Muddle earth, p.4
MUDDLE EARTH, page 4
The area of the city they had so far passed over had struck him as improbably like what he had been familiar with in his own time, though shabbier and to his surprise (muted, like his other reactions) altogether lacking in tall buildings, as though its downtown area had evaporated—or fallen down from lack of maintenance, like the houses he had seen approaching the freeway.
This section, though, was an utter contrast. Here was a large open space paved with irregular stone flags. On three sides of it had been reconstructed houses of an ancient design. Timber frames, stained black, surrounded whitewashed plaster infill and latticed windows, while over all thatched roofs loomed like beetling eyebrows. In total contrast the fourth side was closed by row upon row of wooden seating, raked sharply upward beneath an awning. At the center of the oblong area thus defined had been erected a platform on which stood a tall man with bulging muscles, naked save for a black breechclout, black boots, and a black cloth mask. From time to time he tested with his thumb the blade of an enormous ax.
Just out of sight behind a row of the fake houses there stood a gilded coach drawn by four perfectly matched black horses—
Rinpoche looked again. They were standing impossibly still.
Oh. Machines.
“Is this the set for a movie you’re making?” he inquired, wondering why, if nowadays people could create such a convincing replica of a horse, anyone would bother with that sort of elderly technology—except, of course, in the interests of the “authenticity” Salvador Munday had been so exercised about.
“Yup,” Gus answered. “The same damn’ film as usual. Every mortal week… Ah, hell. I better get back in character. Vy tit I haf to pretent to be Tscherman? Vy tit I not tschuss an accent I can issily kip up, like Eye-ritsch hoots begorrah look you gorblimey?”
“The same film as usual?” Rinpoche repeated in bewilderment. Down below, under the guidance of young men and women bearing colored flags on poles, a horde of people was flooding into the square. Many wore what looked like sixteenth-century Western European dress, but others had costumes from earlier periods and a dozen different countries: burnouses, saris, even togas.
Harry muttered a curse, presumably in response to a message on the nonexistent radio.
“Are they still not ready?” Gus demanded.
“Not by a kilometer. They say we’ll be catering for sixty-seven million today. We’ll have to set down to save fuel.”
“Oh, shit. I mean: ach, Scheiss!” Gus folded his arms and sat back in what could only be termed high dudgeon as the ‘copter swept to a landing beside the coach. The horses were definitely machines; they twitched not a tail, not a nostril, at the dust and noise.
“I don’t understand,” Rinpoche said doggedly into sudden quiet as the engine died. “The same picture over and over?”
“Vot? Oh! It’s the Holyrood experience, of course! What does that name call to mind?”
After a bewildered pause: “Well—nothing, to be candid.”
“Vare ver you etschugadet?” Gus rasped, and interrupted himself by saying, “Christ, I know a lot of Hollywood directors really were German, but it’s a beast of an accent, it really is… Mary Queen of Scots, of course!”
“Who?”
“Executed on the orders of Queen Elizabeth of England. A great tragic heroine. Schiller wrote a play about her, there were operas even. Holyrood was the royal palace in Edinburgh. Because of that goddamned sign, the Yelignese laid it down: all tourists who come here get the Holyrood experience! So far as they’re concerned that means the chance to appear as extras in a film about Mary Queen of Scots—or take an acting or even a speaking role at extra charge. And I’m sick to death of it! We can’t even afford enough costumes of the proper period; we have to make do with anything not too ridiculously modern, never mind how antique it would have been, or foreign. I mean, how many Pakistanis in shalwar-kameez would have been at the Scottish court in Mary’s day?”
“Even that’s not the worst of it,” Harry said somberly. “Mary was actually beheaded indoors, in private, with just a chaplain and a handful of other witnesses, but because no one wants to miss out on the grand climax we’ve had to move it to the open air, like you see. We even had to take one whole side away from the reproduction city square we’d built to make room for those bleachers because each time more and more people insist on getting a clear line of sight—and, of course, on figuring recognizably in the crowd shots.”
“And what’s more,” Gus supplemented, “though Mary did take off her dress to save it from being spoiled by the blood, she kept on her shift—her underslip.”
“Whereas now they insist on her doing a full strip,” Harry rasped. “Right down to her skin. Oh, it does pull the punters, I guess. Sixty-seven million this time! Where’s it all going to end? That’s what I want to know.”
“Million? But there’s barely room here for a couple of thousand—three at most.” Rinpoche blinked in confusion, sure though he was that his own experience of addressing large crowds (and he didn’t want to remember that!) had enabled him to judge the numbers aright.
“Oh, that’s only the ones physically present. Some people just won’t be satisfied with secondhand memories, even from the finest observers. Those are the hyper-rich, of course. But many of our audience represent planetary populations, or at least whole cities.”
“Huh?”
“Sure! Interstellar travel isn’t cheap, you know, not even with a Duckman’s Dumper. So when somebody can nearly afford to visit Earth, but not quite, they often make up the difference by arranging to sell their memories when they get back. Pretty often they undertake to have some special experience that one of their sponsors would like to recall but doesn’t care about enough to make the physical trip. ‘Course, the more copies you take of a memory the less sharp it becomes, but techniques are improving all the time, and several of today’s spectators have contracted to service half a million.”
“Is that a whole planetary population?” Rinpoche asked foggily.
“Of a human planet, you mean? Oh, no! Just the maximum one can cope with using present-day techniques. It’s the aliens who send along a single representative to bring back impressions of Earth for their entire species.” Harry stretched and yawned. “Heaven knows, though, what the folks back home make of a queen getting her head chopped off.”
“Confirms them in their view that we’re uncivilized upstart barbarians,” Gus suggested sourly, and muttered another unprintable comment about having to make the same movie over, and over, and over.
“But when you filmed me trying to run away from the helicopter,” Rinpoche countered, “you said you could use the footage in some other picture altogether.”
The director brightened. “Ah, Gone with the Birth of a Kane by Northwest! That’s what I’m pinning all my hopes on. Thirty years in the making, combining elements from four of the undisputed masterpieces of the Golden Age, it cannot fail but be the box-office smasheroo of all time. I only wish I could figure out how to include Casablanca in the title.”
Anxious to be helpful, Rinpoche pondered a moment. “How about calling it Casablanca II and using the rest as a subtitle?”
“Well, I don’t know about subtitles.” Gus frowned. “Having so much wordage on screen across the lower edge of every single shot… Harry, what do you think?”
“I think the punters are getting restless,” the pilot answered, restarting his engine. “Ready?”
“Ja. Ass ready ass I sall effer be! Vare’s my megaphone? Ach, dare. Hoch aye! Ve go to ze zet, bitte schnell!”
And, moments later, amid swirling dust and smog, the celebrated director Gustav von Scheidelberg strode to confront his players. He seemed to have forgotten about Rinpoche, and Harry wasn’t interested; having cut his engine again, he thrust a stick of gum in his mouth, leaned back, and closed his eyes, chomping.
With a trace of faint relief—inevitably faint—Rinpoche dropped to the ground and stole away. He had been given much to think about, and since his mental processes were being rendered sluggish by, presumably, the same chemicals that kept his emotions remote, he needed somewhere quiet to ponder his discoveries at leisure. Before he could make himself scarce, however, one of the guides mustering the tourists bellowed at him, waving his flagstick.
“Hey, you! Yes, I do mean you! What are you doing in gear like that? Some people here have paid millions to appear in our movie! Do you want to ruin everything?”
“Sorry!” Rinpoche shouted back. “Lost my way!”
And darted around the nearest corner, noticing as he passed that someone had switched on the horses and they were whinnying and pawing at the ground.
A few hundred meters further on he reached a stretch of concrete sidewalk into which had been impressed footprints, palmprints, and the prints of extremities he dared not even make guesses about. Each of the ones that were recognizably human bore a name that to him meant nothing: Lazarus Long, Phoebe Zeitgeist, John Carter, Telzey Amberdon, Giles Habibula, Gilbert Gosseyn…
By now the smog was making his eyes water to the streaming point. He needed to escape indoors. Staring around, he caught sight of a blur that suggested an illuminated sign. After blinking away his tears he was able to decipher it into SPOTCH’S SPOT, THE BAR OF THE STARS! AUTHENTIC ATMOSPHERE OF OLD HOLYROOD! TOPLESS WAITRESS! PROHIBITION RAIDS NIGHTLY! HAPPY HOUR 0800-0600!
Under which, in smaller letters:
Aliens welcome. Fluorine breathers 24 hours’ notice.
Gratefully, he pushed open the door.
Within, he found a large, dark, low-ceilinged room set with tables and chairs. There was a bar at the far end, with shelves of bottles behind it. The lights were dim, the air was cool and clean. But there was no one else in sight. For a moment he wondered whether he had misread the sign. It could scarcely be later than nine A.M., so perhaps the joint was not in fact open. Uncertainly he approached the bar, noting with a fraction of his attention familiar labels on some of the bottles: Seagram’s, Jack Daniels—
Just a moment. He took a squarer look. Preconception had betrayed him. Sevagram? Jack Dann’s?
While he was still staring, a curtain behind the counter rustled. A long-faced girl with a mop of untidy brown curls and glistening tombstone teeth poked her head around it, fighting to control a yawn. He approached uncertainly, having suddenly remembered that he had no money. Perhaps, though, she would let him stay inside long enough for his eyes to stop stinging.
But she addressed him before he could speak.
“Would you like a long slow comfortable screw against the wall?”
His jaw dropped.
“No? Are you sure? What about between the sheets?”
His jaw dropped again, this time to its limit.
The girl emerged into clear view, her expression dispirited. She wore nothing bar a red miniskirt fractionally broader than a belt. She was thin and bony with small flat breasts, below which her ribs could easily be counted.
“I’ll never make my fortune in this job,” she muttered. “My fool of a professor at the Institute of Historical Imbibology swore that the double meaning of drink names like that was a surefire way of inducing red-blooded males to purchase them… Not gay, are you?”
“Not that I know of,” Rinpoche admitted.
“Thought not. I can’t boast much in the way of tits, but they have the right effect on straights. I can tell by the way their eyes try to look anywhere else except directly at me. What do you want? How about a sidecar? A Manhattan? An old-fashioned or a dry martini or a Gibson’s? A grasshopper, a brandy Alexander? A Moscow mule, a margarita? Traffic lights? I mix all those pretty good—except you don’t mix a traffic lights, of course—and it’s supposed to be a big deal having a real live person fix your drink. You wouldn’t think it if you worked here, though. Jer know you’re the first daytime customer I’ve had in three months?”
Forcing his jaw to close again, Rinpoche hoisted himself on to a stool at the bar and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He wished they’d included handkerchiefs in his outfit.
“You were offering me something to drink,” he hazarded.
“Sure I was! Authentic twentieth-century cocktails! All, of course, available in indistinguishable alcohol-free versions.”
He was about to admit his lack of funds and ask for water, when the unlikelihood of her last statement got through to him.
“How’s that possible?” he exclaimed.
“For clients who eschew alcohol we can mix any drink with Fomalhautian crench instead. It induces identical effects.” She brightened. “Would you like to try a cocktail with crench? It comes in whiskey, gin, rum, vodka, saké, grappa, kava, and tequila flavors, and also cognac and crème-de-menthe, though I’m out of those.”
Rinpoche felt his cheeks growing hot.
“Well—uh—apart from it being kind of too soon after I woke up, to be perfectly honest, I don’t have any money.”
The girl leaned her elbows on the counter and linked her fingers, at the same time raising one foot behind her to the level of her hips.
“Just my luck,” she muttered. “First daytime customer in yonks and he turns out to be a bankrupt wreck. My fault, I guess, for being a sucker. All those romantic dreams about Old Earth, cradle of the species, source of our culture and civilization…”
Rinpoche started. “Do I take it that you weren’t born on Earth?” he whispered. The concept should have been staggering; he wanted to quake with wonderment. But once again he couldn’t make it happen.
“Can’t you tell from my accent? No, I’m from Trigon, and sometimes I wish I were back there!”
“Is Trigon a planet? I don’t remember a planet called Trigon. I remember Mars, Venus, Mercury…” His words tailed away. She was staring at him in disbelief.
“Are you or are you not a wreck on the run?” she demanded.
“What? Oh! Oh, yes! At least I suppose I must be. I mean, I was woken up from freeze this morning and—”
“Weren’t you given the standard data dose?”
“No! You see, I—”
“This doesn’t make sense.” Her voice was abruptly firm. “I just figured it out. You do have money. You must. Only you think of it the old-fashioned way, cashes or credicharts or whatever it was called—things you physically carried around with you. Let’s see if I’ve guessed right. It’ll be the first time in years… Hold still.”
While speaking she had reached to a shelf behind her for a pencillike gadget that she now presented to Rinpoche’s right eye. Before he had time to blink it emitted a flash of light so brief it barely left an afterimage, and she was saying in an angry tone, “What do you mean, no money? If I had a tenth of your credit, I’d be off this garbage-pile planet like a shot!”
“I don’t understand!” Rinpoche cried.
“According to this reading, you have three hundred and sixty-six billion crunits!”
“What?”
“That’s what it says!” She tossed the device back on its shelf.
“Well, all I can think is… Just a second.” There were paper napkins on the bar; he seized a couple and mopped his face. “You said three hundred and sixty-six? Not sixty-five?”
“When you’re talking in billions, how much difference does it make?” Her tone was bitter.
“It’s just that I thought… Oh. It must be invested at a high rate of interest.”
“What else would you do with that much money?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t know I had it! That’s the honest truth!”
“But you must have known!” she flared. “Why else would they have left you to undertake your own reeducation? They only do that to people who can easily afford it!”
“Who only do it?”
She hesitated. Then, in a completely altered voice, she said, “You really don’t know what’s what, do you?”
“I do not!” Rinpoche blared.
“Hmm…” As though it were a matter of habit she brushed at her nipples, making them stand up like finger joints. “Well, I’ve told you you’re rich. For that, how about buying me a drink?”
“Uh… Sure! Of course! But how?”
“Oh, you’re listed as creditworthy by every computer on the planet—how else do you think I found out so fast? There are some things the Yelignese are really quite good at, despite what people say. Well, I’ll have…” She licked her lips with a pink and pointed tongue. “I’ll have a coffee!”
“I expected you to ask for something special.”
“Isn’t that special enough?… Oh!” Her eyes rounded enormously. “Of course! I suppose you hail from a time when people could drink coffee every day!”
“You mean nowadays they can’t?”
“Grief, no! Not since the crunchiform blight! It was just as well seeds had been smuggled off-world illegally, or the Yelignese would have had to reconstruct the whole thing by analogy, and they’d’ve been bound to get it wrong. I mean, consider beer! Can you imagine anyone liking that stuff? I just can’t believe it’s authentic!”
There was a faint ping. From a small compartment under the bar she produced a yellowish-brown cuboid with frost forming on it. Raising it to her lips—or more exactly to her teeth—she said, “Thank you very much! You know, this is only the seventh time I’ve ever tasted coffee? It’s so special I keep count… Well, mud in your hatch!”
She bit off a corner of the cube, rolled it around her mouth, shut her eyes, and tilted her head back in ecstasy. “Mm-hm!” she exclaimed. “But this isn’t fair! How about you? What do you want?”
“I guess a glass of water,” Rinpoche sighed.
“Here on Earth?” She looked offended. “Didn’t they even warn you about that? Oh, those Yelignese!”
“Not to drink the water? On our own planet? Where we evolved?” Rinpoche searched eagerly for any sign that he might have regained his usual spectrum of emotions, but without success; for all the strength of feeling evoked by the idea that water on Earth had become undrinkable, he might as well have been talking about some remote world the other side of the galaxy.
