A Fall in Autumn

by Michael G. Williams

  Don’t believe them. Their stories are self-evidently lies. My profession has taught me nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and nobody’s pure, no matter how pretty they are. Usually quite the opposite, in fact.

  Right after the ground rises a little, it levels out, and a gravel and sand trail emerges from the manually tended grass. The gravel is a mix of shades of beige and white and gray and red, all different kinds of rocks jumbling together, but slowly, like pixels in a painting shifting together to present a larger image. The rocks resolve into stones and then into small boulders, stepping stones, and bigger outcroppings as the crust itself rises out of the sand and soil. Down Preserves is way in the back end of Autumn, near the Inner Edge. The angle of elevation is partly to give us more natural space to run around in—useful when the City drives us too fucking nuts to stand each other another second longer—and partly to hide the massive exhaust and thrust portals. Instead of the sight of yet more machinery, no matter how vital it is to things like navigation or braking or whatever, Down Preserves gives us something like Terra Firma to look at out the windows of our homely hovels. It’s a little bit below to remind ourselves what life is like in normal places, a corner of open green we can scurry to when we need it.

  Walking into the woods on that slowly forming path, surrounded first by large ferns and the tropical flora of North America and the desert scrub of the Mediterranean, it’s easy to feel like you’re everywhere and nowhere: for all the Sincerity monks say they’re keeping things “natural,” it’s as unnatural a mix as you can imagine. No geography in the world contains that botanical mix on its own. That’s religion for you. Heading up the hiking trail, though, into the simulated higher elevations, you start to find deciduous forest and deer and Scratch Ivy, and the mosquitoes fall away: all the stuff you’re used to if you were lucky enough to be born north of forty-five degrees. I like it in that part of Down Preserves.

  It would have been easy to get lost in letting my mind wander, except I wasn’t dressed for a hike—ratty slacks and the dress shoes I needed to replace a year ago, the ones with a hole in the sole right under the pad of my foot—and I was busy tracking a third of a ton of likely very angry meat. This whole case was starting to smell bad, too. I was supposed to be seeing whether Buttercup was visiting a milkmaid on weekends. If he was, she picked a hell of a place to ply her trade. If he wasn’t, I was supposed to tell the client what he was doing. The rational part of my mind told me to turn around, go back and call off the case, give the client back her retainer and invite her to take a long walk to a different detective. Something about this didn’t add up. The client didn’t want pictures, and they always want pictures if they think there’s actually a case. The cobwebs in my cupboard and the late rent notice in my mailbox urged me forward, though. If I was going to eat this week, I had to know what Buttercup was doing on Saturnday afternoons in Down Preserves. I could only hope it didn’t involve giving one of his mittens a quick sniff.

  Down Preserves is the largest open space in Autumn, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually very big. Designers modeled it on a place from ancient times. The Americans had a place called Golden Gate where they preserved a section of carefully tended nature in a large and largely artificial urban landscape. There’s a whole thing in the visitor center about how they borrowed this and that from Golden Gate for the design of Down Preserves. This version is more extreme, though, and if you go high enough up the back, you make it into the Alpine zone. When Autumn travels to the right places for it, we’ll get snow down in the City, but here, it’s winter all the time with white-furred rabbits and the like to give it that touch of Mother Nature.

  I climbed, breathing hard but not breathless, pulling my jacket around myself against the constant wind. It probably wasn’t all that cold out, but the slightest breezes cut right through me these days. In the higher elevations of the park where you’re above the Fore Barrier, you start to get a taste of real weather. For once, I was glad I quit smoking a few years ago: I could breathe, and I could smell the wet chill of some distant winter in the colder air blowing down the hill at me. It felt glorious, if only because I wanted to savor every sensation I could and this one was so starkly different from the uniform pleasantness of everywhere else in Autumn.

  Back when I quit smoking, I pretended I did it for health reasons, but the truth was, I was tired of the stares it got me. Arties aren’t supposed to do a lot of the fun stuff other people get to do. That’s true for all kinds of things, of course, and normally the judgment of strangers doesn’t bother me. Smoking was different, though. I gave it up after a Sister of Sincerity walked up to me on the bus, slapped the reef out of my mouth, and dragged me off the bus at the next stop. I decided maybe it would behoove me, if not entirely to respect some people’s views on my status as a living historical artifact, at least not to aggravate them.

  The trail through the middle elevations in Down Preserves is, of course, impossible to use for tracking: all gray rocks and brown mud. All that is covered in a uniform blanket of gold and brown and red leaves dropped from trees perpetually bursting with the colors of fall foliage. It would make a hell of a place to have to run away from someone: even at a walking pace, I had to step carefully and look where my feet were going rather than up ahead. I was hoping Buttercup would go as high as the snowline so I could find his prints there. The standard attire of a working detective wasn’t exactly hiking boots, but having a trail to follow would be worth picking twigs out of my loafers for a week.

  As I rounded a curve, a frigid gust came shooting down the path to greet me. Maybe this could happen according to plan! Maybe I would actually get to sneak up on him. Maybe I was not being led directly into a trap. Maybe I would get to close a case and get paid in full. Maybe today would be okay after all.

  The snowline was right there, maybe thirty meters from me, then twenty-five, then twenty, then fifteen—and then Buttercup stepped out from behind a tree. He balled up one fist and rubbed his knuckles against the palm of the opposite hand like something out of bad theater.

  “Okay, Buttercup.” I held my hands out at my sides, clearly unarmed, clearly no match for his massive bovine strength. “So you made me. But please tell me you didn’t lead me all the way here so you could teach me not to follow you around. You could have done that with a kind word—even an unkind word, maybe even a cruel one—way back in town, saved me a cab fare, saved you a bus ride or two. I mean, really, seriously, please do not beat me up and leave me to sleep it off.”

  “I’m not going to.” Buttercup’s voice scraped and banged, something heavy being dragged on stones. It suggested the shaking of ancient flanks in the golden light of a primitive morning from a simpler time. His eyebrows slowly inched closer, like each had an uncertain crush on the other at an old school dance. “Did you call me ‘Buttercup’?”

  I shrugged at him. “It seemed to fit somehow. No offense intended, of course. I’m glad to hear we can talk this out. You’re my last job. I’d like to conclude this as tidily as possible.”

  His eyebrows finally got together, and he shook his massive head. “Not gonna talk, neither.”

  “Okay, but that doesn’t leave us a lot of options and, to be honest, I’m a pretty lousy dancer.” I was simply producing words, trying to keep him occupied. Something was about to happen, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be good.

  I was right.

  Fingers—talons—tapped me on the shoulder from behind, and when I looked back, it was the client. She hissed at me. “He’s not going to beat you up. I am.”

  That was the last thing I remembered for a while.

  It didn’t matter. Nobody in particular needed me awake.

  While I took a long nap on the side of an artificial mountain at the back of a sculpted landscape, Autumn flew on through the daylight toward a zone of night. As I write this, it’s sometimes hard to recall the fine details, but if I remember correctly, we were moving from South American highlands toward Africa. I always enjoye
d it when we went to Africa: lots of fresh food and a few new faces around town. Things would be looking pretty good on the dinner front for the next few weeks.

  The next thing I knew, the golem shook me gently awake. He had a little snow in his hair, having blown in from above the snowline a few meters away, but my vision still blurred a little when I tried to open my eyes, so the rest of the details were hazy. My head ached and my face felt like Buttercup danced on it, which was not necessarily outside the realm of the possible. More than anything, though, I was surprised to see a golem: one of the actual Living Metal themselves, with dark hair and artificial skin and all the complex mechanisms of the face that let golems toe the rim of the forbidden Uncanny Valley of Lore.

  “Are you alright?” The golem asked it in that gentle voice they all have—the tones I once read were selected to make them seem trustworthy.

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a bird and a bull pass that way, laughing up each other’s sleeves, have you?” It had started to get dark, which meant it had been a couple of hours at least. I was probably concussed, but I needed the rest, whatever the source.

  “I’m afraid not.” His eyes narrowed in mimicry of relaxation. “I’m glad I found you, though. You need medical attention.”

  “No,” I groaned, trying to sit up. “I’m fine. I’m really fine.” I got up on one hand, then the other, then managed to stand with his help. I dusted myself off and shook my head back and forth. “I guess I’m not getting paid for that one.” I sighed it to myself, but the golem smiled a little. He started to say something pitying or placating, but I waved it off. “Never mind. Thanks for stopping when you saw me. It’s more than most people would do.”

  The golem ducked his head and shrugged a little at me. “Sadly true.”

  I sighed a second time and looked around. “Worse places to get beaten up, I guess.” I patted my pockets: my wallet was still there, which was something.

  Of course, they hadn’t robbed me. They wanted me to know it was something personal.

  “True,” the golem said. “It’s going to be a beautiful day tomorrow, but I wanted to catch the forest today before the colors change.”

  “Oh?” I looked up. “Are they going to change?”

  “Haven’t you heard? We’re going to have spring tomorrow.” The golem smiled. “I appreciate it, but I’m not quite ready for everything to be green again for a while.”

  I nodded at him. That’s life in Autumn for you: envy of the world, object of hate, and we complain about the weather being too predictable. I tipped my hat at him. He was beautiful, if a little too sincere, which is what you always hear about a golem after somebody gets a look at one up close: more human than you’d expect, maybe too human. I’d seen them before, from a distance, but I’d never met one in person like this. “Sorry to hear that.” I rubbed my temples. “Thanks again.”

  He stopped me, holding out a hand to shake. “I’m Alejandro.”

  I took his hand and met his eyes. They clearly weren’t human: the irises spun, concentric rings of flexible materials rotating in opposition to one another around pupils obviously Other in origin. They weren’t from the right color palette, either, and in my memory of that moment—that pivotal moment, when a simple introduction eventually changed everything I understood about myself, about the grand flying City of Autumn, about the Empire, and about the world—his pupils glowed a faint electric blue from within, striking both in their obvious artificiality and their very human softness. Alejandro had eyes that said more to me of compassion, of understanding of the human condition, of hope and loss and regret and persistence, than any other set of eyes I’d seen in a long time.

  So, of course, I walked away and forgot to give him my card or tell him my name or anything useful and didn’t turn around when he called to me to ask if I needed help. Instead, I staggered back down the trail and out onto the street, back across town, out of the green and brown aromas of night flowers opening and tilled earth, and into the miasma of bodies and sweat and damp fur and old food the City offered the nose instead. I couldn’t afford another cab. If Talons was stiffing me on the job, then she would shut me off from her accounts as part of whatever this had been as soon as they laid me out and beat it. Eventually, I dragged myself up in front of my office door an hour before midnight. Stenciled letters declared VALERIUS BAKHOUM, QUESTIONS ANSWERED, and behind that door was a desk, a couple of filing cabinets, a few purpose-driven proteans to keep the air from going stale, and a couch I could unfold into a bed.

  I did exactly that, stripped to my imperfect Artisanal skin, and fell dead asleep before I was even flat.

  2

  “Bakhoum! Bakhoum, you lousy son of a bitch!”

  That’s how I awoke three days later. I didn’t continuously sleep for the better part of half a week, but I might as well have for all I got done. The client—you know, Talons—canceled the open line for this job, so that was that: my last entry in the ledger for this gig was a big fat goose egg. I got a retainer, I got a few of the expenses covered but not nearly all of them, and I got nothing for finishing the job. I had basically no money and no prospects. The cupboard in the kitchenette was pretty bare, and I was a week and a half late on the rent. The voice on the other side of the door was my landlady. She was neither an Artie nor a Plus, but I didn’t know anything about her genetic baselines beyond that. Whatever engineering produced her did not make her especially solicitous toward the idea of accepting excuses in lieu of rent, which I guess is good if you’re a slumlord but lousy if you’re a penniless tenant. I stayed very still on my futon, afraid to breathe lest she hear the frame creak and kick the door in to get at me.

  Of course, she would never do that. She knew she would never get the cost of a replacement out of me.

  There was more pounding, then: “I know you’re in there, you rat. Don’t think you can impress me with your fancy historical genes. You know, I could have you thrown out anyway, and that’s what I’m going to do on Fireday if you don’t get your shit together. You’ve got three days. You hear me? Three. Days.” Then, she stomped off down the hallway, her footfalls echoing off the plaswood and cement. My office is in a building constructed for durability and stability, not fashion. The plaswood floors were a later addition intended to class the place up, but it turned everyone into a tap dancer.

  After she was gone, I let out my breath and sat up, pulled on trousers, and stretched to the sound of a hundred popping joints. Whatever kept the landlady at bay was good enough, even if that meant hiding and holding my breath. I cared far less about paying her rent than where I would get food or smokes—oh wait, I’d quit smoking—or a cup of coffee.

  Coffee, I thought. The memory of the stuff was almost enough to wake me. I ran out of Buenos Dias Blend the day before, and I didn’t have a penny to spend on more. I inspected a bottle of Old Indefatigable on top of the filing cabinet. Whiskey in a coffee cup wouldn’t be anything new, and neither would whiskey first thing in the morning, but something about whiskey from a coffee cup first thing in the morning seemed unacceptably perverse.

  I lifted the bottle and put my hand on the stopper, but there was a second knock, one much quieter and more reserved. It sounded an awful lot like a customer’s knock: the sort of knock that said they were sorry for bothering me but sorrier for having a problem in the first place, and still not as sorry as they would be to pay. I put the bottle back on the file stand and nudged the button to unlock the door.

  Alejandro opened it and stepped inside as quietly as a cat in a bassinet, then closed it behind him with a click the baby would have slept through. Normally, the hinges squeaked and the door took jiggling to get closed. I’d always heard a golem’s senses were way beyond ours, but I had no idea. I blinked and set down my coffee mug, still empty of whiskey or coffee or anything, and nodded. “Well.” I tried not to look surprised. I probably failed. “Okay.”

  Whereas it had been dark and dramatic a few days ago, Alejan
dro’s skin was an off-white with hints of gray where an egg’s shell might have shades of beige or tan. His hair changed to a deep reddish purple. I had assumed golems were fixed in their appearance, and in that moment, it occurred to me to wonder why I ever assumed that in the first place. No reason they can’t swap things around like any Plus.

  Taking in his choices of colors, my mind kicked around words like “eggplant” and “burgundy” before deciding they fell short. The golem’s hair was pulled back and tied into a neat ponytail. It hung so that it hit the middle of his back exactly between where his shoulder blades would have been if he were a living man. He stood maybe two meters tall, maybe taller, easily several centimeters taller than I am, so I had to look up a little to meet his eyes. It had a sobering effect: he seemed instantly superior in the social hierarchy.

  I reminded myself everything about a golem is literally by design. If he was tall enough to make most people look up to him, it could only be a deliberate choice, almost certainly meant to convey authority—one I found, ironically, a little off-putting.

  Alejandro had good cheekbones, a pair of pale and expressive lips, eyebrows that jutted at a barely noticeable obtuse angle over his eyes, and a prominent Adam’s apple. I thought that was an unusual touch of mimicry for something otherwise obviously constructed. Why bother with the laryngeal prominence if anyone could tell he was made of some kind of cellulose and bioplas? The various design choices taken together suggested ambivalence: maybe a team expressing in their work some internal conflict about how human he should or shouldn’t be, or maybe a Doc Frankenstein somewhere who was never quite at peace with the idea of his or her creation.

  My initial over-analysis of his design and execution bothered me in the way I was always bothered by my detective’s reflex of seeing motives behind every detail. But, I also knew a part of what bothered me about him was what bothered me about the idea of golems in general: no one knows who made them or where they came from. All anybody knows is they’re ancient. Sometimes they’re very kind, and sometimes they’re assholes, and sometimes they’re just sort of there, dissociated and distant in a way some people read as snobbery, and regardless of what they’re like socially, absolutely none of them will admit their origins. They’ve been asked plenty of times, of course, and the urban legend goes that once in a while one of them will open up enough to say she or he doesn’t know whence they came. I never liked that answer. It’s the sort of non-answer politicians give when they want to make you feel like they answered your question. It’s a deflection. I hate people who play that sort of game.