Out on Blue Six

by Ian McDonald

  “You mean, everyone has one of these things?”

  “Implanted just after birth. Amazing what you can find whilst scampering through the municipal dataweb.”

  “Can I see it?” The King of Nebraska handed Courtney Hall the vial. She held it up to the light. The bioplastic Judas cringed away, barely alive, yet photophobic.

  “And the Ministry of Pain can trace anyone, anywhere, through these tags?”

  “That’s correct.” The King of Nebraska’s eyes twinkled villainously. “By Jove, I think she’s finally going to reach the conclusion I wanted her to reach.”

  She was. “So you must have had your own tag removed in order to be able to abscond.”

  “Abdicate. Please. As you have so correctly surmised, there was no way the Ministry of Pain was going to let me slip underneath the Salamander Throne in possession of something as valuable and unique as my little interior cocktail party. Oh, no. So I was forced to make myself invisible. The King of the Host of the Air. I vanished from their computers, one blip in the pointillist sea of millions winked and went out. I am a nonperson, the gods cannot see me, I pray, and so I live here in my splendid solitude safe and warm and wined and unmolested.”

  “And so you had to take my tag, too, because you couldn’t take the risk of being associated with anyone who could possibly have been traced by the Ministry of Pain.”

  “At last! The Love Police are, by and large, a lazy caste of hellions, and cowards to boot, but I couldn’t take the chance that they might not someday succumb to a sudden fit of heroism and suddenly decide to clear every miscreant and malefactor out of the DeepUnder. So, I had to make you safe. Kill you, in effect. Join the dead, madam.”

  Courtney Hall studied the floating smear of molecular circuitry.

  “It makes me feel dirty inside, like shit in my veins. Is it still tracking me?”

  “Oh, no, it’s quite safe now. Deprived of contact with a human bioenergetic field, it becomes inert and will eventually die. But if you want, I’ll gladly have it waste-disposaled for you.”

  “Please.” She handed the plastic vial to the racoon chamberlain, who bowed, and departed. “I suppose I really should thank you.”

  “I suppose you really should, too. But I am a king, and kings expect no thanks. That’s the way it is, alas. However, if you think you can still eat after that—dinner!” He clapped his hands, and out of a score or more floorceilingwall hatches poured a scurry of raccoons, some dressed in aprons, some in bow ties, some in chef’s hats.

  “Cute, aren’t they? Pardon my little anthropomorphisms: it’s all too easy to think of them as little people, and of course they aren’t. My subjects.” Small hands moved tables, chairs, polished glasses, laid silverware, lit candles. “I found them down here when I began building Victorialand. Just another pack of urban raccoons, smarter than the average vermin, but vermin nonetheless. I have to remind myself of their humble origins sometimes. Hell, I have to remind them of their humble origins sometimes. But then I got this idea, you may call it crazy, you may call it the most damn arrogant thing you’ve ever heard, I decided to make them into a race of subjects. My thesis was that if biogram technology could make a zook with an IQ in the high nineties into the Elector of Great Yu, it could also boost dumb vermin into smart sentients. Be hold, the result. The process is automatic now: all cubs are socketed at birth, and a small biochip tank produces my custom implants. They’ll be here, as a people, long after I’m gone. I rather like the idea of that. It’s more immortality than most folk can aspire to. I suppose in a sense I’m their god. Either that or mad. Or both. I don’t much want to be either, but what can I do? Resign? It can be a wee bit awesome sometimes, and that’s not at all good for the royal ego.

  “‘Tinka Tae,’ that’s their name for themselves. It was one of their Striped Knight wide patrols rescued you from that pack of cutesicles. I have to keep the boundaries of Victorialand fairly heavily policed; there’s worse than feral pets down there. Nothing so wild as a domesticated thing gone wild. When the folks up there get tired of them or their famulus tells them it’s time for a change, they dump them down the garbage or flush them down the crapper. Some manage to survive, somehow, a few reproduce—even though they’re bred to be sterile. You should see the hybrids. They’re competing with the raccoons for an ecological niche, and I think maybe I got to the Tinka Tae just in time. Jinkajou here, my chamberlain, has been with me from the very start, the first racoon I socketed. More than just chamberlain, I suppose—buddy, confessor, grand vizier, devoted servant, and humble worshiper. Nearest thing that raccoons have to philosopher.”

  Watching the Tinka Tae serving the meal’s innumerable courses, Courtney Hall concluded uncharitably that her host was really no different from those surface pet-creators he so despised. Less cuddlesome, not so cute, smarter, more dextrous, but the Tinka Tae were no less the creation of Jonathon Ammonier than any kit-craft cutesicle was the invention of its owner. Raccoons have no need of philosophers. The anthropomorphising hand had revoked any simple dignity they had possessed as animals. Liqueurs were served. The King of Nebraska spun a platter on his horn gramophone, an ancient, ancient thing called “As Time Goes By.” Replete, muzzy with unfamiliar (and unpsychofiled) alcohol, Courtney Hall was once again drawn to the Louis XIV conversation piece. The King of Nebraska sat down beside her and rested a kingly hand on her thigh.

  Courtney Hall shuddered. Trapped by the absolutism of monarchy. One good smack to the gob would take care of any overamorous ex-zook, but the raccoons? Those vegetable knives looked sharp.

  “I have a little, eh, favor to ask of you.” The royal breath smelled of onions. Courtney Hall tried to will herself into the top left corner of the room where the weather satellite obscured her projected view of the couch. “A commission. A royal command. Something only you can do for me.”

  Get it over with. Please, Yah. Let him get it over and done with.

  “Madam Hall, I want you to paint my portrait. You are an artist. And this place, this Victorialand, is full of paintings and portraits, but there is not a single one of me, Jonathon the First, King of Nebraska.” From behind the conversation piece his long arm produced a drawing pad and pastels. The King struck a studied pose of affected regality. It lasted no more than five seconds before it was shattered into giggles.

  “Look, just sit and talk and I’ll draw you.” Courtney Hall felt like jumping and laughing. Her dread now embarrassed her. “Word of warning: I am a cartoonist, have been since I was a kid. Just be warned.”

  And she did find it impossible to keep the exaggeration out of her pastel lines. She found herself wishing for Benji Dog to cover the waggling naked fingers with the will of the Compassionate Society.

  “Beyond,” said the King of Nebraska suddenly. Courtney Hall jumped, sent a jet of pastel streaking across the sheet. It was not the suddenness of the word that made her start. It was its implication. “Does it not fascinate you, Madam Hall? The Beyond. The place Without, where there is no city, no Great Yu, no Compassionate Society.” He left the conversation piece to pad fretfully about his receiving room.

  “Your Majesty, please, it’s hard enough.”

  “Yu is big, but Yu is not the whole world. Can’t be. Impossible. Urbi est orbi? Its population is over a billion and a half, but there must be more people in the world than that. It can’t hold everyone, can it? Do you ever think, have you ever thought, that there must be a place which is not the city, a boundary where Yu ends and the world begins?”

  It hurt Courtney Hall to find another sharing her sixteen-o’clock dream. Offense, intrusion. She had wanted it to be all, only hers. Her fingers stroked oil pastel color onto the sheets as her thoughts went back to lay their claim to the Beyond. Even as a child she realized she had worked her imagination upon the place beyond the city. When she was very small, she had filled it with peacocks and peach trees and naked sylphs and prancing bambis. As she grew, she turned it into a place of ghost-haunted skeleton cities cindere
d in the dying throes of the Break; later still, a lunar wasteland of blasted rock and burning sand; then it transformed into a rolling Arcadia of orchards and wheat fields tilled by apple-cheeked yeomen. After that it had become for her a great encircling forest filled with wild, fell beasts until, reeling under the hormonal punches of puberty, it had become, most terrifyingly of all, the void, an absence of anything without even the possibility of a name, for a name would be something. As she had been inducted fully into her caste and career, she had thought that it did not matter whether Heaven or Hell waited beyond the city; she was a citizen of the Compassionate Society who would live all her perfectly contented life within Great Yu. A Beyond was purely irrelevant; Yu was all the world she needed. Once. Before the dream came tapping on her window at sixteen o’clock every afternoon.

  “There is a Beyond,” declared the King of Nebraska. “I know it. I had always suspected there might be, but it was not until I became Elector that on one of my rambles through my memories I learned that it was true. There is a Beyond, but what that Beyond is, my predecessors could not tell me, for it was walled out in the earliest days of the city. Imagine, my dear madam, my frustration! From frustration to fascination, from fascination to obsession are two short steps.” Courtney Hall softened pastel contours with a fingertip. “So: when are you free to come?” Courtney Hall’s fingertip stopped motionless on the King of Nebraska’s left shoulder.

  “What?”

  “So, when are you free to come? To the End of the World. Three months, three weeks, three days, three hours? Tomorrow morning?”

  “I’m not going to the end of the world. Tomorrow morning, any morning.”

  “Well, stuff you, madam!” shrieked Jonathon Ammonier. He jumped from the couch and stalked off through the wall.

  Stupid! Why had she said that? Why why why when it was the very thing she had been dreaming of for years, the very thing that gave some hope and meaning to her life down here, that there might be an end, a place beyond? When it was the wild winds from that place that had blown her down here?

  No one had ever lost their temper with her before.

  Trying not to replay the scene over and over in her memory with different words, different lines, Courtney Hall picked up pastel and paper and tried to finish the drawing. The tight singing in her head kept distracting her.

  A chittering whistle from a chair shaped like the palm of a beggar: Jinkajou the Chamberlain hunkered on the cushion, biochip dreadlocks clinking, glinting.

  “Hurt thy feelings, has he?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Thou has hurt his.”

  “What does a racoon know about feelings?”

  “Things different DeepUnder. Thou has learned Victorialand not Compassionate Society. Here is pain.”

  “Everyone keeps telling me this: Victorialand is not the Compassionate Society. I know that.”

  The racoon drew a tiny, white clay pipe from its vest’o’pockets and lit up.

  “DeepUnder white. Pure albino strain mutant mary-juan. Very ancient. Very good. Thou tokest?”

  “I’m not psychofiled for narcotics.”

  “Things different—”

  “Things different DeepUnder.”

  “Scorn not advice. Heed this: no man, no racoon, happy when dreams kakked upon.”

  “You’re telling me this? Look, I know. Can you understand this? I wanted to go. I wanted to go more than anything else. I just couldn’t say it. I didn’t say what I felt.”

  “Common complaint of topsiders, if observation may be forgiven. Understand that, for thou, Victorialand is one place of ease and comfort in hostile, strange world. Thy reluctance to leave it understandable.” The old racoon trickled smoke from its nostrils and rolled its head with evident euphoria. “However, thou not so keen to stay awhile in Victorialand when thou hears this. Victorialand leaks.”

  “Does that mean what I think it means? Does it? Does it?”

  “History forthcoming. Forgive, but Tinka Tae have greater powers manipulative dexterity than linguistic aptitude; please be patient if at time is incomprehension. As thou knows, Victorialand built into nuclear reactor. In early days, before Tinka Tae no more than another no-good pack bum street raccoons, Jonathon Ammonier accidentally—accidentally, mindest thou—caused radiation leak from reactor. Leak small but, ah, cumulative? Correct adjective? Yes, cumulative effect. All Victorialand mildly radioactive.”

  Universal treachery: the morning breakfast, the water she had bathed in, the clothes she was wearing, the dinner she had eaten, the liqueurs she had sipped, the very air she breathed in out in out had betrayed her. Her eyes felt poisoned by merely looking. The prayer of Mulu, Celestial Patroness of Ecological Protection surfaced through the years: From the unseen demons Alpha, Beta, Gamma. From rats, cats, and raccoons …

  “Preserve us.”

  “Ah, please not to fear unduly, madam. Small leak, small radiation. Takes long time for effect to reach dangerous levels. Thou art quite safe, but Jinkajou advises against protracted stay in Victorialand. His Majesty, Bless ’Im, not so certain. May already be too late. Undoubtedly is sick: Jinkajou have access to medical files, symptoms of early stages of radiation poisoning apparent. Jonathon Ammonier should be removed from Victorialand with greatest expediency before any further damage done. No more necessary. Expedition to End of World, excuse thou, madam, art trigger. His Majesty, Bless ’Im, lazy man. Coward, too, if Jinkajou not mistaken. Dreams but is unwilling to chase dreams. Must be pushed. Thou could have pushed him, he would have gone.”

  “But what about you, your people, are they not sick, too?”

  “Tinka Tae short-lived breed, but have fears for future generations. But, Tinka Tae also loyal species. Cannot be otherwise. Loyalty enforced in neurons, through sentience.” Claws tapped circuits. “Loyalty great dilemma. Shall explain. Because of loyalty, His Majesty, Bless ’Im, cannot be abandoned to fate. But also, because of same loyalty, Tinka Tae cannot force His Majesty, Bless ’Im, to leave Victorialand. Understand?” A perfect dilemma, like a pair of hard black claws at the bottom of some sea.

  “So I am the solution to your dilemma, the outside force that will push Jonathon Ammonier into pursuing his dream and saving himself.”

  “And in saving himself, also all Tinka Tae nation. Volunteers will accompany, the rest will be freed to leave Victorialand, save race.”

  “I have sadly misjudged you. Personally, and as a people. Forgive me.” Courtney Hall’s apology was cautious.

  “That is good. Truth has been spoken by both of us. So, truth being known, what then is thy decision?”

  “Is there a decision to be made?”

  “Not truthfully.”

  “But I always would have gone with him anyway. It was just too much, too soon …”

  “Please. His Majesty, Bless ’Im, no different. Please to tell, what is it in humans that makes them deny the very thing they wish most?”

  “Go and tell His Majesty, Bless ’Im, that Courtney Hall will come with him to the End of the World.”

  “Excellent.” The chamberlain hopped from the hand-shaped chair and knocked the dottle from his pipe on the carpet. “One more word advice: His Majesty, Bless ’Im, must never know.”

  “You’ve kept it a secret from him that he may be dying?”

  “Indeed. Only we, and thou, knowest. He is never to know. He is the King, must always be so; believe so, live so, die so.” Chiplocks clicking and clacking, the racoon slipped into a brass wall hatch.

  “So,” said Courtney Hall. “To the End of the World. To the Wall.”

  Apostles II

  LIKE ALL CONCEPTION, IT began with an act of love.

  Like all creation, it began in a void.

  Then a voice spoke a word and a photon of enlightenment was cast into the void. One voice. Two voices. Many voices, a multitude of words, a constellation of lights. Word into light into idea.

  “So, what are we going to do with the loose twelve seconds there?”


  “Any costume suggestions? Or just street clothes?”

  “I think some sort of dance; dance-juggling, perhaps—any comments?”

  “I think the vocal arrangements should reflect the nature of the performance. If we choose a religious festival, it should sound the ritual echo.”

  Word into light into idea into action. Quanta of creativity melded together into movement sequences, snatches of dialogue and chant, riffs, runs, fugues, and themes; explosions of dizzying acrobatics and lithe, subtle suggestions of dance and movement.

  “Fireworks. Definitely fireworks.”

  “You always want fireworks. They’re very hard to come by securely.”

  “Say we arrange the musicians as the centerpiece, build the whole fan-juggling sequence about them?”

  “M’kuba, could you get us six sets of power-wheels from your blue-sixing friends?”

  “I really feel we’re going to need some kind of costume, at least for the dancers and jugglers.”

  “It’ll run up our budget.”

  “What budget?”

  “Well, then, anything we can reuse? I hate having to travel twenty kilometers to shop just so they can’t trace the transaction. Devadip, you got any of that polyform fabric left over from last time?”

  “We could slot the Golden Section into that problematic twelve seconds.”

  “Between the power-wheels and the chant, yes, and move the chant to the finale.”

  “More satisfying climax than fireworks.”

  “And it kills that slack twelve seconds.”

  “Okay, so we nix the fireworks. So, does it work?”

  “It works.”

  “Do we do it?”

  “We do it.”

  The amorphous monobloc of ideas had coalesced into a what (“Sounding the Ritual Echo”), a where (the Festival of the Flames in Wheldon, at which the prollet populace decorated the shrines of their sept siddhi with thousands of lights and paraded them through the streets of the prefecture prior to a race of the various saintly litters around the Plaza Veneziano), and a when (three days hence). The Raging Apostles moved into rehearsal.