“I perceive it,” said Tertius White, “as possessing the color and the bitter, forbidden flavor of absinthe.”
“It’s champagne,” said Angela. “It tickles my nose.”
“Whatever it is,” Willa Quantum said carefully, “it’s best quality. Our host keeps his cellar well stocked.”
Chapter 1
“How do you think it started?” Aelfric asked Pamela Weaver. They sat together on an ivory naugahide two-seater made from a century-old auto seat reset in real mahogany stand and armrests, close enough to enjoy the sunset through Squire Fitzhugh’s wall-sized west window, but far enough back from the others that they could converse privately.
“How did it all start?” Pamela sipped her sherry. M. Poe tasted it as Amontillado, M. Garvey as champagne, M. White as absinthe, M. Drake—Captain Drake—as officers’ port. But it was sherry. A good, sweet after-dinner sherry, M. Aelfric told her. To her working-class tongue it seemed bland, though smooth. She would as soon have tasted a good lager, a cream stinger, or even a sweet kosher wine, but she knew that, unlike most of their fellow guests, she tasted what really was in her glass. She supposed she could learn to like it easily enough. Almost as easily as she had learned to like Aelfric—on the first evening of their acquaintance. “I thought,” she went on, “that you Standards never theorized about causes and effects, that you just concentrated on things as they are without wondering how they came to be that way. Isn’t theorizing too much like using your imaginations?”
“Officially, we never theorize. Officially, we’re human computers every working minute, ticking reality in and out with the absolute minimum of original thought. Unofficially, after hours ...” He patted his brown forelock with its two silver hairs. “When I was a boy, before Walkie—M. Margaret—chose me for her heir apparent, I used to think I’d be a historian when I grew up. Reality-perceivers make the best historians. Theorists, yes, but theories based in facts.”
Pamela sighed. “There was never any question I’d be anything but a producer. Straight from tenth grade to tech college. Most of what history I’ve read, I’ve read on my own, catch it when you can.”
“Sometimes amateurs come up with the best ideas of all.”
“Here!” she teased, rubbing her sleeve. “Don’t come to the fac’ and tell that to any of our trained producers.”
“I said ideas. Theories. Not craftwork.” His gaze followed her hand across her tunic. “No amateur could weave a design like that.”
“Thank you. I wove it myself. Had I told you that?”
He shook his head. “You hadn’t, but I guessed it must have come from your fac’ and be one of yours or one of your trainees’, so the compliment was calculated.”
But honest. She was sure it was honest. The design was her own as well as the loomwork, and to be complimented on it by one of the upper-class reality perceivers, who could not only see it as it really was but had the cultivation to know whether it was artistic or merely garish ... “Well,” she said. “So in the field of history we’re both amateurs, but I’m more amateur than you and so my theories must be better, is that it?”
“Exactly.” He grinned and lifted his glass to her.
“Well, then. I think it was a combination of overpopulation and the drug culture. Too many people with too much leisure time turning to vision-pills and electro screens.”
“Until fancying got into the genes of the race?”
She shrugged. “Well, we know fanciers tend to breed fanciers and realizers, realizers. Maybe mostly environment. Or maybe new genes can grow in species. I’m no scientist, but there has to be some better reason why mutations happen than—what was that last theory? The jump effect?”
“Edson’s Jump-Trait Effect.” He nodded. “Now less in favor, I believe, than Kozinowski’s Parallel-Dimension Slippage Theory.”
“Kozinowski’s theory?”
“As nearly as I could understand Al Everymind’s popular treatment, two similar species develop simultaneously in alternate but closely parallel dimensions, then something, maybe a natural catastrophe, causes the dimensions to bang together for a geological instant—so to speak—and the two species slip through the crack and trade dimensions.”
“Sounds like nonsense to me, but I don’t know physics from algenometry.”
“I know just about enough,” Aelfric replied, “to feel reasonably confident that the whole theory of parallel dimensions has yet to be one hundred percent proven, so Edson’s Jump-Traits may come back into the scientific fashion again.”
Pamela took another sip of sherry. “Anyway, we know there are fantasy perceivers and reality perceivers, and we all tend to breed our own kind. Chances are much better that your children and mine will live in reality.”
“Especially if we marry realizers.”
“And chances are that M. Poe’s children, for instance, will live in fantasy.”
“But not necessarily their father’s fantasy. Nor their mother’s, whichever of our fellow guests she may turn out to be.”
They exchanged a smile, half sly, Pamela felt, and half shy. Squire Fitzhugh was famous for these matchmaking houseparties. He never told his guests outright which of them he had in mind for which others, but in the case of this weekend’s only two reality-perceiving guests it was fairly obvious. Pamela hoped it might also prove one of the squire’s successes.
“So heredity can’t account for all the details,” she said. “Maybe there’s something in what’s-her-’name’s theory about the strength of class consciousness to shape people’s characters.”
“Generheim’s theory. ... Generheim? Yes, that’s the name, I think. Well, it may be better than Kozinowski’s, if you can accept the picture of vast, rather nebulous masses of thought permeating society to settle selectively on this person or that according to the parents’ birth-class.”
“Maybe the thought masses can sniff out money,” she joked. “No, but how would that account for upper-class and lower-class realizers separated by this huge class of fanciers?”
“Because so-called upper-class reality perceivers actually have quite a bit less money than most of the fancy class,” Aelfric replied with only the gentlest trace of bitterness. “Probably we have more idle rich people today than society has ever seen before, and virtually all the fanciers seem to see us as their financial equals. They expect it of their governing class.” He rubbed the worn material of his tunic between thumb and forefinger. “You think this is my casual old wear for lounging around? They undoubtedly do. It’s been my second-best suit for at least three years.”
“I did think you were only being casual. The fancy class make such a buffer between governors and producers.” Yet the revelation gave her a warm feeling. If anything should come of this, her adjustment to his social level might not be so bumpy, after all. “And yet the squire did bring us together this weekend, so the fancy class can be a line of communication, too.”
“Sometimes the squire seems dangerously close to a realizer in some things. The old boy may live in a nineteenth-century romance, but he’s shrewd enough to know excellence when and where he finds it.”
“More likely he picks up so many—what’s the word?—protegees—that he’s bound to get one or two good ones just by the law of chance.” But she treasured Aelfric’s compliment, so much that she hardly understood until after saying it that her own reply was more self-compliment than modest disclaimer. Then she brought a half embarrassed little laugh up from her throat, sent a pink slip to the working-class morals that kept staring down the back of her neck, and, although they had met only hours ago, she squnched closer to him on the antique cushions.
For a moment, as their thighs touched, he seemed about to shrink back. Governing-class morals must be prudish, too, like producing-class morals. But he relaxed. They were in a fancy-class house among fancy-class fellow guests for the long weekend. He put his arm around
her, pulling her a little closer yet.
They sat comfortably, looking across the living room at Squire Fitzhugh’s other guests, four men and four women. M.’s Poe, Angela Garvey Garvey, Livingstone, White, and the strange Willa Quantum sitting before the window to watch the sunset; Countess DiMedici, Captain Drake, and M. Serendip sitting with their host to watch another kind of show on the five-meter screen—a new play by Al Everymind. Everymind’s plays were not only written for the fancy class, they were always given in fancy-class productions, which meant the costumes were basic beige in stark-cut styles, the scenery was basic green stairways and blocks, and the players were likelier to wear plain white masks than to use make-up. In fancy-class theater, it was wild experimentation to give actors costumes in contrasting colors. Every fancier in the audience saw costumes and scenery according to personal imagination—odd, when they almost always saw text and pictures as they really were on a printed page—so keeping theatrical production simple must save the producers a lot of money. Pamela loved theater as staged for her own class, with bright costumes and detailed scenery in the old-fashioned style, made of cheap materials, no doubt, but colorful. To her delight, Aelfric had told her that he preferred that kind of theater also, when he could slip away to see it.
Like the actors in fancy-class drama, fanciers dressed simply for the most part. Here and there you might see a few really costumed for their worlds, but usually they kept to basic styles in solid, neutral colors, with skirts or trousers, long sleeves or short, and a few accessories like the Countess DiMedici’s rings providing the only visible clues to their fantasies. There were no costumes tonight in Fitzhugh Manor except for M. Livingstone’s and the captain’s hats and the Countess DiMedici’s rings. Tonight all the fanciers wore long sleeves and all of them wore trousers but the countess, who had a floor-length skirt. The fabric was fine stuff and the tailoring was perfect, though. For some reason, quality was among the traits that seemed to remain standard in almost everyone’s perception, which was as well for the producing class.
“Sometimes I wish we could see them all as they see themselves,” Pamela murmured to Aelfric. “It’d be as good as old-fashioned theater. The squire like something out of Dickens. M. Drake in full admiral’s regalia and cocked hat, most likely. The countess in some sort of Florentine Renaissance brocade—ivory white, I think, to set off her skin ... But they don’t necessarily even see racial heritage, do they? What a pity!”
“No, but Livingstone might see her skin more or less as it is, if he’s ever heard her family name. Of course, he probably sees you and me, Portent and M. Jones, all as Africans. Portent and M. Jones as carriers, me as a native guide, you and M. DiMedici as tribal princesses in sleek sarongs and several kilos of golden bangles.”
“Do you know her family name?”
He nodded. “I looked them all up in the Name and Print Registry yesterday afternoon. One piece of snoopiness allowed us Standards. Most of them are fairly neutral, except for ...” He leaned and whispered it confidentially, “M. Irene Mbunga DiMedici.”
Pamela laughed, shook her head, and touched her lips, not yet daring to touch his. “Don’t tell me any more. Privileged information.”
“Privileged from them, because of the way it can affect how they see other people. Let most of them hear Walkie’s family name, and they see her as a full-blooded Native American in feather headdress. It’s safe to tell you, ‘M. Margaret Walking-Horse Standard.’ You’ll see exactly what I see when I look at her.”
“Still, I’m never eager to tell anyone my own family name.” Everyone, fancier and realizer alike, could choose and change first names and final names for the price of the record keeping, but family names were fixed and permanent. Back when, a woman could change her family name to match her husband’s. That was when the family name had also served as the final name. Now family names passed from mothers to sons and from fathers to daughters, and there was nothing Pamela could ever do about her hated family name, except leave it buried in the Name and Print Registry, as all the other people did who disliked bringing their family names out for everyday use. “Do you suppose,” she said to change the subject, “that Squire Fitzhugh has M. Livingstone in mind for the countess?”
“They seem as likely a pair as Angela and M. Poe.”
“Oh, but I think Angela and M. Poe would make a good pair. Sort of the warp and woof—the top and reverse of each other. They already seem to have an understanding.”
“I believe they were schoolmates. Which would be enough to explain whatever you’ve noticed.” At once he softened the slight disagreement by adding, “But they say Squire Fitzhugh has been known to manage some very unexpected pairings.”
They looked the other guests over once again. “M. Poe and Angela?” Aelfric went on. “Well, maybe. And if Livingstone is meant for the DiMedici, that would leave Captain Drake for M. Quantum and M. Serendip for M. White.”
“Or M. White for M. Quantum,” said Pamela, feeling, not quite a shiver, not quite a thrill, but something almost dreamlike in contemplating them. “They would make a matched pair, wouldn’t they? I can’t think what either one of them is perceiving.”
It must have been coincidence, for surely none of the fanciers could overhear her words, but even as she spoke, M. White moved from the group watching the sunset to the group watching the showscreen. Some of M. Serendip’s long, straight black hair hung over the back of the couch, and his hand seemed to caress it, so lightly she never turned her head, for a moment before he went around and sat beside her.
Aelfric watched and shrugged. Pamela felt his shrug as something comfortable and pleasant. He beckoned M. Jones, who came and refilled their glasses. M. Jones was a plump woman in her sixties, with twinkling eyes and a dimple in each cheek, but because she was taking the role of butler this evening many of the fancy class probably saw her as a solemn, balding man in black clothes of the old, traditional cut. Or as a jeeves.
Chapter 2
Much later that night, after everyone else had gone up, Aelfric Sexton Standard mused alone on the low balcony over the east garden, watching the moonrise. Yes, he mused, now we let fanciers keep their family fortunes and lubricate the economy however they choose. Now we institutionalize only the ones who prove themselves dangerous to life and limb. So the definition of sanity changes with the centuries.
Pamela Weaver’s a fine young woman.
But how did fanciers come to be the moneyed class? Realizers must have engendered fanciers in the beginning. It must have been realizers who initially amassed the fortunes, the nearly bottomless mines of properties, annuities, and investments. Maybe in those early days ambitious reality perceivers married fanciers so as to have quiescent spouses to stay out of the way. Neat little spouses to stay dreaming in their houses, not partners to talk things over with.
I’d prefer a partner. Maybe Pamela. She’s a good listener. Not a bad talker, either.
Or maybe being born rich and idle tended to turn the second moneyed generation after the Great Tax Cut Rebellion into fanciers. Maybe it had already happened before, to a much lesser extent, in the Gilded Age, but people hadn’t noticed it then.
Or maybe enough of the early fanciers had married the solid-brained realizers who amassed the fortunes. They did still marry realizers sometimes, usually from the wealthier ranks of the producing class. Like old aristos infusing the bloodline now and then with a little healthy peasant stock.
There was a time when the governing class had probably been the most moneyed of all. If that were still so, I could offer her real wealth, not just class. What happened? Did the moneyed legislators all turn into fanciers and leave only the reality-perceiving drudges—and the more idealistic drudges at that—to do the governing? Or did the Great Rebellion cost the governing class its major source of income? Historians differed on the question.
At least the governors still had prestige, still formed the highest clas
s socially, if not the most well-off materially.
Pamela might have more money than I do. She’s an overseer, the highest rung of producer. Otherwise she might not have come to Fitzhugh’s notice. Or if she did, even he might have hesitated to include her in one of his houseparties.
Well, I’m no more economist than historian. I still haven’t found the economist who could come up with a really convincing theory as to how the fancy class got more than its share of the money. Hard to hold too deep a grudge against them, though. Take the squire—one of those boys grown big, romantic old bachelor set on spreading happiness around by pairing other people off as his chief hobby.
And it might work, for the two of us.
They’re all pretty much children grown bigger, each of them living in a personal fantasy world and all of them agreeing to play along with one another. And, somehow or other, they generally make it work. Rather touching ...
Hello?
Footsteps in the living room behind him. Someone else coming out to the balcony for a view of the garden in the rising moon.
Aelfric turned to face the sliding doors (real silicon glass) that Squire Fitzhugh called French windows. “Hello.”
“Good evening. Sorry if I startled you.”
“You didn’t. I knew you had to be one of us. A burglar would have come from the outside.”
“Unless said burglar had already penetrated the house by some other way, which I believe would have been very difficult. Have you been here long, M. Standard?”
“Oh, maybe half an hour.”
“Early for an assignation?”
“No.” Aelfric reminded himself not to take offense at the implied low morality. Fanciers were fanciers. “No, just sorting my thoughts out alone. Traditional, isn’t it, for a man in the first throes of love.”
“Love?”
“Yes, love! That’s it! But I’m not quite sure. Maybe you can help me figure it out.”
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 14
