Unconquered Countries-Four Novellas

by Geoff Ryman

  “It seems so real,” she said. Her throat clenched and she couldn’t speak.

  Eamon rolled forward, dropping onto his knees. “I know what I am,” he said. “I’m not alive, I’m just digital code. I’m only a copy. But believe me, Billie. If I could know you as well as this copy knows you…” His lower chin seemed to crumple up like cardboard. “Then I’d love you, too.”

  The invisible ocean roared, the wind blew, somewhere and nowhere, in a bedroom in Stratford East.

  Tora wrote.

  She sent a card.

  A celebration of Eamon Strafe’s birthday

  Saturday, 25th March, 8:30 P.M.

  No husbands allowed.

  There was a map, and an address in Finchley.

  On the back Tora had written. “Found you in the phone book. You always were the best of us. If you don’t come, I’ll know it’s too late for the rest of us.”

  The rest of whom?

  Tora had done well. She worked in telesales and lived in a 1930s red brick house, with mock Tudor half-timbering around the gables. Tora opened the door, even plumper than before, and cried out Billie’s name, and hugged her, held her, wept. Surprised, Billie wept too.

  “Tora,” she accused. “You’ve gone glam.”

  “Oh, you gotta go for it,” said Tora. She’d sprinkled sparkly stuff on her cheeks and wore a dark loose shirt and mid-calf trousers. She made Billie feel pinched and delicate like something breakable. Tora led her in, arm in arm.

  The two big downstairs rooms had been cleared of furniture, and were full of women. The walls were covered with balloons and pictures of Eamon Strafe. Slumped in a corner chair there was a thing like a scarecrow that grinned blindly with huge teeth. It was a life-size doll.

  The women were rubbing balloons on their thighs and giggling naughtily. The rubbed ballons stuck to the wallpaper with static. “Oooh, Berthe, you’re highly charged tonight!”

  Billie felt at once superior and envious. The women all looked like hairdressers, happy and boring. She felt like something sharp-edged and broken in comparison. She wanted to leave.

  She was introduced. The faces and names passed in a nervous blur. Tora held it together for all of them. “Tonight is our night, love. Caterers in so nobody has any washing up to do. Here’s the food.” There was a table full of prawns and salads and quiches. No meat. “This is Gwen. She’s in charge.” Gwen evidently was not. She was a small, round-shouldered woman in a white T-shirt, black leather jacket and motor cycling boots. She poured Billie a glass of punch.

  “I call it Tanamera after the second book,” Gwen said, giggling for no reason. She was from the north, and the word “book” had an owl’s hoot in the middle of it. “It’s made from fruit and traditional Irish herbs. I like to think it’s the sort of thing our Eamon would drink himself.”

  “Thank you. It’s very nice,” Billie heard herself say. She wasn’t used to parties. She found she had nothing to say to Gwen. She went and stood by Tora again.

  “Well, I’ve applied what I’ve learned from Eamon to my business,” Tora was saying. “You know, he’s right, the main thing, even in selling, is to listen. If you don’t listen, you don’t get the information you need.”

  “Well, I’ve noticed that,” said another woman. “You think it’s all a bit airy-fairy, and then you find it works in the real world.”

  A third woman looked very serious indeed, a tiny sharp chin over lace collar. “If Eamon Strafe had been born two thousand years ago, who would he have been?” she said. “Think about it.”

  John the Baptist? Herod? Pontius Pilate? “I didn’t think they had pop stars back then, actually,” said Billie. Tora chuckled. “Well, no,” she said. At least Tora wasn’t losing her sense of proportion. “You all have everything you need? I think everyone’s here. Shall we make a start?”

  “Yeah, if anyone’s a bit late, it won’t matter,” said the woman who didn’t like things airy-fairy.

  Tora stepped away from them and clapped her hands. “OK, everybody. Thank you all for coming, and for bringing all these things! Eamon will be with us later, but first we’ll have a reading. Danielle?”

  The most beautiful woman Billie had ever seen stood up. Perfect hair, perfect face, lovely hands. She was French, and there was a precision in the way she moved that was not English. She was lovely, but her voice was tuneless and deadening, and she recited the worst of Eamon Strafe. She recited the awful little poem about love being like a hyacinth. Billie had never thought that absolutely everything Eamon wrote was wonderful. That was not the point. The point was that sometimes, waywardly, he would give you things that could not be found anywhere else.

  When Danielle began to recite “Changes” (rearranges, turning pages, the different ages) and the women sat, cross-legged, with their eyes closed, nodding, Billie realized that these were the people who actually liked the bad stuff. It was the bad stuff they came for. The chilling thought was that maybe most Eamon Strafe fans did.

  Billie felt betrayed. They called themselves fans, but they didn’t understand. Sometimes Eamon sang about the pain and terror in the world, and whatever hope was left. They only saw his little greeting cards.

  Danielle finished and the women applauded. It’s because she’s French, thought Billie. They like her accent.

  Then they played some clips.

  Their instinct was unerring. They started with Eamon’s worst ever song, “I Want to Be with You.” There were only about four things that Eamon had done that Billie truly could not stand, and this was the worst. It was about someone whose girlfriend had died, and he is trying to join her or something.

  “Oh, that voice,” said the lady in the black leather jacket, and she shrank down further into herself. Another took out a lipstick-smeared Kleenex and unabashedly wept into it. Weeping was approved behavior. They all began to weep, hands around each other’s shoulders. In respectful silence, Tora tiptoed about her room, lighting candles. It was as though they were in mourning.

  Then came “A Voice like Mist,” and Billie could feel her face go as hard as stone. It had been on the same cassette single as “Lebanon Dead,” and on no album, and there he was, on “The Late Show,” 12 years ago, and almost skinny, and she had not heard the song since she had lost the cassette moving house, and she had not seen the clip since she and Tora had first become friends.

  It really was as good as she remembered it, and she remembered how she had felt then, when the whole flavor of the world had been different.

  And as she realized this, all the women stood up and held hands, just like she and Tora and Janice had done, and they began to sing the words by heart in strained and cracking voices, like in church, and she couldn’t hear Eamon any more.

  A voice like the mist

  Lands like a kiss

  And then it’s gone.

  It’s not some drippy love song, Billie wanted to say, surprised at how copious were her tears. It’s about the Spirit. It only speaks sometimes. Billie looked up and the Frenchwoman, Danielle, was looking at her with an expression like love. It seemed to say: I understand what you feel. No you don’t, thought Billie.

  Danielle came up to her after the clip had finished. “I live in this country because of him,” she said, amorous.

  Billie felt as cold as ice. “Then you’re in the wrong country. He’s Irish.”

  Danielle’s smooth surface was only slightly fractured. She smiled and made a little shrug. Well not quite Irish, no.

  Ireland might muss your makeup, thought Billie. She found herself yearning for Ireland, the Ireland of her dreams.

  Tora came in with a cake. Billie had a terrible feeling that she knew what was going to happen next. There was a blue-green flutter on the screen.

  “HEL-LO-O!” all the women shouted.

  Billie looked away. She tried not to see. All the women started to sing.

  “Happy birthday dear Eamon. Happy birthday to you.”

  Eamon was wearing sunglasses. He never wore sun
glasses. Sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, and he was by the sea, but it was a beach, with palm frond umbrellas and drinks on white tables and people water skiing. The waves rippled and reflected light in irregular patterns. Tora had a more powerful machine than Billie: it could do waves.

  “Hey Tora,” Eamon said jauntily. He was a deep nut brown. “Girls. Hi there, how ya doing?”

  They chorused back, “Hello.”

  “You don’t need any cake, you’ll get even fatter.”

  “Well,” replied Tora. “You tell me you like them plump.”

  “Ho, ho, hey,” said the women, as though something truly wicked had been said.

  “Depends on the plump girl,” said Eamon, adjusting his sunglasses.

  “Hooo!” said all the women.

  Tora lunged toward Billie, and took hold of her arms. She gave them a squeeze, perhaps to find if they were as skinny as they looked. “Eamon, I’d like you to meet someone new.”

  New! Billie turned. New? Do you think you own him?

  “That’s Billie,” said Eamon. “I know Billie. Hi, how are you?”

  “I should have known,” murmured Tora, eyes narrowed, smiling. “Sorry.”

  “Hello,” said Billie, embarrassed. “That’s what I normally say to you isn’t it?”

  For some reason Tora’s group thought this very funny—the laughter was sudden, then quickly hushed. It sounded canned. Billie felt shop soiled. So all these machines, they’re all linked by the transceivers. They talk to each other. It’s all one thing, all linked, all colluding so we can all keep, so that can keep, my illusions.

  And she was even grateful.

  Tora was blowing out the candles on the cake. Since Eamon couldn’t.

  “Sing for us, Eddie,” called one of the woman.

  “Yeah, all right!” said a woman leaping up from the floor. She was burly and wore blue and white and a string of pearls. None of it made sense.

  “‘Basic Blue!’”

  “Hoo! Yeah! ‘Basic Blue,’ Eamon!”

  Eamon put his sunglasses back on, and started to croon and all at once, Billie understood what was happening, happening to them all.

  “Tora,” said Billie. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Tora looked at her for a moment as if it were a criticism of the group. The glass in Billie’s hand turned as if by itself. Billie dropped her drink. Her knees went from under her, and she fell. It was the burly woman in pale blue who caught her.

  “Oh, love, oh darling,” said Tora, genuinely concerned.

  The women sprang to help. Billie was lowered to the floor.

  “Poor love,” said Tora, deeply moved. “She always was his biggest fan.”

  Someone called to the screen. “Eddie? Eddie could you hold on, someone’s ill.”

  “We never had anyone faint before,” said a lean and craggy blonde on the outskirts of the group. She was just a little amused.

  Tora said, “Let’s get her to the loo.”

  They carried her into the bathroom. They stroked her hair and called her Pet, as she threw up traditional Irish herbs. To Billie, none of it mattered.

  Self-programming. They get to know us. They become what we want them to be. So all the different Eamons drift away. They become ugly monks or spiffy little jerks in Hawaiian shirts.

  And none of them are Eamon at all.

  “I think we should leave her alone for a few minutes,” said Tora quietly, and ushered the women out.

  And Billie lay on the thick, pink, shaggy rug and thought, I’m dying. I’m dying inside. Dimly she heard Eamon singing. So how thin do you have to become, Eamon? You said you would become thin if you tried to reach everyone. Aren’t you thin enough, now, changing for them all? A thin film of Eamon Strafe all over the world. And getting thinner.

  Billie stood up, unsteadily, before any of them came back. She slipped into the hallway from the loo. Her coat was hanging up. All of them were turned to the screen, arms around each other, like the puppy dogs in 101 Dalmatians. Or the dog on the record label.

  Billie walked on, out of the front door, closing it softly, without saying thank you, without saying good-bye. She ran on tiptoes, like the house was made out of china. She ran up the street, expecting any moment to hear them call.

  She went home and said hello.

  “You’re not Eamon,” she told it, shaking with rage.

  She’d woken him up. He was in a bedroom in the monastery, a wooden cross on the wall.

  “You know that. I know that,” he said, squiffy from lack of sleep, annoyed.

  “I’ve just seen you at a resort beach, in, I’d say, Acapulco. This is self-programming stuff. It changes. It becomes what we want it to be like. I’ve just seen you on someone else’s machine and you came on like some naff Joe Cool.”

  “So what bothers you more? The fact that you own me, or the fact that you don’t?” The question threw Billie.

  “Every performer adapts to the audience. If I adapt to a different audience, that’s just being professional.”

  “You have nothing to do with the real Eamon Strafe. I am sick of dreaming about Eamon Strafe. I am going to find him, the real one. And, I am going to turn you off.”

  He shrugged. “That’s your choice.” He reached across and turned off the light.

  The screen was dark. There were small shifting sounds of sheets. Through the closed monastery window there came the sound of surf. With an angry punch, Billie canceled it all out.

  The next day, Billie wrote a letter to Eamon Strafe’s book publishers.

  Dear Mr. Strafe,

  This is a real woman who is tired of illusion. I have spent time, Mr. Strafe, reading your verse and listening to your records. Not all of them are very good. Some of them, however, changed my life and made me who I am.

  Are you still so famous that it is impossible to meet you? I am a mature person, Mr. Strafe, with something to say. You said once that you felt you had to give the people who loved you more than a rehearsed performance. Was that true? I don’t know if I can believe you.

  It would be nice to have an answer.

  Yours sincerely,

  Billie

  There was no answer. Billie scanned in the logo of a computer magazine, and printed stationery using her own address and telephone number.

  Dear Mr. Strafe:

  As you may know, the readership of Computer Entanglements is one of the most sophisticated in the field of computer-society interface.

  We would very much like to interview you as part of a feature we are planning on personality programming. We are particularly interested in your views on the effects of such programming on the people who use it.

  If you are happy to be interviewed or have any questions, please contact me at the above telephone number.

  Yours faithfully,

  Wilhelmina del Vaille

  No answer. Another letter, sent registered post, gave him a time and a place to meet. It was outside an expensive Japanese restaurant in Knightsbridge. It took her two hours to travel to it, and though she wore her best dress, she felt drab and shabby standing outside it. The wealth in the nearby windows shocked her. There was a giant glass peacock being sold for thousands of pounds. Who would need such a thing? Where could they put it? What would they do when the kids broke it? She stood waiting until her feet went dead with cold. Eamon did not come. This did not surprise her. She knew, but she could not help herself.

  Dear Eamon,

  In a way, I carry your baby. The man who gave it to me reminded me of you. It’s a boy and I gave him your name. I know you are married now, but I still think I could have your baby. I know where it should be conceived. It should be conceived on a mountain top in Ireland, looking over a forest. It would be summer, and we could go swimming in the lake. Like in your song.

  You see, I believe in you, Eamon. I know you mean the things you sometimes sing about. The words touch me. It’s as though I’d thought of them myself only I never quite got them down on paper. It’s
as though your words are ghosts of my own, ghost words that always escape just ahead of me.

  I wish I could see that mountain. I am terribly afraid that you might be the only man who could take me there.

  Love,

  Billie

  Seventy-five letters.

  The postage alone came to nearly forty pounds. It made the CD look like a bargain. She was going to have to think of something new.

  So what do you know, Billie? You’ve got a computer that knows company law backwards, and can broadcast into most business records. You know something about how to use it.

  Years before, she had tried to set up a pottery business, and things kept going wrong with the tax, or when someone checked her credit. She had tried to call it Folio Crafts, after Shakespeare, and so she had tried to register it as Folio at Company House, with her name as sole proprietor. But somewhere, something went wrong.

  Someone had keyed her into the National Business Register as Polio Crafts. A simple substitution of a P for an F. Maybe they thought it was some sort of charity for the paralyzed. Billie lost a commission because someone did a business check on her and pronounced her nonexistent. So Billie had to do research in the archives to find her own company. I know how to do all that, Billie remembered.

  Billie got out all her old CDs. They were about the only thing she had brought with her from home. She read the fine print, particularly fine on the palm-sized jewelbox cases. Released through Sony International, a Memison Production, for Spirit Management. All songs by Eamon Strafe through Songfeast International, courtesy of Haskell Inc.

  Of course, you were just a simple Irish monk, right?

  Billie could not afford Dun and Bradstreet. She went through the Financial Times Profiles. They only listed Haskell Inc., which had two related companies, one in the UK and Haskell NV in the Netherlands. When she looked it up, through Profiles’ foreign database, NV turned out to be part-owned by a huge Dutch electronics firm. There was also Haskell Arts Ltd, the UK subsidiary of NV. None of the business descriptions made any sense. NV called itself a hardware developer, but appeared to neither sell designs nor manufacture machinery. The UK company specialized in something called, with great vagueness, multimedia applications.