Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (34 page)

"I think they know this trick," he gasped.

"Ah, but I have another. Coming up is a real wall, so scramble, my little man."

She yanked hard and together they went up and over a heap of stones and beams, then crouched behind it. To judge by the smell, they were now in the ruins of a burned-down house.

"I thought you wanted to be caught," he whispered.

"It's no fun unless I really try to escape first. After all, Mike, what is illusion? What is reality? Is
l'être
really
le néant,
or not? Does a mask conceal the real self, or reveal it? How often, like any true child of France, I have pondered these questions—"

At this moment the first of the drug-addled hunters ran head-on into the wall,
thump, crack,
and collapsed with groans. Others followed,
thunk, bonk, bam.
Followers began to fall over leaders, who at least were softer than the wall.

"Idiots," said Poppaea. "
Allons,
Mike! Now is our chance."

Again they were running headlong at trees that turned to shadows as they touched them. Through the fleeting forest he caught glimpses of Poppaea's limo, parked beside the ramp that led to safety. Lounging in front, fur-caped back against the hood, stood Donny. He was holding a nasty-looking scimitar in one hand, Sporus's leash in the other.

"He thinks he has outsmarted us,
l'imbécile,
" she hissed. She tucked two fingers into her mouth and emitted a piercing whistle.

Instantly the car's lights switched on and it leaped forward, flattening Donny and sending Sporus spinning away. Its hydro/electro engine humming tunefully, the limo rushed through the forest, trees leaping nimbly out of its way. It halted directly in front of them, the bot chauffeur blinking its LEDs, and the back doors flew open. Poppaea and Mike scrambled in, the doors closed with a satisfyingly weighty sound, and she exclaimed, "
À la maison, vite, vite!
"

It was high time. The denizens had recovered from their encounter with the ruined house and were coming on again, howling with rage. As the limo swept up the broad white ramp, they poured out of the woods and followed it onto Level IV, where real people lived. Mike saw them beginning to disperse among the bijou palaces, smashing windows and setting fires. Then the limo climbed another ramp, leaving the spreading chaos behind.

"God, it has been
such
an entertaining evening," breathed Poppaea. "And now,
mon cher petit Michel,
I am ready for another kind of adventure, if you are. Remember, I am your slave until dawn. The time is short—don't waste it."

Unaware of the riot, Charles and Alice were viewing, but had not yet begun doing, the Viennese waltz.

The Palace was a colorful scene, all its chandeliers dimmed and flickering to imitate gaslight. The male guests were dressed in the fancy uniforms of disbanded armies; the women in ample gowns that swayed like complex flowers as they moved; some sported entirely superfluous bustles. Charles disdained costumes and wore his usual evening attire, clinkers and all.

He smiled at Alice, who was looking superb in pink. After a conventional life, he thoroughly enjoyed both her company and the shock effect of squiring what everybody else thought was a droid. He took her by the hand and waist, caught the languid
deux-temps
rhythm, and they joined the dancers circling the floor. The couples spun round and round on their own axes, and also orbited the room—just like Terra, come to think of it.

"My goodness," said a woman dancing nearby, "I didn't know those things could be programmed to
waltz
."

Charles winked and Alice grinned. When the music stopped, he led her out onto a balcony.

"Oh my God," she breathed. "Moonlight, roses, a nightingale singing. It's a program called
Smiles of a Summer's Night
, and it's all on one single memory cube, even the smells of the flowers."

"Don't tell me about it," he said, feeling happier than he had in a decade or two. "I'd rather enjoy the illusion."

"Sorry to be a downer. I just know too much about this damn fake world, that's all. Charles…can I ask you a really pushy sort of question?"

"Ask away."

"Well then, do you think I could become your mistress? Just for a while?"

"That's rather an astounding proposal, my dear. What brought it on?"

"Oh, I don't know. We're both loners, aren't we? I just thought, maybe when you retire we could go back to Terra and be alone together."

"That sounds entrancing," he said, and put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned against his starched shirtfront and sighed.

"I hope that's a yes. It'll be nice to have a man in my bed again, even if—"

"Even if he is a million years old."

"You've got to stop reminding me of that
right now.
Only women are permitted to repeat the dumb things their partners have said, over and over and over.… Charles, do I have to do all the work around here? They're playing Strauss, and the faux moon is full and the faux nightingale is singing, so what are you waiting for, anyway?"

They had just fused into a deep embrace when Chairman Lewinski came bustling up. He was looking frantic—his ball-bearing eyes darting angry gleams, his swollen veins inflamed, all his wattles aquiver.

"Ambassador," he said abruptly, "please tell your droid to turn off. I have an urgent matter to discuss, and I don't want her recording it."

"Certainly," said Charles. "Turn off, my dear."

Alice immediately froze in place.

Lewinski growled, "It seems we're having a riot. It started on Level III. Down there it's always trouble, trouble, trouble, and what does Ambrosia exist for, if we're to have trouble all the time?"

"How can I be of assistance?"

"We don't have a real jail here, so I want you to communicate with the Government of Terra on an urgent basis. Tell them that we desire to lease prison space, provided a prison can be found that is suitably upscale."

"If there's one thing Terra possesses," said Charles, "it's a wide variety of prisons. I'll return to the embassy at once and contact the appropriate authorities. It'll be costly, you know."

"What's wealth for, if not to imprison one's obnoxious offspring? I thank you, Ambassador. Please ask also for a squad of human police to guard the rioters on the shuttle—preferably very
mean
police, who dislike rich brats. Our coppers, unfortunately, have been programmed for deference."

He bustled away, tearing out what was left of his hair.

"Turn on again," said Charles, but Alice replied, "After that interruption, I may have to fake it."

He was having coffee in his private office next morning, when his butler showed Mike in. He clearly needed a drink, so Charles asked what he wanted. "Gin Apocalypse," said Mike promptly.

The butler bowed, rolled away to the embassy's wet bar, and returned with a stiff one. After Mike had imbibed a healing quantity, Charles said, "You look like a man who's made a rough night of it."

"Oh, just the usual. Helped start a riot, got chased by a lynch mob, had sex with a hermo. A
female
hermo," he added quickly.

"That's an oxymoron," Charles objected.

"Not really. Poppaea's just a tad overequipped. This morning she announced that we're changing places—now I'm her slave and she's my dominatrix. 'Oh good,' said I, 'I've always wanted to try that. But first I gotta take a leak.' Into the bathroom, out the window, ran like hell. Guess I'm safe here," he added, looking around like a hunted wild creature. "I mean, legally the embassy's Terran soil, right?"

At this point Alice entered, wearing one of Charles's bathrobes. Mike goggled at her. "My God," he gasped, "I didn't know you had a sexual app."

"Actually, I'm as human as you are, if not more so. Charles, order some coffee for me, will you?"

"Certainly, my dear."

Mike's face took on a moonstruck expression. "God, how I wish I'd known you were human," he muttered.

"Oh, Mike, I'm so glad you didn't."

They were seated at breakfast when shouts, screams, and the clatter of weapons began in the street outside. Charles sent the butler to find out what was going on, and it returned with startling news. "It appears, sir, that the police droids, instead of arresting the rioters, have begun attacking the Palace."

"What a story!" cried Mike. "Trouble in heaven! Rich snob bums running wild! Police mutiny! Attack of the rebel droids!"

He gulped his coffee and rushed off. Alice left to get dressed, muttering, "Nothing but a ball gown to wear, and this isn't shaping up to be a ball-gown type of day."

Charles ordered his bots to close the Embassy gates, finished his breakfast, and set out to see the excitement for himself. He was headed toward the Palace through the faux forest when it began to fade and vanish. One by one the trees flicked off, the emerald grass rolled up like a carpet, the singing birds blinked out like Christmas-tree lights, and the cloudless sky vanished, leaving behind only a grim coffered ceiling of dull metal with dusty pipes and wires—the underside of Level XIII.

Now Charles could see the battle, and it was like déjà vu all over again. How many times in his life had he witnessed riot and disorder? The droids hammered at the closed doors with their weapons, anodized gold burned off revealing the steel beneath, smoke drifted like tendrils of acrid mist, and muffled curses and screams came from inside. When someone touched him on the arm, he jumped—but it was Alice, wearing workmen's coveralls she'd found in some closet at the Embassy.

"I know the Council are a bunch of boring twits," she said urgently, "but we have to do
something
."

"Is there a master control panel for the droids? Can we shut them all down?"

"Yes, it's on Level I, the lowest service level. We'd better go back and get your car—"

But they'd just turned toward the Embassy when a limo shuddered to a stop beside them. Poppaea was driving herself, and she leaned out and cried, "I was looking for someone, but this—this is
incroyable
. What is occurring, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur?"

"I'm afraid the Servant Problem is solving itself," said Charles dryly. "We need to lobotomize the droids. Do you know the way down to Level I?"

"Only too well. Hop in."

They crowded into the front seat beside her. The powerful car rose from the bare metal ground, swooshed past the battle at the Palace—where the droids ignored it, fixated like any machines on one assigned task—and down the nearest ramp.

As they passed through level after level, Alice gaped at the contrasts. On V through XI, everything was serene, faux lovers wandering hand in hand among faux gardens, human and nonhuman workmen adding dabs of paint to bijoux residences. But Level IV revealed burned-out buildings and shattered windows, while Level III was bereft of life. Level II was also empty, all the police droids off attacking their masters, while on Level I baffled bots stared at control panels where alarm lights flickered in epileptic disorder. Circuits were overloading left and right, and the smell of burned plastic and metal poisoned the air.

"Typical of urban riots," Charles remarked like a connoisseur. "Blood flows in one neighborhood, people walk dogs in another. Screams of pain here, screams of laughter there. Where's the panel we need?"

"Straight ahead, I think," said Alice. As the limo careened past tall, glimmering banks of machinery, she pointed out a ceiling-high module with LEDs blinking madly. Charles said to Poppaea, "Run into it hard,
si'l vous plait
. What's this? Oh right, I forgot about the restraints."

But the limo hadn't. With the perfect if limited recall typical of machinery, it reached out upholstered arms to enclose the three of them, while shields alerted by radar blocked the windscreen and the front bumper hardened into collision mode. The crash that followed made the limo groan, but all the warning lights went dead in an instant. Suddenly, anticlimactically, the great Ambrosian riot was over.

"A curious business," said Charles. He was viewing a news program on the bankruptcy of Ambrosia, caused by the refusal of the rich to pay enormous sums to live in a place where the CODO was, if anything, thicker than on Earth.

The program was surprisingly blunt and candid. A massive heart attack inside the burning Palace had deprived Informat of the elder Lewinski's ruthless hand, and under his son the cartel had collapsed in a barrage of scandal. As a result, all sorts of news was getting through that the Editorial Computer used to filter out—including rave reviews for Mike's brutal exposé
Secrets of the Rich and Infamous
.

"The Ambrosians were right after all," Charles said, turning off the big entertainment center he'd bought with his retirement bonus. "Ultimately, it was the Servant Problem that did them in."

"No, darling," said Alice, "what did them in was being human. Our species just isn't built for a carefree existence."

She fed their pet, a large neutered alleycat named Poppaea, and they left their condo for an evening stroll down the curving flower-and-tree-lined streets of Garden State Gardens, a walled community on the outskirts of Newark. When friends asked why they'd chosen this particular spot to settle, Alice always answered that their aim was to get as far from Heaven as they possibly could.

"Newark," she liked to say, "just dropped into the slot."

Ecstatic yes but how can I fill this vacuum
where my blood used to pump
where they've left me a bit
of shivering shifting magenta tech
like a dark lucky stone from Mars
with a stripe of quartz-like fibers
lining it like a jolt of passion or
the mold of a fist from an unborn child
waiting in my chest to unfold