Child of Fortune

by Norman Spinrad

  Yet by my own lights, I seemed sufficiently advanced in my craft to meet with financial as well as artistic success, if only I could secure the funds to remove myself to some planet where the streets were alive with gay-spirited throngs and the joie de vivre so absent from Ciudad Pallas had reached a reasonably full flower.

  For did I not possess not only a considerable repertoire of tales acquired from the Gypsy Joker ruespielers of Edoku but a unique tale as well that was entirely my own? And was not even my modest success against all odds here on Belshazaar proof that I had the wit and craft to properly tell them?

  It was only a function of effort over time, or so I told myself during these weeks. Slim though my daily earnings were, every credit thereof was retained against the day when I had accumulated sufficient funds to purchase electrocoma passage in a Void Ship leaving Belshazaar for greener pastures. Sooner or later, though alas more likely the latter than the former, I would have enough credit on my chip to travel on.

  And as far as I was concerned, it mattered little as to where, for the journey itself was what I now sought to resume. Once I had enough funds to travel to anywhere else, I would take myself forthwith thither, and on that new planet would I ply the ruespieler’s trade until I had earned enough to pay my way to the next, and the next, and the next, worlds without end, tripping the life fantastic like Pater Pan, from star to star, following the Yellow Brick Road of the wandering ruespieler, vraiment star-tripping through the centuries even as he, mayhap even to meet him once more before my body’s time ran out.

  Was it a man I sought to follow, or the Pied Piper of a tale? Did I truly dream of regaining the companionship of a lost lover or was this merely an ultima Thule my spirit placed like the rising sun above a road that had no ending?

  La même chose, nē, for Pater Pan the natural man was a wandering spirit, and Pater Pan the Pied Piper of the Yellow Brick Road was the spirit of wandering, and to Sunshine the ruespieler, were they not one and the same?

  Be that as it may, in the end my tale was to take a different turning, indeed as I spieled for pittances in the streets of Ciudad Pallas, the wheel had already turned, though I was to be the last to know. Far sooner than I could have dreamt, I was telling my last tale for the citizens of Ciudad Pallas, though at the time I knew it not, for my chip still held less than half the credit I needed to purchase passage to the nearest world.

  The tale I was telling at the time was, appropriately enough, Spark of the Ark, the venue was an undistinguished Ciudad Pallas street like all the others, and the audience consisted of some half-dozen burghers, four Children of Fortune, and a handsome dark-haired woman whose form-fitting suit of iridescent gold and silver feathers seemed to mark her as a turista from some more sophisticated sphere.

  “And where did he go when the Jump Drive rang down the final curtain on the great slow centuries of the First Starfaring Age?” I declaimed, segueing into my climactic appeal for funds. “Everywhere! Nowhere! Into the space between which lies within our human hearts! Here within the teller who brings you the tale, vraiment even within the Arkie Sparkie hearts of you, my poor lost Bloomenkinder, which is to say all of you who still retain the nobility of spirit to insert your chips into my transcriber and donate your funds to she whose life is the singing of the song!”

  So saying, I waved my transcriber in the customary manner before them, and in their customary manner most of them chose to fade away, though two of the Children of Fortune were good enough to honor my efforts with a single credit apiece before departing.

  Now only the dark-haired woman in the suit of feathers remained, neither fleeing at my mendicant’s appeal nor making any move to loose the strings of what surely must have been an overflowing purse. Instead she stood there regarding me quite strangely, with a wry yet somehow warm smile on her lips, and a peculiar look of nostalgic merriment in her wide blue eyes.

  “Quelle chose!” I demanded, forthrightly confronting her. “From your haute couture it is evident that you are a woman of wealth and grace! Surely you will not be so mean-spirited therefore as to deny the Piper her pay?”

  She laughed good-naturedly, withdrew a chip from the folds of her garment, inserted it into my transcriber, and watched my eyes widen in delight and no little astonishment as she transferred a full hundred units of credit to my own.

  “I too once practiced the ruespieler’s trade long ago and far away,” she said. “Hola, in a certain sense it might be said that I follow it still. At any event, I do believe that it is you I have journeyed to this tiresome planet to meet.”

  “Me?” I exclaimed.

  “You are Sunshine Shasta Leonardo, are you not? Of whom the case histories speak? The Lady of the Ode?”

  “Ode?”

  “Vraiment, Omar’s ode, Our Lady of the Bloomenkinder, naturellement.”

  “Omar Ki Benjamin? He really wrote the ode he promised?”

  She laughed. “Of course. The old roué is a man of his word. The problem has always been getting him to give it.”

  “You are a friend of Omar’s?”

  She shrugged. “A subtle question, liebchen. We have been lovers from time to time for decades, yet I am still not quite sure. But then we know how such men are, nē?”

  “We do?”

  “We had better!” she declared. Then, sensing my complete befuddlement, which no doubt would have been evident to the coarsest oaf, she took me by the hand. “Come, kindelein,” she said. “It would seem that I have much to tell you, though of course not half so much as you have to tell me.”

  “Where are we going?” I managed to inquire.

  She made a moue of distaste. “Alas, my suite at the Hotel Pallas,” she said. “One cut above a rude bordello, as far as I’m concerned, but the best Belshazaar has to offer, I was given to understand.”

  I nodded. “I dwelt there once,” I told her.

  “Well, then, you know what I mean!”

  And so, hardly knowing how I had gotten there or why, I found myself ensconced with this bizarre yet somehow immediately simpatica woman in a suite in the Hotel Pallas much like the one Guy and I had once shared, all thick blue carpeting, brown plush upholstery, tawny wood paneling, polished brasswork, and dominated by a huge window that presented a grandiose and repulsive vista of this city of charmless gray and ugly expanses of glass.

  “Feh!” my hostess agreed when she saw me gazing distastefully thereon. “You will be as happy to be quit of this place as I, nē? But come, be seated, have some of this wretched wine that they dare to charge such an outrageous price for, and hear my name tale, for naturellement, I already know yours.”

  She ushered me to a couch, sat down beside me, uncorked a bottle of wine, filled two goblets, wrinkled her nose, and gulped down a draught. The wine, when I tasted it, was nowhere near as vile as I had been led to expect.

  “Bien,” my new friend declared, for so I had already begun to consider her, though I did not quite know why.

  “My name is Wendi Sha Rumi. My father, Rumi Mitsu Cala, was, or rather still is, a composer and performer of musique et lumière native to no planet in particular, for he was conceived and raised to manhood aboard a succession of Void Ships, his mother, Cala Abdu Etroy, having been a freeservant thereon, and his father, Mitsu Bryan Chiri, being a Void Captain of same. His freenom, Rumi, he chose for the premiere of his first composition in homage to the legendary sufic poet of old.

  “My mother, Sha Smith Gotha, alas deceased, was a Void Ship Domo. Her father, Smith Willa Carlyle, was an artisan of bijoux to the floating cultura, and her mother, Gotha Lee Kotar, was, to be frank, a courtesan thereof, of great beauty and tantric skill, or so it is said. Her freenom, Sha, she chose upon becoming a Domo homage a Sha Lao Hari, one of the earliest to follow that art, and the first to fit out her Grand Palais with a vivarium, or so the legend goes.

  “My parents met when the courses of their endless voyages intersected aboard the Pegasus D’or, and one of the results of this union, naturellement, was
myself, also raised entirely en passage, as it were. Thus I am a third generation native of the floating cultura, which no doubt does much to explain my distaste for planetary surfaces, let alone for such a pismire world as this.

  “Eschewing parental largesse out of some ill-conceived rebellious pride and wishing to wallow in all that the worlds and the men thereof might have to offer, I passed my wanderjahr, and a long and wild one it was, ma petite, as a nouvelle indigent Child of Fortune making her way from world to world by the usual means, which is to say courtesy of wealthy lovers, via tantric performance, as a freeservant, by stratagems amounting to little more than theft, and finally as an itinerant ruespieler with a plethora of dark and spicy tales to tell, my dear.

  “At length, vraiment at great length, it slowly began to dawn on me that there were far more lucrative markets for same than streets and platzes, which is to say I began to record my romances and stories on word crystal, an alteration of medium which I commend to your attention, liebchen, for the sale thereof now allows me to live in the style to which all civilized folk should wish to become accustomed.

  “My freenom, Wendi, I chose as a suitable nom de plume for the publication of my first word crystal, homage a the collector of lost boys in the tale of Peter Pan, for certainement I had collected enough of the same during my wanderjahr, and the gentlemen of the priapic gender were the audience I sought to capture for my libidinal romances—”

  “Pater Pan!” I exclaimed. “The tale of Pater Pan?”

  “Peter Pan,” Wendi corrected. “Though it is arcane indeed that you should hear the other, for in fact long ago I briefly knew a man who styled himself thusly, and what a fellow he was too, liebchen, with a great golden mane of hair, the most outrageous blarney, and a suit you would not believe…”

  She smiled at me broadly as I sat there with my mouth gaping open. “Then again you might,” she said archly, “seeing as how it was sewn together of a patchwork of assorted swatches not unlike the very scarf you wear!”

  I gaped. I gargled. I gulped down a great swallow of wine. Wendi patted me on the knee and laughed uproariously.

  “Pardon, ma pauvre petite, of course I was enjoying a small jest at your expense,” she said. “Naturellement, your connection to the fellow, being recorded in the copious annals of your case history, was known to me from the start. Which is not to say that he and I were not lovers too, long ago and far away, verdad. C’est vrai. I tell you true.”

  At last I found my tongue. “Annals? Case history? Pater Pan?” I stammered. “I know not what to say. I am filled with questions I cannot frame.”

  Wendi raised an admonitory finger. “All in good time,” she said, pouring me another goblet of wine. “But I have been babbling on at endless length and I have not come all this distance to hear the sound of my own voice, pleasing though it may be to my ears. It is your turn to speak, ruespieler. I would hear the tale of the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt from the lips of same, for the dry monographs which the proprietors of the Clear Light Mental Retreat have thusfar licensed for publication obviously omit the most spicy and piquant details. I would learn why Our Lady of the Bloomenkinder is presently reduced to spieling for pittances on these mean streets. Drink up, then speak! I swear a solemn oath that I will seek not to gain profit by stealing your tale. And when you have enlightened my ignorance, then I will surely enlighten yours, at least to the extent that my poor powers command. Drink! Speak! Favor me with the telling of your own true tale!”

  And so, my loquacity along the way well lubricated by more goblets of wine than I could count, I related to Wendi Sha Rumi a greatly condensed summary of the events I have thusfar recounted in this very histoire, omitting only those matters which cast less than glory upon my own person, some of the more intimate details, and of course whatever mature retrospective analysis I have attempted herein, which was beyond my intellectual powers at the time.

  “Ah, I knew we would be friends when first I perused Omar’s ode!” Wendi declared when I had more or less concluded. “For surely you are a sister of the spirit to the girl that I once was, and with good fortune, I am surely a sister of the spirit to the woman you will one day become.” She frowned. “But despite your natural talent as a teller of tales, there remain matters I do not entirely comprehend…”

  “That you do not comprehend!” I exclaimed. “Vraiment, there is little of your presence on Belshazaar or my presence in this very room that I comprehend at all!”

  “Well, then, let us take turns as interlocutor and respondee, my dear,” Wendi said. “The first question may be yours…”

  “What are you doing here, Wendi?” I asked. “What do you want from me?”

  “Do you wish me to frame my reply in terms of spirit, art, or commerce, liebchen?”

  “Surely,” I told her dryly, “as an author of romances, you are capable of combining all three…?”

  “Well spoken!” Wendi declared with a little laugh. “In terms of spirit, as I have said, I knew you were a time-warped sister of my own heart when first I encountered Omar’s ode. In terms of art, when I then perused the dry details of your adventure in the annals, I recognized an uncompleted tale of great promise that I wished to hear from the heroine herself in order to enrich my own mastery of the art, for as you will learn, a serious practitioner thereof must never give over studying the work of colleagues. As for commerce, I have secured a modest commission to assist you in preparing a proper version of your adventure on the Bloomenveldt for inclusion in the Matrix.”

  “Matrix? Commission? Annals? Qué pasa?”

  “One moment, liebchen!” Wendi chided. “For speaking of commerce, it is your turn to answer me. To wit, why in all the worlds do I find Our Lady of the Bloomenkinder, the heroine and author of the Tale of the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt, the subject of so much learned if far from artful publication, begging for pittances on these wretched streets?”

  “In order to secure funds, naturellement!” I told her. “Why else? So that I may purchase my escape from what you have so justly styled this wretched place!”

  Wendi regarded me with astonishment. “You are in fact declaring your indigence, child?”

  “I do possess some two hundred and sixty units of credit on my chip…” I said in a somewhat pitiful voice.

  “Two hundred and sixty!” Wendi exclaimed. “With that you might purchase two nights’ lodging in this despicable hotel! I do not at all comprehend.”

  “I do not comprehend what it is you do not comprehend.”

  “Caga!” Wendi fairly exploded. “Nom de merde! The Clear Light Mental Retreat has licensed the publication of any number of learned and fatuous monographs dissecting your exploits, and while admittedly these are certainly less than popular fare, several thousand copies of each must surely have been purchased by institutes of learning. What wretched rate of royalty have they cozened you into accepting? One colleague to another, how mingy was the advance?”

  “Royalty? Advance?” The more she spoke, the less I seemed to understand. “I am supplied with a decent enough room, three dull meals daily, and several changes of clothing, and that is the long and short of it,” I told her. “You are saying I should receive something more?”

  “WHAT?” Wendi shouted, bolting from the couch. She began pacing in small circles before me, fairly bellowing her outrage. “Chingada, what a naif! And to think I once had the temerity to style myself a proper thief! Child, while you have been spending all these weeks answering their stupid questions and begging alms in the street, the mages of the Clear Light Mental Retreat have been churning out monographs by the roomful on the data you have been so naively donating gratuit, at considerable profit to themselves!”

  “They have…?”

  “Of course they have!” Wendi exclaimed. “Unlike you, my little ingenue, they were not exactly born the day before yesterday!”

  Slowly, she subsided from her wrath, sat down beside me, and laid a friendly hand on my knee. “Fear not, Sunshine,”
she said in a much calmer voice, but one that was nevertheless edged with burnished steel. “I will aid you in dealing with these mountebanks forthwith. Healers they style themselves even as they rob innocent children!”

  So saying, she grabbed me by the hand and fairly yanked me to my feet. “Andale!” she said. “We will have it out with this Urso fellow at once!”

  “But…the Matrix…your commission…what is happening…? You haven’t told me anything…” I stammered as she dragged me toward the door.

  “In the floatcab, liebchen, I will elucidate as best I can, though, hola, it would seem you have more to learn than even I can teach!”

  Night had fully fallen by now, and as the floatcab followed its guiderail through the largely empty streets of Ciudad Pallas toward the Clear Light Mental Retreat, Wendi Sha Rumi told me of things that were at length to open up worlds.

  “Consider, Sunshine,” she said, “that since the Gyptians started carving graffiti on the walls of their tombs, or at any rate since Gutenberg printed his first book, our species has been churning out mountains of paper, tapes, cines, holos, word crystals, und so weiter on every conceivable subject and then some. And since some centuries before the Age of Space, these have all been replicated thousandsfold, to the point that to our Second Starfaring Age almost none of this knowledge and art has been lost. We now number hundreds of billions on nearly three hundred worlds, and still this process continues apace.”

  She shook her head in wonder and amazement. “The imagination boggles, nē. Paradoxically enough, there is so much knowledge that if some sense were not made of it, it might as well be lost. Thus the Matrix, wherein the sum total of human knowledge is stored in subatomic coding that makes word crystal seem as crude and coarse as tablets of baked clay. Or rather the Matrices, for each Void Ship contains a copy to be continually updated as their paths cross.”