When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition)

by William Barton

  Murph again. I felt a slight burning in the pit of my stomach, remembering those dozen or so dates, especially the one to the senior prom, three weeks back. Not the only girl I’d been dating. Sure as hell not among the ones I’d gotten closest to, but... memories of laughter. Of having fun. Just a date. Just a date, Murph. Doesn’t mean a thing.

  She said, “I think we’d make a... pretty good team, Murph. You and me, I mean.”

  Why didn’t I see this coming? Hell. Maybe I did.

  “I heard you were going into business with Dr. Goshtasp.”

  I nodded. “My dad and I always got along. I like robots.” Sure as fuck better than being a Mother’s Trust sidebander, anyway.

  She said, “You know my family controls a lot of big contracts, Murph. Even some government contracts. If you wanted to, you could be a lot more than just a... tinker. A few years of hard work, maybe you wouldn’t have to do any of the work yourself anymore. You’d hire people and...” She nodded toward the dump, with its pathetic dead sprawled all around, “spend as much time as you wanted to... helping them.”

  Helping. I felt my heart go crunch in my chest. Imagined careful, oh-so-clever Ludmilla Nellisdottir watching me, trying to... understand. What does Mr. Murphy want? Well, he loves the little robot trash, wants to help them you see, and he’s not really a Timeliner, just half a Timeliner’s son... Maybe I would have said something bad then, but...

  Ludmilla smiled, a bright gleam of perfect white teeth, stretched, seemed to work up her courage. Then she reached down, oh so slowly, and pulled up the silky hem of her dress. Nothing on underneath but her own lovely brown fur, fur just the same color as her long, lustrous hair. She smiled and said, “I know how you like to play gatesie, Murph. Girls can’t keep a secret.”

  A pulse of horrid dismay filled my breast, imagining all the girls who’d opened their gates for me the last couple of years, just for fun. Just for fun. Whispering together, telling jokes, in the girls’ steamroom, in long nighttime vidfests and slumber parties and... That Murph. Christ, he’ll do... anything. Anything you want.

  And coming into a pretty good job, besides.

  Luddy moved her hips, striking a pose, showing me Goddess’ Altar and Child’s Gate all rolled into one, and said, “You... want to take me for a test drive, Murph?”

  Test drive. That’s what girls call it when they whisper. Rannvi told you that, years and years ago. Rannvi’s the one who told you all their secrets, giving you an... edge.

  And Ludmilla Nellisdottir standing before you now with her gate exposed, inviting you in, giving it her all, thinking that she’s figured you out. I think if I could’ve spoken just then, I would’ve taken the Orb’s Secret Name in vain. Women aren’t supposed to humiliate themselves like this, not in front of a man.

  She said, “I’m asking you to marry me, Darius Murphy.”

  Did my heart stop? I couldn’t tell, heart flooded with an image of Ludmilla Nellisdottir following me around, getting me to go on all those fun, friendly dates. Making friends with all the girls with whom I’d played gatesie so she could figure me out, figure out what I wanted, paint me into a corner where what she had to offer was so good that... the silence stretched on too long, Luddy letting go, letting the hem of her skirt fall, closing the gate.

  I said, “This is a hard time for me, Luddy. I mean, my whole future, the rest of my life, however long...” Her face seemed to crumble, eyes filling with a horrible shine of tears. “Wait. I’m not telling you no, Luddy.” How could I say no, after what she’d just done?

  Maybe that was the point of doing it.

  I said, “I just need time to... think.”

  She said, “Oh.”

  That’s it. Time to think. I need time to think.

  But I could see I’d spoiled it for her, maybe ruined everything forever. All the work she put into this moment, all the planning, standing there with her dress pulled up, making her proposal of marriage. You’ll be a rich man, Murph. You won’t have to work. All your spare time, all the time I’m willing to let you have, can be spent with your beloved robots, Murph.

  Imagine that.

  How the hell do I tell her she got it wrong?

  Dr. Goshtasp loves the robots, Luddy.

  Me?

  I don’t fucking know.

  In a voice faint with despair, she said, “Can I... sit with you, Murph?”

  “Sure.”

  She sank down at my side, getting as close as she dared. Sat silent for a moment, looking out over the dump. Then she whispered, “Who were they, Murph? Tell me. Please.”

  Who were they? Like it really matters. After a while, before the silence could get ugly, I started making up pretty lies. Fairy tales. The long result of time. Et fucking cetera.

  Making things worse, in other words.

  o0o

  You do things for people who really love you, even if maybe you don’t quite love them back, even if maybe you think those things are foolish. So, about a week after graduation, I went with my father to a Timeliner Firehall deep in the Audumlan wilderness, beyond the bayou country, back by the old, abandoned blocks of dormitories where Standard ARM’s human workers and expensive optimods had lived, once upon a time. Went and knelt before the magus for my manhood ceremony, though I haven’t believed a word of this for a long, long time.

  If ever.

  Old America spawned the Timeliner faith they say, part of that last great surge of religious ecstasy that also spawned things like the Mother’s Children. Maybe even its direct counterpart, a religion to comfort men, men who must go sailing the dark skies, working for something, some goal never quite their own. Wealth of the corporations. Families of the women. Something to fill their empty hearts. Uncreated Time giving birth to the universe, manifesting itself in the universe it made through the agencies of Flame and Shadow, the personified forces of good and evil at work in all our lives, calling on human free will to decide between one and the other, evoked through the agency of Restitutor Orbis, called the Orb by one and all.

  Nonsense.

  The Firehall wasn’t so different from a Mother’s Temple. Darker. More shadows, cast into its many alcoves by the altar’s Eternal Flame. A Temple is always clothed in green grass and garlands of flowers, red more often than not, symbolizing a Mother’s Blood. The Firehall is made of gray stone and black iron. Walls lined with icons of the historical Archimages under whose guidance we wander through the Cavern of the Night. Just above the altar’s Flame, the icon of Archimage Xerxes XII, Living Voice of the Orb, a vibrant, handsome man with white hair and beard above bare, young, muscular chest and shoulders.

  Nonsense.

  When I was a little boy, my favorite thing was the traditional statue before the altar, Restitutor Orbis, cast in the image of a heroic naked man, battling the Bull of Labor bare-handed, grappling him by the horns, dogging him down in the dust. If you look closely, you can see both Orb and the Bull are experiencing a certain amount of sexual excitement.

  Utter foolishness.

  After the ceremony, my own and that of six other boys, whose words no one but a Timeliner can ever know, there was a little buffet, men and boys milling around, talking in low, sporadic voices, stuffing their faces, telling crude jokes and laughing. Sometimes, talking to boys who come from Timeliner families, I feel a little jealous. None of these boys has ever been to a Mother’s Service, ever knelt between the Goddess’ legs and babbled out humbling prayers while little girls tittered behind their backs.

  It seems like a wonderful dream, but I hear those families are hard to live in too, families where Timeliner mothers and sisters see their Mothersbairn neighbors going about their business, heads held high, and wonder if that’s not the life for them.

  Hard to be an alien, in any land.

  So I laughed and stuffed my face and told gatesie stories to the other newborn men, like a good little Timeliner male. My father seemed proud of me then, smiling as he listened while I told tales about girls these boys all knew
from school, girls who’d probably want me dead if they knew I’d told. The same girls, I guess, who couldn’t keep a secret from Ludmilla Nellisdottir.

  Walking out to the family flitter afterward, dusk already deep purple in the sky, stemlight fading away right on schedule, night forming up, three bands of bright stars arching overhead, my father breathed in the clean air of the empty wilderness, looking around at row on row of abandoned city block, and said, “Well, we’d better get going. Your mother will kill me if I don’t get the flitter home on time.”

  In the world of the Mother’s Children, Mothers own everything there is, no matter who does the work that pays the bills. I thought about what my life to come would have to be like, and couldn’t think of anything to say, bitter words stilled just inside my lips.

  He stopped, turned and looked at me, then said, “Is something wrong, son?”

  Don’t you know? Why not? You ought to know. You went through this yourself, even if you weren’t really... one of us. There was a long, long silence, the two of us just looking at each other. Then, suddenly, I told him all about Ludmilla Nellisdottir, words coming out in a rush.

  There was another long silence, my father frowning, not looking at me at all. Finally, he said, “I know how it is, Darius. But... gatesie’s just a game for teenagers, you know that. Those girls will all get married now, and, you know, no adult woman, married or not...” More silence, then: “Your mother would never consent to a Timeliner marriage.”

  No. Not like the one she made for herself.

  I said, “What the hell good would that do?”

  Something tragic in his eyes then. “None. None at all.”

  “If I wait, work with you, just go on...”

  He said, “After a while, you’ll start to feel... too alone.”

  “I’m not afraid of that.”

  He gave me a long, sober look. “You will be, sooner or later.” Hesitant, then. “The Himerans... well, they’re just never enough.”

  I think I must have given him a very dirty look then.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. And looked away from me. “We’d better get going.” I followed him to the flitter and we went on home.

  Two. One last little stemshiny aside

  One last little stemshiny aside before life settles down and dreary. Styrbjörn and I took our airguns and bedrolls and camping gear, had Daddy set us down on a hillside in the back country beyond the old habitat blocks, where not even the bayou robots go, on a bright yellow morning, promising to come for us again in a few days, when we’d gotten this boyish nonsense out of our systems.

  As we walked away, down into the shadow-dappled glades of an old park forest, the sky was an unusually clear blue overhead, soft, soapy azure, as if it had the texture of some of Mother’s best jewelry, things I’d loved to rub with my fingers when I was little. We walked, feeling these things as part of last, stolen moments, beneath the boughs of wind-rustling green trees, among slanting beams of stemlight.

  If I tried real hard, I could imagine myself walking through some Old Earth forest, imagine myself some before-time man, from thousands of years ago, lanky and lean, hard and fit, long arms swinging by my sides, long legs striding effortlessly forward.

  Smell the dust of the Fatherworld. This is the world that Uncreated Time made for Man before Man himself was made, before Goddess was made, before even Woman.

  Walking in my imagination, I snickered softly to myself, remembering a day when I’d tried to talk Timeliner doctrine to a much older Rannvi, who’d grinned and asked me the riddle about the chicken and the egg.

  I tried to listen for the sounds of the forest. I don’t really know what sounds an Old Earth forest would make, only the sounds you hear in made-up DataTrack adventures, the cooing of tropical birds, the howl of the monkeys, the incessant screaming of faraway predator cats.

  In the stories we saw as children, stories from the unblocked Mothersbairn datatracks, it’s always in that old-time world where the Mother’s priestesses are still fighting their desperate rear-guard action, defending the Sign of the Labrys against the Patriarchy’s vanguard.

  Ah, but for that damned volcano, the narrator’s soft contralto whisper in your ear, the universe of today would be... different.

  I stopped suddenly, listening, Styrbjörn a few paces away, puzzled.

  “Murph?”

  “Shut up.”

  Long, still silence. Then I heard the sigh of the wind again, the rustle of the leaves in the trees. The little crackle of dead leaves and pine needles on the ground as Styrbjörn shifted his weight impatiently. Finally, far, far away, a faint, almost inaudible whine. Whine as of a distant machine.

  I caught my breath, feeling almost suffocated, then we started to walk again, and, as we walked, Styrbjörn began to talk, while I tried not to listen, tried to hold onto my dream. Where, in the dream, do we want to know about Sieglindë’s family, about how cool his Mother’s Trust job is going to be, about the house where he and his girl will be setting up, courtesy of her mother’s familial wealth?

  Test driven her yet, Styrbjörn?

  Well, no, but... a gate’s a gate, eh, Murph?

  Sure it is, pal. One gate just like another and another and another and... We came out of the forest then on the slope of a long, long hill, put here for Orb knows what reason when Standard ARM Decantorium XVII was newly built, eroded just a bit now, raw red earth showing between banks of tall, weedy, dry brown grass, long gullies forming up in the absence of gardeners. Little things, dark shapes buzzing around in the long grass, dull thrumming sounds and a blur of transparent wings.

  Styrbjörn said, “Oh, snappers already! Let’s get a few.” Good eating, almost time for lunch and...

  I swung the airgun down off my shoulder, where it’d been hanging by its canvas strap all morning, made sure the clip was loaded, pumped the barrel once, ka-ching, pressurizing the chamber, jacking in a pellet. Then we walked down the hill toward the snappers, mighty hunters closing in for the kill.

  Styrbjörn, always impatient, lifted his gun and fired first, pap. Nothing. Snappers suddenly flying up, darting in all directions, confused. I called him an asshole, ran in among the dark, bounding shapes, listening to the sharp, shuddery buzz of their wings, picked out one that was too stupid to zigzag and... pap. Faint kick of a recoil against my armpit, then the snapper tumbled, transparent wings become a jumble of broken plastic panes. Pap. A second one went down. Styrbjörn started firing again, standing beside me, but I didn’t see if he was hitting anything.

  When it was over, most of the snappers getting away, outrunning us in an expanding circle, disappearing into the forest, leaping to safety over the edge of the bluff, we’d brought down more than a dozen of the little critters, were walking around, gathering them up, filling our game bags. Not sure why the hell they’re here or what they are, where they come from. Daddy thinks they’re genengineered from a variety of arthropods, crustaceans, earthforms as always. In any event, part of the complete, calculated ecology that Audumla must once have had.

  Styrbjörn picked one up by the leg, dangling it, watching clear yellow blood drip down off its wings, blood the color of fine, golden honey, and said, “Mmm-boy! This is going to be the best lunch we ever had!”

  o0o

  A night camped out under arching bands of brilliant stars, the intermittent, staring red eye of Ygg, bellies full of roast snapper, listening to the crackle of the campfire, the faraway, irregular rumble of the air conditioning system, then, in daylight, we were up again, walking, talking, doing our best to revel in the splendors of nature. By midday, we got to our real destination, the unstated one that Styrbjörn’d been thinking of, I suppose, when he proposed “one last hunting trip.” Like as not, my father knew what we were up to when he watched us go.

  We popped out of the woods at the crest of a long, low hill, vista of valley sweeping away before us, sweeping down to a broad, turbid river that flowed in the direction of Audumla’s axial spin, before rising agai
n in the middle distance, turning back to green forest, then blue haze, upcurving landscape, a broad swath of empty sky, then the remote, mistily dangling countryside of the next panel.

  Down by the river, down on the bottom land, was a little village, real houses, white-painted wood, red brick, lovely cedar shingles, houses arranged just so, each one in the middle of a perfect, symmetrical, jade-green lawn. Flitters parked in a parking lot inland of the village, a dozen or so shiny metal bugs glinting in the stemlight. People walking the streets of the little townlet, walking down along the river, walking in twos and threes, seldom alone.

  I could feel Styrbjörn’s excitement by my side, just from the way he caught his breath, from the way his step quickened when he caught sight of the place.

  When we approached, as we passed by the parking lot, you could hear men laughing, men talking, oddly out of sync with each other, but making up a steady cadence nonetheless. And nowhere in all this, the rapid, high patter of talking women.

  Beyond the clustered flitters, the sounds became more and more subdued, until finally, once we were among the houses, it was almost as if we were back in the woods, hearing the shush of the wind, the deep, liquid gurgle of the river. One or two men on the street that we could see, walking along, almost in a hurry, not looking at each other, not looking at us, sort of behaving the way men do when they’re in a public toilet. You know.

  We picked a house, almost at random, maybe the same house we’d picked, almost at random, the last time we were here, months and months ago. New Year’s Eve, I think. As we came up the walk, the door opened and a man came out, face looking—I don’t know, exhausted maybe. Stopped short when he saw us, flicker of fear in his eyes, Do you know me? Then, not recognizing us, grinning a nasty little furtive grin. He turned and spoke to the small thing in his shadow before hurrying off, brushing past us, hurrying on up the street and away.

  Where the man had been, a pretty young girl stood in the doorway, slim, top of her head not even reaching as high as my chin, long, tousled light brown hair falling down around her shoulders, face serene and... looking at us with her eyes of glass. She smiled a warm, sincere smile of welcome, and said, “Come in, friends. We’ve been waiting for you.”