Authors: Ian McDonald
“What?” said Courtney Hall. “What what what?”
“His Majesty, Bless ’Im,” said Jinkajou, “has been captured.”
“Has been what?”
But Jinkajou had covered its head with its paws and began to whine, a keening lament that was taken up by the Tinka Tae as one. The sound of them sent the loose, flapping birds exploding from the treetops. Courtney Hall covered her ears.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it, please.”
The interpreter in yellow, whose name was Ankatiel, stepped forward. “You must help us,” it said. “You must help us regain King. It is disloyalty, faithlessness that has led to this.”
“It was pride!” shouted Courtney Hall. Her shouting voice surprised her. “Reckless arrogance! A sick ego!”
“If His Majesty, Bless ’Im, sick, then thou hast failed in thy responsibility to a sick man by letting him go,” said Jinkajou.
Feeling like a serpent in paradise, Courtney Hall said, “What can I do? What do you expect me to do? I’m an artist, not some Johnny-opera hero on prime time! I don’t know where he is, where he’s been taken, who’s taken him, or why. Come on, we wouldn’t last five minutes in there.”
“I would estimate somewhat less.” The whining keening was cut as abruptly as if a neural switch had been thrown. At the edge of the trees were three figures.
One was male; very tall and thin with a waist-length explosion of dreadlocks. He was dressed in a pair of cycling shorts and an elaborately embroidered chemise over which he wore an extraordinary jacket covered in the skulls of birds and rodents and dangling, jangling silver trinkets.
One was a woman; small and dark with bouncing natty dreads. She was dressed in a half-seen sleek something, camouflaged with tiger stripes so that she phased in and out of the general background.
One was an animal. A cat. A real cat. Not one of Marcus Forde’s flush-away abortions. Sin-black, and lean. Its left eye was artificial; skylight breaking through the clouds caught the eye and found tiny digits and circuits hidden within. The black cat rode the small woman’s shoulder. It yawned and displayed chrome steel teeth.
In one step the dark woman was beside Courtney Hall. The cat stretched and flexed five centimeters of platinum claw from housings.
That one step had covered twenty meters. Without, Courtney Hall was certain, ever traversing twenty meters of space.
“About two minutes if you went that way”—the tall, young man advanced across the clearing, pointing out to his left—“about two and a half minutes that way”—pointing right—“and a good three minutes that way and that way. Because, by some astonishing quirk of good fortune, you have plonked yourself and your pets right in the middle of the Democrats’ Strategic Defense Initiative Zone. But be of good cheer, my dear. Help is at hand.” He bowed and kissed Courtney Hall’s hand. Twenty-nine years in Great Yu and no one had ever kissed her hand even once. As many days DeepUnder and it had happened three times. “Angelo Brasil at your service, in the company of my pseudosister, Xian Man Ray, and Trashcan, our cat. We would like very much to offer you our assistance, my dear, in getting your king back.”
D
EAR CITIZEN
CARMINE MALAGUENA
we at the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships are delighted to present you with your Socio/Sexual Compatibility Rating. Since the age of nineteen months, this has been constantly monitored and where necessary, updated to produce a totally accurate profile of your social and sexual characteristics.
Your SSCR is:
Monoghetero7Bintro level12 interact-level 3.6 (Baud Compensated) @Xinf27file£SSCR/PDBXMNfid.7xC
From this data our computers have selected a personal partner for you, and we take the greatest delight in informing you that a meeting has been arranged between yourself and
Citizen Marsden O. Henry
of
Apt 63 Yellow 2113, New South Madrid Center, Las Palorhas
on
April 30, 450
at
Chueco Zembalaya’s Jazz Hot Spot, 919 Shimenevski Prospekt, Los Madres
at
22 o’clock
Your prospective partner will be identified for you by
the proprietor, Citizen Chueco Zembalaya
and, as customary, all expenses of this first joyous meeting will be met with the compliments of the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships.
On behalf of your trusted counselors, it only remains for me to wish you a wonderful, fruitful meeting with your perfect partner.
Jancis Shambala
Ministry of Pain, Department of Interpersonal Relationships
Dear Citizen
Carmine Malaguena
we at the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships are sorry to hear that your first meeting with your perfect partner was not to your total satisfaction. Please do not be unduly dismayed by this: it is not uncommon for new partners to fail to achieve perfect synthesis and unity on their first meeting. Many factors account for this: personal body chemistry and pheromone emission, climatic or ionization levels, discrepancies between the partners’ personal biological time frames, even a certain element of stress and anxiety inevitable between two strangers meeting for the first, and most important, time. Therefore, do not be overly concerned that this first meeting was not the wonderful, fulfilling, romantic experience you may have been led to expect. The Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships is never wrong in its matching of SSCRs, and you will be relieved to know that our computers rate you and your partner
Citizen Marsden O. Henry
to the
98th percentile
compatible.
Do not be alarmed that you were unable to arrange another meeting with your partner: our computers have selected another location and date that have been carefully calculated to engender the maximum of benign, romantic influences upon you both as a partnership.
Your new rendezvous is:
The Eloquent Soy Bean Pancake-arium
Lilac Level
Bernardo O’Higgins Undertower Metropolitan Fashion Mall
Las Defensas
on
May 2, 450
at
16:44 o’clock
As before, to ensure a specially happy rendezvous, all your expenses for this occasion
only
will be complimentary from the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships.
We wish you both every success and happiness in your perfect partnership.
Jancis Shambala,
Ministry of Pain, Department of Interpersonal Relationships
Dear Citizen
Carmine Malaguena
we at the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships really find it most puzzling that you are still experiencing difficulties with the perfect partner we have assigned you. Your history of socio/sexual analysis indicates that you have a high monogameity rating, matched by our computers with that of
Citizen Marsden O. Henry.
According to our models, you should at this stage be preparing to enter into a lasting, bonded partnership together. Instead, you are claiming that relations between you and your partner are disharmonious to the point of verging on minor PainCrime. You constantly disagree and argue to such a degree that you and your partner find it impossible to agree on any point, no matter how trivial. This is quite inconsistent with our profile of your psychosexual makeup, and we, as your trusted counselors, are of the opinion that, with regard to the perfect partnership, figures are a far more trustworthy guide than feelings to the future of a relationship. Give it time. These small incompatibilities will be revealed for what they are, petty egoisms. We at the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships have therefore decided that the best way for you to proceed is in accordance with our projected model of your relationship.
Therefore, you have been assigned a dwelling unit at:
Style Council House, 116 Rhamjees Road, Todos Santos.
This locale has been analyzed to afford you both the best environment for your age, caste, and relationship. Your move has been arranged for May 25, 450, at fourteen o’clock. Please have all your possessions ready for removal from your previous address before that time as your domestic unit will have been reassigned by the Bureau of Housing and Shelter Section for Assignation and Registration to a new tenant.
Time is, in our experience, a great healer of partnerships: you and your partner will find in a new home, a new environment, with time to grow together, that perfect synthesis, that ideal two-in-oneness that is the right of every citizen who approaches the Ministry of Pain Department of Interpersonal Relationships seeking a soulmate. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Perfect happiness,
Jancis Shambala
Ministry of Pain, Department of Interpersonal Relationships
G
LORY BOWL DCCLXII MOVES
into its Third Epact, Meter Fifteen, Twelfth Meld. The Babazulu Aztecs are going for a High Rubric and the crowds are on their feet in a thunder of noise. Meter Fifteen. Twelfth Meld. Anticipation feverish. Will they call a High Rubric, or take spectators, commentators, broadcasters, opposition by surprise and go for something more straightforward, a Straight Out, or maybe a Mark By? Cloud-sized videowalls debate in flashes of neon logic. The crowd waits.
Arm up. Mark. Trumpets blare: the Twelfth Meld! The Twelfth Meld. And … Snap!
Twenty-three point one eight seven seconds of manic activity: snap! ball to CenterBack snap, ball to Toucher, touch for required one, two, three, four, five senses/seconds, okie okie okie, he can let it go now, and what’re they going to do with it? Yes, yes, it’s what the spectators, commentators, broadcasters, opposition thought, they’re going for a rubric, CenterBack’s calling for a Freeze-Play and the Shift-Back to come onto the field, okie okie okie, where’s the Shift-Back, where the
shug
is the S-B, he’s only got twelve seconds of Freeze-Play; here he comes, here he comes, oh,
nice,
nice run, lovely run, oh, he’s a
sweetner
that one, he’s sweet, he’s neat, he’s fast on his feet (should be, all that de-oxy-phenobarbitol jackin’ up his system): look, not one tassel out of place, that’s goin’ to score
high
with the Line Justices, and Freeze-Play Unfrozen, snap! long looping passing shot, lookit those Pandas jump hands, reachin’ hands grabbin’, clawin’, maulin’ and Yah-Oh-Yah, he’s got it, the S-B’s got it, now, what’s he goin’ do with it? Well, I never saw that before, that long looping throw high high high into the air, up it goes, up it goes, up it goes, but don’t watch the ball, watch the S-B, oh, that is
incredible
, single backflip, followed by a backflip/somersault/copterspin combination,
howzedooit
? oh, lookit
that
, two pull-backs and a maxi-ford and that’s just
got
to be a nine-four, nine-five, and the ball’s coming down and he’s right under it … Perfect catch. Perfect catch … and the Panda tagger-backs have just tagged him, they’ve got a tassel but it’s too late and down in the Kop the Babazulu are whoopin and cheerin because a play like that has to get diem a nine-four
minimum,
place’ll come
apart
if it’s anything less, they’ll have to call the Love Police; scenes reminiscent of the quarterfinal three years back when a Rubriced Fifteenth Meld by the Orange Vitamin Locusts averaged 8.3, which led ultimately to the dissolution of the Orange Vitamin Locusts and their amalgamation into the Blue Screamers and the Night Motions and a short spell in West One for their coach Rodrigues Maradonna, remember, Hanno?
Remember it well, Chezz, remember it well. And here come the Line Justices … The trumpets have played the Conclavion and the judges’ litters are being carried onto the field for a conference with the referee because you may not have noticed it but there was a banner up by the Back Left LineWatch signaling a possible infringement of the twenty-meter rule by the Aztecs’ point-convertor that would result in the High Rubric’s being demoted into a two-p6int Snap-Back to the Pandas, so the Back Left LineWatch and the referee are conferring; yes, they’re calling in a replay video and, red light! A red light! Remarkable, quite remarkable, it’s being put to the Team Spirits for adjudication. And the fans do not like it … the computers are conferring and the Back Left LineWatch and the referee are conferring and the Line Justices in their litters are conferring, everyone’s conferring and yes, the Team Spirits have reached a decision; the banner goes down! The banner goes down. No infringement, no infringement, and the home crowd here today are loving it to
death …
Chezz …
… and one hundred and fifty meters above the laagers of Line Justices’ litters, lying head to head like the six-o’clock hands of one of those old-fashioned novelty watches from Seven Seals Novelties and Gifts on a forty-centimeter plazzed-steel girder, Kansas Byrne and Kilimanjaro West of the Raging Apostles are conferring. On art. On theories of the aesthetic. On creative vandalism.
“The Theater of Rigor,” said Kansas Byrne, “is the ultimate expression of human artistic potential, an aesthetic system in which the performer is no longer bound by the limitations of being merely an ‘actor’ or a ‘dancer’ or a ‘musician’ or an ‘artist’ but becomes, through the disciplines of his art, a creature which transcends such arbitrary divisions, an ‘actordancermusicianartist,’ a creature of as many dimensions as there are dimensions of artistic expression. Visionaryprophetvandalcriminalgymnastloverpoetgraffitistcookdesigner…; by becoming the master of every discipline, he or she thus transfigures art into true spontaneity of expression: the artist capable of self-expression in any medium he or she feels will best convey that expression. That’s the Theater of Rigor. That’s why Kansas Byrne is a Raging Apostle and not just another tlakh producing pieces of performance art for Witnesses to coo and tut over. Kansas Byrne is a Raging Apostle because the Compassionate Society is not interested in transcending divisions, breaking boundaries. Because boundaries, divisions, are what the Compassionate Society is, at the core, at the heart. Divide and rule. Caste and conquer.”