When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition)

by William Barton

  I could feel Styrbjörn tense up at the promise he heard in her voice. She turned away, and we followed her, through the black hole of the open door, on into the dimly-lit red room beyond. We dropped our gear in the corner nearest the door and waited.

  There. A row of them, sitting silently on a red-padded bench by the back wall, nine little girls dressed in clingy silk robes. Not so little of course. Tall. Slim. Featureless. Not so much featureless as... unformed. Not immature, no. Just... waiting.

  They call these things allomorphs. Daddy says they started out a couple of centuries ago as therapeutic tools. Tools to fix the damaged psyches of human men and women. Men and women who were... I don’t know. Not right somehow. Afraid of... each other, I guess. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it’s too much work to fix yourself from the inside out like that. Easier just to submit to the needle, needle and knife, let them shoot you full of soul. Soul and well being.

  So the therapists gave up, Daddy says, threw all their allomorphs away, some of them just wandering off, so much abandoned machinery in the functional habitats of Piazzi, Kuiper and Oort. Some picked up for scrap, most... bought for their entertainment value. These here, they say, are part of a package deal the local Standard ARM management staff got when they first built Decantorium XVII.

  As if on cue, one of the little girls, the one nearest the rightward end of the bench, stood, stepping forward in a whirl of white robe, pirouetting before us, sort of... expanding. As she whirled, her black hair grew longer, flying up in a circle of sheen, disappearing briefly as she pulled out of her robe, white robe flying to one side, crumpling up by the far wall.

  There. There, in the Name of the Orb...

  They say these things can become anything. Anything you want. Anything you could possibly dream. Maybe anything anyone could possibly dream. Certainly it’d have to be that way, if they were once used to... heal those sick old men and women, men and women who might like... anything at all.

  This one, here and now, dancing in the half-darkness before us, grew sleek like a fishpond seal, hips rounding out as she danced, waist nipping in, large breasts with huge dark nipples bulking up on her chest, face almost hidden in masses of lustrous, suddenly curly black hair, hair almost hiding those famous eyes.

  Slick shine, as of flowing oil, suddenly appeared on the inside of her dancing thighs, and the air seemed to fill with... a hard pull of... wanting. I heard Styrbjörn gasp softly by my side, saw him step forward a half step out of the corner of my eye.

  Whose dream is this, then? They say they can read your mind, the allomorph things, but it’s not my dream. Not my dream at all.

  When I turned and looked at my friend, he was looking at me, face screwed up in some kind of comic agony, silly desperation, and I could see an erection was already tenting the front of his pants. So much for whose dream... He said, “Murph. Do you mind?” Gesturing at the dancing thing.

  I shrugged. “Be my guest.”

  He turned quickly away, having forgotten me, struggling to get his chit out of a back pocket, handed it to the dancer, fumbling, almost dropping it. She slowed to a stop, smiling, took the wafer from him, put it briefly in her mouth, handed it back. Then took him by the hand and led him stumbling away into the darkness.

  And me?

  When the next allomorph came dancing forward, I stepped forward too, chit already in my hand. Put my other hand on her shoulder, stopping her before she could turn, before she could strip off the robe, before she could change. Stood looking for a long, empty moment into those fathomless eyes of glass.

  She took my chit, still looking at me. Bit down softly, gave it back. I slipped it into my pocket again, wondering if Mother would know, when the charge appeared in the household accounts, that Einar’s Total Glutton Pizzahouse or whatever guise these things used, was really...

  I can hear her now, screaming at my father, How the fuck could Dagmar and his friends eat that much pizza?

  Dr. Goshtasp, wincing, murmuring, Well, growing boys, you know...

  Growing boys, my ass.

  The allomorph stood close enough for me to feel tiny budding breasts, surely having detected by now that I longed for neither men nor girl children, looked up into my face, and whispered, “What do you want me do be?”

  What. Not, who. I said, “Nothing. Not yet.” Then I took her by the hand and led her down a long, dark hallway, led her past a score of open, empty bedroom doors and out the back door of the establishment. Led her out into the brilliant, clean midday stemshine.

  o0o

  I led her away from the house, away from the village, led her down the river and into the cool shadow of the trees, following a trail along the banks of a river red with mud, holding one small hand in mine, curiously conscious of delicate bone, of the cool stillness of her fingers. Something indefinable here. Something... utterly unlike the hands of real girls, held on so many dates.

  Quick, fragmented memory of Ludmilla Nellisdottir, holding my hand as we walked outside, walked through the night, night of the promenade dance. Holding onto me, gripping my hand so firmly in her own.

  I remember she stopped me in the darkness. Stopped me, faced me, looked up at me, waiting for that stolen kiss. Laughing softly to herself as we walked on.

  Not at all like this thing’s hand now.

  Nothing from my little allomorph as I led her by the hand, deeper and deeper into the abandoned forest, led her up a steep trail away from the river and through the trees, until finally we burst from shadow and into the brilliant stemshine of a forest glade, acres of meadow stretching out before us. Quiet stillness and... no, those are not flowers.

  Before us on the dark green grass, dots of yellow here and there, moving gently, though not to the residual breeze of Audumla’s faraway air conditioning fans. Thousands of pale yellow butterflies, clinging quietly to their stalks of grass, waiting for... something. Every now and again as we watched, one or another of them would rise up, fly for a little while, a delicate flutter of living color, then settle again, wings flexing gently, open, close, open again. Waiting.

  Unbidden, the allomorph said, “Pretty.”

  I turned and looked at her then, as she turned to look at me, focusing on my face somehow. “Do you like pretty things?”

  She glanced back at the butterflies, watched another one fly about for a while, following it with bits of crystalline glitter. Then she looked at me again, and said, “Who do you want me to be?”

  Who, rather than what. You read me well, little allomorph. “I don’t know.”

  She undid the tie of her robe and shrugged it off her shoulders, so that it fell in a pool around her slippered feet, stood still, watching me watch her. Maybe this is what they make for men who know nothing of themselves? That tender, innocent, barely-formed face. Those budding little breasts. Narrow hips barely flaring from a slim, flat-bellied waist.

  Featureless slit of a vulva, furred just enough to let me know her machinery understood I wasn’t here to rape a child.

  Nothing here of the Goddess, though. Nothing threatening at all.

  Behind her, a whole section of butterflies lifted off in unison, whirling off the ground, spiraling upward like autumn leaves in a sudden wind, and my allomorph turned away, murmuring softly, as if to herself, a gentle whisper of delight. Nothing threatening about the flight of yellow butterflies. About yellow leaves helpless before the wind.

  Nothing threatening in an allomorph’s private joy at a nature to which she does not belong.

  She turned toward me again, taking my two hands in hers, looking up into my face, standing close to me, so close my senses would fill with the pheromones she made just for me.

  All at once, all around us, the butterflies flew, for no reason we could know, for no reason that could matter, blizzarding into the sky. I looked deeply into her fathomless, forever-empty eyes of glass, and then, fragile insects swirling round us like a storm of buttercups shining in stemlight, imitation light of a sun that w
as to me only a dream, I laid her down in the cool green grass and did what a man will always do with a compliant man-made whore.

  o0o

  Home again, finished, I thought, with boyhood things. Oh, yes, I know I can go see the nice little allomorphs anytime I want, just like all those other men, but... whose dream is that? Not mine, certainly. A young man may have a vision of what his life will be like, or he may not. I didn’t, but hated to imagine myself married and dull, working, coming home, paying to see my children raised, sneaking away every now and then for a hopeless frolic with a thing.

  Better than boyhood things, of course.

  Keep telling yourself that.

  Better than the household servants, the... silvergirls. Silvergirls those almost silent, will-less, liquid metal humanoid things that serve in Mothersbairn households, humanoids on the feminine verge of androgyny, naked and sleek, nothing between there legs but a vaguely suggestive shaping of curves.

  You see them all your childhood, as they dress and bathe and feed you, play with them after a fashion as they play with you. When you grow just old enough, it doesn’t take a particularly clever boy to alter that play, discovering they’ll more or less... do what you tell them.

  Do what you say and not tell Mother.

  If you’re not clever enough, some other boy will snicker and tell you. You’ll be horrified, of course, but then you’ll start to think about it, lying alone in your bed at night and, sooner or later...

  I used to have a favorite silvergirl, one I came to regard as my personal toy, but, one day, Mother came to watch as the thing gave me my evening bath, got a stony look on her face, and told me I’d have to bathe myself after that, ordering the silvergirl away.

  Maybe I was eleven years old, by then.

  Just old enough, as they say.

  When I was home, showered and dressed again, I checked my mail and found a note from Mother on my freeze-frame interface. It told me to dress for dinner guests, specified my powder blue semiformal dinner jacket, white ruffled shirt and little blue bow tie. Dress, my boy, and be there on time. No indication as to who the dinner guests might be. As usual. No need for me to know. Just show up. Smile and be polite. Make chitchat. Don’t spill steak sauce on your ruffles.

  I dawdled anyway, poking around the DataWarren, finding nothing, as usual, staring moodily out my bedroom window at the long, dusky orange tunnel of Audumla, until just before dinnertime, wondering if this was a grown man’s angst at last, or just more boyish silliness. Finally got into my suit and went downstairs.

  Just get through the evening. Maybe there’ll even be something to do later on. Hell, maybe Lenahr will dump chocolate milk in his lap like he did when Mother had the Priestess’ Acolytes over.

  Lenahr was already in the dining hall foyer when I got there, being fussed over by a silent silvergirl. My brother was the perfect image of a pouting boy spalled from Mark Twain’s Sidney, clad in Mother’s favorite blue and gold sailor suit, short pants showing his smooth red knees, robot making a futile attempt to re-tie his floppy bow tie, futile because he was a moving target.

  I walked over, grinned, ruffled his straw-blond hair, and said, “Hiya, Lenny. How’s it going?”

  He looked up at me, all serious and owl eyed. Then he said, “Fuck off, Doggie. Why don’t you suck my ruby-red dink?”

  Doggie. I wiped my hand ostentatiously on my pantleg and gave him one of those looks you give an asshole kid brother. “Lemme know when you grow one.”

  Lifted his middle finger, gave me an unusually evil grin. “Last chance, shitface...”

  I think I might have wondered what the hell he meant, but Rannvi came hurrying down the stairs, dressed in a clingy siniform pantsuit of slick, iridescent silk, mostly blue, but with moving sheens of green, orange and metallic red, covered to the neck with cloth, body nonetheless on perfect display. Her face seemed flat and white, mouth set hard, lips compressed into a pale streak. Eyes stony, full of anger, looking right at me.

  “What the hell’s wrong?”

  Lenahr snickered, and Rannvi snapped at him, “Shut the fuck up, you little prick.”

  Good grief.

  The double doors to Mother’s Wing swung open and she came in, cutting off whatever might have been said next. Mother, dressed up kretikai, long, pleated red skirt sweeping the floor, already narrow, muscular waist further cinched in by a velvet-strapped girdle, underbodice turning her bare breasts into solid, rouge-nippled mounds, trailed by Father, dressed in a standard semiformal dinner jacket just like mine, but black, as if he were going to some kind of casual wake.

  She said, “Well. On time and dressed up.”

  That wonderful sarcasm with which she’d so-successfully molded us all, that smooth face, even-toned complexion the best money can buy. Those wonderful sky-blue eyes I’d loved to look at when I was little, perfectly matching her favorite turquoise jewelry. Long, straight blond hair drawn back in a flowing ponytail mane. Ruby-red lips set in a tight little smile and...

  I looked at Dad, wondering why the hell Mother was dressed up for a trip to the Goddess. Restitutor Orbis. Face full of tension, one corner of his mouth turned sharply downward. Eyes black like flint. And not looking at me, no matter how hard I willed them to do so. The two of them must’ve just had one fuck of a big argument.

  When I glanced at Rannvi, she leaned close, seeming anguished, and whispered, “I’m sorry, Murph. If I’d known, I’d’ve told you.”

  I felt an odd little pang, and thought, Told me what? But, somewhere, I think I already knew.

  Mother swept forward, dining hall doors swinging open before her, flooding us all with light, opening on a room full of people, Mother holding out her arms to greet her old friend Nelli Torgunnsdottir. Two of them embracing, breasts wallowing all over one another. Beyond them, more of Mother’s friends and associates. A young priestess with portable altar. A dozen or so girls from school, all in their party best, including some I’d gated for fun, laughter in all their eyes.

  And there, dressed in Virgin’s Veil, was Ludmilla Nellisdottir, face glowing with some glorious, otherworldly joy.

  I guess, in another world, in another time, they’d’ve all screamed, Surprise!

  I guess maybe I’m pretty stupid.

  When I looked at Father now, he returned my gaze, stood stock-still by my side, and said, “I’m sorry, Darius. I’m truly sorry.”

  Sorry. Wonderful.

  As they led me forward, the silver organist began to play Posting of the Banns, priestess lighting her candles, making her ritual announcements, telling everyone concerned that in six weeks, if nothing unwholesome turned up, Dagmar Helgasson would be sealed in holy wedlock to Ludmilla Nellisdottir, and that would be that.

  Somewhere else in the house, I suppose, my so-called friends will be hastily assembling some kind of bachelor party. Barrels of sweet red ale. Some cheeky little pornoflick or another. Styrbjörn drunk, slobbering all over me, going, See, buddy? Now we can go hunting together forever and ever, while our fuckin’ wives do whatever they fuckin’ want.

  Sure, pal. Fulfilling my every dream.

  They led me to the altar, led me to stand beside Ludmilla Nellisdottir, who stood oh-so-close, hip touching mine, and whispered, “We’re going to be happy together, Daggy. I just know we will.”

  So. Banns posted and prayers said, symbolic white satin ribbon tied around our wrists. Ludmilla giving me what was supposed to be that symbolically chaste “first kiss.”

  Torgunn and Mother and all the fine Ladies of the Motherhood heading for the banquet board, talking, talking.

  My father standing silent in one corner of the room, looking down, as if at his feet.

  Ludmilla led off by her friends to the Virgin’s Retreat.

  Me led off by mine to Final Night.

  All I remember of the latter is a drunken, slobbering Styrbjörn asking me, “Hey, Murph. She give you any tongue for firstie?”

  And remembering with a peculiar pang that she had, just a
tiny flicker, the tip of her tongue briefly poking my lower lip. Earnest of intent?

  And realizing that not one of my little friends was a Timeliner boy.

  I imagined the Orb, astride his bull, looking down at me with scorn.

  What are those words he’s mouthing?

  Mother’s boy.

  Sure.

  That’s me.

  o0o

  Eventually, the day came to an end. I went to my room, refusing to talk to anybody, went to bed, and lay there in the darkness, head spinning from too much liquor, looking out the window at darkness, at the Audumlan landscape, at the dark skyscape with its bands of stars alternating with bands of nothing at all.

  After a while, Ygg started to show itself, edge of dim, sullen red sliding out of nowhere, slowly growing.

  Well, you knew this would happen. Knew it. Knew it and did nothing about it, because... well what the hell could I do.

  No place to run. No hiding place.

  Angry at myself. Angry with Father, with Rannvi, refusing to talk to either of them as I stumbled off to my room.

  My room. What a laugh.

  Nothings mine. Not here. Not anywhere.

  In a little while, I’ll go live in Ludmilla’s spanking new house, and nothing will be mine there, either.

  What’s going to happen to me? Life with Luddy. Life working with father. Nothing will change, except I’ll have to contend with Luddy’s cunt every day and the girls won’t come to me anymore.

  Maybe one day, I’ll have a son of my own, and we can go down to the bayou county together, visit with the Himerans, fix their little woes, play with all the cute little kits and pretend...

  Right.

  Suddenly I was back down in the bayou again on a bright and stemshiny day, walking along some drytrack through the swamp, Father and I together, airguns under our arms, daypacks on our backs, fishing poles folded away in their cases, waiting for us to take them out and use them.