The Elephant’s trunk swished irritably. “I’m definitely going to kill you.”
The Marquis grinned. “You are going to force me to say pshaw,” he said. “Or fiddlesticks. Until now I have never had the slightest moment of yearning to say fiddlesticks. But I can feel it right now welling up inside me—”
“What, by the Temple and the Arch, has got into you?” asked the Elephant.
“Wrong question. But I shall ask the right question on your behalf. The question is actually what hasn’t got into the three of us—it hasn’t got into Peregrine and me because we were holding our breath, and it hasn’t got into you because, I don’t know, probably because you’re an elephant, with nice thick skin, more likely because you were breathing through your trunk, which is down at ground level—and what did get into our captors. And the answer is, what hasn’t got into us are the selfsame spores that have got into our portly shepherd and his pseudocanine companions.”
“Spores of the Mushroom?” asked Peregrine. “The Mushroom People’s the Mushroom?”
“Indeed. That selfsame Mushroom,” agreed the Marquis.
“Blimming Heck,” said the Elephant.
“Which is why,” de Carabas told the Elephant, “if you attempt to kill me, or to kill Peregrine, you will not only fail but you will doom us all. Whereas if you shut up and we all do our best to look as if we are still part of the flock, then we have a chance. The spores will be threading their way into their brains now. And any moment now the Mushroom will begin calling them home.”
A shepherd walked, implacably. He held a wooden crook. Three men followed him. One of those men had the head of an elephant; one was tall and ridiculously handsome; and the last of the flock wore a most magnificent coat. It fit him perfectly, and it was the color of a wet street at night.
The flock were followed by guard dogs, who moved as if they were ready to walk through fire to get wherever they believed that they were going.
It was not unusual in Shepherd’s Bush to see a shepherd and part of his flock moving from place to place, accompanied by several of the fiercest sheepdogs (who were human, or had been, once). So when they saw a shepherd and three sheepdogs apparently leading three members of the flock away from Shepherd’s Bush, none of the greater flock paid them any mind. The members of the flock who saw them simply did the same things they had always done, as members of the flock, and if they were aware that the influence of the shepherds had waned a little, then they patiently waited for another shepherd to come and to take care of them and to keep them safe from predators and from the world. It was a scary thing to be alone, after all.
Nobody noticed as they crossed the bounds of Shepherd’s Bush, and still they kept on walking.
The seven of them reached the banks of the Kilburn, where they stopped, and the former shepherd and the three shaggy dog-men strode out into the water.
There was, the Marquis knew, nothing in the four men’s heads at that moment but a need to get to the Mushroom, to taste its flesh once more, to let it live inside them, to serve it, and to serve it well. In exchange, the mushroom would fix all the things about themselves that they hated: it would make their interior lives much happier and more interesting.
“Should’ve let me kill ’em,” said the Elephant as the former shepherd and sheepdogs waded away.
“No point,” said the Marquis. “Not even for revenge. The people who captured us don’t exist any longer.”
The Elephant flapped his ears hard, then scratched them vigorously. “Talking about revenge, who the hell did you steal my diary for anyway?” he asked.
“Victoria,” admitted de Carabas.
“Not actually on my list of potential thieves. She’s a deep one,” said the Elephant, after a moment.
“I’ll not argue with that,” said the Marquis. “Also, she failed to pay me the entire amount agreed. I wound up obtaining my own lagniappe to make up the deficit.”
He reached a dark hand into the inside of his coat. His fingers found the obvious pockets, and the less obvious, and then, to his surprise, the least obvious of all. He reached inside it, and pulled out a magnifying glass on a chain. “It was Victoria’s,” he said. “I believe you can use it to see through solid things. Perhaps this could be considered a small payment against my debt to you … ?”
The Elephant took something out of its own pocket—the Marquis could not see what it was—and squinted at it through the magnifying glass. Then the Elephant made a noise halfway between a delighted snort and a trumpet of satisfaction. “Oh fine, very fine,” it said. It pocketed both of the objects. Then it said, “I suppose that saving my life outranks stealing my diary. And while I wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t followed you down the drain, further recriminations are pointless. Consider your life your own once more.”
“I look forward to visiting you in the Castle someday,” said the Marquis.
“Don’t push your luck, mate,” said the Elephant, with an irritable swish of his trunk.
“I won’t,” said the Marquis, resisting the urge to point out that pushing his luck was the only way he had made it this far. He looked around and realized that Peregrine had slipped mysteriously and irritatingly away into the shadows, once more, without so much as a good-bye.
The Marquis hated it when people did that.
He made a small, courtly bow to the Elephant, and the Marquis’ coat, his glorious coat, caught the bow, amplified it, made it perfect, and made it the kind of bow that only the Marquis de Carabas could ever possibly make. Whoever he was.
The next Floating Market was being held in Derry and Tom’s Roof Garden. There had been no Derry and Tom’s since 1973, but time and space and London Below had their own uncomfortable agreement, and the roof garden was younger and more innocent than it is today. The folk from London Above (they were young, and in an intense discussion, and they had stacked heels and paisley tops and bell-bottom flares, the men and the women) ignored the folk from London Below entirely.
The Marquis de Carabas strode through the roof garden as if he owned the place, walking swiftly until he reached the food court. He passed a tiny woman selling curling cheese sandwiches from a wheelbarrow piled high with the things, a curry stall, a short man with a huge glass bowl of pale white blind fish and a toasting fork, until, finally, he reached the stall that was selling the Mushroom.
“Slice of the Mushroom, well grilled, please,” said the Marquis de Carabas.
The man who took his order was shorter than he was, and still somewhat stouter. He had sandy, receding hair and a harried expression.
“Coming right up,” said the man. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s all.” And then, curiously, the Marquis asked, “Do you remember me?”
“I am afraid not,” said the Mushroom man. “But I must say, that is a most beautiful coat.”
“Thank you,” said the Marquis de Carabas. He looked around. “Where is the young fellow who used to work here?”
“Ah. That is a most curious story, sir,” said the man. He did not yet smell of damp although there was a small encrustation of mushrooms on the side of his neck. “Somebody told the fair Drusilla, of the Court of the Raven, that our Vince had had designs upon her, and had—you may not credit it, but I am assured that it is so—apparently sent her a letter filled with spores with the intention of making her his bride in the Mushroom.”
The Marquis raised an eyebrow quizzically although he found none of this surprising. He had, after all, told Drusilla himself, and had even shown her the original letter. “Did she take well to the news?”
“I do not believe that she did, sir. I do not believe that she did. She and several of her sisters were waiting for Vince, and they all caught up with us on our way to the Market. She told him they had matters to discuss, of an intimate nature. He seemed delighted by this news, and went off with her, to find out what these matters were. I have been waiting for him to arrive at the market and come and work all evening, but I no long
er believe he will be coming.” Then the man said, a little wistfully, “That is a very fine coat. It seems to me that I might have had one like it, in a former life.”
“I do not doubt it,” said the Marquis de Carabas, satisfied with what he had heard, cutting into his grilled slice of the Mushroom, “but this particular coat is most definitely mine.”
As he made his way out of the Market, he passed a clump of people descending the stairs and he paused and nodded at a young woman of uncommon grace. She had the long orange hair and the flattened profile of a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, and there was a birthmark in the shape of a five-pointed star on the back of one hand. Her other hand was stroking the head of a large, rumpled owl, which glared uncomfortably out at the world with eyes that were, unusually for such a bird, of an intense, pale blue.
The Marquis nodded at her, and she glanced awkwardly at him, then she looked away in the manner of someone who was now beginning to realize that they owed the Marquis a favor.
He nodded at her, amiably, and continued to descend.
Drusilla hurried after him. She looked as if she had something she wanted to say.
The Marquis de Carabas reached the foot of the stairs ahead of her. He stopped for a moment, and he thought about people, and about things, and about how hard it is to do anything for the first time. And then, clad in his fine coat, he slipped mysteriously, even irritatingly, into the shadows, without so much as a good-bye, and he was gone.
Connie Willis
Connie Willis lives with her husband in Greeley, Colorado. She first attracted attention as a writer in the late seventies with a number of stories for the now-defunct magazine Galileo, and went on to establish herself as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers of the 1980s. In 1982, she won two Nebula Awards, one for her novelette “Fire Watch,” and one for her short story “A Letter from the Clearys”; a few months later, “Fire Watch” went on to win her a Hugo Award as well. In 1989, her novella “The Last of the Winnebagos” won both the Nebula and the Hugo, and she won another Nebula in 1990 for her novelette “At the Rialto.” In 1993, her landmark novel Doomsday Book won both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award, as did her short story “Even the Queen.” She won another Hugo in 1994 for her story “Death on the Nile,” another in 1997 for her story “The Soul Selects Her Own Society,” another in 1999 for her novel To Say Nothing of the Dog, another for her novella, “The Winds of Marble Arch” in 2000, another in 2006 for her novella “Inside Job,” and yet another in 2008 for her novella “All Seated on the Ground”—capped off in 2011 by her most recent book, the massive two-volume novel, Blackout/All Clear winning both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. In 2009 she was voted into The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and in 2011, she received the SFWA Grand Master Award. All of which makes her the most honored writer in the history of science fiction, and the only person ever to win two Nebulas and two Hugos in the same year. Her other books include the novels Water Witch, Light Raid, and Promised Land, all written in collaboration with Cynthia Felice, Lincoln’s Dreams, Bellwether, Uncharted Territory, Remake, and Passage, and, as editor, the anthologies The New Hugo Winners, Volume III, Nebula Awards 33, and (with Sheila Williams), A Woman’s Liberation: A Choice of Futures by and About Women. Her short fiction has been gathered in the collections, Fire Watch, Impossible Dreams, and Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. Coming up is a huge retrospective collection, The Best of Connie Willis.
In the fast, funny, and furious story that follows, she takes us out for a night at the movies which turns out to be a lot trickier and more complicated than just buying a ticket.
NOW SHOWING
Connie Willis
“A charming, lighthearted comedy!”
—Entertainment Daily
The Saturday before Christmas break, Zara came into my dorm room and asked me if I wanted to go to the movies with her and Kett at the Cinedrome.
“What’s playing?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “Lots of stuff,” which meant the point of going wasn’t to see a movie at all. Big surprise.
“No, thanks,” I said and went back to typing my econ paper.
“Oh, come on, Lindsay, it’ll be fun,” she said, flopping down on my bed. “X-Force is playing, and The Twelve Days of Christmas and the reboot of Twilight. The Drome’s got a hundred movies. There must be something you want to see. How about Christmas Caper? Didn’t you want to see that?”
Yes, I thought. At least I had eight months ago when I’d seen the preview. But things had changed since then.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to study.”
“We’ve all got to study,” Zara said. “But it’s Christmas. The Drome will be all decorated and everybody will be there.”
“Exactly, which means the light rail will be packed and security will take forever.”
“Is this about Jack?”
“Jack?” I said, wondering if I could get away with, “Jack who?”
Better not. This was Zara. I said instead, “Why would my not going to the Drome with you have anything to do with Jack Weaver?”
“It’s … I don’t know,” she stammered, “it’s just that you’ve been so … grim since he left, and you two used to watch a lot of movies together.”
That was an understatement. Jack was the only guy I’d ever met who liked movies as much as I did, and all kinds, not just comic-book-hero and slasher films. He’d loved everything from Bollywood to romcoms like French Kiss to black-and-whites like The Shop Around the Corner and Captain Blood, and we’d gone to dozens of them at the Drome and streamed hundreds more in the semester we’d been together. Correction, semester minus one week.
Zara was still talking. “And you haven’t gone to the Drome once since—”
“Since you talked me into going with you to see Monsoon Gate,” I said, “and then when we got there you wanted to eat and talk to guys, and I never did get to see it.”
“That won’t happen this time. Kett and I promise we’ll go to the movie. Come on, it’ll be good for you. There’ll be tons of guys there. Remember that Sig Tau who said he liked you? Noah? He might be there. Come on. Please come with us. This is our last chance. We won’t be able to go next weekend because of finals, and then we’ll be gone on break.”
And nobody at home would want to see Christmas Caper. If I suggested going to the movies, my sister would insist on us going to A Despicable Me Noel with her kids, and we’d end up spending the whole afternoon in the arcade playing Minion Mash and buying Madagascar stuffed giraffes and Ice Age Icees. By the time I got back to school, Christmas Caper would be gone. And it wasn’t like Jack would magically show up and take me like he’d promised. If I wanted to see it on the big screen, I needed to do it now.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m not going with you to meet guys. I’m going because I really want to see Christmas Caper. Understood?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, getting out her phone and punching keys. “I’ll just text Kett and—”
“I mean it,” I said. “You have to promise me you won’t get sidetracked like last time, that we’ll actually go to the movie.”
“I promise,” she said. “No guys and no eating till afterward.”
“And no shopping,” I said. I had missed Monsoon Gate because Zara was trying on Polly Pepper shoes in The Devil Wears Prada boutique. “Promise me.”
Zara sighed. “Fine. I promise. Cross my heart.”
“A sweet romantic comedy with lots of action!”
—popcorn.com
Zara’s promise meant about as much as the ones Jack had made me. Zara began texting the second we arrived, and we weren’t even through the preliminary bag and phone check at the Drome before Kett said, “The NWU guys behind me in line just asked me to ask you if we want to go see the cast of The Bourne Dynasty. They’re holo-skyping over at the Universal booth.”
Zara looked hopefully at me. “We could go to the 12:10 instead of the ten o’clock.”
/> “Or the 2:20,” Kett said.
“No,” I said.
“Sorry,” Zara said to the guys. “We promised Lindsay we’d go to Christmas Caper with her first,” and they promptly began hitting on the girls behind them.
“I don’t see why we couldn’t have gone to a later showing,” Kett said, pouting, as we went through the explosives check.
“Because after the holo-skyping was over, they’d have wanted to play Skyfall or go eat at Harold and Kumar’s White Castle, and we’d have missed the 2:20 and the 4:30,” I said, and as soon as we made it through the body- and retinal-scans and into the Drome, I headed straight for the tickets kiosks, ignoring the barrage of previews and holograms and ads and elves passing out coupons for free cookies and video games and schedules of today’s autographing sessions.
“I thought you were going to get the tickets online before we left,” Zara said.
“I tried,” I said, “but it’s playing a special limited engagement, so you have to get them here.” I dragged my finger down the list of movies—Ripper 2, X-Force, The House on Zombie Hill, The Queen’s Consort, Switching Gears, Just When You Thought You Were Over Him …”
Honestly, you’d think with a hundred movies, they’d put them in alphabetical order. Lethal Rampage, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre—The Musical, A Star-Crossed Season, Back to Back to the Future, Wicked—
Here it was. Christmas Caper. I tapped the tickets button and “3” and swiped my card.
“Unavailable,” the screen said. “Tickets must be purchased at ticket counter,” which meant we had to get in line, one of the worst things about going to the Drome.
You’d think as huge as it is and as many people as it has to cope with, they’d have Disneyverse-style back-and-forth lines, but they only use those to line people up for showings. The tickets lines snaked single file all the way back through the Drome’s football-field-sized lobby, the Hunger Games paintball stadium, the No Reservations food court, Wetaworks’ Last Homely House, the virtual-reality terrace, and half a mile of souvenir shops and boutiques.
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