American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  “Well, get well,” I said, “if you need to. I didn’t make Ceylon. I was in the Mediterranean most of the time.”

  There was applause within. I was glad I was without. The players had just finished Graber’s Masque of Demeter, which he had written in pentameter and honor of our Vegan guest; and the thing had been two hours long, and bad. Phil was all educated and sparsehaired, and he looked the part all right, but we had been pretty hard up for a laureate on the day we’d picked him. He was given to fits of Rabindranath Tagore and Chris Isherwood, the writing of fearfully long metaphysical epics, talking a lot about Enlightenment, and performing his daily breathing exercises on the beach. Otherwise, he was a fairly decent human being.

  The applause died down, and I heard the glassy tinkle of thelinstra music and the sound of resuming voices.

  Ellen leaned back on the railing.

  “I hear you’re somewhat married these days.”

  “True,” I agreed; “also somewhat harried. Why did they call me back?”

  “Ask your boss.”

  “I did. He said I’m going to be a guide. What I want to know, though, is why? —The real reason. I’ve been thinking about it and it’s grown more puzzling.”

  “So how should I know?”

  “You know everything.”

  “You overestimate me, dear. What’s she like?”

  I shrugged.

  “A mermaid, maybe. Why?”

  She shrugged.

  “Just curious. What do you tell people I’m like?”

  “I don’t tell people you’re like anything.”

  “I’m insulted. I must be like something, unless I’m unique.”

  “That’s it, you’re unique.”

  “Then why didn’t you take me away with you last year?”

  “Because you’re a People person and you require a city around you. You could only be happy here at the Port.”

  “But I’m not happy here at the Port.”

  “You are less unhappy here at the Port than you’d be anywhere else on this planet.”

  “We could have tried,” she said, and she turned her back on me to look down the slope toward the lights of the harbor section.

  “You know,” she said after a time, “you’re so damned ugly you’re attractive. That must be it.”

  I stopped in mid-reach, a couple inches from her shoulder.

  “You know,” she continued, her voice flat, emptied of emotion, “you’re a nightmare that walks like a man.”

  I dropped my hand, chuckled inside a tight chest.

  “I know,” I said. “Pleasant dreams.”

  I started to turn away and she caught my sleeve.

  “Wait!”

  I looked down at her hand, up at her eyes, then back down at her hand. She let go.

  “You know I never tell the truth,” she said. Then she laughed her little brittle laugh.

  “. . . And I have thought of something you ought to know about this trip. Donald Dos Santos is here, and I think he’s going along.”

  “Dos Santos? That’s ridiculous.”

  “He’s up in the library now, with George and some big Arab.”

  I looked past her and down into the harbor section, watching the shadows, like my thoughts, move along dim streets, dark and slow.

  “Big Arab?” I said, after a time. “Scarred hands? Yellow eyes? —Name of Hasan?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Have you met him?”

  “He’s done some work for me in the past,” I acknowledged.

  So I smiled, even though my blood was refrigerating, because I don’t like people to know what I’m thinking.

  “You’re smiling,” she said. “What are you thinking?”

  She’s like that.

  “I’m thinking you take things more seriously than I thought you took things.”

  “Nonsense. I’ve often told you I’m a fearful liar. Just a second ago, in fact—and I was only referring to a minor encounter in a great war. And you’re right about my being less unhappy here than anywhere else on Earth. So maybe you could talk to George—get him to take a job on Taler, or Bakab. Maybe? Huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. You bet. Just like that. After you’ve tried it for ten years. —How is his bug collection these days?”

  She sort of smiled.

  “Growing,” she replied, “by leaps and bounds. Buzzes and crawls too—and some of those crawlies are radioactive. I say to him, ‘George, why don’t you run around with other women instead of spending all your time with those bugs?’ But he just shakes his head and looks dedicated. Then I say, ‘George, one day one of those uglies is going to bite you and make you impotent. What’ll you do then?’ Then he explains that that can’t happen, and he lectures me on insect toxins. Maybe he’s really a big bug himself, in disguise. I think he gets some kind of sexual pleasure out of watching them swarm around in those tanks. I don’t know what else—”

  I turned away and looked inside the hall then, because her face was no longer her face. When I heard her laugh a moment later I turned back and squeezed her shoulder.

  “Okay, I know more than I knew before. Thanks. I’ll see you sometime soon.”

  “Should I wait?”

  “No. Good night.”

  “Good night, Conrad.”

  And I was away.

  Crossing a room can be a ticklish and time-consuming business: if it’s full of people, if the people all know you, if the people are all holding glasses, if you have even a slight tendency to limp.

  It was, they did and they were, and I do. So . . .

  Thinking inconspicuous thoughts, I edged my way along the wall just at the periphery of humanity for about twenty feet, until I reached the enclave of young ladies the old celibate always has hovering about him. He was chinless, nearly lipless, and going hairless; and the expression that had once lived in that flesh covering his skull had long ago retreated into the darkness of his eyes, and the eyes had it as they caught me—the smile of imminent outrage.

  “Phil,” said I, nodding, “not everybody can write a masque like that. I’ve heard it said that it’s a dying art, but now I know better.”

  “You’re still alive,” he said, in a voice seventy years younger than the rest of him, “and late again, as usual.”

  “I abase myself in my contrition,” I told him, “but I was detained at a birthday party for a lady aged seven, at the home of an old friend.” (Which was true, but it has nothing to do with this story.)

  “All your friends are old friends, aren’t they?” he asked, and that was hitting below the belt, just because I had once known his barely-remembered parents, and had taken them around to the south side of the Erechtheum in order to show them the Porch of the Maidens and point out what Lord Elgin had done with the rest, all the while carrying their bright-eyed youngster on my shoulders and telling him tales that were old when the place was built.

  “. . . And I need your help,” I added, ignoring the jibe and gently pushing my way through the soft, pungent circle of femininity. “It’ll take me all night to cross this hall to where Sands is holding court with the Vegan—pardon me, Miss—and I don’t have all night. —Excuse me, ma’am. —So I want you to run interference for me.”

  “You’re Nomikos!” breathed one little lovely, staring at my cheek. “I’ve always wanted to—”

  I seized her hand, pressed it to my lips, noted that her Camille-ring was glowing pink, said, “—and negative Kismet, eh?” and dropped it.

  “So how about it?” I asked Graber. “Get me from here to there in a minimum of time in your typical courtier-like fashion, with a running conversation that no one would dare interrupt. Okay? Let’s run.”

  He nodded brusquely.

  “Excuse me, ladies. I’ll be back.”

  We started across the
room, negotiating alleys of people. High overhead, the chandeliers drifted and turned like faceted satellites of ice. The thelinstra was an intelligent Aeolian harp, tossing its shards of song into the air—pieces of colored glass. The people buzzed and drifted like certain of George Emmet’s insects, and we avoided their swarms by putting one foot in front of another without pause and making noises of our own. We didn’t step on anybody who squashed.

  The night was warm. Most of the men wore the featherweight, black dress-uniforms which protocol dictates the Staff suffer at these functions. Those who didn’t weren’t Staff.

  Uncomfortable despite their lightness, the Dress Blacks mag-bind down the sides, leaving a smooth front whereon is displayed a green-blue-gray-white Earth insignia, about three inches in diameter, high up on the left breast; below, the symbol for one’s department is worn, followed by the rank-sigil; on the right side goes every blessed bit of chicken manure that can be dreamt up to fake dignity—this, by the highly imaginative Office of Awards, Furbishments, Insigniae, Symbols and Heraldry (OAFISH, for short—its first Director appreciated his position). The collar has a tendency to become a garrot after the first ten minutes; at least mine does.

  The ladies wore, or didn’t, whatever they pleased, usually bright or accompanied by pastel simicoloring (unless they were Staff, in which case they were neatly packed into short-skirted Dress Blacks, but with bearable collars), which makes it somewhat easier to tell some of the keepers from the kept.

  “I hear Dos Santos is here,” I said.

  “So he is.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t really know, or care.”

  “Tsk and tsk. What happened to your wonderful political consciousness? The Department of Literary Criticism used to praise you for it.”

  “At my age, the smell of death becomes more and more unsettling each time it’s encountered.”

  “And Dos Santos smells?”

  “He tends to reek.”

  “I’ve heard that he’s employed a former associate of ours—from the days of the Madagascar Affair.”

  Phil cocked his head to one side and shot me a quizzical look.

  “You hear things quite quickly. But then, you’re a friend of Ellen’s. Yes, Hasan is here. He’s upstairs with Don.”

  “Whose karmic burden is he likely to help lighten?”

  “As I said before, I don’t really know or care about any of this.”

  “Want to venture a guess?”

  “Not especially.”

  We entered a thinly-wooded section of the forest, and I paused to grab a rum-and-other from the dip-tray which had followed overhead until I could bear its anguish no longer, and had finally pressed the acorn which hung at the end of its tail. At this, it had dipped obligingly, smiled open, and revealed the treasures of its frosty interior.

  “Ah, joy! Buy you a drink, Phil?”

  “I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “I am, but I want to survey the situation some.”

  “Very well. I’ll have a simicoke.”

  I squinted at him, passed him the thing. Then, as he turned away, I followed the direction of his gaze toward the easy chairs set in the alcove formed by the northeast corner of the room on two sides and the bulk of the thelinstra on the third. The thelinstra-player was an old lady with dreamy eyes. Earthdirector Lorel Sands was smoking his pipe. . . .

  Now, the pipe is one of the more interesting facets of Lorel’s personality. It’s a real Meerschaum, and there aren’t too many of them left in the world. As for the rest of him, his function is rather like that of an anti-computer: you feed him all kinds of carefully garnered facts, figures, and statistics and he translates them into garbage. Keen dark eyes, and a slow, rumbly way of speaking while he holds you with them; rarely given to gestures, but then very deliberate as he saws the air with a wide right hand or pokes imaginary ladies with his pipe; white at the temples and dark above; he is high of cheekbone, has a complexion that matches his tweeds (he assiduously avoids Dress Blacks), and he constantly strives to push his jaw an inch higher and further forward than seems comfortable. He is a political appointee, by the Earthgov on Taler, and he takes his work quite seriously, even to the extent of demonstrating his dedication with periodic attacks of ulcers. He is not the most intelligent man on Earth. He is my boss. He is also one of the best friends I have.

  Beside him sat Cort Myshtigo. I could almost feel Phil hating him—from the pale blue soles of his six-toed feet to the pink upper-caste dye of his temple-to-temple hairstrip. Not hating him so much because he was him, but hating him, I was sure, because he was the closest available relative—grandson—of Tatram Yshtigo, who forty years before had commenced to demonstrate that the greatest living writer in the English language was a Vegan. The old gent is still at it, and I don’t believe Phil has ever forgiven him.

  Out of the corner of my eye (the blue one) I saw Ellen ascending the big, ornate stairway on the other side of the hall. Out of the other corner of my other eye I saw Lorel looking in my direction.

  “I,” said I, “have been spotted, and I must go now to pay my respects to the William Seabrook of Taler. Come along?”

  “Well . . . Very well,” said Phil; “suffering is good for the soul.”

  We moved on to the alcove and stood before the two chairs, between the music and the noise, there in the place of power. Lorel stood slowly and shook hands. Myshtigo stood more slowly, and did not shake hands; he stared, amber-eyed, his face expressionless as we were introduced. His loose-hanging orange shirt fluttered constantly as his chambered lungs forced their perpetual exhalation out the anterior nostrils at the base of his wide ribcage. He nodded briefly, repeated my name. Then he turned to Phil with something like a smile.

  “Would you care to have me translate your masque into English?” he asked, his voice sounding like a dying-down tuning fork.

  Phil turned on his heel and walked away.

  Then I thought the Vegan was ill for a second, until I recollected that a Vegan’s laugh sounds something like a billy goat choking. I try to stay away from Vegans by avoiding the resorts.

  “Sit down,” said Lorel, looking uncomfortable behind his pipe.

  I drew up a chair and set it across from them.

  “Okay.”

  “Cort is going to write a book,” said Lorel.

  “So you’ve said.”

  “About the Earth.”

  I nodded.

  “He expressed a desire that you be his guide on a tour of certain of the Old Places. . . .”

  “I am honored,” I said rather stiffly. “Also, I am curious what determined his selection of me as guide.”

  “And even more curious as to what he may know about you, eh?” said the Vegan.

  “Yes, I am,” I agreed, “by a couple hundred percent.”

  “I asked a machine.”

  “Fine. Now I know.”

  I leaned back and finished my drink.

  “I started by checking the Vite-Stats Register for Earth when I first conceived of this project—just for general human data—then, after I’d turned up an interesting item, I tried the Earthoffice Personnel Banks—”

  “Mm-hm,” I said.

  “—and I was more impressed by what they did not say of you than by what they said.”

  I shrugged.

  “There are many gaps in your career. Even now, no one really knows what you do most of the time.”

  “—And by the way, when were you born?”

  “I don’t know. It was in a tiny Greek village and they were all out of calendars that year. Christmas Day, though, I’m told.”

  “According to your personnel record, you’re seventy-seven years old. According to Vite-Stats, you’re either a hundred eleven or a hundred thirty.”

  “I fibbed about my age to get the job. There was a Depre
ssion going on.”

  “—So I made up a Nomikos-profile, which is a kind of distinctive thing, and I set Vite-Stats to hunting down .001 physical analogues in all of its banks, including the closed ones.”

  “Some people collect old coins, other people build model rockets.”

  “I found that you could have been three or four or five other persons, all of them Greeks, and one of them truly amazing. But, of course, Konstantin Korones, one of the older ones, was born two hundred thirty-four years ago. On Christmas. Blue eye, brown eye. Game right leg. Same hairline, at age twenty-three. Same height, and same Bertillion scales.”

  “Same fingerprints? Same retinal patterns?”

  “These were not included in many of the older Registry files. Maybe they were sloppier in those days? I don’t know. More careless, perhaps, as to who had access to public records. . . .”

  “You are aware that there are over four million persons on this planet right now. By searching back through the past three or four centuries I daresay you could find doubles, or even triples, for quite a few of them. So what?”

  “It serves to make you somewhat intriguing, that’s all, almost like a spirit of place—and you are as curiously ruined as this place is. Doubtless I shall never achieve your age, whatever it may be, and I was curious as to the sort of sensibilities a human might cultivate, given so much time—especially in view of your position as a master of your world’s history and art.

  “So that is why I asked for your services,” he concluded.

  “Now that you’ve met me, ruined and all, can I go home?”

  “Conrad!” The pipe attacked me.

  “No, Mister Nomikos, there are practical considerations also. This is a tough world, and you have a high survival potential. I want you with me because I want to survive.”

  I shrugged again.

  “Well, that’s settled. What now?”

  He chuckled.

  “I perceive that you dislike me.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea? Just because you insulted a friend of mine, asked me impertinent questions, impressed me into your service on a whim—”