Asimov's Science Fiction: September 2013 (2 page)

"So? What are you here for?"

The woman beside him already seems flushed from the wine, and has a homely face and a dimpled smile, although she sports pointed teeth, elfin ears, and her eyes are cattish slots.

"For?" "

Name's Wilhelmina Howard. People just call me Will...." She offers him a claw-nailed hand to shake. "Made my money doing windfarm recycling in the non-federal states. All that lovely superconductor and copper we need right here to keep our power supplies as they should be. Not that we ever had much of a presence in England, which I'm guessing is where you were from...?

" He gives a guarded nod.

"But isn't it just so
great
to be here at Elsinore?
Such
a privilege. Thea's everything people say she is, isn't she, and then a whole lot more as well?
Such
compassion, and all the marvelous things she's done! Still, I know she's invited me here because she wants to get hold of some of my money. Give back a little of what we've taken an' all. Not that I won't give. That's for sure. Those poor souls back on Lifeside. We really have to do something, don't we, all of us...?"

"To be honest, I'm here because I used to work with Thea. Back when we were both alive."

"So, does that make you an
actor?"
Wilhelmina's looking at him more closely now. Her slot pupils have widened. "Should I
recognize
you? Were you in any of the famous—"

"No, no." As if in defeat, he holds up a hand. Another chance to roll out his story. More a musician, a keyboard player, although there wasn't much he hadn't turned his hand to over the years. Master of many trades, and what have you—at least, until that message fail signal came along.

"So, pretty much a lucky break," murmurs this ex-take-no-shit businesswoman who died and became a fat elf, "rather than any kind of lifetime endeavor...?"

Then Thea enters the hall, and she's changed into something more purposefully elegant—a light grey dress that shows her fine breasts and shoulders without seeming immodest—and her hair is differently done, and Northover understands all the more why most of the dead make no attempt to be beautiful. After all, how could they, when Thea Lorentz does it so unassailably well? She stands waiting for a moment as if expectant silence hasn't already fallen, then says a few phrases about how pleased she is to have so many charming and interesting guests. Applause follows. Just as she used to do for many an encore, Thea nods and smiles and looks genuinely touched.

The rest of the evening at Elsinore passes in a blur of amazing food and superb wine, all served with the kind of discreet inevitability that Northover has decided only chimeras are capable of. Just like Wilhelmina, everyone wants to know who he's with, or for, or from. The story about that jingle works perfectly; many even claim to have heard of him and his success. Their curiosity only increases when he explains his and Thea's friendship. After all, he could be the route of special access to her famously compassionate ear.

There're about twenty guests here at Elsinore tonight, all told, if you don't count the several hundred chimeras, which of course no one does. Most of the dead, if you look at them closely enough, have adorned themselves with small eccentricities; a forked tongue here, an extra finger there, a crimson badger-stripe of hair. Some are new to each other, but the interactions flow on easy rails. Genuine fame itself is rare here—after all, entertainment has long been a cheapened currency—but there's a relaxed feeling-out between strangers in the knowledge that some shared acquaintance or interest will soon be reached. Wealth always was an exclusive club, and it's even more exclusive here.

Much of the talk is of new Lifeside investment. Viral re-programming of food crops, all kinds of nano-engineering, weather, flood, and even birth control—although the last strikes Northover as odd considering how rapidly the human population is decreasing—and every other kind of plan imaginable to make the Earth a place worth living in again is discussed. Many of these schemes, he soon realizes, would be mutually incompatible, and potentially incredibly destructive, and all are about making money.

Cigars are lit after the cheeses and sorbets. Rare, exquisite whiskeys are poured. Just like everyone else, he can't help but keep glancing at Thea. She still has that way of seeming part of the crowd yet somehow apart from—or above—it. She always had been a master of managing social occasions, even those rowdy parties they'd hosted back in the day. A few words, a calming hand and smile, and even the most annoying drunk would agree that it was time they took a taxi. For all her gifts as a performer, her true moments of transcendent success were at the lunches, the lessthan-chance-encounters, the launch parties. Even her put-downs or betrayals left you feeling grateful.

Everything Farside is so spectacularly different, yet so little about her has changed. The one thing he does notice, though, is her habit of toying with those silver bangles she's still wearing on her left wrist. Then, at what feels like precisely the right moment, and thus fractionally before anyone expects, she stands up and tapsher wineglass to say a few more words. From anyone else's lips, they would sound like vague expressions of pointless hope. But, coming from her, it's hard not to be stirred.

Then, with a bow, a nod, and what Northover was almost sure is a small conspiratorial blink in his direction—which somehow seems to acknowledge the inherent falsity of what she has just done, but also the absolute need for it—she's gone from the hall, and the air suddenly seems stale. He stands up and grabs at the tilt of his chair before a chimera servant can get to it. He feels extraordinarily tired, and more than a little drunk.

In search of some air, he follows a stairway that winds up and up. He steps out high on the battlements. He hears feminine chuckles. Around a corner, shadows tussle. He catches the starlit glimpse of a bared breast, and turns the other way. It's near-freezing up out on these battlements. Clouds cut ragged by a blazing sickle moon. Northover leans over and touches the winding crown of his Rolex watch and studies the distant lace of waves. Then, glancing back, he thinks he sees another figure behind him. Not the lovers, certainly. This shape bulks far larger, and is alone. Yet the dim outlines of the battlement gleam though it. A malfunction? A premonition? A genuine ghost? But then, as Northover moves, the figure moves with him, and he realizes that he's seeing nothing but his own shadow thrown by the moon.

He dreams that night that he's alive again, but no longer the young and hopeful man he once was. He's mad old Northy. Living, if you call it living, so high up in the commune tower that no one else bothers him much, and with nothing but an old piano he's somehow managed to restore for company. Back in his old body, as well, with its old aches, fatigues, and irritations. But for once, it isn't raining, and frail sparks of sunlight cling to shattered glass in the ruined rooms, and the whole flooded, once-great city of London is almost beautiful, far below.

Then, looking back, he sees a figure standing at the far end of the corridor that leads through rubble to the core stairs. They come up sometimes, do the kids. They taunt him and try to steal his last few precious things. Northy swears and lumbers forward, grabbing an old broom. But the kid doesn't curse or throw things. Neither does he turn and run, although it looks as if he's come up here alone.

"You're Northy, aren't you?" the boy called Haru says, his voice an adolescent squawk.

He awakes with a start to new light, good health, comforting warmth. A sense, just as he opens his eyes and knowledge of who and what he is returns, that the door to his room has just clicked shut. He'd closed the curtains here in the Willow Room in Elsinore, as well, and now they're open. And the fire grate has been cleared, the applewood logs restocked. He reaches quickly for his Rolex, and begins to relax as he slips it on. The servants, the chimeras, will have been trained, programmed, to perform their work near-invisibly, and silently.

He showers again. He meets the gaze of his own eyes in the mirror as he shaves. Whatever view there might be from his windows is hidden in a mist so thick that the world beyond could be the blank screen of some old computer from his youth. The route to breakfast is signaled by conversation and a stream of guests. The hall is smaller than the one they were in last night, but still large enough. A big fire crackles in a soot-stained hearth, but steam rises from the food as cold air wafts in through the open doors.

Dogs are barking in the main courtyard. Horses are being led out. Elsinore's battlements and towers hover like ghosts in the blanketing fog. People are milling, many wearing thick gauntlets, leather helmets, and what look like padded vests and kilts. The horses are big, beautifully groomed, but convincingly skittish in the way that Northover surmises expensively pedigreed beasts are. Or were. Curious, he goes over to one as a chimera stable boy fusses with its saddle and reins.

The very essence of equine haughtiness, the creature tosses its head and does that lip-blubber thing horses do. Everything about this creature is impressive. The flare of its nostrils. The deep, clean, horsy smell. Even, when he looks down and under, the impressive, seemingly part-swollen heft of its horsey cock.

"Pretty spectacular, isn't he?"

Northover finds that Sam Bartleby is standing beside him. Dressed as if for battle, and holding a silver goblet of something steaming and red. Even his voice is bigger and deeper than it was. The weird thing is, he seems more like Sam Bartleby than the living Sam Bartleby ever did. Even in those stupid action virtuals.

"His name's Aleph—means alpha, of course, or the first. You may have heard of him. He won, yes, didn't you...?" By now, Bartleby's murmuring into the beast's neck. "The last ever Grand Steeplechase de Paris."

Slowly, Northover nods. The process of transfer is incredibly expensive, but there's no reason in principle why creatures other than humans can't join Farside's exclusive club. The dead are bound to want the most prestigious and expensive toys. So, why not the trapped, transferred consciousness of a multi-million dollar racehorse?

"You don't ride, do you?" Bartleby, still fondling Aleph—who, Northover notices, is now displaying an even more impressive erection—asks.

"It wasn't something I ever got around to."

"But you've got plenty of time now, and there are few things better than a day out hunting in the forest. I suggest you start with one of the lesser, easier, mounts over there, and work your way up to a real beast like this. Perhaps that pretty roan? Even then, though, you'll have to put up with a fair few falls. Although, if you really want to cheat and bend the rules, and know the right people, there are shortcuts...."

"As you say, there's plenty of time."

"So," Bartleby slides up into the saddle with what even Northover has to admit is impressive grace. "Why are you here? Oh, I don't mean getting
here
with that stupid jingle. You always were a lucky sod. I mean, at Elsinore. I suppose you want something from Thea. That's why most people come. Whether or not they've got some kind of past with her."

"Isn't friendship enough?"

Bartleby is now looking down at Northover in a manner even more condescending than the horse. "You should know better than most, Jon, that friendship's just another currency." He pauses as he's handed a long spear, its tip a clear, icy substance that could be diamond. "I should warn you that whatever it is you want, you're unlikely to get it. At least, not in the way you expect. A favor for some cherished project, maybe?" His lips curl. "But that's not
it
with you, is it? We know each other too well, Jon, and you really haven't changed. Not one jot. What you really want is Thea, isn't it? Want her wrapped up and whole, even though we both know that's impossible. Thea being Thea just as she always was. And, believe me, I'd do anything to defend her. Anything to stop her being hurt...."

With a final derisory snort and a spark of cobbles, Bartley and Aleph clatter off.

The rooms, halls, and corridors of Elsinore are filled with chatter and bustle. Impromptu meetings. Accidental collisions and confusions that have surely been long planned. Kisses and business cards are exchanged. Deals are brokered. Promises offered. The spread of the desert that has now consumed most of north Africa could be turned around by new cloud-seeding technologies, yet untold fortunes have been spent providing virtual coffee, or varieties of herb tea if preferred for Farside instead.

No sign of Thea, though. In a way she's more obvious Lifeside, where you can buy as much Thea Lorentz merchandise as even the most fervent fanatic could possibly want. Figurines. Candles. Wallscreens. T-shirts. Some of it, apparently, she even endorses. Although always, of course, in a good cause. Apart from those bothersome kids, it was the main reason Northover spent so much of his last years high up and out of reach of the rest of the commune. He hated being reminded of the way people wasted what little hope and money they had on stupid illusions. Her presence here at Elsinore is palpable, though. Her name is the ghost at the edge of every conversation. Yes, but Thea... Thea... and Thea... Thea... Always, always, everything is about Thea Lorentz.

He realizes this place she's elected to call Elsinore isn't any kind of home at all—but he supposes castles have always fulf illed a political function, at least when they weren't under siege. People came from near-impossible distances to plead their cause, and, just as here, probably ended up being fobbed off. Of course, Thea's chimera servants mingle amid the many guests. Northover notices Kasaya many times. A smile here. A mincing gesture there.

He calls after him the next time he sees him bustling down a corridor.

"Yes, Mister Northover...?" Clipboard at the ready, Kasaya spins round on his toes.

"I was just wondering, seeing as you seem to be about so much, if there happen to be more than one of you here at Elsinore?"

"That isn't necessary. It's really just about good organization and hard work."