Tea From an Empty Cup

by Cadigan, Pat

  ‘That was easy,’ she said, noting the address and the directions. It just figured. You have only to ask. Too good to be true.

  The map absorbed the book, making it disappear. She picked it up and moved along the street toward the next three-way intersection. Three fiery humanish shapes detached themselves from the burning ruins of a classic Rolls sandwiched between two antique sports cars and stood watching her. Konstantin had a sudden urge to whirl on them and claim she was selling encyclopedias. The idea was a tickle playing over her back, where she imagined she could feel their literally burning stares.

  No, they might actually expect her to produce chips full of natural history quick-times. She couldn’t account for how she had come up with the idea of playing such a prank; according to her ex, she’d never had much of a sense of humor.

  Ah, but this is the Land of Anything Goes. You can pretend you have a sense of humor, or that your ex isn’t actually ex, and all while you look for someone with the unlikely name of Body Sativa, or Love. Or who knows?

  She passed several brawls, a side street where a few hundred people seemed to be trying to stay as close together as possible and still dance – it looked as though they had decided nudity would do it – and a billboard-sized screen where half a dozen people were either collaborating on a quick-time or competing to see whose images could dominate. Someone among them was obsessed with mutant reptiles. Or were certain kinds of images contagious?

  Or maybe, she thought as she passed someone that might have been the offspring of a human and a cobra, it was the mutants themselves that were contagious. She paused at a corner in front of a park surrounded by a black metal spiked fence and consulted the map.

  ‘Sssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh …’

  The noise was so soft, she wasn’t sure that she had actually heard it. But then it came again, from the dark enclosed by the spiked metal fence, and she found that the sensation of small hairs standing up on the back of her neck was not necessarily something that the hotsuit had to produce for her.

  ‘Sssshhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaannnnnnnntiiiiiiiiiih …’

  She was clenching her hands so tightly that if she really had been holding a map, it would have crumpled and torn. Come on, she told herself. This is nothing more than a scary movie. You just happen to be in it.

  ‘Ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnntiiiiiiiiiiiiiiihh …’

  Apparently it didn’t matter what she told herself, the hairs on the back of her neck were going to stand up and jitterbug regardless. Chills were creeping down below her backbone now. Konstantin tried to steel herself and shivered instead.

  ‘Sssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnntiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiihhhh. Welcome back from the land of the dead. We’ve been waiting for you, darling.’

  Konstantin forced herself to turn around. The faces grinning out of the darkness glowed moon-pale, with thick black circles around the luminous eyes. Cold flicked more sharply at the back of her neck and up onto her scalp.

  There were half a dozen of them, in a roughly symmetrical formation around a picnic table with the one who had spoken in the center. They were all wearing black skintights over their idealized hardbodies, some disputably female, others emphatically male. When mimes go bad, Konstantin thought, and became even more terrified that she might laugh. More chills played over the back of her neck, as if in deliberate reproach for having such an irreverent thought. She shuddered and felt the sliced area of her neck separate a bit.

  She covered her wounded throat with the map and moved closer to the fence. ‘Have we met?’ she asked, trying to sound remote.

  The figure posed in the center of the table changed position and moved a few steps forward to the edge. ‘Oh, Shantih,’ he said sulkily. ‘And after all we’ve meant to each other. I’m wounded. Mortally. We all are.’ He gestured at the others.

  ‘And I’m dead,’ Konstantin said. ‘You have any idea who did it?’

  The glowing moon-colored face suddenly took on an uncertain expression. ‘Honey, you were there, look at your footage. Relive every glorious moment. We –’

  ‘I have. I’d invite you to watch it again with me, but I’m on my way to meet someone. Maybe we can connect later.’

  One of the women on the speaker’s right straightened up from her catlike stalking pose and pushed both hands into the small of her back. ‘Oh, for the love of Lucy, Shantih, my back’s killing me tonight but I came out anyway. If you’re not playing, just say so and we’ll go find somebody else.’

  Konstantin shrugged. ‘Right. I’m not playing.’ She turned to go.

  ‘You’re not Shantih.’ The man hopped down from the table and went over to the fence. ‘Are you.’

  Konstantin kept her distance. ‘You knew Shantih Love pretty well?’

  The man adjusted something on himself at waist-level and Konstantin felt the chills that had been tormenting her suddenly vanish. ‘“Knew?” Does that mean our usual Shantih gave up the character?’

  ‘Gave up the ghost,’ Konstantin told him. ‘The person you knew as Shantih Love in here has been murdered. For real. I –’

  He turned away from her and swung his arm. The group surrounding the picnic table vanished, including the woman who had complained about her back. ‘All right, just what kind of virgin are you, hon?’ he asked, turning to her again, annoyance large on his white painted face.

  ‘What kind?’ Konstantin was mystified. ‘How many kinds are there?’

  ‘Are you some senator’s get out for a good time, or are you some rich kid who bought out a regular? Thought you could get in the game with the fame along with the name?’

  Konstantin started to answer but he did something at waist level again and a fresh wave of chills danced up her neck into her hair, intense enough to make her cry out. She stepped back, batting the air with her map as if ultrasonics were insects she could swat away from herself.

  ‘You stay away from me, you pseudo-rudo,’ he yelled at her.

  ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘I didn’t –’

  ‘I hate you virgins, you all think you’re the first one to think of saying the one you bought out got killed for real and you’re on the trail of the killer. You all think if you say that, we’ll all just lead you to their stash, tell you, “Oh, help yourself, angel of justice, take all the stuff, and if you don’t know how to use it, just ask.”’ He did something at his waist again and Konstantin retreated several more steps. Finally, she thought to shift her gaze to the control for her ’suit and blocked the incoming sensation.

  The man made a disgusting noise. ‘A virgin and a cheat. God’s sake, baby, if your meat can’t take the motion, why did you bother jumping on the ride?’ He flickered out, leaving her alone.

  Moving on, Konstantin couldn’t decide whether to feel relieved or chastened.

  The place marked on the map turned out to be a subway station, or maybe just the post-Apocalyptic ruin of a subway station. From where she stood on the sidewalk looking down the stone stairs, Konstantin could hear the distant sound of people’s voices and, even more distantly, music but no trains. Maybe you could hike around post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty in the tunnels and bring your own music with you. She crouched at the top of the stairs with her map, absently pressing the flesh of her throat together. The cut edges felt a bit like putty or clay, but they wouldn’t stay closed for very long. She wondered idly if she should try to find a place to have herself sewn up, or whether she might even try it herself. If that was even the sort of thing that Shantih Love might do –

  There was a strange pressure all along her back, from her neck down to her feet. She stood up and turned around to see if some new weird experience had crept up behind her, but there was no one and nothing there. She was alone; the pressure was all in the ’suit, as if it were trying to push her down the steps into the subway.

  ‘Help?’ she asked, turning the map over. The cat’s face flashed briefly, sneering at her, and then she was holding the book again. She found the section on the hots
uit almost immediately, but she had to read it over three times to be sure that the ’suit itself, being loaded with Shantih Love characteristics now, was trying to give her a strong hint as to what to do next. At this point, apparently, Shantih Love would have gone down into the subway.

  There was a noise below her. She looked over the top of the book and jumped. A young Japanese man, wearing the plain laborer clothing of a hundred years before, was standing a few steps down from her. Although she was no expert, she was pretty sure that was a Samurai sword at his side.

  She hugged the book to her chest protectively; it became a map again. The man gazed at her steadily, his expression mild, almost blank. He came up another step. She meant to retreat but something in his face changed so that he suddenly looked severe, and she stayed where she was.

  ‘Does this mean you’re giving up, Mr Iguchi?’ he asked in a soft, sarcastic voice. ‘Or have you just changed your strategy?’

  ‘How do you know my name?’ Konstantin asked him, wincing inwardly when she heard the tremor in her voice. It wasn’t fear but cold – her ’suit seemed to have turned into a portable refrigerator, for no reason that she could see.

  The man came up another step. ‘Games again, Tom? It’s always games with you.’

  ‘More like a malfunction, actually,’ she muttered, rubbing one arm. The temperature inside the ’suit was still dropping, as though it were trying to keep her cool inside a furnace.

  ‘It’s not cold tonight, Tom,’ the man said. ‘Are you sure it’s not fear that’s making you tremble?’

  ‘Have it your way,’ Konstantin said desperately, hoping that might have some effect on the ’suit’s wayward thermostat.

  ‘Sure you’re not afraid of me? Or maybe what I represent?’

  Konstantin’s teeth chattered. ‘W-w-what would that be?’

  ‘An old world that has nothing to do with what this world has become, this world, or the one it’s contained in, or the one that that one is contained in. Boxes within boxes within boxes, all the way to infinity.’ The man suddenly produced a strange coin between thumb and forefinger. It flashed silver for a moment; then Konstantin saw the figure on it. Something contrary in her had always insisted on recognizing it first as a tipped-over numeral eight and then as the symbol for infinity. Subconscious protest over the idea of world without end, amen? No time to wonder; the man flipped the coin and showed her the other side, a snake with its tail in its mouth.

  ‘There is something very Japanese about these non-Japanese symbols, don’t you agree, Tom? It’s Old Japan that I’m talking about here, not the hot icy flash of the nth generation of speed tribes, or the debauchery of the newest salaryman club in the neon jungle that covered over the old signs and symbols.’

  He held the coin out to her but when she reached for it, he flipped it again and snatched it out of the air. Konstantin pulled her hand back, embarrassed and irritated. The man put both hands behind himself for a moment and then held them up. ‘Which hand, Tom? Can you guess?’

  Konstantin tucked the map under her arm, trying to ignore the fact that she felt as if she were turning into an ice cube from the skin inward. ‘Let’s see,’ she said, lifting her chin with bravado. ‘I used to be pretty good at this. Finding the tell, I mean. Everybody’s got a tell. Even Old Japan.’

  The man’s eyes narrowed; he took a closer look at her. ‘You never used to be so smart. What’s happened since I saw you last – you take some genius pill somewhere? Something that’s burning your brain cells out as fast as you can use them, maybe?’

  Konstantin didn’t answer. She scrutinized his right fist for a long time, then his left. ‘Sometimes it’s a twitch, a tightening of the muscles. Sometimes, you can get them to look at the correct hand, just by suggesting it. Doesn’t matter, you just have to be observant so you can pick up on what kind of tell it is. Most of the time, the person doesn’t even realize it. But it’s there, and it tells you what the answer is.’ Konstantin hesitated and then tapped the man’s right fist. ‘I say there.’

  He didn’t move. ‘You’re not Iguchi.’

  ‘Come on, let’s see it,’ said Konstantin. ‘I know I’m right. Otherwise you wouldn’t be stalling.’

  ‘You’re not Iguchi. I should have seen it immediately. That’s too smart for Iguchi. Where is old Tom tonight? Did he hire you, or did you buy him out? If you bought him out, I got to tell you, he stuck you with damaged goods there.’ He indicated her cut throat with a jerk of his chin.

  Konstantin felt more confident now. She stepped forward and tapped the knuckles of his right hand. ‘I said come on, let’s see it. I know it’s there. Give me the coin and you can call it a night.’

  ‘Call it a night?’ The man smiled, raised his right hand, and opened it. It was empty. ‘Or call it a day?’ He raised his left hand now, watching as it unfolded to reveal that it, too, was empty. He stayed that way, both hands raised, as if he were at gun point, or perhaps surrendering. ‘Or call it in the air?’

  Annoyed, Konstantin drew back and folded her arms. ‘Fine. But I know, and you know, that until you cheated, that coin was in your right hand. You can skip on outa here now but we both know you cheated. Don’t we?’ She went to take the map from under her arm and felt something funny in her palm. She opened her fingers.

  ‘I told you to call it in the air,’ the man admonished her as she held the coin up and looked at both sides. ‘The problem is, when you have a coin with infinity on one side and Ouroboros on the other, how can you ever really know which side is heads and which is tails?’

  He burst out laughing, bowed to her, and walked off into the darkness. She could hear the echo of his laughter long after the shadows had swallowed him up.

  She examined the coin again. Never mind that, she thought, how can you be sure that what you don’t have is an eight-cent coin to go with your three-dollar bills? But never mind the sarcasm – she had just received some AR stuff. She wondered if this was the type of stuff Guilfoyle Pleshette was so enamored of, and if it were the sort of thing that someone might kill for.

  She descended the stairs, marveling at the way she could feel every bump and irregularity in the banister. The sounds of voices and music bounced off the grimy tiles, the echoes as sharp and clear as bell tones, down to the tiniest distortions. Sometimes the sensory input was too authentic to be authentic, she thought, amused; her hearing had never been that good, even when she’d been very young. Of course, she’d never been this sharply focused before. AR was almost a misnomer, this was more like enhanced reality for obsessives, people who preferred to move in milieus that were ordered down to the tiniest detail, things they themselves probably wouldn’t notice after they had set it in place, but that was the obsessive mind at work –

  And what kind of mind was this at work, she asked herself, frozen at the bottom of the staircase and staring at the empty platform beyond the broken turnstiles and the long-unused token-seller’s cage. There were no people anywhere to be seen in the unnatural fluorescent light, no movement anywhere at all. Dust and dirt lay thickly on everything, suggesting that no one had come here for a long, long time.

  So had her Japanese friend only been waiting at the bottom of the stairs? Or had he come up from some other passage she had missed on her way down?

  She looked at the lights overhead. They didn’t hum or buzz; they didn’t even flicker. Strange, for a place so disused and abandoned, when everything else was so terribly authentic.

  The coin grew slightly warmer in her fist. No, too high a price, she thought, amused. ‘Icon cat?’ she asked.

  The cat jumped into her arms and became the book.

  ‘Subway,’ she told it.

  The pages flipped and came to rest on a picture of a wooden nickel; a mahogany nickel, if Konstantin wasn’t mistaken. She hesitated, and then said, ‘No. Try again.’ The pages flipped again and kept flipping, as if in a very high wind. Because there was a wind, she realized, coming from somewhere down in the old train tunnel. She could fe
el it and she could hear music again as well, except it was much thinner sounding, just one instrument, either a guitar or a very good synthesizer.

  ‘Pause,’ she told the book; it closed quietly for her and vanished. She climbed over one of the turnstiles, paused in case anyone wanted to arrest her for fare-jumping, and then walked out onto the platform to look around.

  The man with the guitar was to her left, sitting cross-legged at the place where the platform ended and the tunnel began. His head was tilted back against the wall and his eyes were closed, so that he seemed to be in a state of deep concentration as he played. Konstantin wondered if he were going to sing, and then wondered exactly what kind of strange kick a person could get from spending billable time in AR alone in a vacant subway station, playing a musical instrument for nobody.

  None, she decided. ‘Resume,’ she said, staring at the guitar player. The book returned to a visible state, pages flipping. ‘Empty subway, downtown.’

  The pages fluttered to rest and she was looking at a bottle cap. CREAM SODA. It swelled up from the paper into a three-dimensional object and rolled out of the book to fall on the tile at her feet. Down by the tunnel, the guitar-player paused and turned his face to smile at her. His eyes were still closed. The lights changed, becoming just a bit warmer in color as the legend NOW ENTERING NEXT HIGHER LEVEL ran along the bottom of her vision like a late-breaking news bulletin on Police Blotter.

  People were all over the platform, standing in groups, sitting on the turnstiles, grouping together down on the tracks, picking their way over the rails to the opposite platform, where there were even more people. At first, she saw only the same types she had seen on the shore in Shantih Love’s AR log. After a minute or so, however, she discovered that if she didn’t look directly at people too quickly, they would come into focus as characters far less clichéd and more bizarre.

  She stayed where she was, keeping her gaze lowered. The light seemed to be changing, growing even softer and warmer, but she didn’t look up at it, or at anything else. The feeling of things altering around her came to her as a sensation of the air rearranging, as a plume of smoke or steam might coil and contort, reshaping itself without dispersing.