Phoenix Café (6 page)

“The missionaries don’t kill,” muttered Mâtho, scrupulously fair. “It’s assisted suicide; it’s quite legal if it’s done in private. It’s
not
legal to watch.”

“Is it my fault if some grasping newshandler has been trawling the emergency services?”

“We talked about God,” Misha whispered drowsily. “And death and immortality. But sex was there. The subtext of our conversation was all sex.”

Rajath and Joset crowed and slapped each other on the back. “Michael Junior is in love with the alien throat-slasher!” howled Rajath, and broke into a fragment of popular song.
“Oh, sweet mystery! Across the galaxy! Fated we meet, to be each other’s doom—”
Mâtho looked ready to weep, torn between shame and guilty fascination. Misha remembered the inner torture chamber; the haunted darkness of Catherine’s eyes. He was feeding his friends with gobbets of her agonized flesh and blood.

He swung himself to his feet. “Tomorrow I shall make flowers. Blue lilies and orange bellflowers. It’s an allusion to her gown. I’ll send them to her. She finds the sexual organs of our plants irresistibly arousing.”

He swept his duster coat from the foot of the couch and tossed it around his shoulders. It had begun to melt. It would soon be in perfect tattered form for the
passeggiata.
He resumed his black beret and studied the effect, in his inward eye, with brief but exacting attention.

“Don’t be scared, Joset. She’s given up the missionary work, she told me so herself. Miss Catherine will need a new distraction, and we shall provide it. But we don’t want to seem too keen. Let’s go. Out, anywhere! To the Café!”

He plunged his hands to the wrists into a crystal nautilus vase that stood on the glass floor. “The City Manager was there, talking to lord Maitri. He was watching me very closely.”

“The Manager!”
breathed Mâtho, stunned.

“So old Sattva ghosted the party.” Joset grimaced knowledgeably. “He’s a tricky customer. Did you manage to eavesdrop? Hear anything about increased law enforcement?”

“Not a word,” confessed Misha. “I wasn’t interested. But let me tell you about the food. It was bizarre. Roast peacocks with their feathers, whole antelopes with their heads and horns, hedgehogs in fish sauce, small mountains of extinct fruits, and everything tasting
horribly
of yeast and detergent.”

They stormed through the house and courtyard and out into the streets. It was growing dark at last: a darkness that would be unbroken by street-lamps or commercial displays. The Aleutians did not understand why anyone would need municipal lighting. Each of them bowed for the prince’s aspergation. Misha lifted and shook his glistening hands over their heads. On they swept, into the vast, exhausted human city, each carrying their own share of the pale, clinging fire.

2 
Political Meeting

i

Catherine resumed her old place in the household. She joined Maitri’s elderly and diminishing band of retainers at services in the character shrine, in the slow formal dancing that closed every day; and through the sociable Aleutian nights. When the members of the company napped and chatted and entertained each other, she reminisced with them about the glory days gone by. She discussed sacred records with the chaplain, played “Go” and “chess” with the Silent, and “Scrabble” with the Signifiers. She sent word to her comrades in the Church that her health had broken down and she would be taking an indefinite break from her missionary work. She made arrangements to dispose of her
trou,
along with the few possessions she’d left there. Maitri, delighted, secured her an invitation to visit the daughter of an old friend, a young lady like herself.

The Khans sent a closed car, which picked her up at the front door of Maitri’s house and deposited her, some time later, inside a walled garden. There was a sharp twittering of birdsong. Far distant walls (the garden’s dimensions were doubled, at least, by the artful use of virtual display-screens) were bright with vividly colored Aleutian creepers. Fruit trees stood in rows, bearing flowers and fruits together, apples and pears, apricots and peaches: all the foliage, dark or pale, suffused with the tell-tale un-green of hybrid Aleutian genes. Butterfly wings flickered, insects hummed.

Airborne traffic within the Cities was limited by environmental law; and unfashionable. Youroans traveled continental distances, without a thought, in “closed cars,” that gave you no sensation of movement. It worried Catherine, like a vague nausea, that she did not know where the hell she was. She could have crossed Youro, or spent the hours sitting in a traffic jam.

“You must be Catherine.” Mrs. Benazir Khan, Maitri’s old friend, dismissed the car: it vanished, magically, into an antique false vista of box hedges and fountains. She was a tall human, a gauze scarf draped over her sleek dark hair, her figure markedly but sedately female in sober Aleutian overalls. She held Catherine’s hands slightly longer than the customary greeting required, as if judging for herself and finally whether this was a suitable companion for her child. “I’m glad you’ve given up the Mission work,” she said at last. She shook her head. “Maitri has been so worried. The Church of Self is not the answer, Catherine. You must let us find our own solutions to our problems.”

Catherine felt humbled.

“Let me introduce you to my daughter.”

Thérèse Khan was a tiny creature, dressed like a proper young lady in a cinched bodice and full skirt under a robe of layered gossamer. She curled in the middle of a pink flowerbed under an apple tree, teasing a small white puppy.

“Play nicely now,” smiled Mrs. Khan, and left them.

Thérèse’s hands and face were decorated in living color. Her eyes looked out as if from a mask made of butterfly’s wings. Catherine thought of tiger weed tattoos. She didn’t know what to say. The puppy yapped.

“Would you like to hold him? Put out your hands.”

The puppy squirmed in Catherine’s cupped palms and licked her fingers.

“Isn’t he
sweet?
He’s called Pipi because he does it all the time. He’s supposed to be house-trained but he isn’t.”

“How old is he? Maybe he’s too young to learn.”

Thérèse laughed, not unkindly, at Catherine’s ignorance. “He’s as ‘old’ as he’s going to get. He’s a neotoneyatey…. I can’t remember the word: he’ll be a puppy forever.” She put her hands playfully over the dog’s minute pricked ears. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’ll always love Pipi, but I wish I could have a proper dog. A wolfhound or something.” She kissed the animal’s nose. “I hope he didn’t hear that. Misha—Michael Connelly—has wolfhounds at their place in the country. I’ve seen them often. They’re so fierce and marvelous, so sexy!”

“Perhaps they wouldn’t be happy living indoors.”

“That’s what mama says, and Imran. He’s my brother. But if people can make puppies and kittens that will live for a hundred years without ever growing up, why can’t I have a hunting dog who’d be happy in here?”

“That might be a logical problem, not a technical one.”

Thérèse wrinkled her nose. “If you say so. Shall I show you my birds?”

She jumped to her feet. The dented flowers sprang up, recovering shape like soft furniture. She took Catherine to a rocky grotto that stood incongruously among the tailored trees, hung inside and out with tiny wooden cages. “All native Youroan species.” Thérèse coaxed a finch with a blue and pink head onto her finger. “It’s bad taste to keep exotics. Is it true there are no birds in Aleutia?”

“It’s true. In the shipworld people have made winged things for fun, in imitation of yours. At home we don’t have anything that flies. Where there are living things, there’s no empty space for flying. But as you know, we don’t have either animals or birds, strictly speaking. Our cities are colonies of life, where every variant is related to us, the people: there’s really only one ‘species’—”

“Shall I show you my fish pool? You’ll love my koi. They practically talk.”

Catherine was prepared for anything. “You mean they’re self-conscious? Like, fish-shaped people?”

Thérèse looked over her shoulder, shocked. “Oh no! That would be cruel!”

While they were admiring the fish, Thérèse had a telecall. She politely insisted that she could put her friend off, but the interruption was a relief to both of them. Catherine left her chatting with her virtual companion, and went for a walk. She found Mrs. Khan sitting at a white wrought iron table in front of the fountains vista, reading a news site.

She shut the page, frowning a little. “Are you two getting on?”

“Yes, fine. Thérèse had to talk to someone for a moment.”

“Sit down then. Let me order you some coffee. Or would you prefer a soft drink?” She tapped her reader. “Your Youro Manager doesn’t understand his city. This negotiation with the Americas (which seems pointless, anyway) will cause trouble. Nothing that looks like the aliens favoring Reform will be tolerated in my city. There’ll be riots in the poor wards.”

A servant arrived with a tray of coffee and fruit juice.

“But the poor aren’t Traditionalists,” said Catherine. “How can they be?”

“Naturally you’re right, in a sense. To be human male and female, in the true meaning of the terms, has become the privilege of a wealthy minority: I’m afraid that’s true. But you have worked among the
sous-prolé,
our leisured classes. You know how they cling to their sexual identities, though it would be hard to tell their naked bodies apart, if you will excuse my vulgarity.”

“I know that. Nearly all our converts were Traditionalist in sympathy, though of course they weren’t voters. I meant, I find it puzzling.”

“Ah, the Aleutian liberalism!” Mrs. Khan smiled wisely. “You people don’t understand the concept of Reform versus Tradition. I am a Muslim. My colleagues in government are Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, Pagans, Marxists, even halfcastes. It’s the same in the other party. I am a Traditionalist, a woman and a member of the Cabinet. Some prominent Reformers are ‘biologically male.’ My goodness, who cares? Biological sex is not the issue. But the issue is real, and the only thing that matters in Youro politics. Traditionalism is a question of values, a choice
to remain human.
None of us will give that up.”

“But if it’s a choice you can’t have unless you’re rich,” Catherine persisted. “Why don’t the people, the masses, simply become Reformers. Since they can’t help their physiological changes, since Reformers is what they
are,
practically speaking? And riot until they turn you out of government?”

Mrs. Khan was not offended. She laughed and shook her head.

“My dear, the Reformers themselves cling to the human socio-sexual divide, in their own way. They don’t want to be neuters! That’s what makes Reform so absurd. Did you see the cages in Thérèse’s grotto? They have no doors, and this orchard is open overhead. My daughter’s birds have the freedom of Youro: they prefer to stay here. Our people are like those birds. They prefer the security of the familiar. It’s a law of nature.”

“You’re so right,” sighed Catherine. “It’s the same at home.”

She sipped her drink. The luxury of this setting was insidious. Chatting at ease with this sensible, pleasantly wicked human politician, an Aleutian need feel no guilt: no discomfort. “Is Misha Connelly a ‘biological male’?”

Mrs. Khan looked astonished. Then she laughed—a prim, smothered sound completely at odds with her previous manner.

“I couldn’t possibly tell you.”

ii

Catherine was in her room and sleeping, dreaming of the first landfall. They were about to cross the giant planet’s atmosphere. If we meet hostile natives we’re on our own, if we find treasure we’ll be expected to share it. Heigh-ho, that’s the way of the world. In becomes down, we’ve been lost for so long, at last a new world! Then everything goes wrong. Dying, falling in flames. The screaming, the crying, the sobbing voices—

Catherine?>

Maitri was by her bed, kneeling upright, human style.

“You were having a nightmare, darling.”

His robe was a poem of mingled green and blue with touches of palest rose, the soul of a lake of waterlilies: but he looked desperately tired and ill. She started up, shocked. No one had told her that Maitri was sick! She lay back. Of course he was not sick. He was old.

He stroked her hair. “Was it the same one?”

She nodded. “When we crashed in Africa.” This aged Maitri seemed a blurred intrusion; in the world of her nightmare he was so different. “Sometimes even when I’m awake,” she said softly, “I think everything that’s happened since those flames is an illusion.”

She’d made up her mind to devote herself to making him happy. She would be one of Maitri’s souvenirs, a nature-identical Traditionalist young lady he could show off at his parties. She would make afternoon visits to bizarre children, and be pleasant company in the main hall. She’d begun to suspect there might be enough daily laceration in this quiet existence to keep her need for pain in check. But because the dream still possessed her, she suddenly knew the charade must end.

Before Catherine was conceived, Lord Maitri had announced that he meant to stay behind. In future lives trips to Earth might be commonplace, but he loved the place too much to rely on that. He wanted to enjoy his last certain lease on the beloved giant planet to the very end, and die here of old age. But the Departure had been delayed and delayed. Aleutians don’t cling to life, and don’t collect statistics: suddenly she saw that he would be
really
old: helpless and confused, alone here with the hungry, angry humans, the billions so exploited and abandoned—

“Maitri, you have to give this up. I know what you promised yourself. But you didn’t know how long it would all take, or what the political situation would be like. Suppose Gender War breaks out again? I want you, and the whole household, to get back to the shipworld. I want you to start arranging that now.”

He looked down at her tenderly. A million tiny chemical touches spilled into the air: his ward felt nothing. “And leave
you
alone? I don’t think so, my dear. I still plan to have the proud distinction of being the last Aleutian on earth. Not counting yourself, of course.” He chuckled. “What you really mean is that you want me dead, so you don’t have to worry about me. I could say the same of you! There’ve been times, recently, when I’ve truly wished you’d decide to set your proselytes an example. It’s not pleasant to know that someone I love is so continuously unhappy. Shall we make a pact? Kiss goodbye, and pray that WorldSelf brings us together again soon, in some better life? I don’t think we’d be charged with criminal suicide. I am practically senile, as you so kindly remind me. And you have been declared insane.”

She stared up at him. Escape was not remotely a temptation.

“I can’t.”

“I know. I was joking. But don’t ask me to leave you, not before I must.”

He stood up, grumbling unconsciously in the Common Tongue. “You dream of our landing. I dream of the shipworld, myself. Those placid lifetimes lost in space when nothing much happened. Poor old Kumbva and his fights with the navigators. It was no use; you can’t teach Aleutian technicians that abstract measurement matters. They said yes and yes, and as soon as his attention slipped a notch they were throwing out his tricks and doing exactly as they pleased. So we wandered aimlessly, really quite content; or that’s the way it seems to me now. We were institutionalized, as they say on Earth. Do you remember when we stumbled over this system and actually discovered a new habitable planet—which was supposed to be the object of the whole exercise, if I recall correctly—practically nobody wanted to land?
There might be trouble, what’s the point, we just want to go home….
Do you remember that? It was left to our private expedition of ne’er do wells, our little band. And in the end you found the Buonarotti Device, and turned the whole venture from an absurd failure into a triumph. What thanks do we veterans get? We’re ignored.”