Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (40 page)

Playing with dead people can sometimes be cool. I owe Rob Hood a huge debt of thanks for teaching me that, and for reinforcing the fact that all too often writers are the worst judges of their own work.

~ * ~

ENTRÉ LES BEAUX MORTS EN VIE

(AMONG THE BEAUTIFUL LIVING DEAD)

Le Chateau de la Mort Dorée
— known as Fool’s-Death House in the vernacular — was situated halfway up the vertical flank of a mountain not ten minute’s powered flight from Jungfrau, in the region that had once been called Switzerland. Sandwiched between stone and air, the sprawling, rococo structure with its four hundred luxury rooms and five banquet halls looked like a pimple on a granite giant’s cheek. Tunnels, elevators and airships provided the usual means of gaining access. Only a few people dared to climb in person. The view from the Chateau’s tiered terraces was spectacular enough to negate the need for such foolhardy, if courageous, gestures.

Yet some people still made the effort. Ordinary people, of course; never the reves themselves, although this was one of their favourite sites. Of anyone on Earth and off, the reves knew best how fragile life could be. Yet how resilient.

All this passed through Martin Winterford’s mind as he stepped off the airship and onto the Chateau’s wide receiving platform. Buffeted by the crisp, mountain wind, and with the setting sun hidden behind a mile of solid rock, he experienced a moment of near
-satori.
This, the first time he had visited the Chateau, would possibly be the last — in his lifetime. Although he would no doubt return many times, if he chose to accept his uncle’s ultimatum, it would be as a reve, and he would no longer be, by ancient definition, alive.

He tried to reassure himself that, living or dead, by whatever definition, it made no difference to
him
— but the doubt still nagged two hours later, as
La Célébration Annuelle
began.

~ * ~

“Je vois que vous êtes en souffrance le changement,”
said a melodic voice. “
Apprendez-vous déjà le française?”

Martin turned. A tall woman in a white silk ballgown, complete with gloves, fan and blonde coiffure, had come up behind him. The skin of her shoulders and throat was bare and very pale, flawless. Her eyes were the deepest brown he had ever seen, her lips the richest red.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Old French,” he said, raising his champagne flute to cover his uneasiness. Make-up couldn’t hide the truth, not from so close. Not that she wanted to, either, or else she wouldn’t have left her shoulders and throat exposed. The woman was a reve.

“Pas mal,”
continued the woman.
“Vous aurai beaucoup du temps à combler son retard.”

He shook his head, nervousness becoming irritation at her persistence. If she wanted to be fashionable, why didn’t she find someone else to do it with?

With an amused smile — perhaps at his expense, he couldn’t tell — she raised her fan and indicated that he should follow her into the next room. Martin hesitated for a moment, then obeyed. He had nothing better to do. The party, for all its glamour and opulence, had proved to be slightly dull. Its many cliques left him wandering alone, wary of intruding.

“You’ll have to pardon me,” said the woman over her shoulder as she led him through the crowd, past two tables piled high with exotic hors d’oeuvres and wines, mostly untouched. He caught a hint of delicate perfume in her wake. “We like to have our little games. Someone must educate the newcomers, put them through a rite of passage. That is our purpose here at the Chateau — unofficially, at least. It’s important,
n’est-ce pas?”

Martin simply nodded at first. The woman’s perfect English, with its qualifiers and clauses, threw him so off-balance that what she actually said didn’t register until they were half-way across the room.

“You
know?”
he exclaimed, wondering what had given him away. He had chosen his outfit carefully: a black suit with ruffs at neck and collars, leather shoes and skull-cap. He had hoped to remain anonymous.

“Of course,” said the woman. “I am observant. There are three hundred and twenty-seven guests attending this
soirée,
of which seventy-nine are revenants. Two hundred and forty-five are government officials: doctors, diplomats and examiners, mainly, all known to me either personally or by reputation. That leaves three.” Her eyes twinkled. “You are clearly not a waiter, for you cannot speak French. Besides, your age seems about right.”

Martin didn’t bother denying the truth. If games were her
métier,
then he would acknowledge defeat early. Either that, or risk arousing a deeper interest that he could not afford to indulge.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, more curious than concerned for the moment.

“Does it matter?” She fluttered her fake eyelashes and pouted like a teenager. “Our table is boring, boring, boring. It lacks interesting conversation — or interesting people to make conversation, perhaps I should say. I was in the process of looking for someone to liven up the evening when I spotted you.” Her smile returned as they weaved past a cluster of potted palms and through an arched entrance-way. “Would you care to join us?”

Martin side-stepped a waiter carrying a tray of garishly coloured drinks. The banquet hall looked like something plucked from Eighteenth Century Europe, with gilded walls, a string quartet playing in one corner and crystal chandeliers suspended from a high, domed ceiling. He raised his voice to be heard over a mélange of music and speech filling the room.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course. Don’t be obtuse, my dear. You have a choice in everything.”

Again the coquettish flutter that did nothing to ease his disquiet. The echo of his uncle’s words was uncanny. But before he could answer, the woman brought him to a halt with a hand on his chest.

“Ah,” she said, “here we are. Why don’t you take a seat... I’m sorry? I didn’t catch your name.”

Martin faltered. The table before them held six “people”. He stared at them dumbly until he realised that they were all staring back at him just as hard.

He turned to face the woman who had led him to the table. Only then did he realise that her words had been a question. He almost blurted out his full name before natural caution caught up.

“My name is Martin,” he managed. “And —?”

“Allow me to introduce you.” The woman gestured around the table with a flourish of her fan. A fat man in purple robes was Professor Algiers Munton of the Revenation Institute in New York. M. Elaine Bennett, a narrow-faced, female reve dressed in simple grey peasant attire, hailed from Port Moresby. The sexless mod with orange veins glowing under its ceremonial skin and the AI node sporting the usual black suit preferred by the AI conglomerates for formal occasions were Alkis and PERIPETY-WEYN, both from the Moon’s Armstrong Base. An android rem from Attar, judging by its coat of arms, was being ridden by someone called “Le
Comptable Froid”,
or “Count” to his friends, who had been unable to make the physical journey from that remote moonlet to Earth in time for the Celebration. All indicated their pleasure at meeting him with nods, smiles or brief but sincere hellos.

Only the last member of the small party, a bald young man wearing a blue period suit, remained silent when introduced as “Spyro Xenophou”, and went otherwise — almost pointedly — unexplained.

Martin swallowed, his mouth dry, after greeting them all in return. What had his uncle said when news of his application had arrived? No true aliens, but plenty that
seem
alien ...? As a summary of his current situation, that would do as well as any other.

“Sit, sit.” The woman —
reve,
he reminded himself, although the distinction seemed like splitting hairs in such a crowd — ushered Martin towards a chair. “Or leave. If you’re going to make a fool of me by declining my invitation, then at least do so quickly. Don’t allow me to waste any further breath. Air is rarefied so high in the mountains, you know.”

“I beg to disagree,” broke in the Count via his rem, its artificial voice smooth but eerily inhuman. The lag between Earth and Attar was much smaller than Martin would have credited, so-called instantaneous transmissions still usually taking a second or two. “Had I access to atmosphere as ‘rarefied’ as yours,” the Count said, “I could increase my profit by four hundred percent.”

“Don’t be such a wet blanket,” chided the woman with fleeting
moue.
“And don’t interrupt. I haven’t finished introductions yet.”

Martin lowered himself with a sigh of relief into the only available seat, either a genuine antique or a very good copy of a Louis XIV. “Please,” he said. “I’d be grateful.”

“Of course. I, dear Martin, am the Reve Guillard — although you can call me Marianne if you prefer. I am most pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Without the slightest self-consciousness, the immortal woman extended her hand to be kissed.

The only other reve at the table, Elaine Bennett, smiled at the expression on Martin’s face as he reached out to clasp the cold, perfect fingers. The Reve Guillard had been a contemporary of Paul Merrick — the world’s first reve and founder of the Plutocracy. Her age was therefore somewhere between four hundred and eighty and five hundred years. Martin felt like he was touching a precious work of art, or a shrine. His lips tingled when she withdrew her hand, as though some of her had rubbed off on him.

“I am honoured, M. Guillard,” he said.

The woman waved her fan; in another age, another body, she might have blushed.
“C’est peu de,”
she said. “And please do call me Marianne. I’d hate to have to insist.”

“Thank you.” He felt dizzy; the rush of blood to his face threatened to overwhelm his brain. As he tried to regain his composure, he was acutely aware of the silent young man watching him closely, almost resentfully. It bothered him, but he couldn’t afford to let it distract him.

Perhaps sensing the new arrival’s discomfort, the AI node stepped in to fill the silence. “We were discussing the latest trend,” PERIPETY-WEYN said. “Le
mode du temps,
as it were. M. Bennett noted some interesting parallels between it and the French Revolution.”

“Naturally she would,” M. Guillard said, assuming control of the conversation with confident ease. “And she is correct: there
are
superficial parallels. The term ‘plutocracy’ was not chosen lightly, you know.”

“And not without a sense of humour,” said the mod, Alkis.

“Yes.” M. Guillard cast the cyborg an ambiguous look. “Paul always liked puns. But the similarities run no deeper than that. The trend for things Old French is deliberate, not symbolic of some deeper human conflict. How could there be a French Revolution today when the members of the ruling class, no matter how wealthy they might be, are already dead? Besides, next year it might be Twenty-First Century America that takes our fancy, or White Russia.”

“Each with its own revolution,” the mod observed.

“Yes, yes, Alkis. That too is deliberate. We gravitate towards potent times in order to stave off boredom —”

“Or to allay subconscious guilt,” interrupted M. Bennett with a grimace. “Or fear.”

“Nonsense. You imagine cause in a world of effects.”

“I feel it.” M. Bennett met the Reve Guillard’s stare unflinchingly. “In my youth, I felt it too.”

“Naturellement, ma chère.
And that is why you are here: because you are something of a radical. We require diversity and dissent if we are to remain vital.” M. Guillard flapped once with her fan, and sighed theatrically. “Do you see what I mean now, Martin?” she asked, pinning him with her wide, brown eyes. “These are old arguments, centuries-worn and boring, boring, boring! Why don’t you tell us about yourself instead? Who invited you here this evening?”

Martin leaned forward and chose his words with care. “My sponsor, ah, Gerome Packard, thought it might be a good idea.”

“Did he, now? That sounds like uncommonly good sense from dear Gerome.”

“He said it would help me acclimatise.”

“Socially, yes. Physically, probably not. No-one can predict with certainty the effects of revenation on a given individual.”

“I take it, then,” put in the mod, “that you are aspiring to the Change?”

Martin felt sweat bead on the back of his neck.
Maybe one day, I’ll be like her
—
the Reve Guillard.
“My application was approved five weeks ago,” he said to avoid a direct answer.

“Interesting.” The mod folded its glowing hands on the table. “Of all the alternatives presently available, revenation remains the only proven means of achieving extreme human longevity. I envy you the opportunity.”

“Thank you, Sir.” Coming from a mod, that was candour indeed. “Sometimes I wonder whether it’s really going to happen.”

“No doubt. You must be nervous,” said Professor Munton. “I would be, in your shoes.”

Seeking a distraction, Martin hailed a waiter. One appeared instantly at his shoulder. He offered to pay the round, but only Professor Munton joined him in ordering a drink. None of the others required fluid intake, being either self-sufficient within themselves or partial to other means of gaining nutrients.

“How long until your birthday?” asked the AI node when the waiter had departed.