The Best of Kage Baker

by Kage Baker

  Meera bit her lip.

  “Go on, go on,” said Crispin. “Who got the part of the Visitor, anyway, did Morton tell us?”

  “Mr. Skousen,” said Meera. “The newsman up here.”

  “Oh, good, at least he’ll know how to read. Go on.”

  “‘These streaks of foam, spreading out to a great distance, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form another, more vast.’ You know what I’d do, if I were you? Talk to some of those hauler people. They go Outside a lot. Mother Griffith was telling me about some of the really dreadful storms.”

  “Oh, yeah, the…Raspberries or something, they call them,” Crispin nodded. “Like what took out that temple. Yes, brilliant. Who’s that big guy who plays my brother, in the boat? Alf. He’s an old-timer here. I’ll buy him a beer or something. Go on, go on.”

  Meera lifted the plaquette. “‘I looked down a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, speeding dizzily around and around with a swaying and sweltering motion, sending forth to the winds an appalling voice. The mountain trembled to its very base. He looks at the Old Man. This, this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom!’ And that’s your cue.”

  Crispin clasped his hands together and gave a shrieking laugh. “‘Ah! I will tell you a story—’ What are you making that face for?”

  “Darling, that was your Spongebob laugh.”

  Crispin scowled, an effect the dental appliances rendered hideous. “No, it wasn’t. It was crazier.” He did it again. “No, you’re right. Sorry.” He gave a sepulchral chuckle instead. “Oh, that’s it. ‘I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something of the Maelstrom!’”

  ***

  “I’d like to thank you all for being here today,” said Mr. Morton, clasping his long white hands. “Especially our stars, who have—ha, ha—truly crossed the heavens to shine here amongst us. But I am positive that each and every one of you will shine in your own proper sphere as we begin our journey toward True Art.”

  “Yaaay!” cried Mona. There was polite applause.

  “Our stars, of course, need no introduction,” Mr. Morton went on. “However, I’d like each of the rest of the cast to stand and have his or her moment in the spotlight. Why don’t we begin Stage Left? That would be you, Alf.”

  “Erm,” said Alf. “Name, Alf Chipping. Dee-oh-bee twentyfree April twenty-two-eighty-free. Patient Number seven-seven-five. Haulers’ Union Member number sixteen.”

  “And…why did you decide to take up acting, Alf?”

  “Like plays,” said Alf.

  “Good for you,” said Crispin.

  Mona stepped forward. “I’m Mona Griffith, and I’m engaged to be married next year, and I’ve always wanted to be a performer. When I was little I used to climb on the table and pretend I was a hologram. I can still sing the Perky Fusion song. Want to hear it? ‘Perky Fusion, he’s the man, Perky Fusion in a can, cleaner source of energy, lights the world for you and me, Perky Fusion one-two-three!”

  “How nice,” said Mr. Morton. “And how about you next, Ms. Hawley?”

  He addressed a girl who looked rather like Joan of Arc, with her shaven head and hyperfocused stare. She stood straight.

  “Exxene Hawley,” she said. “Joined the MAC with my boyfriend. Wanted to make a better world on Mars. He turned out to be a stinking bastard. I said, I’d make my own stinking better world. Left him and the stinking MAC. Now I’m here. It makes as much sense as anything.”

  “And you’re in theater because…?”

  “It’s a good outlet for my issues, innit?”

  “O—kay,” said Mr. Morton. “And so we come to Chiring.” A dapper gentleman rose and flashed them a smile.

  “Chiring Skousen, your News Martian. I’m shooting a documentary on the birth of Theater on Mars.” He waved a hand at the holocams stationed about the room.

  “Which will, no doubt, win him another award from the Nepalese Journalists’ Association,” said Mr. Morton coyly. “Mr. Skousen is our other celebrity, of course, but we knew him when!”

  “And I’ve always cherished a secret ambition to play Edgar Allan Poe,” added Chiring.

  “And so we come to Maurice,” said Mr. Morton, nodding toward that gentleman. He stood and nodded.

  “Maurice Cochevelou,” he said. “I run Griffith Steelworks. Used to do a bit of acting with the Celtic Federation’s National Theater Project. Thought it might be nice to step back on the old boards, you know. Oh, and I’m engaged to be married to Mother Griffith.”

  Someone snickered.

  “Well, I am,” said Mr. Cochevelou plaintively.

  “And there we are,” said Mr. Morton, but Crispin raised his hand.

  “Hey! Everyone else had to stand and face the music. We shouldn’t be exempt!” He rose to his feet and raised his arms at the elbows, holding them out stiffly. “Hey hey, Mr. Korkunov, I’ve had such a busy morning!” he said, in his loudest Brophy the Bear voice. Mona giggled and applauded. “And I’d just like to say that Crispin Delamare is really looking forward to working with you all!”

  He sat down. Meera rose, blushing.

  “I’m Meera Suraiya, and I’m looking forward to working with you too.”

  “And we’re expecting a baby in six months!” said Crispin. Meera put her hands to her face in dismay. To her astonishment, people applauded. She looked around at them all. They were happy for her.

  ***

  “No, nobody thinks anything about it, up here,” said Mother Griffith, as she led them along the corridor. “At least, nobody thinks any harm of it. They do say people aren’t having them now on Earth. I can’t say I’m surprised, with those fines! I had mine in the Celtic Federation, see, when you didn’t need a permit. Different now; shame, but there it is. I wouldn’t go back to Earth if you paid me, indeed.”

  “What do people do for—well, for clothes, and furniture?” inquired Crispin.

  “And nappies?” inquired Meera.

  “Catalogs,” said Mother Griffith. “Or the PX at Settlement Base. For now. Not to worry! Within the twenty-four-month, the boys will have my Market Center finished. It’ll be vast! At last, affordable consumer goods up here at reasonable prices, what a thought, eh? It’ll be even more civilized when your next one comes along.”

  “Next one?” said Meera, in a faint voice. Crispin shrugged.

  “And here we are!” said Mother Griffith proudly, and pulled a lever. With a hiss, the great door before them unsealed and folded back on itself. A rush of air met them, cool and sweet, very like Earth. They stepped through and found themselves on a catwalk, looking out across a gulf of air at a corresponding catwalk on the opposite side. Behind them, the portal hissed shut again. “Griffith Towers!”

  “Brilliant!” said Crispin, going at once to the railing and peering over. Meera followed him and looked down, then quickly backed away. Ten storeys below was an open atrium with a fountain, and little green things dotted here and there. Immediately above them was a modest dome, letting in the light of day.

  “That’s a rose garden down there,” said Mother Griffith, in satisfaction. “Trees, too, would you believe it? No expense spared. Can’t wait to see what the American Sequoia will do in our gravity. I know it doesn’t look like much now, dears, but give it a few seasons.”

  “Oh, no, it’s very nice,” said Crispin, and Meera conquered her fear of heights enough to take a second look. She had to admit the place showed promise; while most of it was cast concrete, in pink and terracotta hues, the floors were cut and polished stone of an oxblood color. There was a great deal of ornamental wrought iron on all the balconies, and hanging baskets that were clearly meant to contain plants one day. Green flowering creepers, perhaps,

  in all that wrought iron, level after level descending…

  The image of the Maelstrom came into her mind, the whirling vortex. Meera pulled back and gasped out, “Griffith Towers, you said. Will there be floors added
going upward?”

  “Lady bless you, no, dear! Far too dangerous, even when we get the Great Dome finished. Couldn’t very well call it Griffith Hole-in-the-Ground, though, could we? It’ll be nicer when the workmen’s gear isn’t lying all about,” conceded Mother Griffith. “You’ll have some noise to put up with for a few more months, but it’ll all be finished by the time the baby comes. Your place is done, though. Come and see.”

  She led them along the catwalk to a door, beside which was the first window they had seen on Mars, something like a large porthole. Mother Griffith rapped on it with her knuckles.

  “Expect you never thought you’d see one of these again, eh? Triple-glazed Ferroperspex. Anything happens to the dome, you’ll still be safe inside. As long as you don’t open the bloody door, of course,” she added cheerfully, and palmed the via panel. The door opened for them. “Got to program in your handprints before we leave, do remind me.”

  They stepped through, and the lights came on to reveal a snug, low-ceilinged room. It had plenty of built-in shelves, though the phrase was more correctly cast-ins; everything was made of the ubiquitous pink cement, polished to a gloss, from the entertainment console to the continuous bench that ran around the walls. There wasn’t a stick of wood in evidence anywhere. The few pieces of freestanding furniture were made of wrought iron. An attempt had been made to add warmth, in the big oriental rug on the floor and in the bright cushions on the bench.

  “Front parlor,” announced Mother Griffith. “Kitchen and bath through there—yes, a real private bath, with running hot water and all! Everything state of the art, see? And bedrooms off here—this one we made adjoining, thought you’d want that for the nursery. Come and see.”

  Each room had a sealed airlock rather than a door. They stepped through into the bedroom and stared; for the bed was sunk into a recess in the floor, under a transparent dome of its own.

  “More state of the art,” said Mother Griffith. “Anything happens, your own little dome keeps you safe with your own oxygen supply.”

  “‘Anything happens’? What’s likely to happen?” asked Crispin.

  “Oh, nothing very much, nowadays,” said Mother Griffith, with a wave of her hand. “Once the Great Dome’s finished, I don’t expect there’ll be many emergencies. If we get another Strawberry it can’t flatten the place—that’s the clever part of building underground, see? Though it might dash a boulder or two against the atrium dome, so it’s best to take precautions. And it’s five years now since we had an asteroid strike, and that was way out in Syrtis Major, so—”

  “Asteroid strike?”

  “Scarcely ever happens,” said Mother Griffith quickly. “We never waste time worrying about ’em, and you needn’t either. And aren’t they building a whole series of orbiting gun platforms up there, and bases on Phobos and Deimos to boot, all manned with clever lads who’ll pot the nasty things off with lasers to some other trajectory, if they don’t blow them up entirely? They are indeed.

  “No, the only real inconvenience is the dust. There’s a lot of dust.”

  “But,” said Meera, “Just supposing for a moment, that an asteroid did hit—say it plummeted right through the atrium dome!”

  “We’d lose the rose garden,” said Mother Griffith. “And I suppose anyone who’d been silly enough to be down there without a mask on, but that’s Evolution in Action, as we’re fond of saying up here. You’d be snug in here with your door sealed, I expect.”

  “But we’d be trapped!” said Crispin.

  “Not a bit of it! There’s a hatch in the kitchen, opens out on the maintenance crawlway. Leads straight back to the Empress of Mars, so you’d just stroll up and have a pint while the Emergency Team dealt with things. What, were you expecting aliens with steel teeth lurking round the water pipes? Not a bit of it; only alien you’ll see is the fellow in the Tars Tarkas costume on Barsoom Day, bringing presents for the kiddies,” said Mother Griffith firmly. “Come now, have a look at the nursery.”

  ***

  Meera waited offstage with Exxene and Mona, the three of them in matching black leotards. They were growing slightly bored, waiting as they had been for fifteen minutes. Across from them they could see Alf and Cochevelou, waiting for their cues, sitting quietly in a pair of folding chairs.

  “I don’t see why we couldn’t have done it live,” Mona complained. “I take really good care of my singing voice, you know? I could do it night after night. I’d be loud enough, too.”

  “He couldn’t have put in his special effects then, could he?” said Exxene. “We’ll be louder. Scarier. Inhuman, like.”

  Meera shifted uncomfortably. Her leotard was a little tight. She wondered how much the baby showed. It was hard to think of herself as a scary, inhuman force of nature with a baby.

  “I heard the first edit,” she said. “It’s wonderful. He’s mixed in all kinds of sound effects, bits of music—all distorted so you can’t quite recognize them, you know—and then our voices come in on the Philip Glass piece and we sound quite unearthly.”

  “I guess it’s okay, then,” said Mona. Exxene stamped her feet in impatience and did a back bend.

  “When’s this Poe going to get his arse in gear?” she muttered. Mr. Morton entered from Stage Right, waving his hands.

  “Sorry! Sorry, all! Mr. Skousen is ready. Places, if you please.”

  Meera focused and thought of herself as a deadly goddess, a creature of the storm, a wall of water black as jet, devouring…or an asteroid approaching through the black cold infinity of space…Here came Mr. Skousen in makeup as Edgar Allen Poe, and she was appalled at the thought of how much white pancake foundation they must have had to use. He had poise, though, and the big sad dark eyes for the role; walked sedately to his mark, turned his little Hitler mustache to the audience and said:

  “‘You must get over these fancies,’ said my guide.”

  “Your cue, Mr. Delamare,” said Mr. Morton. Crispin, in full makeup, came bounding out, rubbing his hands.

  “For I have brought you here that I might tell you the whole story as it happened, with the spot just under your eye!” he cackled, leaping so high he almost collided with the holo rig.

  Meera winced. Mr. Morton pulled his white hands up to his mouth, as though he were about to stifle a scream of dismay; but he made no sound. Mr. Skousen, visibly startled, turned to stare.

  “Look out, from this mountain upon which we stand, look out beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the seaaaa!” Crispin declaimed. Mona stifled a giggle. Mr. Skousen cleared his throat, not quite suggesting disapproval.

  “I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean,” he said. “A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horribly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for ever.” He spoke in clear, somber and entirely appropriate tones.

  Mr. Morton forgot to cue the music, but the stage manager—Mona’s betrothed, who had cleverly traded shifts with another miner so he could keep an eye on her—remembered anyway, and switched on the sound.

  A menacing drone filled the air, disturbing currents of Bach’s Fugue in G, eddies of electronically modified voices.

  “Oh, wow, is that us?” said Mona.

  “We sound good,” said Exxene in surprise.

  “Ladies, that’s our cue,” Meera reminded them, and they processed out from the wings, looking baleful as the three witches in the Scottish Play, seductive as the mermaids in Peter Pan, deadly as the Guardswomen in Sheeratu. They prowled together in a tight circle upstage, and Exxene in particular got an unsettling light in her eye.

  “I’m going to kill somebody,” she said sotto voce.

  “That’s the spirit,” said Meera, resolving to keep well out of arm’s reach of her.

&nb
sp; They walked on, round and round, in a silence that deepened.

  “Line?” said Crispin at last.

  “Do you hear anyfing, do you see any change in da water,” said Alf helpfully.

  “Do you hear anything?” said Crispin, lurching up to Mr. Skousen and jerking at his sleeve. “Do you see any change in the water?”

  “Crumbs!” said Mona, sincerely shocked. “He’s awful!”

  “Oh, dear, Mr. Delamare,” said Mr. Morton, “Mr. Delamare—I am afraid—this is not quite what I had in mind.”

  “Sorry?” Crispin straightened up. “Oh. Too broad, isn’t it? I can tone it down a little.”

  “Yes, please,” said Mr. Morton. “Go on. Your line, Chiring.”

  Mr. Skousen drew a breath and said:

  “As the old man spoke, I became aware of a vast and gradually increasing sound.”

  Mr. Morton waved distractedly, and Durk raised the volume on the music. Mulet’s Thou Art the Rock was briefly recognizable. Mr. Skousen raised his voice:

  “The vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing—prodigious streaks of foam gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging eastward. These streaks of foam, spreading out to a great distance, took unto themselves the…er…”

  “Jyartry motion of da subsided votrices,” said Alf.

  “Thank you. Took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form another, more vast.

  “I looked down a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, speeding dizzily around and around with a swaying and sweltering motion, sending forth to the winds an appalling voice. The mountain trembled to its very base.”

  Mr. Skousen looked at Crispin, and cried: “This, this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom!”

  Crispin leaned in and, with his very, very worst Spongebob titter, said “I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something of the Maelstrom! Ha-ha-ha!”