Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (32 page)

"You'll enjoy it," the Minister assured him, smiling benignly. "Big desk, no duties. A great chance to decompress after your long, distinguished career."

"You mean a great chance to learn how to be useless. I've never even known why we have an embassy there."

"Legally, because it's another world. As a practical matter, because the bunch of snobs who live there have more money than God. They'll love you, Charles, if only because you have a hyphen in your name."

"What'll I do with my time?"

"Evenings, go to parties. The Ambrosians spend a lot of time having dinners and balls and receptions. Daytimes? I dunno. The only issue that seems to get them stirred up is the Servant Question, and I don't see why that should concern you. So relax, play a little tennis, take up tai chi, think about your memoirs."

"When I was a kid," said Charles, "I used to sit in church wondering if heaven could possibly be as boring as it sounded."

"Soon you'll know." The Minister smiled. He gave the old boy his patented sincere handshake, and put him out of his mind forever.

In the aisle of the shuttlecraft, Mike Segretti said good morning to a tall, forbiddingly well-groomed old man entering a unit marked DeLuxe. In reply he got a chilly look, and the door closed with unnecessary force.

Mike shrugged. Life as a journalist had left him almost unsnubbable. He found his own compartment—the type of beige closet the Transport Administration termed Basic—and settled down to sightsee. When the shuttle left the atmosphere and the blind on his porthole retracted, he pressed his nose to the triple transplast and gaped at the oceans, the clouds, the moon over here, dawn breaking over there. The Earth
was
beautiful, just like travel brochures said—not a hint of all the bad stuff that went on down below, the tedious succession of disasters that journalists called CODO (for Crap of Daily Occurrence).

Feeling inspired, Mike pulled out his notebook, turned it on, and made the first note for the article he'd been assigned to write. "Below lies the human tragedy," he intoned, "but up here you see only the divine comedy."

That was exactly the sort of oracular stuff the Editorial Computer liked. He had his article's lead, and now if he could come up with a snappy finish, what lay between would practically write itself. Smiling contentedly, he put away the notebook, closed his eyes to both tragedy and comedy, and began to snore.

The two travelers arrived simultaneously, yet not together.

In the VIP Lounge of Ambrosia's shuttleport, Charles Adams-Morgan was met by a delegation of gleaming personages, all of whom turned out to be droids. He endured with the stoicism of long practice a (literally) canned speech of welcome, then entered a limo that rose purringly from the porcelain floor and bore him like a pheasant on a platter down six levels to the palatial embassy. Awaiting him there were champagne, fancy chocolates, hothouse flowers, and two of those annoying cards that talked.

The first, in a desperately upper-class accent, invited him to dine with the Board of Governors that evening. "Formal attire," it fluted, "decorations will be worn."

"Monkey suit," Charles translated, "with clinkers."

The second card in gruff Germanic tones invited him to a costume ball a week hence, with the theme Old Vienna.
Oh God,
he thought,
not one of those,
and gestured at a serving bot standing in a niche of the atrium. It rolled up, gathered his luggage, and led the way into a gold-plated elevator and down a gleaming hallway.

The master bedroom's rococo décor looked as if it had been vacated a few hours earlier by Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine. Here a valet bot took over, explaining as it unpacked his luggage, "I am programmed not merely to obey Your Excellency's commands, but as far as possible to anticipate your every desire."

"Then you should have anticipated that I prefer to be served in silence," Charles replied in tones that had given frostbite to many a hostile diplomat. After that the unpacking proceeded—mutely.

Meanwhile, Mike was undergoing Ambrosia's way of greeting non-VIPs. The searching and scanning of his meager form ended only when the Medical Officer stripped off his latex glove and handed Mike a paper towel.

"Get dressed," he said and walked away, whistling tunelessly. A nurse passed the doorless examining cubicle and glanced in. "Make mine sunny-side up," she said.

In Passport Control, Mike perched his insulted backside on a very hard chair while his documents were processed. Though now fully clothed, he still felt ghostly fingers prodding him inside and out.

"Police record," the guard muttered, collating four piles of hardcopy. "Security clearance, retinagraph, DNA, bloodwork, brain scan, sperm sample, rectal smear.… First trip to Ambrosia?"

"Yeah."

"Have fun," he said, and waved Mike down a long blank hallway that led to OPAL, the Ordinary Persons Arrival Lounge. He was wondering what new humiliation might await him there, when an elegant young woman held up a sign with his name on it. He pointed at himself and smiled and she smiled back.

"So you're Mr. Segretti," she said, shaking hands. "What do your friends call you?"

"Mike," said Mike. "And you are—"

"You can call me Alice."

"You live on Ambrosia for long, Alice?"

"I've
been
here quite a while," she corrected him. "Technically speaking, I don't live at all."

Oh Christ,
he thought,
another one.
It was getting harder and harder to tell them from people. At a desk labeled SUPPLIES, he checked out an omni tuned to local channels, retrieved his suitcase, and followed Alice onto a slider ramp that took them down five levels. They emerged into the light of a vagina-pink sky.

"It's always morning on Senior Level," she explained. "Makes the old folks feel more hopeful. Or so I'm told."

"Why are they putting me on Senior Level? I'm only twenty-nine."

"This is where we house most of our visitors. For obvious reasons, units are always coming vacant."

"So there's death, even on Ambrosia."

"Our scientists are working on the problem."

For a few minutes they stood gazing at the scene. Belle époque buildings overlooked parkland with shivering aspens, weeping willows, blooming dogwood, a murmuring brook, and a pool where a rainbow trout leaped and scattered glittering spray. Far off, a line of snow-capped mountains etched the dawn sky, and the snow had faint roseate tints, just like real snow on real mountains on a real morning.

"Wow," he said.

People began to appear. Young couples strolled through the park arm in arm, climbed an ornamental bridge, stood gazing at the water. Toddlers in immaculate jumpers or rompers or whatever they called those things (Mike had so far avoided the joy of fatherhood) ran laughing from one blossoming copse to another.

He nodded at the people. "Are they, uh—"

"Good, aren't they? Senior Level residents like to look at young people, provided they aren't
real
young people, who are, you know, too noisy."

She led him into a building that resembled a very large piece of pastry and deposited him in a small apartment on the first floor.

"I'm sure you'll want to clean up and rest a bit," she said efficiently. "Tonight you'll observe a state dinner.
Observe,
not partake. We'll have a bite early, or rather you will. Tomorrow A.M. we'll do a grand tour, get you oriented, and I'll set up some interviews. See you at nineteen-thirty in the lounge."

Mike's new quarters comprised two large rooms with faux antiques, a white carpet, white walls, a white ceiling, and an opulent bath. Music was provided by an audio program called
Three Hundred Years of Show Tunes.
Mike looked for some way to turn it off, couldn't find any, and told his notebook, "Remind me to ask Alice how to can the goddamn music."

He dropped his wrinkled clothing into a trapdoor marked Clean and Press, took a hot shower and stretched out on the bed. Immediately it began to massage him. "Stop that," he said. The bed stopped. That gave him an idea, so he added, "Stop the music," and the music stopped too. Mike thought,
The room listens. The room hears. The room is at my service. That's better than having to call a bellboy, who'd want a tip.

In its quiescent state the bed was superb, molding itself to every bone and joint of his body. Fifty-two minutes later he woke, allowed a shaver vac to smooth his face and whisk away the mown bristles, retrieved his now spotless clothes, and dressed. As he exited the room, it assured him, "Henceforth, I will open the door only to your body signature."

Whatever
that
might mean.

Aided by soft-voiced signs hovering in midair, he found the lounge, sat down, and told his chair to stop massaging him even before it started. When the bartender rolled up, he ordered a Gin Apocalypse and had just downed it when Alice arrived. The time was precisely nineteen-thirty, proving again that droids, alone of all creatures in the known universe, were always punctual.

"Ready for the thrill of seeing the Board of Governors eat dinner?" She smiled.

"Are they human? So far the only carbon-based organism I've seen was in the bathroom mirror."

"If they weren't, would they be dining?"

He said he guessed not, and at her suggestion ordered another Apocalypse and a hamburger. While he ate and drank, she plugged into a wall socket and became visibly more energetic and talkative as the current flowed.

 
CHARLES CONTEMPLATED the Palace of Government without pleasure. Who but a trillionaire would mix Palladio with neo-Frank Gehry, then cover all interior surfaces with anodized gold? Between the gold and the blaze of light from nineteen chandeliers, he was glad his replacement eyes had tinted lenses.

"His Excellency, Charles Adams-Morgan, Ambassador of Terra," intoned a lackey in eighteenth-century attire.

"Ah, Mr. Ambassador," murmured the squat, veinous, and many-wattled Chairman of the Board of Governors, extending his right little finger and smiling, or trying to.

"Chairman Lewinski," replied Charles, whose memory for names was legendary. He hooked the proffered digit with his own and they gingerly shook.

"My colleagues," said Lewinski, while a servant wiped his used pinkie with a germicidal patch. Somewhat insulted, Charles ignored the other fingers waving at him like worms emerging after a rain, bowing instead. He preferred bowing anyway—it showed respect while avoiding contact.

Superb drinks and stilted chitchat followed. Everyone was indifferent to the wars, massacres, scandals, and revolutions currently agitating Terra, but passionately committed to one side or the other of the Servant Question. Charles gathered that the issue was whether to be waited on by humans, or not.

Those who favored their own species argued that there was something terribly
generic
about the service given by bots and droids. To be served, in the best and most traditional sense, you needed
servants
—people over whom you had power, not mere devices that could be programmed to obey any Tom, Dick, or Harry. Those on the other side of the issue argued that people, dammit, were just too unpredictable. Some of the techs were talking about forming a union! What would come next? Strikes, labor unrest, the storming of the Bastille? Why had they moved to Ambrosia, if not to get away from that sort of thing, anyway?

Another lackey in knee pants and silk stockings announced dinner. Gold-leafed doors swung wide, and with many bowings and scrapings the portly maitre d' directed the guests to their chairs. Charles's server, a youngster with wig askew, was definitely human. While decanting prosecco into crystal flutes, he managed to spill at least half of it, causing a fat lady to exclaim, "Gimme a bot any day!"

Sipping slowly, Charles eyed the long table with its burden of crystal and silver. Regardless of age, all the guests looked buffed and glossy. At the far end of the banquet hall, behind a sheet of transplast, stood a throng of the unglossy. He turned to a slender, flat-chested woman seated on his left—her place card identified her as Poppaea Mosul Delcombray—introduced himself, and asked who the onlookers were.

"Just the little people," she replied in a bassoon-like voice. "Off-duty servants, techs, medics, people like that. I've never understood why they like to watch their betters eat, but they do. We call the area where they're permitted to stand 'Newark.'"

"Very amusing."

"I suppose that journalist fellow is in the crowd someplace."

"Journalist?"

"One of Lewinski's hacks. Lew owns fifty-one percent of Informat, the communications cartel. When the fellow gets back to Terra, I suppose he'll do one of those features about how, under all the glitz, the rich and powerful are just folks like everybody else."

She chuckled throatily, and he realized that she was a hermaphrodite. He rather liked hermos for their slightly askew angle on the human comedy. "An American writer," he told her, "once said, 'The rich aren't like the rest of us.'"

"Well, of
course
we aren't. We have a lot more money. By the way, how do ambassadors make theirs?"

"A little at a time," he replied and turned to the fat lady, who wanted to know if Terra was as big a mess as ever. He said it was.

Six courses later, when the last spoonful of pêche Melba had been disposed of, he and Poppaea left the hall together. Their cars were waiting, and he was about to enter his when a short, badly tailored young man materialized with leprechaun-like suddenness at his side.

"Hi, Mr. Ambassador," said the elf. "Remember me? Mike Segretti. We met on the shuttle. I'm here to do an article on Ambrosia."

Charles said distantly, "Ah."

"Seems I've got a problem," Mike confided. "I'm staying on Level XIII, but my droid's gone off someplace, and I don't know how to get back to my building."

"Best of luck finding it," said Charles, and entered his car alone. As the door was closing, he heard Poppaea say, "Oh, Mr. Segretti"—she pronounced it seg-ret-TEE—"perhaps
I
can help you."