Globalhead

by Bruce Sterling

  Despite the impressive scale of their labors, most of the work was cosmetic: painting, trimming, adornment. There remained two vital structural activities: the completion of the fifteenth anterior buttress, and the sealing of the Great Dome.

  Rodolphe, munching a pastry, went to inspect the buttress. Rooted in bedrock and surrounded by trampled mud, the great structure was lashed in a towering framework of tarred cordage and graying lumber.

  All last month there had been a critical shortage of decent brick. It had slowed work on the buttress, which had to be completed before the Great Dome could be trusted to bear the weight of its capstone.

  Mysteriously, today there were several hundredweight of bricks, heaped carelessly nearby, on the muddied grass. Rodolphe studied them, nonplussed.

  “Where is the night watchman?” he called.

  A foreman sent a messenger to fetch the man. The night watchman came slithering downward from the heights of the buttress, on a knotted rope. He leapt from a final catwalk, landed in the mud with a splash, and capered barefoot to Rodolphe’s side.

  The night watchman wore a thick moldy coat and baggy trousers, gone ragged at elbows and knees. A puckered leather cap was slung over his dented, shaggy head. He was almost dwarfish, his spine oddly bent; but his huge hands and feet were gnarled and muscular.

  “Good morning, Hugo,” Rodolphe said.

  “Good morning to you, Monsieur Rodolphe!”

  “Who brought these bricks last night?”

  “Bricks?” Hugo growled. He stared at them, rubbing his chin, his ugly head cocked sideways.

  Rodolphe waited patiently. The unfortunate Hugo had never been quick, but even a man of subnormal, childish intelligence could win his way to an odd kind of wisdom, in a lifespan of centuries.

  “I don’t know,” Hugo confessed at last.

  “Come now,” Rodolphe said. “Nothing within this building site escapes your notice, Hugo! You must have seen someone arrive last night. Look, there are cart tracks.”

  Hugo yanked a brick from the heap, weighed it in one hand, sniffed it, touched it to his tongue. “These are city bricks,” he pronounced. “They have the smell of Paysage.” He looked up, blinking. “It is demolition work. Fresh.”

  “Well, that’s helpful information,” Rodolphe said. “If we find an injured building in the city, then we have our unwanted benefactors. But I ordered no demolition, and expected none. I fear some mischief was committed to obtain these bricks. Why didn’t you see these people, Hugo?”

  Hugo jerked his dirty thumb toward the distant scaffolding ringing the Great Dome. That was where Hugo stayed, most nights; high above Paysage, crouched under a flapping tarpaulin.

  “Last night there were screams,” Hugo said. “Strange noises in the sky, the sound of many wings.” Hugo reached into one vast pocket of his baggy trousers. “And this morning I found this, Monsieur Rodolphe!” He pulled out the limp corpse of a large bird.

  A closer look showed it was not a true bird, but some kind of feathered animal. This dead creature had sharp conical teeth in its beak, and scaly claws at the joints of its wings. Its green and yellow feathers were loosely socketed in a tough gray hide.

  It seemed to have broken its long snaky neck, colliding with a scaffold pole, in the darkness. Blood had clotted at its yellow nostril holes, and it stank like a snake, a sharp reptilian reek.

  “What on earth is this creature?” Rodolphe said.

  Hugo shrugged. “I have never seen one.”

  “Never, in your long life? Then they must be rare, Hugo.”

  “There was a large flock of them, monsieur. They were very loud in their cries and rustling. They stopped here to roost. Then they flew off—south, I think.”

  “It’s some queer beast from the deep wilderness,” Rodolphe said. “A creation of the Conventions. What are they resurrecting now, I wonder?” He looked at Hugo sharply. “Were there machines inside it?”

  Hugo shook his head. “I did not cut it open to look, monsieur. It smells very bad.”

  “Well, it’s no use looking for devices now,” Rodolphe said. “If they wanted to hide their cunning little nano-gnats, we would never find them. We would never know … the Conventions are mysterious. It is the nature of Conventionality, I suppose. But I don’t like mysteries, Hugo. Not here, within our very walls!”

  Hugo smiled shyly, as if it were all somehow his fault. “This has happened before, monsieur. We have had other birds. I remember, when the third minaret was completed …”

  “When was that? How many years, Hugo?”

  “I don’t count years, Monsieur Rodolphe. But Pay-sage was happy that night. We lit great fireworks in celebration. Many ducks flying from the wilderness were dazzled and blinded … We gathered them in the morning and made fine pies from them.” Hugo rubbed his stomach with a leer.

  Rodolphe sighed. “I hate it when things like this happen. I like things to make proper sense.”

  “You are young,” Hugo observed. He stuffed the creature back into his pocket. “May I go now?”

  “Yes, very well … Wait a moment. What’s all this now?”

  There was a sharp disturbance near the gate. Raised voices, an angry scuffle. Frowning, Rodolphe hurried toward it.

  A table suddenly flew upward, pastry plates and coffee tureens catapulting through the air. Rodolphe broke into a run.

  Five men of the work crew were struggling with an intruder. They had tackled him and flung him to the earth, and an angry crowd was quickly gathering, clutching shovels and brick hods.

  A tremendous bestial roar rang out, echoing from the Enantiodrome’s stone walls. Another table flew into the air with a tumbling lurch and a smash. Workers backed away, stumbling and dropping their impromptu weapons.

  A huge furred monster reared up above the crowd, jaws agape and roaring. It sat on its haunches, its long clawed arms swiping loosely at the air. Its teeth were like ivory chisels. It was a great brown bear.

  Rodolphe ran headlong through the crowd, shouting and waving his arms. “Let him go, you fools! Release that man!”

  Shouting orders, Rodolphe fought his way into the struggle. He wrenched their hands away from the invader’s gaunt naked limbs. The man collapsed, trembling.

  He was a Wild Man. A hairy, filthy Conventional, a savage of the woods.

  The crowd was trying to keep the Wild Man’s bear at bay, feinting at it timidly with shovels and crowbars. “Leave it alone!” Rodolphe shouted. “Can’t you see this man belongs to that creature?”

  The crowd protested. “But he’s a savage!” “A dirty spy!” Rodolphe saw that the loudest shouter was Mercier, one of his most trusted foremen. Mercier’s face, normally placid and sensible, was beet red now, congested with instinctive hatred.

  Rodolphe was loath to touch a Wild Man, but he forced himself to act, and hastily dragged the disgusting wretch to his feet. “I’ll take care of this matter personally!” he shouted. “Clear a way for us there! Mercier, get a grip on yourself, for God’s sake! You must take charge here, in my absence.”

  Mercier blinked. As Rodolphe had hoped, the sudden weight of responsibility brought Mercier to his senses. “All right, Rodolphe.”

  Rodolphe turned away. “Be careful of that beast, you fools! Don’t try to annoy it!”

  The Wild Man half-flung his stinking arm over Rodolphe’s shoulder, sagging against him. Rodolphe, wincing, hauled the Wild Man away toward the gate. The bear shambled up quickly at their heels, growling and pausing to snap at a hoe handle. Rodolphe looked over his shoulder; Mercier was calming the crowd.

  “You disgust me!” Rodolphe hissed at the Wild Man. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sorry,” the Wild Man muttered.

  “It’s bad enough when we see one of you people in the common street! Don’t you know that this building is a special place for this city? You have the whole outside world for your demented wanderings …” Rodolphe hauled the stumbling Wild Man through the gate and into the street.
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  A few of the angriest workers followed them past the gate, shouting and waving their tools. Most of them stopped within the site, gawking, and even laughing nervously, now that the trouble was over.

  Rodolphe hustled the hobbling Wild Man half a block down the street, then dashed across it, into an alleyway.

  They staggered down the alley, and past a turn, out of public sight. Then the Wild Man’s legs seemed to give out; he sat in a doorway with a groan, and cradled his tangled, shaggy head in his hands.

  The bear shouldered its way past Rodolphe, slinking up with its huge blunt skull held low. The bear sniffed at the Wild Man’s bruises, and licked at a bloody scrape.

  Rodolphe wiped his hands with a kerchief. “There are laws here, you know,” he said. “We could arrest you! Throw you out—or even put you in prison!”

  The Wild Man looked up pitifully. “Rodolphe! It’s me.”

  Rodolphe stared at him in horrified alarm. “Dad?”

  “No, I’m not your father, you fool! It’s me, your old friend, Charles!” The Wild Man brushed his tangled hair back from his cheeks. “Look!”

  “Charles!” Rodolphe said. “So it is! But you’re so … so thin and filthy …”

  “You get used to it,” Charles muttered. He wiped his mouth, and spat. “I didn’t know you would make such a fuss! When I ran the Enantiodrome, we used to let Wild Men in to see the work. Why, we were proud to show it!”

  “That was years ago, Charles!”

  Charles shrugged his bony shoulders. “I suppose it was …”

  “We simply can’t let you in there now. The Enantiodrome is almost finished. It’s important.”

  “ ‘Important.’ Yes, that’s just what I used to think.” Charles sighed. “I couldn’t believe that it was almost done, though. Completed, at long last … I had to see it, Rodolphe, see it with my own eyes.”

  Rodolphe nodded slowly. Despite himself, he was touched. Even in his pathetic indecent exile, poor Charles was still drawn by the fine old loyalties. “How did you learn the news?”

  “A little bird told me,” Charles said, without any trace of irony. He got shakily to his feet, which were wrapped in hairy moccasins. “And it’s true, Rodolphe—it’s almost done! It’s beautiful, isn’t it? And I’m such a mess. Sorry. This isn’t easy for me, you know.”

  “We must get you away from here,” Rodolphe said. “Out of the public street. We’ll go to my apartments.”

  Charles shuddered slightly. “I’d be just as happy to stay in the open air. Walls and roofs are so confining.”

  “Nonsense. We’ll take the back streets … Can you walk? Are you badly hurt?”

  “No,” Charles said. He looked at a swelling bruise with indifference. “It’s all right.”

  The bear suddenly spoke up. Its lips writhed and a long chain of guttural muttering came from its hairy throat. Rodolphe stared at it, his skin crawling.

  “This is Baltimore, my domestic,” Charles said. “He says not to be frightened. You can ride on his back if you like.”

  “No thank you,” Rodolphe said.

  Charles climbed lithely onto the bear’s shoulders. “Don’t be upset, Rodolphe. You’ve seen domestics before.”

  “Of course. My old parents had domestics,” Rodolphe said. “Horses. Rather more normal-looking creatures.” He paused. “It still bothers me to see a wild animal talk.”

  “He’s not an animal,” Charles said, without rancor. “He’s an instrument of the Conventions. The Conventions sent me a bear, once my inner mind had …” Charles seemed to choke on his words. “I mean, after I left this city. It might have been a horse instead, but a bear better suited my … my ‘temperament,’ is the term you might use.” Charles shook his head in confusion. “It’s hard to explain to you, in a way you can understand. But Baltimore looks after me. That’s all. He won’t hurt you, Rodolphe.”

  “Good,” Rodolphe said.

  “It’s not so strange,” Charles said vaguely. “A bear as a domestic, I mean. There’s a very old man in China whose domestic is a bed of ants. He has a …” Charles paused and swallowed, his eyes gone distant. “He has a very big soul.”

  “That’s just fine, Charles,” Rodolphe soothed. “Come along with me now. Quickly.”

  “I can talk, you know,” Charles said. The bear carried him easily, lumbering along at Rodolphe’s heels. “I just have trouble speaking in a manner you can comprehend.” They left the alley, and dodged across a street lined with shops, to the frowning alarm of passers-by. “My ways of thought have changed so much …” Charles continued blithely. “That’s what we do, Rodolphe. Talk about thinking. And think about talking.”

  “I know, Charles. That was always what most disgusted me about Conventionality.”

  Wild People were rare in Paysage. There were always a few of them, however, blundering in for their own inscrutable reasons: nostalgia perhaps, or some silent urge to make their obnoxious presence felt. Those who lingered were thrown out of town by the city police. And the same would soon be true of Charles, if he wasn’t hidden somehow.

  Rodolphe did not bring up this topic. He knew it would not be much use. It was always hard to talk straightforward common sense to the wretches. Decent people simply shunned them. It saved a lot of trouble, all around.

  Rodolphe hurried home, trying to maintain his dignity under the accusing stares of fellow citizens. At last, Rodolphe urged Charles and his monstrous escort up his apartment stairs. Two of the stairs cracked loudly under the beast’s great hind paws.

  Rodolphe managed to get the bear settled into a corner of his sitting room, where the floor joists groaned ominously under its weight.

  Charles sat wearily on a canary yellow chaise lounge. “Get up!” Rodolphe snapped. “Look what you’ve done to that upholstery … my wife sewed that herself!”

  “Sorry,” Charles muttered, brushing ruefully at the stained fabric. “I didn’t mean to make any trouble. You should have left me at the building site.”

  “Not in your condition. It’s simply impossible!”

  “I want to see it, Rodolphe. I gave years to the great work. I have a right.”

  “We can talk about that, when you look like a decent human being again,” Rodolphe said. He marched Charles into the bathroom.

  Rodolphe lugged in towels and a tin kettle of steaming hot water. On his second trip, the bear addressed him, from its den behind the card table. “Rodolphe,” it said. “May I ask you some questions?”

  “No!” Rodolphe shouted.

  “They are well worth thinking about.”

  “I’m not listening!” Rodolphe said.

  After an hour’s determined scrubbing, Charles was clean and shaved. He sat on a settee, wearing Rodolphe’s second-best houserobe, while Rodolphe snipped at his hair with his wife’s sewing scissors.

  Without its thicket of hair, Charles’s face had a fiercely compelling asceticism. His pale eyes glowed with weird intelligence, and his gaunt weather-beaten arms and legs were all tendon and leathery sinew. He sat calmly on the settee, his hands folded. His quietude, in contrast with the obvious whipcord strength of his lean body, was almost frightening.

  “Doesn’t this feel better?” Rodolphe asked. “To be clean and decent again?”

  “I suppose it does. Yes.” Charles cleared his throat. “The sensations are different. And it does bring the old memories back.” He smiled, with a shadow of his old charm. “You’re too kind to me, Rodolphe! You have done me a service; you always were a good friend.”

  “That’s better. You sound much more like yourself now, Charles.”

  “Perhaps. I often remember my days here in Pay-sage.” He blinked. “It does have some meaning, Rodolphe. What we do here; the work, and the sweet little rules of daily life, and all that baggage. Even in the great outside world, looking back on this little enclave … The effort isn’t wasted; it’s a necessary process.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” Rodolphe said.

  “I just felt
you should know that, Rodolphe! Someday it will be a comfort to you.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me!” Rodolphe said. “You’re a fine one to talk about ‘wasting effort.’ What have you done, since you left this place, that has made the world one whit better?”

  Charles sighed. “It depends on your definitions. You don’t have the terminology, Rodolphe.”

  “Words!” Rodolphe said. “All words, and airy nonsense! You’ve lost your mind, Charles. You’ve lost your purposes. You’re nothing better than that shambling beast of yours.”

  “Oh but I am,” Charles said. “Baltimore is intelligent, but he has no consciousness. He’s … he’s really a cybernetic-organic incarnation of the former industrial urban environment. The megatechnic infrastructure has miniaturized, and woven itself on a cellular level into the ontological information-processing structure of what was once the natural realm. The Conventions are a global data system that has assumed the function of an Immanent Will.”

  “What?” Rodolphe shouted.

  Charles sighed. “It’s not as strange as it sounds. You get quite used to it, once you … well … give up, and become Conventional. The Conventions have their own kind of beauty, Rodolphe. Not at all like the simple beauty here but … the Conventions do have a place for human beings. We have a role there, a true function. We … we personify the Conventional world, Rodolphe! We are its soul!”

  “My God, it’s hopeless,” Rodolphe said. “ ‘You’ve become a babbling lunatic.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Charles said patiently. “Once you learn to live the life outside, you learn to see matters differently. To read the patterns of immanence, to smell it almost … the very way you might read your own dreams, or understand the clouds. Storm fronts of meshed intelligence ripple through the living fabric of the Earth. Perceptions become data, data becomes thought, thought becomes … I think you might say ‘spirit’ though that term doesn’t really—”