Unconquered Countries-Four Novellas

by Geoff Ryman

  I am from Stevens Arts, she told herself. I’m here to check out the imaging on the screens. A guard stood in front of her, scanning the audience, hands on his hips. Billie saw the pouch of fat on the small of his back, straining against his shirt. As long as his back was toward her, she ran, lightly trotting, trying to look like a businesswoman who was late.

  He glanced over his shoulder, she slowed, he turned, she nodded to him, smiling. The door was near now, and she fixed her gaze on the round black security panel. Were the keys digits or lettering?

  The guard sauntered toward her, smiling and shaking his head. Digits, she saw, there were only ten of them. She had to get to the door first, and key in and key in right.

  “I’m from Stevens,” she called, and turned to the keys, and cooled her mind. If she failed, she would shrug, smile, say, well it was worth a try.

  5 1 13 15 14. EAMON in code.

  The door clicked, and seemed to sigh. Gotcha!

  Billie nodded again to the guard; nodding to him was good, it meant she faced him and he couldn’t see the dust on her back, the blood on her head.

  The guard’s smile became one of relief, chagrin. He waved her in.

  Billie slipped sideways through the door still facing the guard, closed the door, and turned around.

  She was surprised by something. Dark and shadow. There were trailers on the backstage area, also in shadow, and thick cables underfoot. She was too preoccupied by fear to have said precisely what was missing, what was wrong. On the steps of one of the trailers, a man was hunched over a cellphone. She heard Donald-Duck squawking, she saw a ponytail, she ran, footfall cushioned, hobbled, by rubber cable underfoot. Too late to worry about 20,000 volts now, Billie. She ran for the shelter of the giant speaker; she saw its scaffolding support was wrapped in cloth, loose cloth this side. Dark and speed and silence were all she had. She began to shake, made the shelter of the cloth, enfolded herself in its edges.

  Finally, she was able to breathe, and to hear the sound booming muffled overhead. Eamon began to sing, and there was a roar of approval when the audience recognized the song.

  The music gets louder

  And the beat gets faster

  And the man who calls the tune

  Becomes your lord and master.

  And between him and you

  There grows such a schism

  That the only word for it is

  Sadomasochism.

  And people were cheering? He’s telling you what he’s doing to you, to all of us. Maybe that’s how they do it. They tell us the truth, just enough to make us feel better. Open the door, and then slam it shut on our fingers.

  She peered out from her folds of cloth, and it seemed as though her trembling breath ought to be forming white vapor from cold. A great blank stretch of concrete, dusty, a chocolate bar wrapper.

  Where were the people? Where were the tables with food, the deck chairs, the crowding of family, friends, record company execs, liggers with no real business? Where was the man with the cellphone? From the screens, from somewhere, there came a strange blue-white light. It played over everything, flickering. It seemed to flow along the concrete like ground mist.

  And Billie looked at the giant stage, and there were no steps, no ladders, no lift, no way up, even from the back. How did Eamon get there? Fly? Between her and the stage were the giant screens, supported by scaffolding, scaffolding her new friend.

  She ran again. A curtain of giant cables hung down behind the screen; they must be insulated, just push. Billie ducked behind a screen of thick rubber, and crouched.

  Above her was the scaffolding and beside her the gray wall of the stage. Billie began to climb. You thought you were untouchable, Mr. Strafe. You really thought no one reached you. Well, I will. And I will show you, Eamon Strafe, that you are not my lord and master.

  Halfway up, a megaphone voice said, “Please, young lady. Come down.”

  “Go to hell!” she shouted.

  It was harder going up scaffolding than coming down. She had to lie on the diagonals and shimmy up them, then twist herself around. She saw ladders being carried down below, through the strange thick light.

  She came to wooden planks, a platform, and a ladder, going up to the works behind the screen. She scuttled up the ladder, onto another platform. This one did not shake as she ran. The last level of the ziggurat lay below her, and to her right, a drop of about her own height, across a gap of some yards. She had time to see the surface of the stage was black, glass perhaps or formica, but glistening with flakes of gold, or light.

  “Don’t! Please!” called a voice behind.

  Here goes, Eamon, thought Billie, and flung herself into the air. She flung herself into the viscous light, and became aware in a moment that it was different from any light she had known. It made her skin buzz, and where she blocked it, the shadows moved across each other in different planes, like the lights of passing trucks on her bedroom wall at night. Where the planes of light met and crossed, there was a flaring of rainbow color.

  And overhead, stars seemed to reach up into infinity, dwindling to nothingness. But the stars were in serried ranks, orderly in planes of light.

  And the light was so solid, it was for an instant as though it were impeding her progress, as though she had leapt through water. She remembered the lake in childhood. She remembered her parents. And suddenly she was lying in a crumpled heap on the stage, looking down.

  At a kind of glass, dark as though smoked, but in layers somehow, translucent, and shifting. And the stars were there too, going down forever, through the floor of the stadium, through the earth itself, and in their midst there seemed to be twin suns blazing up at her.

  Don’t look! something told her, and she looked away, and everything was dark, and she stumbled; her ankle was twisted. She was blind, her skin sore as though sunburned, and she turned toward Eamon, and she heard footsteps behind her, and through the smoke of her blindness, she saw Eamon, made of light, like an angel, blazing with inner fire. He did not know she was there.

  And the weight of the world seemed to slam into her, bringing her down, and it was not just the weight of the arms that hugged her knees and the body that tackled her to the stage. Don’t! Look! Down! Something in her mind screamed at her, knowing that a second time, she would go blind forever. Instead she looked up.

  Looked up at Eamon Strafe. He was singing.

  A voice like mist

  hits like a fist

  and then it’s gone.

  Eamon Strafe was translucent, and motes of dust swam through him glinting like galaxies. There was nothing in his eyes, in his mouth. They were shadows, dark inside, with scaffolding, staging, showing through them. He was checkerboard, little defined mosaics of color, and all through his hair, teeth, tongue, eyes, clothes, dust moved in a sluggish current. And Billie knew if her hand reached out to touch him, it would pass through.

  Billie was hoisted to her feet, swung around, taken by the arms, and dragged, her feet sliding on the surface of the stage, slightly greasy. She ran to catch up, took her own weight, even on the damaged ankle, hobbled to keep up with them. The guards pulled her back toward the screen. When she tried to look behind her, one of them took the top of her head in his hand, and turned it back around.

  Hush Hush said their sleeves, and they wore thick protective dress, and mirror visors. Billie had never thought so quickly.

  “I saw him,” she lied. “I saw Eamon! Isn’t he beautiful!”

  The guards said nothing. Below them was spread the unused part of the stadium. Light flickered over rows of deserted seats, invisible people listening to ghost music. This is the future, Billie thought, this is what it will be like.

  There were ladders now.

  “OK, climb down. If you fall, we are not responsible, all right.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Billie, trying to sound thick.

  On the ground, two men were waiting. One was tall, with a ponytail and an ear stud.

  “Are y
ou OK?” he asked. He came forward, took her wrist. “Can you see all right? Does that hurt.” Gently, he moved his hand along her wrist. It stung. The skin was lobster pink. “Ouch!” she yelped. “I’m just back from Ibiza,” she said. “I got a bit too much sun.”

  The two men glanced at each other nervously. “You saw Eamon, did you?” the other man asked. He was short, with a neck thicker than his head, and he wore a white shirt and tie. His voice was darker. What would he do to protect an investment?

  She had to get away, get away before that other guard could come and say: but she knew the password. She got in through the door.

  “Oh, yes, he’s even more beautiful than I thought he would be.” Sixteen. Billie remembered being sixteen. She found the sixteen-year-old was still there, to wonder at things and be hurt by them.

  “I don’t mind anything now. I’ve seen him!” She managed to hop up and down. “At last, at last, at last. Do you know him? Do you get to talk to him?” She found she was weeping.

  “We talk to him, yeah,” said the earring, and he looked just the slightest bit wistful. “He’s a really nice guy.”

  “Did you see anything else?” asked the white shirt.

  “I couldn’t see anything but Eamon!” she said, her voice clogging with mucus and tears.

  The two looked at each other. Roadies, she thought, they used to be roadies for a band and got a big idea.

  “If you’ve got a ticket,” said the ear stud, “you can go back to your seat.”

  Billie reached for her purse. “I’ve lost it!” she cried in a dismay that was only partly feigned. “It’s gone!”

  “Then I’m afraid, love,” said the white shirt, “we’re going to have to throw you out.”

  “Oh no, please!” she wailed. It was just what she wanted.

  They asked for her name. Any ID? Sure, the Association’s card, which gave her name as Wilhelmina. A door was opened in a gate big enough to drive lorries through, just as the image of Eamon Strafe stopped singing about mist and Spirit.

  The door closed. Billie was outside.

  There was a light rain. London looks best at night. The asphalt, the paving stones all reflect the orange street lights, and the drops on cars and windows glow like little jewels.

  Billie began to laugh.

  She laughed out of sheer nerves. She laughed at the way she had fooled the guards. She spun on her heel and kicked a bottle. Hot damn, what had she done? Played Tarzan on scaffolding, fooled the guards, and found the truth.

  Eamon Strafe did not exist. He probably never had. All that love, all that listening, it was for nothing? Laughter and terror bubbled up inside her.

  After all, he was the perfect pop star. Always distant, always perfect, nipping in and out of view, aging beautifully. All those people! Buying disks and tickets and software, and all those women melting at the thought of him, we’ve all been idiots, dupes. What a joke.

  Oh, this is an evil place, a rotten place, scheming, scheming, to get at your loot. I know you, Billie said to the street lights, the closed-up shops, I know what all of you are, small and mean or big and grand, and, you know? You don’t scare me at all.

  I’m free of you, Eamon! You great big blouse! You empty set of knocker thumpers! You great big cardboard box full of fart. You were made up.

  She found she was jumping up and down through a mud puddle like a kid. She laughed again and saw in the dark water a reflection, her face, translucent like Eamon’s. That stirred something in her, and she broke the image apart with her foot, but not before she saw there were blisters on her face, like raindrops on the hoods of cars. Whatever it was, she had now what she had come for. Whatever it was, she had better get moving out of here.

  It was a long ride home, and fear and elation went stale. Billie watched the blackness of the underground walls pass by in a rattling smear, and she asked herself, what now? I’m twenty-seven years old. I have some skills. Scaffold climbing among them. I have the Association, and I like the people in it. And I have my son. She made up her mind what she was going to do when she got home.

  After the tube ride, there was the bus. A drunk got on, reeking and singing harshly, and, oh God, he was singing one of Eamon’s songs. See where it got you, mate? The man looked fifty, and Billie couldn’t tell if it was dirt or hard living that made his skin so dark and blotchy. “Life could be good,” he roared. It seemed to make him feel better.

  You play a crying baby a tape of its own weeping, and it is soothed. That’s all you did, Eamon. You played it back to us. The music came from us, not you.

  In the dark of her flat, Billie found a note from the babysitter. It said that Joey was asleep, so would Billie mind if she left? Bloody hell, thought Billie, the point was to have someone here WHILE he slept. OK, she thought, but I won’t pay you.

  Billie gently pushed open his door, and smelled him, and heard his soft child’s breath. He was growing up a stranger. She did not know what he thought or felt. There was a bursting of love and regret in her, as if she had bitten into a bitter fruit. It made her angry at Eamon Strafe all over again. Billie knelt next to the bed and stroked her son’s brown and slightly greasy hair.

  “Joey,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  He groaned and rolled over.

  “I’ll be a better Mum, I promise. We’ll do something fun on Saturday.”

  He lay inert and unresponsive.

  “I’m sorry life isn’t beautiful.” She meant she was sorry that she had not made it beautiful for him.

  “I’m asleep,” he said, pouting, angry.

  “You know I love you, don’t you?”

  There was no answer. Billie was used to that.

  She kissed him and went back to her bedroom, her own little world, the bed, the posters, the boots and panties on the floor, and the machine. She turned it on.

  “Hello,” she said, darkening, full of strength.

  The image unfurled down her screen from the top down. Eamon was in his dressing room, ebullient, full of joy, happy to see her. “Billie!” he exclaimed, hopping out of his chair. “Hello, love, it’s great to see you!” He looked tanned and worn in his crumpled white suit. It had a stain on the thigh.

  This was her Eamon. Pity, useless pity, moved her.

  “Did you enjoy the show?” he asked. Outside his dressing room, the audience was still rhythmically thumping, demanding more.

  Billie considered her answer. “I learned a lot,” she said. She sat down on the bed and faced him. “I got up on stage tonight. I saw Eamon up close, I stood right next to him. He doesn’t exist. He’s some kind of hologram.”

  “What?” This Eamon made a kind of nervous chuckle.

  “I think it means there has never been an Eamon Strafe. I think he’s been a construct from the beginning.”

  “There’s photographs of me in the papers!”

  “Yes, photographs of you. You don’t exist, either.”

  “Oh, come on, Billie, I’m full of his memories!”

  “Do they add up to a life?” Billie asked. “His life?”

  She had killed him. The picture froze, the sound of cheering stopped, his face was still. Billie could hear the hard disk whirring to itself, trying to consult, trying to find a model response. It was suddenly terrible sitting alone in a bedroom with a frozen screen and the sound of rain.

  “Could you bring Billie on, please?” she asked.

  The screen snapped back into life, and Billie came in wearing black trousers, silver studded, and a black jacket, and a diamond bracelet. Billie, as she might have been if she had money and power and had done what she wanted to. Or was she?

  “Is it true?” Eamon asked this other Billie.

  And this Billie nodded: yes. And Billie on the screen said simply, “Think of it this way. It means you are the real Eamon. You always were.” And she glanced, just once, out at the tiny bedroom, the unmade bed, the other Billie in the stained jumpsuit. What was she thinking? I’m doing your job for you? Which one of us ha
s the better life? Was she thinking anything at all?

  The Billie on the bed said, “I want the two of you to go for a walk, wherever you want to go. Don’t take me with you, I don’t want to be there. Just go there, now, to Ireland maybe.”

  “Japan,” said the other Billie. Billie was almost touched, until she remembered that the temple and the park was the failsafe locale.

  A single perfect tear slid down Eamon’s cheek, leaving a trail behind like a snail. In its perfect depths, upside down, was a reflection of the real Billie. A calculation of the light.

  “Come on, love,” said the other Billie and tapped his shoulder, to go. For some reason, Billie did not want to see them leave the dressing room.

  Billie went to make herself a cup of tea. It would be lonely now without a kindly voice to tell her that she deserved it. She thought of her mother, the house in South End, school, Joey’s father, her memories. Did they add up to a life?

  When she went back into the bedroom, the screen showed Eamon’s empty dressing room. On the table top there were the face powder and the mild-colored lipsticks. Desperate Dan Butch Cosmetics. A sweaty white suit hung on a peg. The murmuring of the crowd had faded away. It was silent now, except for the sound of someone sweeping outside. The shadow of a broom slid along the crack of light underneath the door.

  Billie reinserted the transceiver card.

  “Broadcast down the transceiver network,” Billie told her machine. “Tell them all that Eamon is a digital construct. Tell them all that there is no Eamon. Don’t say how you know. Try to disguise where the message entered the system. Do not reveal the source of information.”

  PROCESSING INSTRUCTIONS said a message on the screen, with a little moving clock.

  “Locate where Eamon and Billie are in the system now, and save it as a separate file. As long as you operate, keep the file active, but security block it. Never open it, even if I ask you to.” Did it understand? “Ice it.”

  Heaven, where nothing ever happens.