Babylon Sisters. Paul Di Filippo
to tell him what’s going on. That’s it. He’ll wait for June.
Stone paces nervously for three minutes. He can’t believe his loss of vision. Yet somehow he’s always known it would happen.
The alarms have stopped, allowing Stone to hear near-subliminal footsteps in the hall, advancing on his door. June at last? No, everything’s wrong. Stone’s sense-of-life denies that the visitor is anyone he knows.
Stone’s Bungle instincts take over. He ceases to speculate about what is happening, is all speed and fear.
The curtains in the room are tied back with thin but strong velvet cords. Stone rips one hastily down, takes up a position to the side of the outer door.
The shock wave when the door is hit nearly knocks Stone down. But he regains his balance, tasting blood, just as the man barrels in and past him.
Stone is on the man’s burly back in a flash, legs wrapped around his waist, cord around his throat.
The man drops his gun, hurls himself back against the wall. Stone feels ribs give, but he tightens the rope, muscles straining.
The two stagger around the room, smashing furniture and vases, locked in something like an obscene mating posture.
Eventually, after forever, the man keels over, landing heavily atop Stone.
Stone never relents, until he is sure the man has stopped breathing.
His attacker is dead.
Stone lives.
He wriggles painfully out from under the slack mass, shaken and hurt.
As he gets his feet under him, he hears more people approaching, speaking.
Jerrold Scarfe is the first to enter, calling Stone by name. When he spots Stone, Scarfe shouts, “Get that stretcher over here.”
Men bundle Stone onto the canvas and begin to carry him off.
Scarfe walks beside him, and conducts a surrealistic converstion.
“They learned who you were, Mr. Stone. That one fracking bastard got by us. We contained the rest in the wreckage of the upper floors. They hit us with a directed electromagnetic pulse that took out all our electronics, including your vision. You might have lost a few brain cells when it burned, but nothing that can’t be fixed. After the EMP, they used a missile on Miz Citrine’s floor. I’m afraid she died instantly.”
Stone feels as if he is being shaken to pieces, both physically and mentally. Why is Scarfe telling him this? And what about June?
Stone croaks her name.
“She’s dead, Mr. Stone. When the raiders assigned to bag her had begun to work on her, she killed herself with an implanted toxin-sac.”
All the lilies wither when winter draws near.
The stretcher party has reached the medical facilities. Stone is lifted onto a bed, and clean hands begin to attend to his injuries.
“Mr. Stone, “ Scarfe continues, “I must insist that you listen to this. It’s imperative, and it will take only a minute. “
Stone has begun to hate this insistent voice. But he cannot close his ears or lapse into blessed unconsciousness, so he is forced to hear the cassette Scarfe plays.
It is Alice Citrine speaking.
“Blood of my blood,” she begins, “closer than a son to me. You are the only one I could ever trust.”
Disgust washes over Stone as everything clicks into place and he realizes what he is.
“You are hearing this after my death. This means that what I have built is now yours. All the people have been bought to ensure this. It is now up to you to retain their loyalty. I hope our talks have helped you. If not, you will need even more luck than I wish you now.
“Please forgive your abandonment in the Bungle. It’s just that a good education is so important, and I believe you received the best. I was always watching you.”
Scarfe shuts off the cassette. “What are your orders, Mr. Stone?”
Stone thinks with agonizing slowness while unseen people minister to him.
“Just clean this mess up, Scarfe. Just clean up this whole goddamn mess.”
But he knows as he speaks that this is not Scarfe’s job.
It’s his.
A SHORT COURSE IN ART APPRECIATION
We were so happy, Elena and I, in the Vermeer perceptiverse. Our days and nights were filled with visual epiphanies that seemed to ignite the rest of our senses, producing a conflagration of desire that burned higher and higher, until it finally subsided to the embers of satiation, from which the whole inferno, phoenixlike, could be rekindled at will. There had never been a time when we were so thrilled with life, so enamored of the world and each other—so much in love.
Yet somehow, I knew from the start that our idyll was doomed to end. Such bliss was not for us, could never last. I don’t know what it was that implanted such a subliminal worm of doubt in my mind, with its tiny, whispering voice that spoke continually of transience and loss and exhaustion. Perhaps it was the memory of the sheer avidity and almost obscene yearning greed with which Elena had first approached me with the idea of altering our natural perceptiverses.
She entered my apartment that spring day (we were not yet living together then, a symbol, I believe, of our separate identities that irrationally irked her) in a mood like none I had ever witnessed her exhibit. (I try now to picture her unaltered face, as I observed it on that fateful day, but it is so hard, after the dizzying cascade of perceptiverses we have experienced, to clearly visualize anything from that long-ago time. How can I have totally forgotten the mode of seeing that was as natural as breathing to me for thirty-some-odd years? It is as if the natural perceptiverse I was born into is a painting that lies layers deep, below several others, and whose lines can be only imperfectly traced. You will understand, then, if I cannot recreate the scene precisely.)
In any case, I remember our conversation from that day perfectly. (Thank God I resisted the temptation to enter one of the composerperceptiverses, or that memory, too, might be buried, under an avalanche of glorious sound!) I have frequently mentally replayed our words, seeking to learn if there was any way I could have circumvented Elena’s unreasoning desires—avoiding both the heaven and hell that lay embryonic in her steely whims—yet still have managed to hold onto her love.
I feel now that, essentially, there was no way. She was simply too strong and determined for me—or perhaps I was too weak—and I could not deny her.
But I still cannot bring myself to blame her.
Crossing the memory-hazed room, Elena said excitedly, “Robert, it’s out!”
I laid down my book, making sure to shut it off, and, all unwitting, asked, “Not even a hello or a kiss? It must be something wonderful, then. Well, I’ll bite. What’s out?”
“Why, just that new neurotropin everyone’s been waiting so long for, the one to alter the perceptiverses.”
I immediately grew defensive. “Elena, you know I try to steer clear of those designer drugs. They’re just not—not natural. I’m not a prig, Elena. I don’t mind indulging in a little grass or coke now and then—they’re perfectly natural mind-altering substances that mankind’s been using for centuries. But these new artificial compounds—they can really screw up your neuropeptides.”
Elena grew huffy. “Robert, you’re talking nonsense. This isn’t one of the regulated substances, you know, like tempo or ziptone. Why, it’s not even supposed to be as strong as estheticine. It doesn’t get you high or alter your thinking at all. It merely gives you a new perceptiverse.”
“And what, if I may ask, is a perceptiverse?”
“Oh Robert,” Elena sighed in exasperation, “and