Fractal Paisleys

by Paul Di Filippo

  “He’s a magician, an evil magician! That’s the only explanation of how someone so puny could have enraptured the priestess so. He must be slain to free her!”

  Hefting his sword, Hermeros stumbled menacingly toward me.

  I fumbled for the packet of transport-confetti, found it and managed to shake some on Quartilla, out of the hole the Dormouse had nibbled. Then I got the horn to my lips.

  “He attempts to summon the aid of spirits!” yelled Hermeros, and threw himself clumsily at our couch.

  As I gave a mighty blast on the party horn, I saw a single dot of confetti fall from Quartilla’s shoulder onto Hermeros.

  Shit, thought I.

  The sun was so bright in comparison to the oil lamps at Trimalchio’s, I couldn’t see for a moment. I could only hope that Hermeros—had he indeed accompanied us—was suffering from the same disadvantage.

  As I did not immediately feel a sword piercing my queasy guts, I assumed the bad-tempered soldier was squinting and rubbing his eyes as fiercely as I.

  As the sun-dazzles cleared from my vision, the pellucid notes of an electric guitar sounded from some distance away, and I realized from other familiar noises that a constant stream of people was flowing around and past our little tableau.

  Finally, I could see.

  Quartilla was turning around in slow circles of slack-jawed amazement. Hermeros was dragging a clumsy hand slowly over his apish incredulous mug, the point of his blade resting on the ground. The Dormouse was unconcernedly asleep at my feet, the sad fate of his cousins forgotten.

  We were in some modern city, standing at the gates of some park. Throngs of people, mostly young, were ambling past us and onto the grassy grounds. One of them, as he passed, tossed a newspaper in a trash can, and I claimed it.

  It was the San Francisco Oracle, and its banner headline read:

  FIRST HUMAN BE-IN TODAY!

  It was 1967, ten years before I had been—or would be—born.

  The Summer of Love.

  Quartilla had stopped turning, and now beamed at me.

  “Laurentius, how marvelous! You have transported us to your Underworld home!”

  “Close enough, give or take a decade or two and the width of a continent.”

  “Little did I ever suspect that the realm of Pluto held such wonders! Just wait until I report these marvelous adventures to Albucia!”

  Instantly, I felt remorseful for having dragged this poor girl from her natural time and place. What had made me permanently wrench her from her home, other than greed for her beautiful company? And how could I ever tell her what I had done?

  “Ah, yes, well, you see, Quartilla—gurk!”

  Hermeros’s swordpoint was nicking my throat. I swallowed tentatively, and my Adam’s apple measured the steel in micrometers.

  “You fiend!” spat the soldier. “You vile fiend! Return us to Rome immediately, or I’ll run you through!”

  “Now listen, Hermeros, it’s not as easy as you might think—”

  The blade pushed deeper. “No excuses! Do it!”

  “I can’t!”

  Hermeros must have concealed in his back one of those buttons that Ann Marie had. His expression went instantly from mere anger to volcanic rage.

  “Then I’m damned, and you’re dead!”

  I closed my eyes and tried to pray.

  “Hey, man, quit goofin’ around!”

  “Yeah, brother. Be cool!”

  I opened my eyes.

  Two strange figures flanked Hermeros.

  Both men had hair down to their navels or thereabouts, and flowers and peace signs painted on their faces. One wore a top hat, and the other flaunted a headband to which was affixed a droopy pair of cloth rabbit ears. The guy with the hat was dressed in a ruffled white shirt and denim bell-bottoms, while the other sported a fur vest over his hairy bare chest and tight green velvet pants.

  “You could really hurt someone with that pigsticker,” admonished Top Hat.

  “Don’t you know it’s a day for groovin’ in the sun?” inquired Rabbit Ears.

  The sight of the hippies seemed to have discombobulated Hermeros. When at last he could speak he said, “I have seen Druids naked and painted blue, and lice-ridden Syrian anchorites blistering under the sun. But I’ll sell my own mother into slavery if I’ve ever seen two such misbegotten hellspawn as these ones you have summoned, sorcerer.” Stiffening his resolve, Hermeros readjusted his sword for a thrust. “Though they rend me into pieces, I shall yet have my revenge!”

  Top Hat turned to me. “What did he say, man?”

  “He’s very pleased to meet you, but he still intends to kill me.”

  Rabbit Ears clucked his tongue. “Major uncool.”

  “Bad vibes.”

  “Bringdown city.”

  “Total bummer.”

  Putting two fingers in his mouth, Rabbit Ears produced a loud whistle.

  Out of the crowd materialized a brace of enormous Hell’s Angels, filthy, bearded and leather-clad. They pinioned Hermeros’s arms before he could react.

  I gulped gratefully. Thinking fast, I said, “He’s a little high. Could you just hold him for a while, guys, until he comes down? And, oh, don’t take him out of the park, will you?”

  The last thing I wanted was to destroy San Francisco on such a happy historic day

  “Sure, man,” grunted one of the Angels. “That’s what were here for.” Then they marched the struggling Hermeros off.

  I knew the respite was only temporary. Linked to me by the confetti, Hermeros would remain my problem. Still, it felt good to be rid of him, even for a short while.

  Quartilla had watched the whole affair with pale-faced consternation. Now she said, “You have mighty servitors here, Laurentius. I am astonished I could summon a demon as powerful as you.”

  “Looks count for a lot,” I said.

  The Priapic priestess blushed. “No one has complimented me in so long. Its just wham-bam-thank-you-goddess from most men I meet.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that from me.” Mostly because we’ll never have any privacy, I added mentally.

  There came a gentle coughing. I turned toward the hippies, who were smiling bemusedly.

  “You cats gonna join the party now?” asked Top Hat.

  “What else?” I replied.

  “Far out!” exclaimed Rabbit Ears. “I knew you were dressed up to get down!”

  I suddenly realized what I looked like. Barefoot, wearing a crumpled garland, stubble-faced and vomit-bespattered, accompanied by a gal wrapped in a bedsheet. Yet somehow I fit right in.

  “I don’t believe we’ve swapped handles yet,” said Top Hat. “My name is Fletcher Piatt, and my friend here is Lionel Stokely David van Camp, heir to the canned vegetable fortune, and otherwise known as ‘LSD.’”

  Fletcher took off his top hat and bowed to Quartilla, while LSD kissed her hand.

  “I’m Loren, and this is, um, Quartilla.”

  “Cool. What’s the story with the rat?”

  I had forgotten the Dormouse. “He’s—I mean, it’s, uh—a capybara! That’s it, a capybara. World’s largest rodent. Comes from South America.”

  The hippies regarded the snoring Dormouse dubiously. “Shouldn’t it be, like, on a leash, man?” asked LSD.

  “No, he—it’s quite domesticated.”

  “Groovy. Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s make the scene!”

  So we made the scene.

  Meandering through the rapidly filling park, Dormouse cradled against me, I relished the illusion of freedom. Unlike claustrophobia-inducing indoor parties, the large-scale Be-in, with its fresh air, sun and sky, seemed like heaven.

  We bought hotdogs from a vendor (Quartilla bit into hers tentatively, then ate it with gusto, while the Dormouse consumed most of mine in his sleep), and made our way toward Hippie Hill, where we could command a view of the stage.

  On the way, I kept an eye peeled for Bacchus. Surely he would materialize at su
ch a major bash as this. If I could only lay my hands on him, perhaps there was a chance I could undo what he had done to me.

  But there were simply too many people. I estimated the crowd at several thousand, and not one that I could see was dispensing wine from his palm.

  At the top of the hill, we flopped on the grass. Below us, a band was wailing.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Man, where have you been!” said Fletcher. “Don’t you recognize Quicksilver Messenger Service?”

  I shook my head in amazement. “What history. It’s like being at Woodstock.”

  “History? ‘Woodstack?’ Man, you’re some wiggy cat!”

  Quartilla seemed captivated by the music, so I explained to her who was playing. But in Latin, it came out funny.

  “Mercury’s Heralds? What an honor!” She began to sway with the tune.

  I lay back on the grass. Lord knew where I would end up after this. If only I could relax for a moment—

  As if reading my thoughts, LSD hove into view. He was brandishing a joint.

  “Care for a toke?”

  “Mega-awesome, dude.”

  “Huh?”

  “Uh, right on!”

  Pretty soon, after the third joint had circulated among us, the day turned transparent, and all my cares seemed to melt away.

  Quartilla giggled. “I feel like the Delphic Oracle.”

  “Hey, man,” exclaimed LSD, “I understood that! This dope is bringing back my high-school Latin!”

  “Even the Caterpillar, curmudgeon that he was, let me sample his pipe now and then.”

  Dormouse was awake, leaning on both elbows on my thigh.

  Fletcher and LSD had turned to stone at the first word out of the Dormouse. Their eyes were big as Mad Tea Party saucers.

  LSD was the first to recover. Oh-so-slowly he extended his hand holding the joint to the Dormouse, who took it, puffed deeply, then handed it back.

  “Thank you, sir. Did I ever mention that you resemble a friend of mine?”

  LSD took a long drag on the roach. “Heavy, man. Beyond heavy. What was that phrase you used before, man?”

  “Mega-awesome?”

  “You got it!”

  LSD lit a new joint off the old one, and now the five of us partook.

  The day wore on peacefully. Someone came by handing out free cold beers from a cooler. Another someone laid a gift on us: a can of compressed air with a horn attached. Fletcher and LSD took turns sending out blasts of sound until they grew bored.

  As the afternoon began to shade into night and the Be-in began to show signs of winding down, I grew melancholy, as did the others.

  “Man, don’t you wish a day like this could go on forever?” asked Fletcher, in what he falsely assumed was a rhetorical mode.

  I was still a little high. “You’d like life to be one big party?”

  “Well, hell, man—who wouldn’t?”

  I took the confetti out of my pocket. “I’ve got the power to grant your wish, boys. I sprinkle you with this magic pixie dust”—I suited actions to words—”and the next time I blow this horn”—I showed them the horn—”your endless party begins.”

  The hippies chuckled. “Whatever turns you on, man.”

  “You’ll see how—” I started to say, when I felt cold steel in my back.

  “Now I have you, sorcerer!” said Hermeros.

  I made to raise the horn to my lips, but a jab from the blade stopped me.

  “Don’t try it!”

  Fletcher stepped forward. “Here, let me.”

  He took the horn from my hand and jammed it into the nozzle of the air can.

  Then he mashed the button down.

  The magic horn blared without cease and the universe exploded.

  Like a film run at a zillion frames per second, all the parties of history began to rush by.

  I was dancing on the Titanic, I was sharing a picnic with two Frenchmen and a naked woman, I was a champagne-guzzling spectator at a Napoleonic battlefield, I was boogieing at Club 54, I was in a temple in Egypt, a yurt in Mongolia, a ballroom in Russia. And that was the first picosecond.

  Summoning up every ounce of will, I tried to turn around. It was like wading trough treacle. I could only move in those brief nanoseconds when I flashed through a gaudy party.

  Like stone eroding, I pivoted to confront Hermeros. It took ten million, million parties, but at last I was facing him.

  At that instant, the horn stopped. Fletcher must have managed to lift his finger.

  We were surrounded by a ring of dinosaurs. T. Rexes, I believe. And they were dancing, shaking the earth. Partying, to be precise.

  Hermeros was stunned, but I had no mercy.

  “That ain’t no way to have fun,” I advised him.

  Then I gave him a tremendous shove, propelling him beyond the circle of beasts.

  At the same time, I yelled to Fletcher, “Hit it!”

  The horn sounded, just in time.

  The actinic radiation from Hermeros’s explosion chased us through a thousand frames, forcing us to close our eyes. But it never quite caught us.

  From First Be-in to Great Die-off. Mea culpa, man.

  Silence. Blessed silence. The can must have run out of air.

  I opened one eye timidly, then the other.

  Fletcher was holding the shredded remnants of the magic horn, which had disintegrated under the prolonged blast.

  And, I realized with a shock, we were in Ann Marie’s apartment, with the Millennial New Year’s Eve party seemingly still in full swing.

  I collapsed into a chair. “Straight back to my old problems. Bummer, man.”

  Ann Marie bustled up, perky as ever. “Loren! I’m so glad you could make it!”

  “Don’t play games with me, Ann Marie. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

  “Well, how could I? I haven’t seen you in twenty years, ever since that night you cut out so rudely after worrying me nearly to death!”

  “Twenty—?” I looked more closely at my hostess. Sure enough, those were lots of brand-new lines on her face.

  So I wasn’t in my starting place after all. Which meant that I was still a potentially explosive intruder, with no means of escape. As soon as this party was over, I and my companions would go up with enough force to split the earth.

  I hung my head. “I’m so sorry, everyone. I really am.”

  “What are you whining about now?” said Ann Marie. “I swear, Loren—you’re probably the only person in the world who’s not having fun these days!”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, you know. Ever since the neural whatsits took over all work and government, it’s been one big party!”

  I looked up. “You’re telling me than no one has to work anymore…?”

  “Of course not! It’s just play, play, play, from sunup to sundown, anywhere on the globe you go!”

  I turned to Fletcher and LSD, who had been standing curiously by. “Guys, here’s that endless party I promised. Sorry the ride was a little bumpy.”

  “Cool.”

  Groovy.

  “Where’s the drugs?”

  Ann Marie took one hippie on each arm. “Right this way. Loren, try to have fun! By the way, boys, I love your costumes!”

  For the first time since we had met, Quartilla and I were alone. If you could count being adjacent to a sweaty game of Naked Co-ed Twister alone. I took her hands and gazed into her eyes.

  “Bacchus be praised,” was all I could finally say.

  “Yes. And I’d be happy to show you how.”

  And as we headed for the bedroom, I heard the Dormouse exclaim, “I say, is that a hookah I hear burbling?”

  Every humor writer finds certain idiosyncratic words, actions and objects to be inexplicably, inherently funny. Flann O’Brien, for instance, considered bicycles to be the ultimate slapstick vehicle. For James Blaylock, it might be fish. Without a certain amount of self control and self awareness, however, the
se personal talismans can become verbal tics. When writing “The Double Felix” (winner of the British SF Association award for best story of 1994), I felt that every major character at some point should be reduced to talking aloud to himself. Now, I wonder. Does this bother you? Or am I just talking to myself

  The Double Felix

  Prologue

  most funerals, not surprisingly, are tearful affairs, and that of Felix Wren was no exception.

  It need not have been, of course. Felix himself would have told everyone as much, had he simply remembered to do so before the inconvenience of his expected, if not entirely predictable death. If the mourners had only known about Tosh and the very special collar he wore, they all would have had cause for stunned rejoicing.

  Except, of course, for the murderers.

  From the front row of the packed church—where sat the lovely widow, Mrs. Wren (formerly the titled but impecunious heiress Galina Balyban, great-granddaughter of an exiled White Russian count)—to the last few pews packed with Felix’s employees from Wren BioHarmonics and with his old classmates from the California Institute of Technology, tears flowed and sobs were choked back. Even the minister delivering the eulogy was having trouble maintaining his composure.

  Now, it seems likely that even the worst person who ever lived and died probably enjoyed a mourner or two at his funeral: Stalin’s aged mother, for instance, assuming the dictator hadn’t had her shot by then, might have wept over her boy’s casket. But the tears flowing down during this particular funeral were neither sparse nor crocodilian. Felix Wren had been well loved. Everyone who had ever had any dealings with him had come away with respect and affection. The general consensus had been that Felix was a prince among the rabble. And now, every time anyone glanced at his closed coffin, they were struck anew by the pain occasioned by his unfortunate accidental death at so young an age.

  Undeterred by his own sniffles, the minister was entering his peroration.

  “And it seems only fitting that Felix should have perished in the manner he did, at home in his beloved workshop, searching for yet another product to benefit mankind. How a researcher of Felix’s experience could have failed to take adequate precautions against the accidental needle-stick that injected the fatal compound into his veins must remain forever a mystery, and is not for us to ponder. The authorities”—here the minister glanced toward the rear of the church, where a lone hardbitten man stood awkwardly by the door, hat in his single hand—”are satisfied that Felix’s death was strictly an act of God, one of those inexplicable mishaps all too familiar to us poor mortals. And perhaps God in his wisdom had some—”