Emperor of Gondwanaland

by Paul Di Filippo

  After satisfying his hunger, Geisen finally looked up from his empty plate.

  There stood Bloedwyn Vermeule.

  Geisen’s ex-fiancée had never shone more alluringly. Threaded with invisible flexing pseudo-myofibrils, her long unfettered hair waved in continual delicate movement, as if she were a mermaid underwater. She wore a gown tonight loomed from golden spider-silk. Her lips were verdigris, matched by her nails and eye shadow.

  Geisen hastily dabbed at his own lips with his napkin, and was mortified to see the clean cloth come away with enough stains to represent a child’s immoderate battle with an entire chocolate cake.

  “Oh, Gep Carrabas, I hope I am not interrupting your gustatory pleasures.”

  “Nuh—no, young lady, not at all. I am fully sated. And you are?”

  “Gep Bloedwyn Vermeule. You may call me by my first name, if you grant me the same privilege.”

  “But naturally.”

  “May I offer an alternative pleasure, Timor, in the form of a dance? Assuming your satiation does not extend to all recreations.”

  “Certainly. If you’ll make allowances in advance for my clumsiness.”

  Bloedwyn allowed the tip of her tongue delicately to traverse her patina’d lips. “As the Dompatta says, ‘An earnest rider compensates for a balky steed.’”

  This bit of familiar gospel had never sounded so lascivious. Geisen was shocked at this unexpected temptress behavior from his ex-fiancée. But before he could react with real or mock indignation, Bloedwyn had whirled him out onto the floor.

  They essayed several complicated dances before Geisen, pleading fatigue, could convince his partner to call a halt to the activity.

  “Let us recover ourselves in solitude on the terrace,” Bloedwyn said, and conducted Geisen by the arm through a pressure curtain and onto an unlit open-air patio. Alone in the shadows, they took up positions braced against a balustrade. The view of the moon-drenched arroyos below occupied them in silence for a time. Then Bloedwyn spoke huskily.

  “You exude a foreign, experienced sensuality, Timor, to which I find myself vulnerable. Perhaps you would indulge my weakness with an assignation tonight, in a private chamber of Stoessl House known to me? After any important business dealings are successfully concluded, of course.”

  Geisen seethed inwardly, but managed to control his voice. “I am flattered that you find a seasoned fellow of my girth so attractive, Bloedwyn. But I do not wish to cause any intermural incidents. Surely you are affianced to someone, a young lad both bold and wiry, jealous and strong.”

  “Pah! I do not care for young men, they are all chowderheads! Pawing, puling, insensitive, shallow and vain, to a man! I was betrothed to one such, but luckily he revealed his true colors and I was able to cast him aside like the churl he proved to be.”

  Now Geisen felt only miserable self-pity. He could summon no words, and Bloedwyn took his silence for assent. She planted a kiss on his cheek, then whispered directly into his ear. “Here’s a map to the boudoir where I’ll be waiting. Simply take the east squeezer down three levels, then follow the hot dust.” She pressed a slip of paper into his hand, supplementing her message with extra pressure in his palm, then sashayed away like a tainted sylph.

  Geisen spent half an hour with his mind roiling before he regained the confidence to return to the party.

  Before too long, Grafton corralled him.

  “Are you enjoying yourself, Timor? The food agrees? The essences elevate? The ladies are pliant? Haw! But perhaps we should turn our mind to business now, before we both grow too muzzy-headed. After conducting our dull commerce, we can cut loose.”

  “I am ready. Let me summon my aide.”

  “That skun— That is, if you absolutely insist. But surely our marchwarden can offer any support services you need. Notarization, citation of past deeds, and so forth.”

  “No. I rely on Hepzibah implicidy.”

  Grafton partially suppressed a frown. “Very well, then.”

  Once Ailoura arrived from the servants’ table, the trio headed toward Vomacht’s old study. Geisen had to remind himself not to turn down any “unknown” corridor before Grafton himself did.

  Seated in the very room where he had been fleeced of his patrimony and threatened with false charges of murder, Geisen listened with half an ear while Grafton outlined the terms of the prospective sale: all the Carrabas properties and whatever wealth of strangelets they contained, in exchange for a sum greater than the Gross Planetary Product of many smaller worlds.

  Ailoura attended more carefully to the contract, even pointing out to Geisen a buried clause that would have made payment contingent on the first month’s production from the new fields. After some arguing, the conspirators succeeded in having the objectionable codicil removed. The transfer of funds would be complete and instantaneous.

  When Grafton had finally finished explaining the conditions, Geisen roused himself. He found it easy to sound bored with the whole deal, since his elaborate scam, at its moment of triumph, afforded him surprisingly little vengeful pleasure.

  “All the details seem perfectly managed, Gep Stoessl, with that one small change of ours included. I have but one question. How do I know that the black sheep of your House, Geisen, will not contest our agreement? He seems a contrary sort, from what I’ve heard, and I would hate to be involved in judicial proceedings, should he get a whim in his head.”

  Grafton settled back in his chair with a broad smile. “Fear not, Timor! That wild hair will get up no one’s arse! Geisen has been effectively rendered powerless. As was only proper and correct, I assure you, for he was not a true Stoessl at all.”

  Geisen’s heart skipped a cycle. “Oh? How so?”

  “The lad was a chimera! A product of the ribosartors! Old Vomacht was unsatisfied with the vagaries of honest mating that had produced Gitten and myself from the noble stock of our mother. Traditional methods of reproduction had not delivered him a suitable toady. So he resolved to craft a better heir. He used most of his own germ plasm as foundation, but supplemented his nucleotides with dozens of other snippets. Why, that hybrid boy even carried bestient genes. Rat and weasel, I’m willing to bet! Haw! No, Geisen had no place in our family.”

  “And his mother?”

  “Once the egg was crafted and fertilized, Vomacht implanted it in a host bitch. One of our own bestients. I misapprehend her name now, after all these years. Amorica, Orella, something of that nature. I never really paid attention to her fate after she delivered her human whelp. I have more important properties to look after. No doubt she ended up on the offal heap, like all the rest of her kind.”

  A red curtain drifting across Geisen’s vision failed to occlude the shape of the massive auroch-flaying blade hanging on the wall. One swift leap and it would be in his hands. Then Grafton would know sweet murderous pain, and Geisen’s bitter heart would applaud—

  Standing beside Geisen, Ailoura let slip the quietest cough.

  Geisen looked into her face.

  A lone tear crept from the corner of one feline eye.

  Geisen gathered himself and stood up, unspeaking.

  Grafton grew a trifle alarmed. “Is there anything the matter, Gep Carrabas?”

  “No, Gep Stoessl, not at all. Merely that old hurts pain me, and I would fain relieve them. Let us close our deal. I am content.”

  The starliner carrying Geisen, Ailoura, and the stasis-bound Carrabas marchwarden to a new life sped through the interstices of the cosmos, powered perhaps by a strangelet mined from Stoessl lands. In one of the lounges, the man and his cat nursed drinks and snacks, admiring the exotic variety of their fellow passengers and reveling in their hard-won liberty and security.

  “Where from here—son?” asked Ailoura with a hint of unwonted shyness.

  Geisen smiled. “Why, wherever we wish, mother dear.”

  “Rowr! A world with plenty of fish then, for me!”

  III

  Two Plus Two Equals Infinity


  Something about the nature of science fiction makes collaborating both fun and natural. As a literature of ideas, SF definitely benefits from the “two heads are better than one” philosophy. Plus, most SF writers, I’ve found, really care about the state of the genre as a whole. Literary achievements are not seen solely as unsharable personal triumphs, but rather as part of a contribution to the great flowing stream of science fiction. We’re not all isolated Stephen Daedaluses, but rather a cooperative of individual voices joined in a chorus.

  I’ve collaborated so far in my career with Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Marc Laidlaw, Don Webb, Barry Malzberg, Pete Crowther, and Michael Bishop, and expect to add more names to that list.

  Now, let’s see: There’re over one thousand members of the Science Fiction Writers of America. At the rate of a story per week, without any time off … I should be set for partners until about the year 2025!

  Simply put, Don Webb, with whom I collaborated on the next story, is one of the finest fantasists working these days. I’ve always enjoyed his fiction, and we leaped at a chance to write together, even before we had met in the flesh. Our shared love of Steely Dan—from whom we’ve borrowed our title—provided a springboard for this tale, a fusion of Lem’s Solaris and Blish’s “Common Time.” When I finally did get a chance to meet Don in his hometown of Austin, at a Turkey City writer’s workshop, he did me an immense favor by reminding me that fluency of narrative did not always equal the passionate conviction that the best stories exhibited.

  And I say all this without compulsion, even though Don is also a master of the occult arts on a par with Doctor Strange, and threatened to turn me into a frog if I didn’t write a glowing introduction.

  Ribbit!

  Your Gold Teeth, Pt. 2

  [written with Don Webb]

  The Nepthys was leaking brains.

  Just prior to the catastrophic Reality Transvaluation that had overwhelmed the Singularity Complex for Assessment of Metanoia, the Nepthys’s onboard AOI had begun to undergo an undetected metastasis. Colonies of rogue neurons had come free and traveled through the SCAM’S various pipings, vacuum chutes, and paralymphatic system, establishing uncoordinated ganglia throughout the small orbiting city. Seizing control of various functions, both critical and nugatory, these independent, even mutually combative, pieces of the AOI had revealed their existence through severe yet comprehensible mechanical derangements of the environment.

  But just as the crew was about to take remedial measures to reestablish control, the Transvaluation had washed over the Nepthys, plunging its citizens into a nightmare of giggling death and screaming metamorphosis.

  In the midst of this chaos, Howard Exaker alone remained untouched.

  Or so he dared hope, with a guilty twinge at how his new comrades—ill-known and emotionally distant as they had been from him—had perished or still bizarrely suffered.

  Regarding the spill of faintly pulsing gray matter—so similar to baseline human brains, yet oddly other—that tumbled from the split seams of a Gradient Seven corridor, Howard thought for the hundredth time, If only there were someone left to talk to …

  When the mock sisal-textured wall of the corridor began to change before his eyes, as if in response to his silent wish, Howard prayed he would not have cause to regret his unspoken supplication.

  What he saw now in place of the familiar corridor was a (brain-free) freshly plastered wall of an Egyptian tomb. The paint smelled wet, and the hieroglyphs had begun to speak. The voice of one, a golden two-headed lion, lifted above the chatter: “If you know my name, Howard, you know my nature.”

  Only a week ago, when life had still retained its familiar parameters, Howard had been old-fashionedly absorbing a book on Egyptology. Had the Transvaluator—who, Howard still faintly suspected, might be the damaged AOI, but was probably not—plucked the reading from his mind and used it to couch its latest appearance?

  Howard tentatively replied. “You are Routi, the twin lions Shu and Tefnut, and your name is Yesterday-Tomorrow.”

  Apparently satisfied with his response, the agent behind the Transvaluation—if sentient agent there even were—returned this portion of Gradient Seven to what passed for normality these days. Howard was free to continue his aimless ambling, stepping over the bodies of his recently fallen acquaintances. Those who had worked most closely with him had been the last to die or change. He wondered if the Transvaluator had a special fate in mind for him, toward which it built and ascended along a spiral of bodies?

  From time to time in his peregrinations through the SCAM, the deranged AOI would attempt to touch his mind as of old. But nothing coherent could be gleaned from these brushes.

  It was strange not to be able to form a question and have a ready-made answer appear. Humans had lived so long with AOI morphic fields. In many ways, Howard was the first human being to be alone in five hundred years.

  But the last puzzling thing the AOI had told him before it went mad was “You are not alone. There is another at Gradient Zero. She is …”

  She is. What? Dying? Safe? Responsible for the Transvaluation? A multilifer? A registered berdache? She is.

  Add to that the fact that the SCAM’s layout boasted no Gradient Zero, and the AOI’s final contact had proved less than enlightening.

  Howard stepped over the contorted, barely recognizable body of Cheng Anderson, who had been brought down by a carapace of fungal plaques. Like all the others, he had died with that look of shock. What was the damn final revelation, the answer that killed?

  If conventionally dead the victims even were.

  Again, guilt at his lack of deep remorse coursed through Howard. Two months he had been aboard the Nepthys, hardly long enough to form any solid bonds. And most of the SCAM’s inhabitants had hated him instantly, placed him at the focus of their unease and suspicions.

  But then to occupy that focus was his job.

  His previous assignment had been a nasty little totalitarian world called Fagen III. (Neofascism and primitive agriculture unfortunately worked very well together.) There he had had to manipulate the fourfold plectic symbol of the organic nation into the fivefold symbol of a multicultural state. With luck the changed symbol would permeate the psyches of the population, effecting certain civil justice feelings.

  Happily, the riots and cultural unrest had erupted on the day of his departure. The government thanked him profusely, and paid a bonus. There would be a culmination of the glorious creative unrest when the time to move beyond an agricultural economy arrived.

  In fact he had done so well that he could pick his next assignment, so he went for that very mysterious, newly available plum that had the whole Sophontic Commensality atwitter.

  Nepthys.

  He had written in his Diary then: “I will voyage to the edge of the unknown to find both my undiscovered self and something the universe has never before seen.” (He had not then formulated the thought that these two things might be one and the same.)

  The Diary’s oracle function had written back: “Who are these children who scream and run wild?” He had thought it a marvelous oracle, referring perhaps to some Inner Child, an old archetype recendy resurfacing

  Now, of course, after the Transvaluation he tended to interpret the oracle more disturbingly …

  Leaving Anderson’s body behind, refraining from casting a backward glance for fear the corpse might choose to change, Howard took slow, deliberate steps. It wasn’t wise to run. Beatrice Somerville, the first victim, had discovered that. A glaucous mist had chased her from the gravitic engine room. She had run, and the mist laughed as she turned inside out before vanishing. Briefly displaying on its shimmering self scenes from Beatrice’s childhood, the mist soon faded away, leaving everyone with a headache and the smell of her perfume, which stood out even above the raw sewage unleashed by the rogue ganglia.

  Everyone soon learned the best way to react, for what such knowledge was worth.

  If you let the Transvaluator touch you at will
, play with you, you lived longer.

  Howard focused his attention away from his memories and onto his next few steps. If the Gradients hadn’t been reconfigured too terribly, there would be a dining hall twenty meters ahead to the left. He would only have to pass two doorways. Doorways were the worst. The Transvaluator, perhaps reflecting its own liminal nature, had some fascination with doorways.

  There were no apparent changes as he passed by the first entrance.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  Something had changed.

  Subjective time sped up, making the world around him, including his own body, seem super-slow.

  Howard moved like a superannuated sloth, kicking a dropped scanner and watching it rise underwater-slow. He wondered how many mental hours it would take him to reach the next portal a mere eight meters away. Maybe this slowing had produced the shocked faces on his fallen companions. They had enjoyed what most humans never had—time to think it all out.

  And judging by their faces, the answer to all of life’s questions wasn’t a nice one.

  The director of the station, Sharon Dewdney, had been one of those who had hated him on sight.

  “We don’t need a socio-plectic engineer! The dynamics of our interpersonal situation are firmly established, maximally optimized.”

  “You’re probably right,” Howard agreed, “insofar as you go. There are enough humans here to produce a critical mass of affinities and discharges. If this were a boring, routine assignment, of course, you’d still need an engineer for conventional reasons.”

  “No one will have the time to be bored, or play out the little rituals you devise in the name of psychic health, Com’sal Exaker. And since you admit as much, I fail to see your utility.”