Child of Fortune

by Norman Spinrad

  “Each Void Ship contains all of human knowledge?” I exclaimed in utter wonderment.

  “Nein, nein, nein!” Wendi said. “What an impossible useless mess that would be! The sum total of all human knowledge, child, the edited sum total. For example, Omar’s ode is in the Matrix, but most of the learned babble churned out by the mages of the Clear Light on the subject of your adventure is merely noted in the bibliographical index. And even with stringent editing, it requires years of study to learn how to properly extract what one desires from the chaos of the Matrix.”

  She turned to me and smiled. “Which brings us to our business at hand,” she said. “It has been decided by those who decide such things, which is to say the inner circle of the floating cultura, as it were, that your sojourn upon the Bloomenveldt is of sufficient interest to posterity so that a short and definitive version is deemed worthy of storage in the Matrix. Thus I have been commissioned to journey to Belshazaar on the Mistral Falcon, which waits in orbit even now, to assist you in the preparation of same, along with certain mages who have come along for the ride. Your fee will be two thousand units, admittedly a mere token sum, but I assure you that inclusion of a summary in the Matrix will in no way reduce the sale of the full and glorious romance you will no doubt some day publish, indeed the cachet thereof will no doubt enhance—”

  She cut herself off in midsentence, for our floatcab had now pulled up outside the Clear Light. “Speaking of credit units,” she said, “I see we have reached our destination. So let us conclude this tawdry business as expeditiously as possible, so that we may swiftly flee this loathsome planet and begin our collaboration aboard the Mistral Falcon, nē!”

  Thus, with my head reeling from this rapid-fire round of wonders and revelations to the point where I could scarcely think, I found myself being drawn down the hallways of the Clear Light by Wendi Sha Rumi, who shouted out to all and sundry for Urso Moldavia Rashid to be summoned to his office at once, and who refused to give over her strident demands until the whole mental retreat was in an uproar, and Urso at last appeared therein where we awaited him, scowling darkly, and muttering imprecations under his breath.

  “What outrage is this?” he demanded angrily. “How dare you throw this mental retreat into a tumult and summon me from table like—”

  “Like a thief caught in the act?” Wendi suggested in a cold, hard voice. “As for the nature of the outrage, that is for me to inquire and you to reply, Urso Moldavia Rashid! To wit, have you robbed this child of her droit of authorship out of mere pig-thick ignorance or deliberate guileful malice?”

  “Who is this woman?” Urso shouted at me. “Speak at once, lest I expel you out upon the streets forthwith!”

  “How dare you hector this innocent thusly?” Wendi bellowed. “As for expelling her from this establishment, I assure you that soon enough she will be gone. Which is to say as soon as you have rendered up some five thousand credit units, a modest enough estimate of the amount you have embezzled.”

  “Embezzled? Moi?” Urso said, shifting over at once from bellicose outrage to a tone of wounded innocence which would have seemed utterly sincere had not the transformation occurred with such rapidity. He sank down into the chair behind his desk and demurred not when I seated myself before him. Wendi, for her part, remained standing with one hand on her hip and the other pointing a finger of admonishment.

  “Embezzled, you!” she declared. “For many long weeks has Sunshine been the subject of your learned interrogations, and many have been the monographs published thereon, to the great benefit of this institution’s scholarly repute and to the pecuniary enrichment of all concerned save the font thereof herself.”

  “For those selfsame many weeks, she has enjoyed the benefits of our therapeutic ministrations,” Urso pointed out defensively. “You know only the Sunshine Shasta Leonardo whom we have returned to full sapient sanity. Had you met the babbling creature who first emerged from the Bloomenveldt, you would not value our services to her so lightly.”

  “Well spoken!” I was moved to declare, for I could not deny the justice in his words.

  Wendi, however, fetched my ankle a kick and shot me a look which further served to admonish me to silence.

  “I do not undervalue the worth of your therapeutic efforts at all,” she told Urso. “This I have already credited to your karmic and financial accounts. Otherwise, I would surely have demanded three times as much for the droits.”

  “The arrangement between us was freely entered into,” Urso said in a rather whining tone, turning to me for support. “Will you deny this, Sunshine?”

  Before I could begin to answer, Wendi held up her hand for silence. “Freely entered into?” she fairly snorted. “First you declare that your craft is entirely responsible for her present sanity, which is to say that she was quite barbled when you grabbed hold of her, and then you declare that the poor demented creature was capable of entering a business arrangement freely, and while in a state of perfect indigence to boot?”

  Urso drummed his fingers on the surface of his desk. He shrugged. He sighed. His face took on an almost obsequious mien. “I am a Healer, not an author or an advocat,” he said quite meekly. “I know nothing of these matters. Mayhap I have unknowingly violated some nicety thereof, but I am innocent of all guile or willful wrongdoing…”

  “Well spoken,” Wendi said in a tone of poisonous sweetness. “Then you will no doubt be more than willing to rectify the innocent results of your ignorant actions, nē?”

  Urso studied her narrowly. “In the interests of harmony and justice, I suppose I might bring myself to part with two thousand credit units…” he said speculatively.

  “Four thousand,” said Wendi, “Seeing as how we have now established what you are, would it not be unseemly to haggle over the price?”

  “Three thousand,” Urso countered immediately.

  “Three thousand five hundred. After all, just as the Clear Light Mental Retreat has gained a certain scholarly renown among the worlds of men courtesy of my young friend, so might it gain a certain odor of ill repute should the content of this conversation penetrate beyond these walls…”

  “Done,” moaned Urso. “You drive a hard bargain, certainement.”

  “Au contraire,” drawled Wendi Sha Rumi. “I am known throughout the worlds of men as a high-minded esthete hardly able to properly attend to the grubby details of commerce.”

  Urso fairly choked.

  Wendi laughed.

  After Urso had transferred the funds in question, Wendi accompanied me to my erstwhile room, where I began to stuff the meager wardrobe with which I had been provided into my pack. She fingered one of the tunics distastefully.

  “It is hardly worth the effort to pack this rubbish, liebchen,” she said. “Hardly suitable for the society you are about to enter.” She eyed me speculatively. “We are not that different in general measurement,” she said. “It will be simple enough to alter some of my attire so that you may be properly dressed. Obviously there is no point in attempting to seek out haute couture in this nikulturni burg!”

  With enough credit on my chip to purchase three or four electrocoma passages, I at last began to catch my psychic breath, which is to say I determined to seize control of my own destiny from the admittedly beneficent hands of my friend and would-be mentor, who had scarcely even given me time to ponder my own desires since we had met.

  “I cannot thank you enough for your aid, Wendi,” I told her. “But I have my own road to follow, and, thanks to you, I now have the funds to embark thereon.”

  “Your own road to follow?” Wendi said slowly, as if she had been presented with something of a novel notion. “Vraiment, we must all follow our own star, ma chère,” she agreed forthrightly. “The fact that I have come all this distance to meet you should in no way be taken into account. But what, may I ask, is this destiny which in your heart supersedes telling your tale to the posterity of the Matrix? Never have I heard anyone eschew this honor before…” />
  “To follow the path of the wandering ruespieler and see the worlds of men,” I told her.

  “If that were all, why do you object to traveling at least the first leg of your journey in proper style?” she said, eyeing me narrowly.

  “The worlds of men are many, and lifespan’s duration is limited,” I told her. “I care not to waste weeks of mine voyaging as an Honored Passenger, for I wish to make the attempt to see them all, to trip through the centuries in the sleep of electrocoma in the process and experience thereby as much of our species’ tale as I can manage before I must die.”

  Wendi smiled a strange little smile. “It seems to me,” she said, “that I have heard these words before…”

  I stared back at her. “You really did know Pater Pan,” I said.

  “Indeed,” Wendi said. “And it would seem he told us both the same story of his millennial heart’s desire.” She regarded me sharply. “Do you seek to emulate his example or are you still smitten by his charms?”

  “Je ne sais pas,” I told her in all honesty. “Mayhap they are one and the same. I seek to travel the road of the spirit that we share certainement…”

  “And at the end of it, if fortune is kind, to find the natural man?”

  “Mayhap…” I muttered. “Indeed, since I left Guy Vlad Boca in the Perfumed Garden I have been moved to seek the embrace of no other natural man…”

  “This is a confession of prolonged celibacy?” Wendi exclaimed.

  “I suppose it is…” I muttered. “Though somehow I have never thought of it that way before.”

  “De nada, liebchen, de nada!” Wendi exclaimed, perceiving my discomfort at this admission. “Men being what they are, it happens to us all from time to time, let me tell you. It will pass, it will happen again, it will pass once more.”

  “You do not think me a silly naif for being so smitten that I suffer sexual dysfunction, for seeking to live out a Gypsy Joker’s tale…?”

  “As for the former, I may be no Healer, ma chère, but the natural woman’s wisdom tells me that one whose most recent rounds of tantric exercise consisted of mass ravishment by spiritless male animals is presently not withdrawn from the arena out of mooning longings for a lover light-years gone,” Wendi assured me. “As for seeking to live out the tale, this does impinge upon my area of professional expertise, for whether you know it or not, what you are truly seeking is a fitting ending to your wanderjahr’s story.”

  “I am?”

  “Vraiment, and justly so! For we must always end one tale truly before another can be fairly begun with a clear spirit, in life, as in the literary arts.”

  She shook her head and smiled to herself in a self-congratulatory manner. “I knew that I must hear your tale from your own lips or miss its essence!” she declared. “But I knew not why.”

  “And now you do?”

  “Vraiment,” Wendi said. “Omar’s ode ended with your escape from the Bloomenveldt and the scientific literature considers your return to sapient sanity the proper climax, but while the tale of the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt is history, the tale of the wanderjahr of Sunshine Shasta Leonardo has not yet reached its proper esthetically satisfying conclusion, for you have not yet lived through its telling yet. Whether for reasons of the heart or by puissant unconscious literary instinct, you seek the right conclusion, liebchen, which is to say a proper conclusion to this romance requires a moment of triumphant reunion with your long-lost lover. Bon! Let us be gone! This must be accomplished in the interests of both kismet and art!”

  I had finished packing while we spoke, and Wendi now grabbed up my pack and fairly shooed me out the sliding glass door into the garden. “Wait!” I found myself crying to her yet again. “Where are we going?”

  Wendi paused in the doorway. “To the Mistral Falcon, where else?” she said.

  “But you yourself have just agreed that I should seek out Pater Pan among the stars…?”

  “And how do you intend to do that, my dear?” she asked indulgently.

  I shrugged. “By traveling among the worlds of men as rapidly as possible so as to maximize the probability of random encounter,” I said. “Beyond that it is in the hands of fortune, is it not?”

  Wendi shook her head ruefully. “I can see that your knowledge of mathematics is even more deficient than my own,” she said, leading me by the hand out into the garden, where thousands of stars shone in the clear dark night. “Look up there, and see how the worlds of men are scattered among the stars,” she told me. “I am not sure of the equations, but the approximate odds against such a random encounter occurring may be imagined by multiplying the count of the worlds of men by the mean distance between them.”

  “But…but my path need not be entirely random…I would of course seek out information along the way…”

  “Nevertheless, such a quest would consume your entire lifetime without reaching its proper climax.”

  “I don’t understand you, Wendi,” I complained pettishly. “First you tell me it is artistically right and proper that I seek out a reunion with Pater Pan, and then you tell me that success is all but impossible!”

  “Impossible?” Wendi exclaimed. “When have you ever heard me declare that anything is impossible? Via the Matrix on the Mistral Falcon we shall winkle the fellow out soon enough.”

  “Via the Matrix?”

  “Naturellement, how else do you imagine one keeps track of people in our Second Starfaring Age? While Pater Pan is hardly a figure of sufficient historical interest to have a running account of his wanderings recorded in the Matrix, certainement he has left a strong enough spoor of tales, legends, and little tribes in the process thereof for a maestra of the Matrix to construct a tracking program that will locate a recent locus in the data banks.”

  “How is such a thing possible?” I exclaimed.

  Wendi shrugged. “Such mathematical legerdemain is entirely beyond my comprehension,” she said. “But one need not trouble one’s head with the same in order to employ it any more than one need be a mage of cosmological physics to travel by Void Ship.”

  Wendi began striding across the silent and empty garden to the main exit of the mental retreat, but I still hung back.

  “What is it now, child?” she demanded impatiently.

  “I cannot go with you,” I told her. “For surely the three thousand five hundred credit units I possess, plus the two thousand unit fee you allude to, will at best cover the expense of a journey as an Honored Passenger to one nearby planet. And where will I be then? An immobile indigent cursing my own extravagance again!”

  Wendi’s irritation evaporated. “I see you have exchanged a quantum of innocence for a packet of practicality!” she said approvingly. “No longer the high-minded artiste incapable of attending to the grubby details of commerce!”

  She stood there in the garden for a moment, pondering, then she rubbed her hands together in glee. “Bien!” she said. “Now I will instruct you in a bit of the lore of same. As she who has a commission to oversee the preparation of your Matrix entry, I do declare that the same cannot be properly finished without an esthetically satisfying conclusion, who can deny this, nē? And in my expert literary opinion, this requires a climactic confrontation with Pater Pan. So much for the art of it, ma chère.”

  She waved a finger in my face and assumed an owlish air. “Now attend to the means whereby we artists gain our pecuniary vengeance for the depredations of the merchants, who are forever seeking to take advantage of our high-minded innocence,” she chortled, obviously enjoying herself immensely. “Since we are both agreed that a reunion scene with Pater Pan is essential to a properly crafted Matrix entry, expenses incurred to achieve the same may legitimately be charged to the cost of scholarly research.”

  “Are you suggesting what I believe you are suggesting?” I said, slightly aghast in a moral sense mayhap, but taking a certain delighted amusement in a ploy that would certainly do any Gypsy Joker proud.

  Wendi hugged me proudly. “
Indeed I am!” she declared. “By this accounting, we will travel in proper style until our quarry is found, and if this may take some time, why that is fortune’s gift to circumstance, for we travel gratuit, liebchen, as is only our right as free spirits of the arts!”

  Yet still something held me back.

  “Merde, what ails you now, child?” Wendi said, for no doubt my final trepidation was writ clearly upon my face.

  “In truth, the floating cultura pleases me not,” I blurted rather sullenly. “I have passed that way before, and I have no wish to have such idle empty folk look down their excessively elegant noses at me again!”

  “Am I an idle, empty person?” Wendi said gently. “Have you observed me peering down at you from heights of aristocratic haughtiness?”

  “Of course not…I didn’t mean…”

  She took my hand and squeezed it as she led me inside the Clear Light and through the corridor to the streetside egress.

  “Je comprend, liebchen, truly I do,” she said. “The truth of it is that while you voyaged within a Grand Palais, you never voyaged within the floating cultura, you were never an Honored Passenger therein. You were treated as a mere fortunate urchin, and so you felt like a ragamuffin intruding into the fete, nē…”

  “One might I suppose style it thusly…” I admitted grudgingly.

  “Ah, but this will be another matter, Sunshine,” Wendi said as we reached the street. “For you are that urchin no longer! For now you will travel by the invitation, hola, by the largesse of the floating cultura, not by purchasing intrusion therein.”

  With a little bow, she bade me enter a waiting floatcab. “For now you are no longer a ragged little Child of Fortune, but the heroine of an ode, a personage whose words are deemed worthy of the Matrix, with none other than Wendi Sha Rumi as your collaborator, friend, and patron! Surely she who trekked unaided across the Bloomenveldt lacks not the courage to brave as a darling daughter thereof the haut monde of our Second Starfaring Age?”