The Best of Michael Swanwick

by Michael Swanwick

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  There was a brief, terse silence. Then: “Very well.”

  Summoning all her mental acuity, Lizzie thought back to that instant when she had first seen the city/entity on the fishcam. The soaring majesty of it. The slim grace. And then the colors: like dawn upon a glacial ice field: subtle, profound, riveting. She called back her emotions in that instant, and threw in how she’d felt the day she’d seen her baby brother’s birth, the raw rasp of cold air in her lungs as she stumbled to the topmost peak of her first mountain, the wonder of the Taj Mahal at sunset, the sense of wild daring when she’d first put her hand down a boy’s trousers, the prismatic crescent of atmosphere at the Earth’s rim when seen from low orbit…Everything she had, she threw into that image.

  “This is how you look,” she said. “This is what we’d both be losing if you were no more. If you were human, I’d rip off your clothes and do you on the floor right now. I wouldn’t care who was watching. I wouldn’t give a damn.”

  The gentle voice said, “Oh.”

  ***

  And then she was back in her suit again. She could smell her own sweat, sharp with fear. She could feel her body, the subtle aches where the harness pulled against her flesh, the way her feet, hanging free, were bloated with blood. Everything was crystalline clear and absolutely real. All that had come before seemed like a bad dream.

  “This is DogsofSETI. What a wonderful discovery you’ve made—intelligent life in our own Solar System! Why is the government trying to cover this up?”

  “Uh…”

  “I’m Joseph Devries. This alien monster must be destroyed immediately. We can’t afford the possibility that it’s hostile.”

  “StudPudgie07 here: What’s the dirt behind this ‘lust’ thing? Advanced minds need to know! If O’Brien isn’t going to share the details, then why’d she bring it up in the first place?”

  “Hola soy Pedro Dominguez. Como abogado, esto me parece ultrajante! Por qué NAFTASA nos oculta esta información?”

  “Alan!” Lizzie shouted. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Script-bunnies,” Alan said. He sounded simultaneously apologetic and annoyed. “They hacked into your confession and apparently you said something…”

  “We’re sorry, Lizzie,” Consuelo said. “We really are. If it’s any consolation, the Archdiocese of Montreal is hopping mad. They’re talking about taking legal action.”

  “Legal action? What the hell do I care about…?” She stopped.

  Without her willing it, one hand rose above her head and seized the number 10 rope.

  Don’t do that, she thought.

  The other hand went out to the side, tightened against the number 9 rope. She hadn’t willed that either. When she tried to draw her hand back, it refused to obey. Then the first hand—her right hand—moved a few inches upward and seized its rope in an iron grip. Her left hand slid a good half-foot up its rope. Inch by inch, hand over hand, she climbed up toward the balloon.

  I’ve gone mad, she thought. Her right hand was gripping the rip panel now, and the other tightly clenched rope 8. Hanging effortlessly from them, she swung her feet upward. She drew her knees against her chest and kicked.

  No!

  The fabric ruptured and she began to fall.

  A voice she could barely make out said, “Don’t panic. We’re going to bring you down.”

  All in a panic, she snatched at the 9-rope and the 4-rope. But they were limp in her hand, useless, falling at the same rate she was.

  “Be patient.”

  “I don’t want to die, goddamnit!”

  “Then don’t.”

  She was falling helplessly. It was a terrifying sensation, an endless plunge into whiteness, slowed somewhat by the tangle of ropes and balloon trailing behind her. She spread out her arms and legs like a starfish, and felt the air resistance slow her yet further. The sea rushed up at her with appalling speed. It seemed like she’d been falling forever. It was over in an instant.

  Without volition, Lizzie kicked free of balloon and harness, drew her feet together, pointed her toes, and positioned herself perpendicular to Titan’s surface. She smashed through the surface of the sea, sending enormous gouts of liquid splashing upward. It knocked the breath out of her. Red pain exploded within. She thought maybe she’d broken a few ribs.

  “You taught us so many things,” the gentle voice said. “You gave usso much.”

  “Help me!” The water was dark around her. The light was fading.

  “Multiplicity. Motion. Lies. You showed us a universe infinitely larger than the one we had known.”

  “Look. Save my life and we’ll call it even. Deal?”

  “Gratitude. Such an essential concept.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  And then she saw the turbot swimming toward her in a burst of silver bubbles. She held out her arms and the robot fish swam into them. Her fingers closed about the handles which Consuelo had used to wrestle the device into the sea. There was a jerk, so hard that she thought for an instant that her arms would be ripped out of their sockets. Then the robofish was surging forward and upward and it was all she could do to keep her grip.

  “Oh, dear God!” Lizzie cried involuntarily.

  “We think we can bring you to shore. It will not be easy.”

  Lizzie held on for dear life. At first she wasn’t at all sure she could. But then she pulled herself forward, so that she was almost astride the speeding mechanical fish, and her confidence returned. She could do this. It wasn’t any harder than the time she’d had the flu and aced her gymnastics final on parallel bars and horse anyway. It was just a matter of grit and determination. She just had to keep her wits about her. “Listen,” she said. “If you’re really grateful…”

  “We are listening.”

  “We gave you all those new concepts. There must be things you know that we don’t.”

  A brief silence, the equivalent of who knew how much thought. “Some of our concepts might cause you dislocation.” A pause. “But in the long run, you will be much better off. The scars will heal. You will rebuild. The chances of your destroying yourselves are well within the limits of acceptability.”

  “Destroying ourselves?” For a second, Lizzie couldn’t breathe. It had taken hours for the city/entity to come to terms with the alien concepts she’d dumped upon it. Human beings thought and lived at a much slower rate than it did. How long would those hours translate into human time? Months? Years? Centuries? It had spoken of scars and rebuilding. That didn’t sound good at all.

  Then the robofish accelerated, so quickly that Lizzie almost lost her grip. The dark waters were whirling around her, and unseen flecks of frozen material were bouncing from her helmet. She laughed wildly. Suddenly she felt great!

  “Bring it on,” she said. “I’ll take everything you’ve got.”

  It was going to be one hell of a ride.

  Legions in Time

  Eleanor Voigt had the oddest job of anyone she knew. She worked eight hours a day in an office where no business was done. Her job was to sit at a desk and stare at the closet door. There was a button on the desk which she was to push if anybody came out that door. There was a big clock on the wall and precisely at noon, once a day, she went over to the door and unlocked it with a key she had been given. Inside was an empty closet. There were no trap doors or secret panels in it—she had looked. It was just an empty closet.

  If she noticed anything unusual, she was supposed to go back to her desk and press the button.

  “Unusual in what way?” she’d asked when she’d been hired. “I don’t understand. What am I looking for?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” Mr. Tarblecko had said in that odd accent of his. Mr. Tarblecko was her employer, and some kind of foreigner. He was the creepiest thing imaginable.

  He had pasty white skin and no hair at all on his head, so that when he took his hat off he looked like some species of mushroom. H
is ears were small and almost pointed. Ellie thought he might have some kind of disease. But he paid two dollars an hour, which was good money nowadays for a woman of her age.

  At the end of her shift, she was relieved by an unkempt young man who had once blurted out to her that he was a poet. When she came in, in the morning, a heavy Negress would stand up wordlessly, take her coat and hat from the rack, and with enormous dignity leave.

  So all day Ellie sat behind the desk with nothing to do. She wasn’t allowed to read a book, for fear she might get so involved in it that she would stop watching the door. Crosswords were allowed, because they weren’t as engrossing. She got a lot of knitting done, and was considering taking up tatting.

  Over time the door began to loom large in her imagination. She pictured herself unlocking it at some forbidden not-noon time and seeing—what? Her imagination failed her. No matter how vividly she visualized it, the door would open onto something mundane. Brooms and mops. Sports equipment. Galoshes and old clothes. What else would there be in a closet? What else could there be?

  Sometimes, caught up in her imaginings, she would find herself on her feet. Sometimes, she walked to the door. Once she actually put her hand on the knob before drawing away. But always the thought of losing her job stopped her.

  It was maddening.

  ***

  Twice, Mr. Tarblecko had come to the office while she was on duty. Each time he was wearing that same black suit with that same narrow black tie. “You have a watch?” he’d asked.

  “Yes, sir.” The first time, she’d held forth her wrist to show it to him. The disdainful way he ignored the gesture ensured she did not repeat it on his second visit.

  “Go away. Come back in forty minutes.”

  So she had gone out to a little tearoom nearby. She had a bag lunch back in her desk, with a baloney-and-mayonnaise sandwich and an apple, but she’d been so flustered she’d forgotten it, and then feared to go back after it. She treated herself to a dainty “lady lunch ” that she was in no mood to appreciate, left a dime tip for the waitress, and was back in front of the office door exactly thirty-eight minutes after she’d left.

  At forty minutes, exactly, she reached for the door.

  As if he’d been waiting for her to do so, Mr. Tarblecko breezed through the door, putting on his hat. He didn’t acknowledge her promptness or her presence. He just strode briskly past, as though she didn’t exist.

  Stunned, she went inside, closed the door, and returned to her desk.

  She realized then that Mr. Tarblecko was genuinely, fabulously rich. He had the arrogance of those who are so wealthy that they inevitably get their way in all small matters because there’s always somebody there to arrange things that way. His type was never grateful for anything and never bothered to be polite, because it never even occurred to them that things could be otherwise.

  The more she thought about it, the madder she got. She was no Bolshevik, but it seemed to her that people had certain rights, and that one of these was the right to a little common courtesy. It diminished one to be treated like a stick of furniture. It was degrading. She was damned if she was going to take it.

  Six months went by.

  The door opened and Mr. Tarblecko strode in, as if he’d left only minutes ago. “You have a watch?”

  Ellie slid open a drawer and dropped her knitting into it. She opened another and took out her bag lunch. “Yes.”

  “Go away. Come back in forty minutes.”

  So she went outside. It was May, and Central Park was only a short walk away, so she ate there, by the little pond where children floated their toy sailboats. But all the while she fumed. She was a good employee—she really was! She was conscientious, punctual, and she never called in sick. Mr. Tarblecko ought to appreciate that. He had no business treating her the way he did.

  Almost, she wanted to overstay lunch, but her conscience wouldn’t allow that. When she got back to the office, precisely thirty-nine and a half minutes after she’d left, she planted herself squarely in front of the door so that when Mr. Tarblecko left he would have no choice but to confront her. It might well lose her her job, but…well, if it did, it did. That’s how strongly she felt about it.

  Thirty seconds later, the door opened and Mr. Tarblecko strode briskly out. Without breaking his stride or, indeed, showing the least sign of emotion, he picked her up by her two arms, swivelled effortlessly, and deposited her to the side.

  Then he was gone. Ellie heard his footsteps dwindling down the hall.

  The nerve! The sheer, raw gall of the man!

  Ellie went back in the office, but she couldn’t make herself sit down at the desk. She was far too upset. Instead, she walked back and forth the length of the room, arguing with herself, saying aloud those things she should have said and would have said if only Mr. Tarblecko had stood still for them. To be picked up and set aside like that…Well, it was really quite upsetting. It was intolerable.

  What was particularly distressing was that there wasn’t even any way to make her displeasure known.

  At last, though, she calmed down enough to think clearly, and realized that she was wrong. There was something—something more symbolic than substantive, admittedly—that she could do.

  She could open that door.

  ***

  Ellie did not act on impulse. She was a methodical woman. So she thought the matter through before she did anything. Mr. Tarblecko very rarely showed up at the office—only twice in all the time she’d been here, and she’d been here over a year. Moreover, the odds of him returning to the office a third time only minutes after leaving it were negligible. He had left nothing behind—she could see that at a glance; the office was almost Spartan in its emptiness. Nor was there any work here for him to return to.

  Just to be safe, though, she locked the office door. Then she got her chair out from behind the desk and chocked it up under the doorknob so that even if somebody had a key, he couldn’t get in. She put her ear to the door and listened for noises in the hall.

  Nothing.

  It was strange how, now that she had decided to do the deed, time seemed to slow and the office to expand. It took forever to cross the vast expanses of empty space between her and the closet door. Her hand reaching for its knob pushed through air as thick as molasses. Her fingers closed about it, one by one, and in the time it took for them to do so there was room enough for a hundred second thoughts. Faintly, she heard the sound of…machinery? A low humming noise.

  She placed the key in the lock, and opened the door.

  There stood Mr. Tarblecko.

  Ellie shrieked, and staggered backward. One of her heels hit the floor wrong, and her ankle twisted, and she almost fell. Her heart was hammering so furiously her chest hurt.

  Mr. Tarblecko glared at her from within the closet. His face was as white as a sheet of paper. “One rule,” he said coldly, tonelessly. “You had only one rule, and you broke it.” He stepped out. “You are a very bad slave.”

  “I…I…I…” Ellie found herself gasping from the shock. “I’m not a slave at all!”

  “There is where you are wrong, Eleanor Voigt. There is where you are very wrong indeed,” said Mr. Tarblecko. “Open the window.”

  Ellie went to the window and pulled up the blinds. There was a little cactus in a pot on the windowsill. She moved it to her desk. Then she opened the window. It stuck a little, so she had to put all her strength into it. The lower sash went up slowly at first and then, with a rush, slammed to the top. A light, fresh breeze touched her.

  “Climb onto the windowsill.”

  “I most certainly will–”—not, she was going to say. But to her complete astonishment, she found herself climbing up onto the sill. She could not help herself. It was as if her will were not her own.

  “Sit down with your feet outside the window.”

  It was like a hideous nightmare, the kind that you know can’t be real and struggle to awaken from, but cannot. Her body did exactly as it was to
ld to do. She had absolutely no control over it.

  “Do not jump until I tell you to do so.”

  “Are you going to tell me to jump?” she asked quaveringly. “Oh, please, Mr. Tarblecko…”

  “Now look down.”

  The office was on the ninth floor. Ellie was a lifelong New Yorker, so that had never seemed to her a particularly great height before. Now it did. The people on the sidewalk were as small as ants. The buses and automobiles on the street were the size of matchboxes. The sounds of horns and engines drifted up to her, and birdsong as well, the lazy background noises of a spring day in the city. The ground was so terribly far away! And there was nothing between her and it but air! Nothing holding her back from death but her fingers desperately clutching the window frame!

  Ellie could feel all the world’s gravity willing her toward the distant concrete. She was dizzy with vertigo and a sick, stomach-tugging urge to simply let go and, briefly, fly. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, and felt hot tears streaming down her face.

  She could tell from Mr. Tarblecko’s voice that he was standing right behind her. “If I told you to jump, Eleanor Voigt, would you do so?”

  “Yes,” she squeaked.

  “What kind of person jumps to her death simply because she’s been told to do so?”

  “A…a slave!”

  “Then what are you?”

  “A slave! A slave! I’m a slave!” She was weeping openly now, as much from humiliation as from fear. “I don’t want to die! I’ll be your slave, anything, whatever you say!”

  “If you’re a slave, then what kind of slave should you be?”

  “A…a…good slave.”

  “Come back inside.”

  Gratefully, she twisted around, and climbed back into the office. Her knees buckled when she tried to stand, and she had to grab at the windowsill to keep from falling. Mr. Tarblecko stared at her, sternly and steadily.

  “You have been given your only warning,” he said. “If you disobey again—or if you ever try to quit—I will order you out the window.”

  He walked into the closet and closed the door behind him.