Desolation Road dru-1

by Ian McDonald

  11

  On the first day of spring in the year Two, the Babooshka and Grandfather Haran were married under a cottonwood tree in Dr. Alimantando’s garden. The day was clear and crisp and blue, as befitted the first day of spring. But most days were clear and crisp and blue in Desolation Road. Dr. Alimantando officiated, Rael Mandella was best man, Eva Mandella and little Taasmin were attendants-of-honour, and Mikal Margolis willingly gave the bride away.

  “You must give your dear mother away,” twittered the Babooshka on their only meeting since their arrival in Desolation Road.

  “Me, Mother? Surely you could have found someone better?”

  “I tried, Mishka, I tried, but it would not have been honourable for anyone but a son to give his dear, worn-out mother to be married. So you must give me away.”

  Mikal Margolis had never been able to say no to his mother. He consented, despite Persis Tatterdemalion’s scorn at his weakness and his mother’s parting words to him.

  “Oh, and don’t forget, Mishka, this is your mother’s special day and I don’t want it spoiled by having that cheap woman of easy virtue around, do you understand?”

  So Persis Tatterdemalion was kept well to the back as Dr. Alimantando read the service. He had written it himself. He thought it sounded very well. Dr. Alimantando liked to think he had a good reading voice. After all the reading and the signing, the exchanging of rings and the crowning of the heads, there was the party.

  It was the first party in the history of Desolation Road, and because of that, it was to be the best. Whole lambs were roasted over pits of glowing charcoal, trays of luocoum and stuffed dates circulated for the nibblesome, great vats of matoke and couscous steamed, and glasses of cool fruit punch eased the revellers’ throats. Sweets were tied with ribbons to the branches of the cottonwood tree, and the children jumped up and pulled them down. Limaal and Taasmin, little lithe monkeys of children, soon ate themselves sick on milk-candy angels. Blubbery Johnny Stalin, despite an advantage of age, pulled down none and whined disgustingly under a table for the rest of the afternoon.

  When the first stars penetrated the dome of night, paper lanterns were lit in the trees and little cages containing live glowbeetles suspended from the branches. The children poked the beetles into activity with long straws, and it was as if a galaxy of soft green stars had fallen out of the moonring and caught in the branches of the trees. Then came the most wonderful event of the evening. Rajandra Das and Ed Gallacelli wheeled in the big wireless they had secretly built for the wedding out of one of Rael Mandella’s packing cases. Rajandra Das bowed lavishly and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, happy couple, dear friends, let the dancing begin! Let the music play!”

  Ed Gallacelli twiddled the tuning knob and there was music-scratchy, distant, poorly tuned, but music. The revellers held their breath in expectation. Rajandra Das touched his charmed fingers to the tuning knob, the wireless gave an audible sigh of ecstasy, and the music flooded out; strong, insistent, foot-itchy music. There were cheers. There was applause.

  “Shall we dance?” said Grandfather Haran to his bride. The Babooshka dimpled and curtsied. Then Grandfather Haran seized her up and in a moment they were whirling in a bluster of petticoats and hand-sewn silk across the foot-pounded earth. Inspired by the example, everyone found partners and danced danced danced to the earthy, gutsy music of Western Solstice Landing. Dr. Alimantando led Eva Mandella in a ponderous, stately folkdance from his home land of Deuteronomy. Ever fearful of his mother’s censure, Mikal Margolis danced with Marya Quinsana, who smiled and moved her body against his in such a way that he danced the rest of the night with a painful erection. The Stalins and the Tenebraes danced with their appropriate partners and commented on the ungainliness and clumsiness of their enemies, though Genevieve Tenebrae had one quick swirl with Mr. Jericho, who she thought was wonderfully quick on his feet. Jilted for the night, Persis Tatterdemalion danced with each of the Gallacelli brothers in turn and saw the same face so many times that she felt she had been dancing with the same man all night. Limaal and Taasmin Mandella pranced about with each other with unflagging energy and Johnny Stalin sneaked about, helping himself to leftovers.

  They danced and they danced and they danced under the hasty moons until the radio announcer said that the station was going off the air now and he wished everyone a good night.

  “Good night!” said everyone.

  “Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” said the wireless.

  And everyone had had a good night.

  “The best night,” said Rajandra Das to Mr. Jericho as they stumbled drunkenly toward their respective beds. And all the Exalted Ancestors agreed.

  Marriage was beautiful for the Babooshka and Grandfather Haran, and all who saw them felt the aura of love that surrounded them when they were together and were made joyful. Yet the couple’s joy was not full, for there was a shadow in the heart of it. That shadow had been spoken into the world by the Babooshka one night, wrapped up against the chill evening in her scarlet flannel pyjamas.

  “Haran, I wish to have a child.”

  Grandfather Haran choked on his hot chocolate.

  “What?”

  “Why can’t we have a child, dear husband? A little, perfect child.”

  “Woman, be serious. We are too old for children.”

  “But Haran, this is the Twelfth Decade, miracles are happening every day. This is the age of the possible, so we are told, so it is possible for us, not so? Tell me, my man, do you want a child?”

  “Well… it would be lovely, but…”

  “Husband, it is what I am living for! Ah, to be a wife is wonderful, but to be a mother too! Haran, tell me, if I can find a way for us to bear children, will you agree to us having a child? Will you?”

  Thinking this, wrongly, to be a passing whim of a recently-wed wife, Grandfather Haran set down his mug, rolled over in his bed, and growled, “Of course, dearest, of course.” He was soon asleep. The Babooshka sat up in bed until the dawn came. Her eyes were bright and twinkling as garnets.

  12

  There was very little in Desolation Road that missed the attention of Limaal and Taasmin Mandella. Even before Dr. Alimantando, besieged by algebra in his weather-room, had turned his opticon upon it, the twins had spotted the plume of dust on the edge of the other half of the world beyond the tracks. They rushed to tell Dr. Alimantando. Since their true grandfather’s marriage, Dr. Alimantando had become a much more satisfactory grandfather figure, a grandfather with a touch of the wizard in him, kindly, but a little awesome. Dr. Alimantando heard Limaal and Taasmin clattering up the winding staircase and was happy. He rather enjoyed being a grandfather.

  Through the opticon the plume of dust took on the shape of a paisleypatterned caterpillar, which under increased magnification was seen to be a truck and two trailers, advancing at great speed across the dry plains.

  “Look,” said Dr. Alimantando, pointing at the display screen. “What does that say?”

  “ROTECH,” said Limaal, in whom the seeds of rationalism were germinating.

  “Heart of Lothian: Genetic Education,” said Taasmin, similarly cursed with mystery.

  “Let’s go and meet this Heart of Lothian, shall we?” suggested Dr. Alimantando. The children took his hands, Limaal right, Taasmin left, and dragged him down the steep, winding stairs and out into the scalding sunlight of fourteen minutes of fourteen. The rest of the population had preceded them but lacking their titular head they did not know what to do and stood about uncertainly, slightly in awe of the word ROTECH on the front of the paisley-patterned tractor. A huge round woman with a face like a potato was handing out business cards.

  “Welcome to Desolation Road,” said Dr. Alimantando, bowing correctly. The children aped his actions.

  “Alimantando.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said the big big woman. She spoke with a curious accent that nobody could quite place. “Heart of Lothian: genetic engineer, hybridization consultant, eugenic education o
fficer for ROTECH. Thank you.” She bowed her ponderous bulk to Dr. Alimantando, Limaal, and Taasmin in turn. “One thing,” she said, “this place doesn’t show up on any of the maps… you sure you’re registered with the Bureau of Development?”

  “Well,” said Dr. Alimantando, “er…”

  “Doesn’t matter,” boomed Heart of Lothian. “Run into them all the time. I’ll sort it out with the boys in China Mountain when I get back. Happens all the time, but it’s no skin off my nose. Here…” She handed them each a business card and shouted in a voice like a thunderstorm, “The cards you’re holding entitle you to one free admission, with glass of wine, to Heart of Lothian’s Travelling Genetic Education Show: all the wonders of today’s biotechnology made available to you, at no cost, through the generosity of ROTECH’s regional development council. Roll up, roll up! bring the family, old and young, man and boy, come one, come all and see how ROTECH can help your plantation, your garden, your orchard, your pastureland, your livestock, your fatstock, your birds beasts and bushes, all at the Great PaisleyPattern Biotechnology Show. Doors open twenty o’clock. First ten get free ROTECH badges, stickers and posters. Hats for the kiddies and everyone gets a free glass of wine. Then,” she added with a twinkle in her eye, “I’ll show you how I make it.”

  At twenty hours every man, woman and child in Desolation Road was standing in line outside Heart of Lothian’s travelling show. It had somehow unfolded from a tractor and two trailers into a blossom of paisley-patterned canvas and flashing neon lights. A tethered helium balloon hovered a hundred metres overhead, trailing a long banner proclaiming the glories of Heart of Lothian’s Travelling Genetic Education Show. Loudspeakers poured out fast foot-twitching dance music. Everyone was very excited, not on account of the benefits their smallholdings might reap (Rael Mandella was growing increasingly worried at the depletion of his germ bank and the resulting inbreeding of the town’s livestock), but because in a place of ten houses, where even the arrival of the weekly train was an event, the advent of a travelling show was only a little less awesome than if the Panarch and all the hosts of the Five Heavens had marched over Desolation Road to the sound of flutes and drums.

  At twenty minutes of twenty Heart of Lothian threw the doors open and the people streamed in in a jostling, elbowing mass. Everyone got a bag of mixed ROTECH goodies: given Desolation Road’s tiny population, to limit the largesse to the first ten would have been unjust. Glasses of wine in hand, the people beheld the wonders of ROTECH’s genetic science. They were amazed by the fertility hormones that enabled a goat to give birth to as many as eight kids at one time; they marveled at the clone-kits that could grow live chickens out of nothing but eggshells and feathers; they oohed and ahhed at the growth accelerators that could bring any living thing, vegetable or animal (even human, said Heart of Lothian), to full maturity in a couple of days; they wondered at the engineered bacteria which could eat rock, make plastic, cure plant diseases, generate methane gas, and produce iron from sand; they goggled at Heart of Lothian’s fermentory, a great bag of blue artificial flesh that digested any form of household waste and bled red, white or rose wine on demand from its nipples; and they crept timorously into the darkened room marked Monster Mash and pretended to be offended by the genetic mish-mashs that lurked, roared or slithered within their protective environments. Decked out in orange paper caps printed with the word ROTECH and the nine-spoked Catherine wheel symbol in black, Limaal, Taasmin, and Johnny Stalin stayed there for hours, taunting the agapanthas to snap their metre-wide jaws and the dragons to puff little balls of witchfire. Finally Heart of Lothian herself had to throw them out when she found Limaal and Taasmin trying to force Johnny Stalin through the gas lock into the piranha bats’ low temperature cage.

  The people stayed late, very late for farming folk who rose and set with the sun. They asked questions, placed orders, lifted armfuls of the abundant free literature, and drank down glass after glass of Heart of Lothian’s excellent red, white or rose. Rael Mandella bought a job lot of germ plasm ("guaranteed stronger and healthier,” said Heart of Lothian) to replenish his failing stock. The Gallacelli brothers, too much red, white and rose in them, asked Heart of Lothian if she could engineer for each of them the same wife, perfect in every physical detail. Heart of Lothian laughed them out of her office but told them to come back after the show was folded up if they wanted to sample the perfection of her own ample flesh. Mr. Jericho and his Exalted Ancestors engaged her in stimulating and high-flown conversation for over an hour, Meredith Blue Mountain bought some bacterial treatment for his potatoes, Tenebraes and Stalins obtained various breeds of huge and disgusting slugs to use against each other’s gardens, Persis Tatterdemalion put down an order for a garbage-eating home winery (even though the Great Paisley-Pattern Biotech Show had reminded her sadly of the lamented Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar), and last of all came the Babooshka.

  The neons had all flickered out, the awnings and paisley-patterned tents were folding back into the trailers, the Gallacelli brothers lurking unnecessarily under a wind-pump, and the stars shining bright when the Babooshka came to Heart of Lothian.

  “Madam, I have seen your wonders and your marvels, and yes, they are indeed wonderful and marvellous, the things that can be done these days, but I am wondering, madam, if it is possible for all this science and technology to give me what I want most in all the world, and that is a child.”

  Heart of Lothian, great earth-mother of a woman, studied the Babooshka, small, tough as a desert sparrow.

  “Lady, there is no way you can bear a child. No way at all. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have one. It would have to be gestated out of the body, and I could do that by adapting one of my stock placentories, a bovine one, probably; cows used to commonly be used for surrogating human babies, did you know that? I could fertilize the egg in vitro, elementary stuff, you could even do it yourself; I should be able to find an egg in you somewhere; failing that, I could splice up some cell samples… your husband, is he still potent?” “Pardon?”

  “Could I get a sperm sample off him, lady?”

  “That is for him to say. But tell me, it is possible to give me a child?”

  “Entirely so. Genetically, it will be yours, even though it will be impossible for you to bear it within you. If you want to go ahead with it, come and see me tomorrow, at nineteen, with your husband.”

  “Madam, you are a treasure.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  The Babooshka crept away into the night and the Gallacelli brothers crept in out of the night. No one saw either the goings or the comings.

  Likewise, no one saw the Babooshka three days later carrying home the placentory in a Belden jar.

  “Husband Haran, we have our child!” she sighed, and swept off the discreet covering cloth to reveal the pulpy red pulsing thing in its glass jar.

  “That, that, that… abortion, is our child?” roared Haran Mandella, reaching for a stout stick to smash the unclean thing. The Babooshka interposed herself between the outraged husband and the wet, sucking artificial womb.

  “Haran Mandella, husband, that is my child, more dear to me than anything in this world, and if you so much as lay one finger upon this jar without my consent, I will walk away and never come back.”

  Grandfather Haran’s resolve wavered. The stick quivered in his hand. The Babooshka stood before him, small and defiant as a blackbird. She sang him down.

  “She will be beautiful, our child, she will dance, she will sing, she will make the world bright with her beauty, our child; the child of Haran and Anastasia Tyurischeva Mandella.” Grandfather Haran put the stick back in its stand and went to bed. In the window, where the dawning light could nourish it, the placentory belched and pulsed.

  But the Babooshka’s midnight skulkings had not gone entirely unnoticed. Since they had heard that the Stalins were taking delivery of an order of huge and disgusting slugs from Heart of Lothian, the Tenebraes had been on constant guard against slu
g forays by their enemies. On the night the Babooshka took possession of the blastocyte, Genevieve had been on slug watch. She had seen the old woman and the bundle in her arms and she had known with a sure and certain insight the exact nature of the Babooshka’s business with Heart of Lothian. And her own heart had crazed and cracked in envy.

  Genevieve Tenebrae did not trust her husband. She did not trust him because he refused to give her a child, the child which would have bound her family into a tight Gordian knot of cosiness, the child which would have made her the equal of those damned snobbish Stalins, and what had they to be so damn proud of anyway when their only son was a fat tub of lard, precocious, bad-tempered and spoiled to the point of ruination. A child would give Genevieve Tenebrae everything she wanted, but a child Gaston Tenebrae would never give her.

  “A child, a child, all I want is a child, why will you not give me one?” she would nag every day and every day Gaston Tenebrae would proffer some flimsy excuse, some thin tissue of fabrications that reduced down to selfishness, yes selfishness, pure and simple, and now here was this crone, this hag, this womb-withered Mandella-by-marriage who had a child she was physically incapable of bearing and here was she with a womb as fertile as Oxus Blacksoil, but no seed to sprout in it; it wasn’t fair; no, not at all, and then the idea came to her as she hid in a dump of dwarf matoke bushes on slug watch, the idea, the terrible wonderful idea.

  The next morning while the whole settlement was waving off Heart of Lothian, waving her back to China Mountain, and the official blessing of ROTECH upon their town, Genevieve Tenebrae slipped into the annex to the Mandella house that the Babooshka and Grandfather Haran inhabited. The placentory quivered and pulsed on the window ledge. She approached it with distaste and determination. From out of her bag she drew a biological support jar given to her husband by Rael Mandella. A few minutes messy, fishsmelly work and she was gone again in a cloud of dust and guilt, the jar pressed close to her heart, the tiny blastocyte turning pale, blind cartwheels within. So that the absence of the foetus might not be noticed, she had slipped an underripe mango into the artificial womb.