Terzian walked toward an old ruined castle that shambled down the slope of a nearby hill. And if Stephanie’s plant-people proved viable? he wondered. All bets were off. A world in which humans could become plants was a world in which none of the old rules applied.
Stephanie had said she wanted to crash the market in starvation. But, Terzian thought, that also meant crashing the market in food. If people with no money had all the food they needed, that meant food itself had no value in the marketplace. Food would be so cheap that there would be no profit in growing or selling it.
And this was all just one application of the technology. Terzian tried to keep up with science: he knew about nanoassemblers. Green people was just the first magic bullet in a long volley of scientific musketry that would change every fundamental rule by which humanity had operated since they’d first stood upright. What happened when every basic commodity—food, clothing, shelter, maybe even health—was so cheap that it was free? What then had value?
Even money wouldn’t have value then. Money only had value if it could be exchanged for something of equivalent worth.
He paused in his walk and looked ahead at the ruined castle, the castle that had once provided justice and security and government for the district, and he wondered if he was looking at the future of all government. Providing an orderly framework in which commodities could be exchanged was the basic function of the state, that and providing a secure currency. If people didn’t need government to furnish that kind of security and if the currency was worthless, the whole future of government itself was in question. Taxes weren’t worth the expense of collecting if the money wasn’t any good, anyway, and without taxes, government couldn’t be paid for.
Terzian paused at the foot of the ruined castle and wondered if he saw the future of the civilized world. Either the castle would be rebuilt by tyrants, or it would fall.
Michelle heard Darton’s bullhorn again the next evening, and she wondered why he was keeping fruit-bat hours. Was it because his calls would travel farther at night?
If he were sleeping in the morning, she thought, that would make it easier. She’d finished analyzing some of her samples, but a principle of science was not to do these things alone: she’d have to travel to Koror to mail her samples to other people, and now she knew to do it in the morning, when Darton would be asleep.
The problem for Michelle was that she was a legend. When the lonely mermaid emerged from the sea and walked to the post office in the little foam booties she wore when walking on pavement, she was noticed. People pointed: children followed her on their boards, people in cars waved. She wondered if she could trust them not to contact Darton as soon as they saw her.
She hoped that Darton wasn’t starting to get the islanders on his side.
Michelle and Darton had met on a field trip in Borneo, their obligatory government service after graduation. The other field workers were older, paying their taxes or working on their second or third or fourth or fifth careers, and Michelle knew on sight that Darton was no older than she, that he, too, was a child among all these elders. They were pulled to each other as if drawn by some violent natural force, cataloguing snails and terrapins by day and spending their nights wrapped in each other in their own shell, their turtleback tent. The ancients with whom they shared their days treated them with amused condescension, but then, that was how they treated everything. Darton and Michelle didn’t care. In their youth they stood against all creation.
When the trip came to an end, they decided to continue their work together, just a hop across the equator in Belau. Paying their taxes ahead of time. They celebrated by getting new bodies, an exciting experience for Michelle, who had been built by strict parents who wouldn’t allow her to have a new body until adulthood, no matter how many of her friends had been transforming from an early age into one newly fashionable shape or another.
Michelle and Darton thought that anthropoid bodies would be suitable for the work, and so they went to the clinic in Delhi and settled themselves on nanobeds and let the little machines turn their bodies, their minds, their memories, their desires and their knowledge and their souls, into long strings of numbers. All of which were fed into their new bodies when they were ready, and reserved as backups to be downloaded as necessary.
Being a siamang was a glorious discovery. They soared through the treetops of their little island, swinging overhand from limb to limb in a frenzy of glory. Michelle took a particular delight in her body hair—she didn’t have as much as a real ape, but there was enough on her chest and back to be interesting. They built nests of foliage in trees and lay tangled together, analyzing data or making love or shaving their hair into interesting tribal patterns. Love was far from placid—it was a flame, a fury. An obsession that, against all odds, had been fulfilled, only to build the flame higher.
The fury still burned in Michelle. But now, after Darton’s death, it had a different quality, a quality that had nothing to do with life or youth.
Michelle, spooning up blueberries and cream, riffled through the names and faces her spiders had spat out. There were, now she added them up, a preposterous number of pictures of green-eyed women with dark skin whose pictures were somewhere in the net. Nearly all of them had striking good looks. Many of them were unidentified in the old scans, or identified only by a first name. The highest probability the software offered was 43 percent.
That 43 percent belonged to a Brazilian named Laura Flor, who research swiftly showed was home in Aracaju during the critical period, among other things having a baby. A video of the delivery was available, but Michelle didn’t watch it. The way women delivered babies back then was disgusting.
The next most likely female was another Brazilian seen in some tourist photographs taken in Rio. Not even a name given. A further search based on this woman’s physiognomy turned up nothing, not until Michelle broadened the search to a different gender, and discovered that the Brazilian was a transvestite. That didn’t seem to be Terzian’s scene, so she left it alone.
The third was identified only as Stephanie, and posted on a site created by a woman who had done relief work in Africa. Stephanie was shown with a group of other relief workers, posing in front of a tin-roofed, cinderblock building identified as a hospital.
The quality of the photograph wasn’t very good, but Michelle mapped the physiognomy anyway, and sent it forth along with the name “Stephanie” to see what might happen.
There was a hit right away, a credit card charge to a Stephanie América Pais e Silva. She had stayed in a hotel in Paris for the three nights before Terzian disappeared.
Michelle’s blood surged as the data flashed on her screens. She sent out more spiders and the good news began rolling in.
Stephanie Pais was a dual citizen of Portugal and Angola, and had been educated partly in the States—a quick check showed that her time at university didn’t overlap Terzian’s. From her graduation, she had worked for a relief agency called Santa Croce.
Then a news item turned up, a sensational one. Stephanie Pais had been spectacularly murdered in Venice on the night of July 19, six days before Terzian had delivered the first version of his Cornucopia Theory.
Two murders ….
One in Paris, one in Venice. And one of them of the woman who seemed to be Terzian’s lover.
Michelle’s body shivered to a sudden gasping spasm, and she realized that in her suspense she’d been holding her breath. Her head swam. When it cleared, she worked out what time it was in Maryland, where Dr. Davout lived, and then told her deck to page him at once.
Davout was unavailable at first, and by the time he returned her call, she had more information about Stephanie Pais. She blurted the story out to him while her fingers jabbed at the keyboard of her deck, sending him copies of her corroborating data.
Davout’s startled eyes leaped from the data to Michelle and back. “How much of this,” he began, then gave up. “How did she die?” he managed.
“The ne
ws article says stabbed. I’m looking for the police report.”
“Is Terzian mentioned?”
“Any idea what this is about? There’s no history of Terzian ever being connected with violence.”
“By tomorrow,” Michelle said, “I should be able to tell you. But I thought I should send this to you because you might be able to tie this in with other elements of Terzian’s life that I don’t know anything about.”
Davout’s fingers formed a mudra that Michelle didn’t recognize—an old one, probably. He shook his head. “I have no idea what’s happening here. The only thing I have to suggest is that this is some kind of wild coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in that kind of coincidence,” Michelle said.
Davout smiled. “A good attitude for a researcher,” he said. “But experience—well,” he waved a hand.
But he loved her, Michelle insisted inwardly. She knew that in her heart. She was the woman he loved after Claire died, and then she was killed and Terzian went on to create the intellectual framework on which the world was now built. He had spent his modest fortune building pilot programs in Africa that demonstrated his vision was a practical one. The whole modern world was a monument to Stephanie.
Everyone was young then, Michelle thought. Even the seventy-year-olds were young compared to the people now. The world must have been ablaze with love and passion. But Davout didn’t understand that because he was old and had forgotten all about love.
“Michelle …” Darton’s voice came wafting over the waters.
Bastard. Michelle wasn’t about to let him spoil this.
Her fingers formed
She picked up her deck and swung it around so that she could be sure that the light from the display couldn’t be seen from the ocean. Her bare back against the rough bark of the ironwood, she began flashing through the data as it arrived.
She couldn’t find the police report. Michelle went in search of it and discovered that all police records from that period in Venetian history had been wiped out in the Lightspeed War, leaving her only with what had been reported in the media.
“Where are you? I love you!” Darton’s voice came from farther away. He’d narrowed his search, that was clear, but he still wasn’t sure exactly where Michelle had built her nest.
Smiling, Michelle closed her deck and slipped it into its pouch. Her spiders would work for her tirelessly till dawn while she dreamed on in her hammock and let Darton’s distant calls lull her to sleep.
They shifted their lodgings every few days. Terzian always arranged for separate bedrooms. Once, as they sat in the evening shade of a farm terrace and watched the setting sun shimmer on the silver leaves of the olives, Terzian found himself looking at her as she sat in an old cane chair, at the profile cutting sharp against the old limestone of the Vaucluse. The blustering wind brought gusts of lavender from the neighboring farm, a scent that made Terzian want to inhale until his lungs creaked against his ribs.
From a quirk of Stephanie’s lips, Terzian was suddenly aware that she knew he was looking at her. He glanced away.
“You haven’t tried to sleep with me,” she said.
“No,” he agreed.
“But you look,” she said. “And it’s clear you’re not a eunuch.”
“We fight all the time,” Terzian pointed out. “Sometimes we can’t stand to be in the same room.”
Stephanie smiled. “That wouldn’t stop most of the men I’ve known. Or the women, either.”
Terzian looked out over the olives, saw them shimmer in the breeze. “I’m still in love with my wife,” he said.
There was a moment of silence. “That’s well,” she said.
And I’m angry at her, too, Terzian thought. Angry at Claire for deserting him. And he was furious at the universe for killing her and for leaving him alive, and he was angry at God even though he didn’t believe in God. The Trashcanians had been good for him, because he could let his rage and his hatred settle there, on people who deserved it.
Those poor drunken bastards, he thought. Whatever they’d expected in that hotel corridor, it hadn’t been a berserk grieving American who would just as soon have ripped out their throats with his bare hands.
The question was, could he do that again? It had all occurred without his thinking about it, old reflexes taking over, but he couldn’t count on that happening a second time. He’d been trying to remember the Kenpo he’d once learned, particularly all the tricks against weapons. He found himself miming combats on his long country hikes, and he wondered if he’d retained any of his ability to take a punch.
He kept the gun with him, so the Trashcanians wouldn’t get it if they searched his room when he was away. When he was alone, walking through the almond orchards or on a hillside fragrant with wild thyme, he practiced drawing it, snicking off the safety, and putting pressure on the trigger … the first time the trigger pull would be hard, but the first shot would cock the pistol automatically and after that the trigger pull would be light.
He wondered if he should buy more ammunition. But he didn’t know how to buy ammunition in France and didn’t know if a foreigner could get into trouble that way.
“We’re both angry,” Stephanie said. He looked at her again, her hand raised to her head to keep the gusts from blowing her long ringlets in her face. “We’re angry at death. But love must make it more complicated for you.”
Her green eyes searched him. “It’s not death you’re in love with, is it? Because —”
Terzian blew up. She had no right to suggest that he was in a secret alliance with death just because he didn’t want to turn a bunch of Africans green. It was their worst argument, and this one ended with both of them stalking away through the fields and orchards while the scent of lavender pursued them on the wind.
When Terzian returned to his room, he checked his caches of money, half-hoping that Stephanie had stolen his euros and run. She hadn’t.
He thought of going into her room while she was away, stealing the papiloma, and taking a train north, handing it over to the Pasteur Institute or someplace. But he didn’t.
In the morning, during breakfast, Stephanie’s cell phone rang, and she answered. He watched while her face turned from curiosity to apprehension to utter terror. Adrenaline sang in his blood as he watched, and he leaned forward, feeling the familiar rage rise in him, just where he wanted it. In haste, she turned off the phone, then looked at him. “That was one of them. He says he knows where we are, and wants to make a deal.”
“If they know where we are,” Terzian found himself saying coolly, “why aren’t they here?”
“We’ve got to go,” she insisted.
So they went. Clean out of France and into the Tuscan hills, with Stephanie’s cell phone left behind in a trash can at the train station and a new phone purchased in Siena. The Tuscan countryside was not unlike Provence, with vine-covered hillsides, orchards a-shimmer with the silver-green of olive trees, and walled medieval towns perched on crags; but the slim, tall cypress standing like sentries gave the hills a different profile, and there were different types of wine grapes, and many of the vineyards rented rooms where people could stay and sample the local hospitality. Terzian didn’t speak the language, and because Spanish was his first foreign language, consistently pronounced words like “villa” and “panzanella” as if they were Spanish. But Stephanie had grown up in Italy and spoke the language not only like a native, but like a native Roman.
Florence was only a few hours away, and Terzian couldn’t resist visiting one of the great living monuments to civilization. His parents had taken him to Europe several times as a child, but somehow never made it here.
Terzian and Stephanie spent a day wandering the center of town, on occasion taking shelter from one of the pelting rainstorms that shatte
red the day. At one point, with thunder booming overhead, they found themselves in the Basilica di Santa Croce.
“Holy Cross,” Terzian said, translating. “That’s your outfit.”
“We have nothing to do with this church,” Stephanie said. “We don’t even have a collection box here.”
“A pity,” Terzian said as he looked at the soaked swarms of tourists packed in the aisles. “You’d clean up.”
Thunder accompanied the camera strobes that flashed against the huge tomb of Galileo like a vast lightning storm. “Nice of them to forget about that Inquisition thing and bury him in a church,” Terizan said.
“I expect they just wanted to keep an eye on him.”
It was the power of capital, Terzian knew, that had built this church, that had paid for the stained glass and the Giotto frescoes and the tombs and cenotaphs to the great names of Florence: Dante, Michelangelo, Bruni, Alberti, Marconi, Fermi, Rossini, and of course Machiavelli. This structure, with its vaults and chapels and sarcophagi and chanting Franciscans, had been raised by successful bankers, people to whom money was a real, tangible thing, and who had paid for the centuries of labor to build the basilica with caskets of solid, weighty coined silver.
“So what do you think he would make of this?” Terzian asked, nodding at the resting place of Machiavelli, now buried in the city from which he’d been exiled in his lifetime.
Stephanie scowled at the unusually plain sarcophagus with its Latin inscription. “No praise can be high enough,” she translated, then turned to him as tourist cameras flashed. “Sounds overrated.”
“He was a republican, you know,” Terzian said. “You don’t get that from just The Prince. He wanted Florence to be a republic, defended by citizen soldiers. But when it fell into the hands of a despot, he needed work, and he wrote the manual for despotism. But he looked at despotism a little too clearly, and he didn’t get the job.” Terzian turned to Stephanie. “He was the founder of modern political theory, and that’s what I do. And he based his ideas on the belief that all human beings, at all times, have the same passions.” He turned his eyes deliberately to Stephanie’s shoulder bag. “That may be about to end, right? You’re going to turn people into plants. That should change the passions if anything would.”
The Year's Best SF 21 # 2003 Page 44
