Babylon Sisters

by Paul Di Filippo

  The transient population of Algeciras had more than quadrupled from its Pre-Max heights, and the streets were thronged. Even in the old days, when the port at the southern tip of Spain had filled with Euro-Africans each summer as they headed home on vacation, it had not resembled the current combination of Bedlam and Mardi Gras.

  The town was filled with an atmosphere of impatience, of throttled anticipation. Everyone seemed ready and eager to shed old ways and inhibitions, to get where they were going, their common destination, and begin their lives anew. There was no sense of menace, but Taylor still felt scared somehow at the prospect of so much change.

  He had paused in the doorway, leery of mingling with the crowd. They didn’t share his purity of motive, he didn’t belong with them, he wasn’t really hungry...

  But Narciso, waiting patiently a few feet away, beckoned, and Taylor began to shoulder his way after his guide, who wove lithely in between larger figures.

  The hot twilit air carried scents of the Mediterranean, not all of them pleasant, from that biggest and most utilised of the world’s open sewers. But there were fewer odors than last year, and even fewer than the year before that.

  Holt and his loyal team-mates, the technocratic saviours of Maxwell’s Land, were responsible. They had seeded the sea with toxin-disassemblers, claiming that they needed untainted water for their small but high-throughput desalinisation plants. It was one of the few unilateral actions they had taken outside their own borders. Official communiques and press releases had explained, quite patiently, that they did not wish to give offence, had no plans for expansion where not invited, but on the other hand maintained the right to ensure their own prosperity, to claim their share of the world’s common resources—especially if they improved them in the process.

  The people in the narrow, dusty, cobbled streets of the old town were of all nationalities, of every class and type, here for the same reason Taylor ostensibly was. As one-way emigrants, they all sought passage to Maxwell’s Land, and this was one of the busiest points of entry, along with Marseilles, Naples and Athens. Those favouring an overland route usually chose Israel, rather than attempt travel through the unsettled African nations to the south of Maxwell’s Land. (So far, the Israelis had resisted assimilation, forming a stubborn eastern bulwark against the new country. But Taylor had read just yesterday, in the International Herald Tribune, that the Knesset was preparing to vote on a merger with the globe’s youngest nation—if such an anarchistic system could even be called such.)

  As Taylor followed Narciso down to the waterfront, he noticed that there seemed to be even more demonsign graffiti than yesterday. These emblems were in a variety of media and styles: stencilled, drawn freehand, pasted as preprinted posters and stickers, spraypainted, chalked in colors. But they all took the same form, the inward­ pointing circle of arrows representing anti-entropy.

  Taylor wondered how soon the symbolic invasion would become a literal one. Surely two such incompatible realms could not coexist on one globe forever.

  Walking behind the small, raggedly dressed figure of Narciso, Taylor had been following the boy without much thought given to his reality as an individual. Suddenly, however, he was struck by the desire to communicate, to learn what at least one inhabitant of this land so close to the alien continent thought of that strange shore. He caught up with the boy and laid a hand on his shoulder, halting him.

  Indicating one of the demonsigns with a curt gesture, Taylor said, “Who draws these, Narciso? The pilgrims? The emigrants? Your own people?”

  Narciso looked up, brown eyes lively beneath a fall of black hair. There was a smudge of grease over one eyebrow, like misapplied makeup. “Mostly those first two you name, Señor Nick. The people who still live here have no time for such things.”

  “Don’t you fear the day when Maxwell’s Land will reach out and take Spain?”

  Narciso shrugged with a fatalism beyond his age. “What good is worrying? If America can do nothing about the demons, then certainly I cannot.”

  “You expect life to be good when they come?”

  “Quien sabe? Things do not seem so bad there, from what I hear. Let them come. I will make out. But now, you are hungry, Señor Nick, and my aunt’s place is not far”

  The boy turned and set off down the crepuscular alleys they had been traversing, and Taylor was forced to follow.

  Tia Luisa’s restaurant was situated right on the water­front. Before going inside, Taylor stood on a rust-stained concrete jetty and strained his eyes, trying to make out significant details of the land only a few miles south across the Strait of Gibraltar.

  Lit extravagantly, the African coastline was a far cry from its old self. Just five years ago, it had been possible, by squinting, to pretend nothing had changed there since Roman times. But now the lavish display of power was like an alluring billboard advertising the new world order with all the subtlety of a campaign for the latest blockbuster film.

  Taylor, his brain still stunned from the heat and the drastic changes in his own life, hazily tried to envision what inexhaustible energy might mean. The concept seemed hard to credit, flying in the face of all the precepts of physics he had always cherished. Something for nothing. Hadn’t Szilard dealt the final blow to that possibility?

  The lights reflected in the black waters of the Strait spelled out, plain as any textbook, that Szilard had been wrong.

  Inside, Taylor ordered sangria and squid sandwiches. The latter arrived with the deep-fried meat still hot, a nest of tentacles covered with crisp golden batter, the flesh inside white as a lily and succulent as a kiss. Only the bread was unsatisfying, being made of that peculiar yellow Spanish meal and baked till absolutely dry. Taylor discarded the stuff after a few bites and ate the squid with a fork, washing it down with long draughts of the fruity, brandy-spiked wine.

  Suddenly, with laden fork poised halfway to his lips, Taylor looked nervously at Narciso, who was waiting nearby like a vest-pocket maître d’ to make sure everything was all right.

  “Was this fish caught locally?” Taylor asked.

  “Oh, si, Señor Nick. Very fresh.”

  Taylor regarded the squid. How many of Holt’s toxin­disassemblers had these creatures ingested? Taylor knew the nanomechanisms were supposed to be biologically inert, with a limited lifetime, but still—

  Hell, he’d been eating local catch all week without thinking about it. Too late now...

  Taylor continued his meal in silence, without company, Narciso having vanished into the kitchen. He meditated on tomorrow’s departure. Spain is a land to flee across. That sentence was from a book Aubrey had once tried to get him to read. The author’s name was Gauss—no, Gaddis. He had never gotten into it, too convoluted, not precise enough. The equations of fiction eluded him. Aubrey was always unsuccessfully pressing new books on him—at least, during the first few years of their marriage. Now Taylor wished he had read some.

  Was she with Holt? He was convinced of it. Holt had always read what Aubrey suggested, the bastard. Why else would she have entered Maxwell’s Land, if not to yoke her wagon to his rising star...?

  Narciso, uncannily sensing when Taylor was ready to leave, emerged from the kitchen. “You want some fun now, Señor Nick?”

  “No,” said Taylor wearily. “Just take me back to the hotel.” He stood clumsily, the empty pitcher on the table silent witness to his condition.

  Narciso led him back to his hotel and tumbled him into bed. Taylor sensed his eyes closing, his breath settling into a stertorous rhythm.

  His last thought was, You are what you eat.

  Or what eats you.

  * * * *

  Taylor awoke with a hangover, sharp as the nail driven through Holofernes’ head by his lover Judith. His suit was spotted with sangria stains, the mirror told him, his eyes were pouched in shadow, and he looked like a bum. He didn’t care, though, because soon, one way or another, this whole abominable business would be over with.

  Prior to le
aving, patting down his jacket pockets for his passport, which he was gratified to find, Taylor soon learned that Narciso had relieved him of fifty thousand pesetas, all his remaining money.

  Taylor swore mildly, unable really to bear any grudge against Narciso. He imagined how the boy had rationalised it: the crazy American would be gone tomorrow morning to the land of demons—where, so everyone said, money was of no use whatsoever, and all the streets were paved with gold. Under law, he would never return.

  And the boy was probably right.

  He only hoped there would be no further palms to grease prior to his departure.

  Taylor found his duffel bag beneath the bed, opened it, saw the gun, and zipped it shut. Luckily, his missing wallet had not held the all-important ferry ticket; that was still safe in his shoe.

  Out on the streets, Taylor joined the flow toward the docks. Nothing like this atmosphere had existed since the Iron Curtain crumbled. He assumed some of these people would be his fellow passengers, but that most of them were merely going to gaze wistfully south, or try once more to bargain for an earlier departure date. Had Taylor not come to Algeciras liberally supplied with cash, he, too, might have been among the idlers. Even as it was, the earliest passage he had been able to secure had involved waiting a miserable week. Not wishing to entrust his fate to the privateers in their small craft—stories abounded of passengers taken only halfway across the Strait and then chucked overboard—Taylor had chosen to wait for one of the more reliable conveyances.

  There was a chainlink fence topped with concertina wire around the dock where the ferry was berthed. The gate was manned by UN Peacekeeping Troops, part of Operacion Transito. Ticket in hand, Taylor joined the line leading up to the guards. There seemed to be no customs check of baggage, so Taylor made no attempt to slip his gun into the lining of his duffel bag, as he had intended.

  Under the strengthening sun, time passed. Eventually Taylor came to the head of the line.

  A Scandanavian guard, big and blond, demanded, “Passport, please.”

  Taylor handed it over.

  In a bored voice the guard recited his speech: “You understand that according to UN Security Council Resolution Number 1050, approved by a majority of member nations, you are hereby permanently renouncing your citizenship in the land wherein you are currently enfranchised. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still wish to board?”

  “Yes.”

  The guard waved Taylor through, keeping his passport. His name would appear in newspapers around the world tomorrow, separated from his wife’s by months, though to any future historians the time differential would disappear and the separated lovers would merge into the statistics of the mass exodus, united at last, if only cliometrically.

  As he passed beneath the coiled wire, a miasma seemed to lift off his shoulders. For the first time in a week, he felt he was truly moving under his own volition.

  The craft moored at the dock was one of the old hulking multi-tiered ferries which had once plied a more sedate trade across the Strait. Its suddenly wealthy owners, operating under goverannent franchise, had made minor alterations—filling the cargo space with cheap seats—thereby converting it into a shuttle for the one-way emigrants. Now the craft was showing signs of wear. Kept so busy it had forgone drydock for over a year, the vessel was rusting and untrustworthy-looking.

  Its crew, already wearing surplus CBW gear and breathing bottled air, was forbidden to set foot on Maxwell’s Land, or traffic in African goods, under penalty of the same permanent expulsion the guard had outlined to Taylor.

  Small boats and their owners who opted not to seek a government license for passage to Maxwell’s Land were deemed by the authorities to be in instant violation of the UN interdict, and were sunk when sighted. Twenty had gone down in the week Taylor had been waiting.

  Taylor boarded by means of a shaky wooden ramp and took his place at the already crowded rail. He wished he had someone to wave goodbye to, and he idly looked at the people on the shore for any familiar face, even that of the mercenary Narciso.

  Gulls wheeled overhead. Next to Taylor stood two black youths, mountaineering backpacks dwarfing them, by speech and dress obviously American. They seemed almost giddy with the adventure they were embarked on.

  “Back to Africa, huh, man!”

  “Yeah, but nobody cogged it’d ever be like this!”

  “Hey, how many demons does it take to change a lightbulb?”

  “None, ’cuz they don’t never wear out!”

  Soon the ship was full. A horn blared. With a noisy blast and a belch of black smoke, the ship’s diesels roared into life, the lines were cast off, the ferry pirouetted and headed out to sea. Taylor felt the breeze of passage begin to dry the sweat from his brow. Today the sun felt different somehow. Still as hot, it seemed less dulling than stimulating. Taylor supposed it was all in his mind, the result of being at last in motion.

  Midway through the passage, the ship’s engines abruptly ceased to stink and bellow, the thrumming they imparted to the hull disappearing, more as if they had suddenly winked out of existence than as if someone had throttled back on them. Nonetheless, the ship continued to surge forward, perhaps even more swiftly, under some unknown impulse.

  Taylor puzzled over the curious phenomenon briefly, then discarded it. He was certain he would encounter many mysteries in Maxwell’s Land, none of which had any real bearing on his strictly personal mission.

  The trip to Tangier was over sooner than Taylor could have wished. In transit, he had been both active and passive, moving toward his destiny, yet helpless for the moment to do more than he was doing. With landfall came an end to such suspension, and a necessity for further decisions.

  The trouble was, Taylor had no idea what he was going to do next. Disembarking with the excited immigrants, he realised that he had thought ahead no further than this point. Where Holt and Aubrey were, and how he was to get there without money, were points he had neglected.

  As on the other side, no port officials bothered to rummage through personal possessions. It was as if they were saying, Nothing you bring in can matter as much as what’s already here. And they certainly did not enquire as to the intended duration of anyone’s stay.

  There was, however, one formality to undergo.

  A European woman wearing a Red Crescent pin on her shirt held a modified injection pistol connected by a hose to a stainless-steel tank. Each traveller came under her ministrations.

  When it was Taylor’s turn, he knew what was expected. Dreading it, he took off his jacket and exposed his bare skin.

  The woman pressed the wide muzzle against his flesh and squeezed the trigger.

  When she withdrew it, the demonsign was tattooed brightly in red on the underside of his forearm. A single drop of blood appeared, but no more.

  “Self-organising and ineradicable,” she said, responding to Taylor’s look. “Even if you were to cut it away, it would reform. Think of it as your passport as a citizen of Maxwell’s Land. Oh, and you’ve just gotten the standard viral disassemblers too. Anti-trypansomiasis, anti-AIDS, and all that. Good luck.”

  Clutching his duffel bag in one hand, rubbing his sore new trademark with the other, still without immediate goals, Taylor decided to wander around the city and learn what he could of the changes that had come to North Africa in Holt’s wake.

  * * * *

  Five years ago, the government of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia—one of the more liberal, secular Arab nations—had extended an invitation. Hearing of a certain Desmond Holt, whose field trials of his potentially revolutionary nanodevices had been forbidden in America, the Tunisian government offered to help finance his work and to give him carte blanche in terms of implementing any of his discoveries.

  One year after Holt had relocated with his small staff to the impoverished but eager Arab country, there was no more Tunisia.

  It still existed in the physical sense. The
land—its earth, its people, its buildings—had not vanished off the map. But in a metaphysical and legalistic way Tunisia was no more. As a separate political entity, the country had disappeared. President Ben Ali had, all unknowingly, engineered a coup against himself.

  Details of what was quickly dubbed the “Gadget Revolution,” how it had been accomplished so easily, were scant. Other nations, recognising a peril to their own integrity even if they could not define it, had exhibited great alacrity in slapping quarantine on the infected nation. But the fact of great changes was soon plain.

  After dismantling the government of his host, Holt and the technology he embodied had absorbed Libya to the southeast and Algeria to the west. Both had immediately stopped pumping oil. The rest of OPEC, picking up the slack, prevented more than a slight hiccup in the world economy. The closing of these markets to Western goods and the repudiation of foreign debts was actually more troublesome, and corporations agitated for a quick return to normalisation of relations—assuming, of course, that the offending nations could be forced to give up their dangerous new technology.

  Morocco, where Taylor now found himself, entered into the union a year later. Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Sudan followed in short order. Egypt proved more stubborn, but had acquiesced just six months ago. And now, as Taylor had recently read, Israel looked likely to follow.

  These countries, then, made up the strange and unlikely amalgam known, to the Western press at least, as Maxwell’s Land.

  Home to demons.

  * * * *

  Taylor didn’t know what he expected to see as he walked idly through the noisy city. Perhaps alien scenes of unhuman construction, swarms of semi-sentient mechanisms, perhaps upheaval and confusion... Instead, everything appeared utterly mundane. Tangier was in fact flourishing, despite the seemingly airtight trade embargo imposed by the rest of the world.

  He had never visited North Africa before, but a thousand travelogues had prepared him for the innocuous, albeit colourful reality. In the medina, the old town, the soukhs were all busy, heaps of produce and piles of carpets, booths full of brass and basketware, jewellery and clothing, all proudly on display.