Babylon Sisters. Paul Di Filippo
in the refectory outshowers, and we spent a fun three hours together. But of course, with the way my luck was running, there had to be repercussions. It turned out she was just in from offplanet, somewhere less fastidious than Babylon, and had a bad case of scale mites. You’ve never known irritation until you’ve had those active little critters under your overlapping spinal plaques. Took an hour in the infirmary to make ’em surrender.
When I got out of the ward, I went to a bar to waste a few idle hours in muzzy rumination.
In the dimness of the bar (haven’t really changed in centuries, I understand), I got a TAP from Babylon.
[I called to see how matters were progressing,] he sent.
I jolted up in my seat when his words filled my brain. [Oh, fine, fine, Babylon. I’m planning my strategy right this minute.]
[Good. I suggest you pay more attention to the mental condition of your commensals while you procrastinate. Perhaps their malaise may help motivate you.]
I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but pretended I did.
[Sure. I’ll check it out.]
There was silence then, and I thought Babylon had broken the connection. But he came back with a request.
[Meat, I have a thing I wish you to read. Will you?]
I sent back acceptance, and Babylon squirted me a book.
It took a couple of seconds to absorb and store it, but since it was only a few megabytes of information, I soon had it integrated.
The nature of the information took me by surprise. I had expected something that would help me with my goal. Instead, I got a book of poetry.
It was titled Crimes Embedded in a Matrix of Semi-serious Poems.
And it was all about me.
[Babylon, I— What’s this all about? Who wrote this?]
[I did. But I am not releasing it for general consumption. It would be too likely to incite similar behavior.]
[But why? And why me?]
Babylon sent something wordless akin to a shrug. [I write a lot of poetry in my spare time, and your life seemed dramatically interesting. Not many people talk directly to me, you know, and I have to do something. Also, believe it or not, I actually like you, and would be sorry to have to scoop out your cortex. So I thought I’d share my work with you. I will not hide the fact that I also calculated the action would provoke a slightly higher allegiance from you.]
[Well, thanks, Babylon. I’m touched.] And I was.
[Please think nothing of it. Goodbye, and remember what I said about your compatriots.]
[Goodbye.]
I told you our “rulers” were idiosyncratic, didn’t I?
I got up and left the bar. Serendipity dictated that I would step out into Shadow.
Wincing, I looked up, onto the underside of the Gardens: a flat grey disk marked with colorful graffiti and bordered by dangling plants. I hooked a finger beneath my carcanet and glared at the Gardens, trying to will the whole thing away. I wished I were Prospero, and could vanish this particular gorgeous palace into the baseless, uncertain fabric that was the spacetime continuum.
Up there, in a rented palace suite, the Conservancy envoy was dispensing his poison, in the form of the Chronicle of Mankind, and Babylon claimed it was generating some sort of psychic illness among the populace.
I set off to find out what he meant.
And this was what I learned.
There was a split growing between the human and the non-human citizens of Babylon. Whereas members of all species had always existed in complete harmony, now everyone seemed to be acquiring jagged edges that grated and rasped on each other. I saw it on the streets and in the refectories, in the concert halls and null-gee natatoriums.
The humans were exhibiting traits such as arrogance and impatience and coerciveness. The non-humans were responding with disdain and stubbornness and frigidity. Godhorses drooped (so dispirited), axolotls frowned (so sad), and slidewhistles scurried by (so silent). I actually saw a fight or three that seemed to have nothing at their bases other than prejudice. (You must understand that there were fights now and then in Babylon during normal times. We’re not talking about Utopia, after all, and any sentients might come to blows about certain disagreements. But over negligible physical details—no, never that.)
I knew what the Conservancy planned. Babylon possessed a slight majority of humans. (An accident of statistical distribution. When travel across the universe resembles Brownian motion, you get such occasional clumping.) Pretty soon, when enough of them were infected with the Chronicle, someone would issue a request to the Conservancy to step in and take over the city, on some pretext such as “protecting fellow humans from bodily harm.” What could Babylon do then? The Commensality’s strength lay in solidarity. An AOI could only act in the interests of his community. And if that community was fragmented, where did correct action lie?
Then would begin the riots and bloodshed and retribution for slights real or imagined, the purges and re-education, until Babylon was molded into the Conservancy’s image.
Civilization is so tenuous.
My inaction had helped to bring this fateful Kristallnacht a step closer. I couldn’t let it happen. Not if doing what Babylon wanted was all it would take to stop it.
So I devised a plan.
* * * *
The Gardens hung in the darkling sky like a Fata Morgana conjured by a demon wizard. I floated up, air streaming over my bare limbs like liquid methane over a quilt. (But the cold was in me, rather than in the air.)
I noticed then that only humans were heading for the Gardens. There wasn’t a single other kind of sophont in sight.
It was truly scary, this segregation, even though, by specious (and specificate) biological assumptions, I was willy-nilly on the side of those who had initiated it. I wondered if this was how my distant ancestors had felt on Truehome, when the calls of a lynchmob echoed through some small North American town.
One perfect ten-point landing later (bare feet comprising an unmodified ten toes), I stood on a wide terrace paved with living substance (the better to roll upon). A hundred meters off stood the palace, central pleasure dome of this aerial trysting place.
I moved off toward it, past glimmering elven lights strung on potted trees.
On the broad steps leading up to the main doors, I TAPPED Babylon.
[You know when to shut off the power?] I asked.
[Of course. 24:00:00 exactly. The witching hour.]
[Ha, ha,] I enunciated with mental precision, just to show I was in no mood for AOI humor. [It’s easy for you to joke. You’re not about to take someone’s life.]
[I stand to lose as much if you fail as you do,] retorted that sententious mass of jelly. Then: [Are you sure you need the whole city shut off?]
[I want utter chaos. That’s the only thing that’s going to bring the Conservator out of his lair. Can you think of a better way to accomplish it?]
[No. We will follow your plan. Good luck.]
Babylon left my brain.
The city was powered by a monopole furnace. Shutting it off consisted of stopping the flow of protons into that destructive soliton. (Each proton-disintegration yielded several gev, and the furnace provided more power than a dozen Babylons could fully use. Fair access to energy is equality.)
I had arrived half an hour before midnight. There was one thing I planned to do before confronting the Conservator.
I was going to experience the Chronicle, so I could know exactly what we were up against.
In the palace, I TAPPED for a floorplan and followed