Babylon Sisters. Paul Di Filippo
place had unbent as much.) I am pleased to talk with you about Babylon.
Perhaps my composite conversationalist knows the ancient children’s rhyme. Conservancy types cherish such things, and it gives me a point of introduction. (I TAPPED the verse once and it stayed with me, so I can relate it now.)
How many miles to Babylon?
Threescore miles and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You may get there by candlelight.
Babylon. Like anyplace else in this infinitely accessible universe, it’s just a Heisenberg transition away, so I suppose in a sense you can reach it before a candle’s brief flame flickers out. And when you arrive, it helps if your heels—and mind—are nimble and light, as mine once were.
But as for getting back again—
Well—once you invest as much of yourself in Babylon as I and others have, you can never really leave.
Although of course you can always do what our age specializes in.
You can always run away.
* * * *
Night came down like a hammer.
Certainly, if you know the least little bit about Babylon—and who doesn’t?—you must realize I’ve just lied.
All that really happened was that Babylon shut off the lightstrips that were an integral part of the enormous transparent shell enclosing our city, in accordance with the programmed diurnal cycle.
But what the hell kind of opening line is that? Literalness is such a downer.
No, the story starts much better if I say night came calling. And since some Babylonians—such as myself—who had been born elsewhere still instinctively regarded the phenomenon that way, I think I’ll keep it.
Night came down like a hammer.
Outside our shell dirty clouds of methane and nitrogen swirled, banded a dozen shades of smoggy pink, orange and grey, rendered faintly luminous by the radiance of the gas-giant around which our satellite revolved. (Contributing also, of course, was the feeble light from the far-off primary around which the gas-giant in turn revolved, a star somewhere in that part of infinity that the Conservancy insists on calling Gemini, the twins.)
Light bloomed in a thousand tall towers throughout the city, and fell from myriad free-floating globes. The assorted citizens striding the syalon streets seemed to speed up their pace, as if responding to age-old imperatives their rational selves would have denied.
The night quickens. Everyone, everywhere, grows at least a little more alert after dark, wary of the eyes beyond the fire.
I felt hyped up myself. But then again, I had more reason than most to feel so.
Half an hour after mottled darkness fell, I was ready to step from the departure platform on the fiftieth floor of a residential tower, carrying something that didn’t belong to me. I was confident that no one had seen me take the item, which was small enough to fit neatly beneath the waistband of my jox. And valuable enough to carry me through half a year of lazy pleasures. Well worth the risk involved, thought I.
With my hand on a brass boss studding my black leather chest-yoke, ready to activate the lift circuitry built into the harness, I was congratulating myself on another job well done. That was when the watchmek’s laser nearly clipped my ear off.
I fell flat on the dropledge, having whirled to face the direction of fire. Back in the building, the mek got off another shot that ran a lash of pain along my back.
Biting down on a yell, I pointed my index finger at the officious but stupid thing.
From the small seed that was a solid-state laser embedded under my fingernail sprouted a beam that pierced the mek. It fell over with a dull clunk.
I stood, legs shaky, back scorched. (The only good thing about laser wounds is how they self-cauterize.) My harness fell off, neatly severed, leaving me bare except for sandals and thong (and if you count ornaments, however multi-purposed, my carcanet). My first choice for escape was now gone. I wasn’t about to step off the platform into mid-air sans lift harness, no matter how desperate.
I had two options left. The first was to take the building’s slow gravshaft down—at the bottom of which would surely be waiting a nasty crowd of concerned citizens, summoned by Babylon.
The second looked like an even worse choice. I could go up five floors to the roof, send a TAP for a taxi (the platform here was big enough for individuals only) and wait to be immured within the vehicle, which Babylon would surely override and freeze when he realized what was going on.
I raced inside and headed for the roof.
Sometimes a choice looks bad only because you don’t know all the angles.
On the roof—fifty-five floors full of chambered sophonts closer to the luminescent killer heavens than where I wanted to be—I issued a TAP for the taxi, just to confuse things, then requested the time.
[20:10:01,] came the response.
The Hanging Gardens were due by in three minutes. I had carefully noted their schedule before I attempted this job.
Searching the gloom, I spotted the floating mass: a twinkling faerie palace overgrown with greenery, set on a wide thick disk bearing aloft several landscaped hectares.
The minutes it took to drift toward me seemed eons. Running one thick finger between torc and neck (a foolish mannerism, I know, but one I couldn’t break), I watched the egress to the liftshaft, expecting it to vomit forth meks and men any second.
But no one came. And then the Gardens were overhead.
There were no buildings in Babylon taller than the one I stood on. The Gardens were why.
The polychrome sky was suddenly occulted, and I was in plant-fragrant Shadow; voices drifted down to me. At the same time a creeper brushed my cheek like the antenna of a godhorse. Kicking off my sandals, I tossed my arms up, searching for thicker vines.
Found them.
Swarmed up.
Kids did this on a dare all the time, little caring about the community-service sentence they risked if caught. Once in a while, if they were foolish enough to attempt the climb without a lift harness and lost their hold, they died. Not having grown up here, I had never enjoyed such a thrill before.
Now I was making up for my placid off-world youth.
The Gardens, continuing their slow and stately pavane, left the tower behind. I was halfway up a rubbery liana, hanging a quarter of a kilometer up above the ceramic pavement. I made the mistake of looking down on the carpet of lights, and dizziness blurred my senses. I stopped climbing for a moment until I regained my equilibrium. Then I went as fast as I dared straight to the top.
A leg over the railing, then the other, and I was standing on solid “ground” again. The commingled scents of flowers greeted me.
My arms ached and my legs felt like gelatin. My chest and back were slicked with sweat and possibly blood from my reopened wound. The tension had nurtured a headache that kicked with every pulse.
But beneath my waistband was a fortune waiting to be redeemed.
I looked up in relief. At such a time it would have been good to look upon the stars. (You see, I retained some Conservancy attitudes even after living in Babylon for so long.)
But only a gaudy greasy fog greeted my gaze.
So I moved off.
Avoiding the couples, triplets and quartets (“More than four’s a bore,” they said in the city that month; next month it would be something altogether different, if not antithetical) gathered in the hidden dim purlieus and bowers, past the dancers