Northern Stars

by Glenn Grant

  I kept it rolling, though, through six or eight places, and eventually it rolled me into a West End club that looked as if it hadn’t been redecorated since the Nineties. A lot of peeling chrome over plastic, blurry holograms that gave you a headache if you tried to make them out. I think Barry had told me about the place, but I can’t imagine why. I looked around and grinned. If I was looking to be depressed, I’d come to the right place. Yes, I told myself as I took a corner stool at the bar, this was genuinely sad, really the pits. Dreadful enough to halt the momentum of my shitty evening, which was undoubtedly a good thing. I’d have one more for the road, admire the grot, and then cab it on home.

  And then I saw Lise.

  She hadn’t seen me, not yet, and I still had my coat on, tweed collar up against the weather. She was down the bar and around the corner with a couple of empty drinks in front of her, big ones, the kind that come with little Hong Kong parasols or plastic mermaids in them, and as she looked up at the boy beside her, I saw the wizz flash in her eyes and knew that those drinks had never contained alcohol, because the levels of drug she was running couldn’t tolerate the mix. The kid, though, was gone, numb grinning drunk and about ready to slide off his stool, and running on about something as he made repeated attempts to focus his eyes and get a better look at Lise, who sat there with her wardrobe team’s black leather blouson zipped to her chin and her skull about to burn through her white face like a thousand-watt bulb. And seeing that, seeing her there, I knew a whole lot of things at once.

  That she really was dying, either from the wizz or her disease or the combination of the two. That she damned well knew it. That the boy beside her was too drunk to have picked up on the exoskeleton, but not too drunk to register the expensive jacket and the money she had for drinks. And that what I was seeing was exactly what it looked like.

  But I couldn’t add it up, right away, couldn’t compute. Something in me cringed.

  And she was smiling, or anyway doing a thing she must have thought was like a smile, the expression she knew was appropriate to the situation, and nodding in time to the kid’s slurred inanities, and that awful line of hers came back to me, the one about liking to watch.

  And I know something now. I know that if I hadn’t happened in there, hadn’t seen them, I’d have been able to accept all that came later. Might even have found a way to rejoice on her behalf, or found a way to trust in whatever it is that she’s since become, or had built in her image, a program that pretends to be Lise to the extent that it believes it’s her. I could have believed what Rubin believes, that she was so truly past it, our hi-tech Saint Joan burning for union with that hardwired godhead in Hollywood, that nothing mattered to her except the hour of her departure. That she threw away that poor sad body with a cry of release, free of the bonds of polycarbon and hated flesh. Well, maybe, after all, she did. Maybe it was that way. I’m sure that’s the way she expected it to be.

  But seeing her there, that drunken kid’s hand in hers, that hand she couldn’t even feel, I knew, once and for all, that no human motive is ever entirely pure. Even Lise, with that corrosive, crazy drive to stardom and cybernetic immortality, had weaknesses. Was human in a way I hated myself for admitting.

  She’d gone out that night, I knew, to kiss herself goodbye. To find someone drunk enough to do it for her. Because, I knew then, it was true: She did like to watch.

  I think she saw me, as I left. If she did, I suppose she hated me worse than ever, for the horror and the pity in my face.

  I never saw her again.

  * * *

  Someday I’ll ask Rubin why Wild Turkey sours are the only drink he knows how to make. Industrial-strength, Rubin’s sours. He passes me the dented aluminum cup, while his place ticks and stirs around us with the furtive activity of his smaller creations.

  “You ought to come to Frankfurt,” he says again.

  “Why, Rubin?”

  “Because pretty soon she’s going to call you up. And I think maybe you aren’t ready for it. You’re still screwed up about this, and it’ll sound like her and think like her, and you’ll get too weird behind it. Come over to Frankfurt with me and you can get a little breathing space. She won’t know you’re there.…”

  “I told you,” I say, remembering her at the bar in that club, “lots of work. Max—”

  “Stuff Max. Max you just made rich. Max can sit on his hands. You’re rich yourself, from your royalty cut on Kings, if you weren’t too stubborn to dial up your bank account. You can afford a vacation.”

  I look at him and wonder when I’ll tell him the story of that final glimpse. “Rubin, I appreciate it, man, but I just…”

  He sighs, drinks. “But what?”

  “Rubin, if she calls me, is it her?”

  He looks at me a long time. “God only knows.” His cup clicks on the table. “I mean, Casey, the technology is there, so who, man, really who, is to say?”

  “And you think I should come with you to Frankfurt?”

  He takes off his steel-rimmed glasses and polishes them inefficiently on the front of his plaid flannel shirt. “Yeah, I do. You need the rest. Maybe you don’t need it now, but you’re going to, later.”

  “How’s that?”

  “When you have to edit her next release. Which will almost certainly be soon, because she needs money bad. She’s taking up a lot of ROM on some corporate mainframe, and her share of Kings won’t come close to paying for what they had to do to put her there. And you’re her editor, Casey. I mean, who else?”

  And I just stare at him as he puts the glasses back on, like I can’t move at all.

  “Who else, man?”

  And one of his constructs clicks right then, just a clear and tiny sound, and it comes to me, he’s right.

  THE BYRDS

  Michael G. Coney

  Michael G. Coney is one of the three major SF figures (the others are Judith Merril and Spider Robinson) who moved to Canada in the 1970’s and, of them, the most prolific writer. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and all except the first of his seventeen or more SF novels and the majority of his short fiction (his only collection is an early one, Monitor Found in Orbit, 1974) were published after his arrival in 1973. But his fiction writing had already slowed down by the publication of his ninth novel, Brontomek (1976), which won the British Science Fiction Award as best novel of the year. His five novels of the 1980’s all share the same far future background, although two are Arthurian fantasies.

  In his entry in Twentieth-Century Science Fiction Writers, he writes, “Each of my novels has been an experiment in style and content with one consistent trait: they are all mystery stories. Love is there too, and human psychology, and a little ‘hard’ science, but my main intent is to keep the reader guessing.… As an SF reader, my preference is for the persuasively fantastic: the ‘sense of wonder’ story.” David Ketterer quotes Coney on writing SF where “the denouement was the result of the characters of the people concerned and their reaction to the scientific (generally sociological) premise rather than a gimmick ending based on the premise itself.” Then Ketterer goes on to say, “In the best of Coney’s short stories and novels, character and idea achieve this kind of integration, which the most distinctly Canadian SF aspires to.”

  The best of Coney is also underpinned with mature wit, irony, and humor, and his relation to SF writers such as Philip K. Dick, Brian W. Aldiss, and R. A. Lafferty in this regard is rarely mentioned. We have chosen “The Byrds” in part because it illustrates all of Coney’s strengths. It is set in his hometown of Sidney, British Columbia.

  * * *

  Gran started it all.

  Late one afternoon in the hottest summer in living memory, she took off all her clothes, carefully painted red around her eyes and down her cheeks, chin and throat, painted the rest of her body a contrasting black with the exception of her armpits and the inside of her wrists which she painted white, strapped on her new antigravity belt, flapped her arms and rose into the nearest
tree, a garry oak, where she perched.

  She informed us that, as of now, she was Rufous-necked Hornbill, of India.

  “She always wanted to visit India,” Gramps told us.

  Gran said no more, for the logical reason that Hornbills are not talking birds.

  “Come down, Gran!” called Mother. “You’ll catch your death of cold.”

  Gran remained silent. She stretched her neck and gazed at the horizon.

  “She’s crazy,” said Father. “She’s crazy. I always said she was. I’ll call the asylum.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Mother was always very sensitive about Gran’s occasional peculiarities. “She’ll be down soon. The evenings are drawing in. She’ll get cold.”

  “What’s an old fool her age doing with an antigravity unit anyway, that’s what I want to know,” said Father.

  The Water Department was restricting supply and the weatherman was predicting floods. The Energy Department was warning of depleted stocks, the Department of Rest had announced that the population must fall by one-point-eight per cent by November or else, the Mailgift was spewing out a deluge of application forms, tax forms and final reminders, the Tidy Mice were malfunctioning so that the house stank.…

  And now this.

  * * *

  It was humiliating and embarrassing, Gran up a tree, naked and painted. She stayed there all evening, and I knew that my girlfriend Pandora would be dropping by soon and would be sure to ask questions.

  Humanity was at that point in the morality cycle when nudity was considered indecent. Gran was probably thirty years before her time. There was something lonely and anachronistic about her, perched there, balancing unsteadily in a squatting position, occasionally grabbing at the trunk for support then flapping her arms to re-establish the birdlike impression. She looked like some horrible mutation. Her resemblance to a Rufous-necked Hornbill was slight.

  “Talk her down, Gramps,” said Father.

  “She’ll come down when she’s hungry.”

  He was wrong. Late in the evening Gran winged her way to a vacant lot where an ancient tree stood. She began to eat unsterilized apples, juice flowing down her chin. It was a grotesque sight.

  “She’ll be poisoned!” cried Mother.

  “So, she’s made her choice at last,” said Father.

  He was referring to Your Choice for Peace, the brochure which Gran and Gramps received monthly from the Department of Rest. Accompanying the brochure is a six-page form on which senior citizens describe all that is good about their life, and a few of the things which bug them. At the end of the form is a box in which the oldster indicates his preference for Life or Peace. If he does not check the box, or if he fails to complete the form, it is assumed that he has chosen Peace, and they send the Wagon for him.

  Now Gran was cutting a picturesque silhouette against the pale blue of the evening sky as she circled the rooftops uttering harsh cries. She flew with arms outstretched, legs trailing, and we all had to admit to the beauty of the sight; that is, until a flock of starlings began to mob her. Losing directional control she spiralled downwards, recovered, levelled out and skimmed towards us, outpacing the starlings and regaining her perch in the garry oak. She made preening motions and settled down for the night. The family Pesterminator, zapping bugs with its tiny laser, considered her electronically for a second but held its fire.

  We were indoors by the time Pandora arrived. She was nervous, complaining that there was a huge mutation in the tree outside, and it had cawed at her.

  Mother said quickly, “It’s only a Rufous-necked Hornbill.”

  “A rare visitor to these shores,” added Father.

  * * *

  “Why couldn’t she have been a sparrow?” asked Mother. “Or something else inconspicuous.” Things were not going well for her. The little robot Tidy Mice still sulked behind the wainscoting and she’d had to clean the house by hand.

  The garish Gran shone like a beacon in the morning sunlight. There was no concealing the family’s degradation. A small crowd had gathered and people were trying to tempt Gran down with breadcrumbs. She looked none the worse for her night out, and was greeting the morning with shrill yells.

  Gramps was strapping on an antigravity belt. “I’m going up to fetch her down. This has gone far enough.”

  I said, “Be careful. She may attack you.”

  “Don’t be a damned fool.” Nevertheless Gramps went into the toolshed, later emerging nude and freshly painted. Mother uttered a small scream of distress, suspecting that Gramps, too, had become involved in the conspiracy to diminish the family’s social standing.

  I reassured her. “She’s more likely to listen to one of her own kind.”

  “Has everyone gone totally insane?” asked Mother.

  Gramps rose gracefully into the garry oak, hovered, then settled beside Gran. He spoke to her quietly for a moment and she listened, head cocked attentively.

  Then she made low gobbling noises and leaned against him.

  He called down, “This may take longer than I thought.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Mother.

  “That does it,” said Father. “I’m calling the shrink.”

  * * *

  Dr. Pratt was tall and dignified, and he took in the situation at a glance. “Has your mother exhibited birdish tendencies before?”

  Father answered for Mother. “No more than anyone else. Although, in many other ways, she was—”

  “Gran has always been the soul of conformity,” said Mother quickly, beginning to weep. “If our neighbours have been saying otherwise I’ll remind them of the slander laws. No—she did it to shame us. She always said she hated the colours we painted the house—she said it looked like a strutting peacock.”

  “Rutting peacock,” said Father. “She said rutting peacock. Those were her exact words.”

  “Peacock, eh?” Dr. Pratt looked thoughtful. There was a definite avian thread running through this. “So you feel she may be acting in retaliation. She thinks you have made a public spectacle of the house in which she lives, so now she is going to make a public spectacle of you.”

  “Makes sense,” said Father.

  “Gran!” called Dr. Pratt. She looked down at us, beady little eyes ringed with red. “I have the personal undertaking of your daughter and son-in-law that the house will be repainted in colours of your own choosing.” He spoke on for a few minutes in soothing tones. “That should do it,” he said to us finally, picking up his bag. “Put her to bed and keep her off berries, seeds, anything like that. And don’t leave any antigravity belts lying around. They can arouse all kinds of prurient interests in older people.”

  “She still isn’t coming down,” said Father. “I don’t think she understood.”

  “Then I advise you to fell the tree,” said Dr. Pratt coldly, his patience evaporated. “She’s a disgusting old exhibitionist who needs to be taught a lesson. Just because she chooses to act out her fantasies in an unusual way doesn’t make her any different from anyone else. And what’s he doing up there, anyway? Does he resent the house paint as well?”

  “He chose the paint. He’s there to bring her down.”

  We watched them in perplexity. The pair huddled together on the branch, engaged in mutual grooming. The crowd outside the gate had swollen to over a hundred.

  * * *

  On the following morning Gran and Gramps greeted the dawn with a cacophony of gobbling and screeching.

  I heard Father throw open his bedroom window and threaten to blast them right out of that goddamned tree and into the hereafter if they didn’t keep it down. I heard the metallic click as he cocked his twelvebore. I heard Mother squeal with apprehension, and the muffled thumping of a physical struggle in the next room.

  I was saddened by the strain it puts on marriages when inlaws live in the house—or, in our case, outside the window.

  The crowds gathered early and it was quickly apparent that Gramps was through with trying to talk Gran
down; in fact, he was through with talking altogether. He perched beside his mate in spry fashion, jerking his head this way and that as he scanned the sky for hawks, cocking an eye at the crowd, shuddering suddenly as though shaking feathers into position.

  Dr. Pratt arrived at noon, shortly before the media.

  “A classic case of regression to the childlike state,” he told us. “The signs are all there: the unashamed nakedness, the bright colours, the speechlessness, the favourite toy, in this case the antigravity belt. I have brought a surrogate toy which I think will solve our problem. Try luring them down with this.”

  He handed Mother a bright red plastic baby’s rattle.

  Gran fastened a beady eye on it, shuffled her arms, then launched herself from the tree in a swooping glide. As Mother ducked in alarm, Gran caught the rattle neatly in her bony old toes, wheeled and flapped back to her perch. Heads close, she and Gramps examined the toy.

  We waited breathlessly.

  Then Gran stomped it against the branch and the shattered remnants fell to the ground.

  The crowd applauded. For the first time we noticed the Newspocket van, and the crew with cameras. The effect on Dr. Pratt was instantaneous. He strode towards them and introduced himself to a red-haired woman with a microphone.

  “Tell me, Dr. Pratt, to what do you attribute this phenomenon?”