Universe 14 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  She considered him carefully. “Yes sir,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Very good.” He glanced at the soldier beside her. “She’s unarmed?”

  “Yes sir!”

  “Very good. You and your patrol will be commended for this, soldier,” the general said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Guard the door,” he said.

  The soldiers left, and the general still sat in the chair, his hands on the arms of the easy chair, studying Jax. His eyes were shrewd. She met his gaze and continued to consider her options. They were few and unacceptable. She could attempt to overpower him and die trying to escape. She could stay here and die.

  “Sit down, Jax,” said the general, waving a hand at a chair. “Would you like a drink?” He poured her a drink from the bottle on the coffee table without waiting for her reply.

  She took it from him and sat down. “Thanks,” she said cautiously.

  “You’re welcome, Jax.” He smiled, amused. “You’re very welcome indeed. I had been wondering when my luck would return. It seems it has.” He swirled the drink in his glass. “Now, the question is: what should I do with you?”

  “I thought,” she said slowly, “that we talked about this once before.”

  He nodded slowly, obviously enjoying himself. “That’s true; we did. But that was a different situation, wasn’t it? You would never have said ‘Yes sir’ then.”

  “True.” She sipped the drink. It was whiskey; not good whiskey. She winced a little when it touched a cut on her lip.

  “Make that ‘Yes sir,’ “ he said.

  “The soldiers aren’t here,” she said. “Why put on a show?”

  He studied her and his grin broadened. “Perhaps for my private amusement?”

  “General, if you’re going to kill me, then I’d rather not amuse you first.” His grin had penetrated her weariness. “If you’re not going to kill me, then we have something to talk about.” She knew that he could order the soldiers back to beat her, and in that moment she did not care.

  He laughed and slammed his left hand against the arm of the chair. “By God, I like you. So angry, so arrogant. But I may kill you anyway.” Still smiling, he studied her. “However, if you pledge your allegiance to me, I might not.”

  She kept her face still, hiding her surprise. How strange, she thought, how very strange. An option she had not considered.

  “I need to know some things,” he said. “For example, where are your headquarters?” He sipped his drink. “That would do for a start.”

  “Headquarters? That changes from day to day.” She sipped her drink and tried to think of a way to turn this option into a way to survive.

  “Yes, and where were they last?” He watched her face. She did not speak. “I am waiting, Jax.”

  She shrugged. “They’ll be changed by now. Yesterday, they were in the Garden of Eden, a club on Broadway. By now ...” She shrugged again. “You see, General—that’s the beauty of this way of fighting a war. We’re guerilla fighters on our own land. Temporary headquarters can be just about anywhere. We carry our weapons with us.” She watched him over the drink. “So even if I told you all I know, you’d learn nothing of value.”

  “I could torture you until you’d willingly answer all my questions.” He leaned back in the chair, studying her. “I won’t do that. I think you’re right—the information you gave me would be useless by the time we pried it loose. I could hold you for ransom. I wonder what you would be worth to them.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Or I could persuade you to work for me. I would prefer to keep you as you are—a ghost on a white horse.” He grinned. “But I want that ghost working for me.”

  She took another sip of the drink. “If I said yes, what would you want me to do?”

  “If you say yes, I will assemble the troops and you will surrender to me publicly and vow allegiance to me. If you say no, we will have a public execution,” he said. “A hanging on the steps of City Hall.”

  She liked living. She sipped the drink, and even the bad whiskey tasted good. The room was filled with a silence that made her back feel cold and unprotected. Far away, muffled by the walls, she could hear one of Gambit’s bells ringing, but the sound did not touch the silence in the room. What difference would it make if she pledged her loyalty to the general? None. It would mean nothing. The words would just be words, words like “Yes sir.” She liked living. She swirled the bad whiskey in her glass. Danny-boy would say the words were symbols. They were fighting a war of symbols. Danny-boy was crazy. He was wrong. She liked living.

  “Hanging, I think, is one of the most dramatic ways to execute a prisoner,” the general said. “It’s really ideal. There’s the anticipation while the stage is set—the men build the scaffold in a central place and everyone watches it take form. There is the execution itself—the moment of silence when the prisoner is led forth, the touching ceremony when the blindfold is offered, when the noose is adjusted around the prisoner’s neck. Then the sudden crack when the trapdoor drops open and the moment of heart-stopping pathos when the prisoner dances in the air, struggling against death, but losing. And then, the memory lingers. The shadow of the scaffold stretches across the plaza, a constant reminder of death. I’ll leave the scaffold in place until the war is over.” He nodded, satisfied with his plans. “Most dramatic,” he said. “Most effective.” He smiled and sipped his drink. “You could learn a little about dramatic staging, you know. That business about painting my forehead ...” He touched the mark, acknowledging it for the first time. “That would have been much more effective if you had arranged for a witness, even one witness. I plan to arrange for a full audience for you.”

  “I should have killed you that night,” Jax said with sudden passion. “I could have.”

  “You would have done more good for your cause by wounding me in public than killing me in private. If you had killed me, you would stage your show for an audience of one—the soldier who found my body. You have to plan these things better. For you I plan a grand spectacle.” He shrugged easily, leaned forward, and filled her glass again. “In some ways, you have disappointed me. You don’t take this art business far enough,” he said. He sipped the whiskey and nodded slowly. “You take the easy way. You don’t risk enough.”

  She was alert now, awake and glaring at him over her drink. “What the hell do you know about it?”

  “I know that you draw foolish lines. You are willing to die for art, but you aren’t willing to kill for it.” He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “A good death can be a work of art. So can a good execution. You should learn by my example.”

  She finished her drink. “I don’t believe I’ll have a chance,” she said coldly.

  He nodded and smiled pleasantly. “True enough,” he said. “You’ll die tomorrow.”

  * * * *

  That night she dreamed of dark rooftops and dark streets. She rode on a white horse, and the general rode beside her. Somehow, in the dream, she did not know if she was fighting with the general or against him. As they rode, the general kept lecturing her about the nature of art and death until she wanted to scream. She dreamed of darkness and the smell of smoke. She dreamed that Danny-boy was with her, there in the room. “I guess I’m going to die,” she said to him. He handed her a red rose and smiled. “Do you know how to tell if a work is art?” he asked her calmly. In the early days of their relationship, they had talked endlessly about the nature of art. “True art changes the artist. The artist puts something into the work and he changes. That’s how you tell.” He handed her a red rose, and he vanished in the smoke.

  She woke to a rhythmic pounding, like the hoofbeats of running horses. In the thin light of dawn, hammers pounded as soldiers built the scaffold where she would die.

  She went with the soldiers willingly when they came to take her. She saw no point to struggling. Not now. The plaza was quiet. She walked through the center of the open space to the City Hall, through the ranks of
soldiers. They stood quietly at attention. She saw some she thought she recognized—the sentry she had marked on that first evening, the soldier who reminded her of Catseye. So many; so young. She was glad she had not killed them.

  The sun shone dimly through the haze of smoke and morning fog. She could feel the morning breeze on her face. The bright banners flew over the plaza, snapping in the wind. They were smudged with smoke, a little tattered. Even so, they were a fine, brave sight. The city was a beautiful place, she thought, such a beautiful place.

  The general waited for her at the scaffold. “You can still change your mind,” he said softly. “I can use you.”

  She turned to look at him. Strangely, she did not hate him. He seemed smaller now than he had on the bridge. She had seen the coffee stain on his cuff, seen his face when it was relaxed in sleep, listened to him slur his words when he was drinking. She did not hate him.

  She shook her head quickly once. She did not speak. She climbed the crudely made steps to stand on the wooden platform and looked out over the soldiers.

  The general bound her hands behind her. He offered her a blindfold, but she refused. She wanted to watch the banners fly over the gathered soldiers. As she watched, a man in the front ranks crossed himself.

  The general put a rope around her neck and adjusted the knot. He stood beside her, his hand raised, ready to signal the man who would pull the rope to release the trap door and kill her.

  She saw a movement on the top of the old Library Building on the far side of the plaza. She heard the sound of a single rifle shot. She saw a blossom of blood on the general’s forehead; he swayed a moment, then fell. The stiffness went out of him as he fell; he crumbled, folded. His body struck the steps and rolled down. Rolled more like a sack of old clothes than like a man.

  Jax looked up in time to see the assassin. Danny-boy stood above the crowd on the edge of the old Library’s facade. His red hair was bright in the morning sun. The light glinted on the barrel of the rifle. She could not see his expression, not at that distance. For an instant the world seemed frozen. The colored banners stood still; the smell of smoke hovered in the air.

  One soldier fired quickly, and Danny-boy started to fall. He fell against a stone carving on the Library’s facade, clung for a moment, then fell. She watched from so far away, unable to move. The soldiers moved—some to the general’s body, some to surround her, some raising their rifles to fire at Danny-boy now that he had fallen.

  “Gentlemen.” The Machine’s calm voice boomed from a speaker, hidden somewhere. “The plaza where you stand was planted with explosives before your arrival. The charges are wired to explode at my signal.” It was a lie, Jax knew. But it was a well-told lie, and the soldiers believed that the artists were capable of anything. The plaza was suddenly silent again. “We will sacrifice Jax if that should be necessary. We will welcome those of you who wish to join us peacefully, and escort the others over the bridge. No one will be hurt. Please put down your weapons. Now.” The last word was delivered with uncharacteristic force.

  The soldier who shot Danny-boy was the first to put down his gun. The plaza was quiet. Danny-boy lay where he had fallen. His head lolled back, and the hole in his chest was a deep rich red.

  The general lay tumbled at the bottom of the steps. The hole in his forehead was the same rich red as the hole in Danny-boy.

  Jax stood on the scaffold. The soldiers laid their weapons at her feet, then backed away, as if frightened. She stood, swaying a little, her hands still bound behind her. The numbness was gone, and her head was starting to ache. “Well,” she said to the soldiers. “Who won?” She looked at Danny-boy and looked at the general. “They’re both dead, so who won?” She stopped for a moment, looking across the plaza. “A good death,” she said to no one in particular, “is a work of art.” She started to laugh, but the sound caught in her throat.

  The banners fluttered and snapped in the morning breeze. The clip-clop of hooves on pavement echoed across the plaza. The Machine rode the white horse through the open space. He stopped in front of her, and she studied him for a minute, wondering if he was part of the long dream from which she was emerging.

  The Machine swung his leg over the horse’s back and slid to the ground. When he untied her, she smiled at him with unaccustomed sweetness. “It’s over,” she said. And then her knees gave way beneath her, and she sat on the edge of the scaffold. She took his hand and held it warm in hers, and they sat on the wooden platform and watched the banners fly in the wind.

  She looked over at the general. Through the blood on his forehead and cheeks she could still read the words by jax. She looked out at the flying banners and the white horse. The horse’s harness rattled when it moved its head, searching for a few blades of grass on the trampled earth. Most of the grass had been pounded into the ground by soldiers’ feet. Little was left.

  Other artists had come. They were moving through the crowd of soldiers, dividing them into groups—men who would stay, men who would leave.

  Jax shivered and The Machine took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “We spent last night talking about it,” The Machine said. “Zatch volunteered, but Danny-boy insisted that he would be the one.”

  Jax watched the soldiers milling about the open space. The smoke hung in the blue sky, and the tattered banners fluttered bravely. The white horse cropped the trampled grass. She would paint this someday. Someday she would paint Catseye huddled in the darkness at the top of a long stairway. She would paint a portrait of the general sitting in an easy chair, with an empty whiskey bottle at his elbow and the word dead written on his forehead. She would paint Danny-boy and the general on the steps of City Hall, leaning against each other, stained with blood that was the same rich shade of red.

  Later she would paint. Now she would look at the city with new eyes and wait for the smoke to clear and the blood to wash away in the winter rains.

  <>

  * * * *

  Here’s another story about future advances in medicine and the effect on individual human beings. In everything other than that broad description, however, “Interlocking Pieces” is totally different from the Sharon Farber story presented earlier in this book.

  Molly Gloss was born in Portland, Oregon, and lives there still, with her husband, son, and niece. She graduated from Portland State University, worked as a grade-school teacher, and has recently turned to writing. Her only previous publication was in a small literary magazine, so the present story will introduce her to the wider science fiction readership. You’ll want to look for her byline again.

  INTERLOCKING PIECES

  MOLLY GLOSS

  For Teo, there was never a question of abandoning the effort. After the last refusal—the East European Minister of Health sent her his personal explanation and regrets—it became a matter of patience and readiness and rather careful timing.

  A uniformed policeman had been posted beside her door for reasons, apparently, of protocol. At eight-thirty, when he went down the corridor to the public lavatory, Teo was dressed and waiting, and she walked out past the nurses’ station. It stood empty. The robo-nurse was still making the eight-o’clock rounds of the wing’s seventy or eighty rooms. The organic nurse, just come on duty, was leaning over the vid displays in the alcove behind the station, familiarizing herself with the day’s new admissions.

  Because it was the nearest point of escape, Teo used the staircase. But the complex skill of descending stairs had lately deserted her, so she stepped down like a child, one leg at a time, grimly clutching the metal bannister with both hands. After a couple of floors she went in again to find a public data terminal in a ward that was too busy to notice her.

  They had not told her even the donor’s name, and a straightforward computer request met a built-in resistance: data restricted***key in physician ident code. So she asked the machine for the names of organ donors on contract with the regional Ministry of Health, then a list of the hospital’s terminal pati
ents, the causes and projected times of their deaths, and the postmortem neurosurgeries scheduled for the next morning. And, finally, the names of patients about whom information was media-restricted. Teo’s own name appeared on the last list. She should have been ready for that but found she was not, and she sat staring until the letters grew unfamiliar, assumed strange juxtapositions, became detached and meaningless—the name of a stranger.

  The computer scanned and compared the lists for her, extrapolated from the known data, and delivered only one name. She did not ask for hard copy. She looked at the vid display a moment, maybe longer than a moment, and then punched it off and sat staring at the blank screen.

  Perhaps not consciously, she had expected a woman. The name, a man’s name, threw her off balance a little. She would have liked a little time to get used to the sound of it, the sound it made in her head and on her lips. She would have liked to know the name before she knew the man. But he would be dead in the morning. So she spoke it once, only once. Out loud. With exactness and with care. “Dhavir Stahl,” she said. And then went to a pneumo-tube and rode up.