts from now on.” He paused. “Not that I don’t appreciate your former effort and goodwill, and all.”
Lyle blinked, “How’s your love life, Eddy?”
Eddy sighed. “Frederika! What a handful! I dunno, Lyle, it was okay for a while, but we couldn’t stick it together. I don’t know why I ever thought that private cops were sexy. I musta been totally out of my mind.…Anyway, I got a new girlfriend now.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s a politician, Lyle. She’s a radical member of the Spanish Parliament. Can you believe that? I’m sleeping with an elected official of a European local government.” He laughed. “Politicians are sexy, Lyle. Politicians are hot! They have charisma. They’re glamorous. They’re powerful. They can really make things happen! Politicians get around. They know things on the inside track. I’m having more fun with Violeta than I knew there was in the world.”
“That’s pleasant to hear, zude.”
“More pleasant than you know, my man.”
“Not a problem,” Lyle said indulgently. “We all gotta make our own lives, Eddy.”
“Ain’t it the truth.”
Lyle nodded. “I’m in business, zude!”
“You gonna perfect that inertial whatsit?” Eddy said.
“Maybe. It could happen. I get to work on it a lot now. I’m getting closer, really getting a grip on the concept. It feels really good. It’s a good hack, man. It makes up for all the rest of it. It really does.”
Eddy sipped his mimosa. “Lyle.”
“What?”
“You didn’t hook up that settop box and look at it, did you?”
“You know me, Eddy,” Lyle said. “Just another kid with a wrench.”
* * * *
Copyright © 1996 by Bruce Sterling.
MICHAEL SWANWICK
(1950– )
Part of a richly talented group of Philadelphia-area writers, Mike Swanwick is a remarkable writer, but also one who writes very slowly. He has a unique ability to combine surreal and gritty in counterintuitive ways which produce stories that feel both utterly real and utterly absurd. His marvelous novel The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (1993), for instance, straddles a line between fantasy and science fiction and includes a Dickensian vision of a hideous factory complex where various fey creatures are forced to make powerful war machines for Italian-suited elven executives. He’s also got an ear for the cruelty and pettiness underlying ordinary interactions and speech.
Born in Schenectady, New York, Swanwick went to college in Virginia before arriving in Philadelphia in the early 1970s; by 1980 he was writing full time. In a field that breeds insecurities, Mike Swanwick has always come off as supremely confident in his talent and his writing, but he also takes remarkable care over his craft. I remember a Lunacon panel we did together on Dickensian fantasy in which he described how he reread all of Dickens before writing Iron Dragon’s Daughter. (He wanted to find out Dickens’s formula, which in his words amounted to “take an attractive child and then torture her for 400 pages, then give her a pat on the head and an ice cream cone and send her on her way.”)
While his writing output has always been sparse, its consistent quality is remarkable. Swanwick is a five-time Hugo winner, and has also won the Nebula, World Fantasy Award, and other honors. He is married to microbiologist Marianne Catherine Porter, with whom he has a son.
“The Edge of the World,” a Sturgeon Award winner in 1990, highlights the ordinary qualities we give to special things. While most writers emphasize the reader’s sense of wonder in discovering unusual things, Swanwick reminds us of our ability to stop noticing remarkable things that are a part of our everyday lives.
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, by Michael Swanwick
First published in Full Spectrum 2, April 1989
The day that Donna and Piggy and Russ went to see the Edge of the World was a hot one. They were sitting on the curb by the gas station that noontime, sharing a Coke and watching the big Starlifters lumber up into the air, one by one, out of Toldenarba AFB. The sky rumbled with their passing. There’d been an incident in the Persian Gulf, and half the American forces in the Twilight Emirates were on alert.
“My old man says when the Big One goes up, the base will be the first to go,” Piggy said speculatively. “Treaties won’t allow us to defend it. One bomber comes in high and whaboom—” he made soft nuclear explosion noises—“it’s all gone.” He was wearing camouflage pants and a khaki teeshirt with an iron-on reading kill ’em all and let god sort ’em out. Donna watched as he took off his glasses to polish them on his shirt. His face went slack and vacant, then livened as he put them back on again, as if he were playing with a mask.
“You should be so lucky,” Donna said. “Mrs. Khashoggi is still going want that paper done on Monday morning, Armageddon or not.”
“Yeah, can you believe her?” Piggy said. “That weird accent! And all that memorization! Cut me some slack. I mean, who cares whether Ackronnion was part of the Mezentian Dynasty?”
“You ought to care, dipshit,” Russ said. “Local history’s the only decent class the school’s got.” Russ was the smartest boy Donna had ever met, never mind the fact that he was flunking out. He had soulful eyes and a radical haircut, short on the sides with a dyed-blond punklock down the back of his neck. “Man, I opened the Excerpts from Epics text that first night, thinking it was going to be the same old bullshit, and I stayed up ‘til dawn. Got to school without a wink of sleep, but I’d managed to read every last word. This is one weird part of the world; its history is full of dragons and magic and all kinds of weird monsters. Do you realize that in the eighteenth century three members of the British legation were eaten by demons? That’s in the historical record!”
Russ was an enigma to Donna. The first time they’d met, hanging with the misfits at an American School dance, he’d tried to put a hand down her pants, and she’d slugged him good, almost breaking his nose. She could still hear his surprised laughter as blood ran down his chin. They’d been friends ever since. Only there were limits to friendship, and now she was waiting for him to make his move and hoping he’d get down to it before her father was rotated out.
In Japan she’d known a girl who had taken a razor blade and carved her boyfriend’s name in the palm of her hand. How could she do that, Donna had wanted to know? Her friend had shrugged, said, “As long as it gets me noticed.” It wasn’t until Russ that Donna understood.
“Strange country,” Russ said dreamily. “The sky beyond the Edge is supposed to be full of demons and serpents and shit. They say that if you stare into it long enough, you’ll go mad.”
They all three looked at one another.
“Well, hell,” Piggy said. “What are we waiting for?”
* * * *
The Edge of the World lay beyond the railroad tracks. They bicycled through the American enclave into the old native quarter. The streets were narrow here, the sideyards crammed with broken trucks, rusted out buses, even yachts up in cradles with stoven-in sides. Garage doors were black mouths hissing and spitting welding sparks, throbbing to the hammered sound of worked metal. They hid their bikes in a patch of scrub apricot trees where the railroad crossed the industrial canal and hiked across.
Time had altered the character of the city where it bordered the Edge. Gone were the archers in their towers, vigilant against a threat that never came. Gone were the rose quartz palaces with their thousand windows, not a one of which overlooked the Edge. The battlements where blind musicians once piped up the dawn now survived
only in Mrs. Khashoggi’s texts. Where they had been was now a drear line of weary factory buildings, their lower windows cinderblocked or bricked up and those beyond reach of vandals’ stones painted over in patchwork squares of grey and faded blue.
A steam whistle sounded and lines of factory workers shambled back inside, brown men in chinos and white shirts, Syrian and Lebanese laborers imported to do work no native Toldenarban would touch. A shredded net waved forlornly from a basketball hoop set up by the loading dock.
There was a section of hurricane fence down. They scrambled through.
As they cut across the grounds, a loud whine arose from within the factory building. Down the way another plant lifted its voice in a solid wham-wham-wham as rhythmic and unrelenting as a headache. One by one the factories shook themselves from their midday drowse and went back to work. “Why do they locate these things along the Edge?” Donna asked.
“It’s so they can dump their chemical waste over the Edge,” Russ explained. “These were all erected before the Emir nationalized the culverts that the Russian Protectorate built.”
Behind the factory was a chest-high concrete wall, rough-edged and pebbly with the slow erosion of cement. Weeds grew in clumps at its foot. Beyond was nothing but sky.
Piggy ran ahead and spat over the Edge. “Hey, remember what Nixon said when he came here? It is indeed a long way down. What a guy!”
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 483