Sky Coyote (8 page)

CHERISH the divine emotions that make you what you are, my children: the unnatural survivors of fragile humanity, from them but never again of them, watching eternally as human creativity is destroyed and yet eternally renewed, so that even as we unnaturals MOURN, we must unnaturally CELEBRATE!

“That’s just what I thought, myself. Dare we take it further? Why not receivers as well as transmitters? Lice that pick up Company broadcasts of popular entertainment. Lice that store and deliver coded information. Think of the possibilities!”

“You know, I think I did see this article. Wasn’t this in the issue with Alec Guinness on the cover?”

DO NOT shrug, as some will, and declare that weeds and death SHOULD conquer because the gilded and graceful SHARE the streets with poverty and disease.
A glare in my direction left no doubt about Houbert’s opinion of me.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, with an article on his postwar comedies.”

“That’s the one. I haven’t read it yet. It’s packed in my carry-on so I’ll have something to read on the transport.”

Consider us here on this last night of a century, the deathless, the eternally beautiful, in all our comfort and felicity. Yet even WE shall scatter like leaves before the wind, and who can know when we shall meet again? This gorgeous pavilion will vanish with the dews of morning; yet our more PERMANENT halls shall prove no less insubstantial!
Houbert buried his face in his hands, smearing his golden paint.

“Well, don’t miss the ‘Coming Attractions’ section. Personally,
I’m thrilled by the potential uses. I can just see myself sitting in some London salon with my lice-ridden peruke, eavesdropping on Doctor Johnson!” Lewis rubbed his hands together.

“How colorful.” Mendoza moved her elbow as a Mayan waiter put down a silver ice bucket containing a champagne bottle. “What’s this? We didn’t order champagne.”

“The Father of Heaven (who is, by the way, giving a beautiful speech to which everyone ought to be paying attention) gave orders that this beverage be served to all His immortal children,” replied the Mayan primly. “Whether They deserve it or not.”

“Oh yeah?” Mendoza glared back at him. “Well, you can go jump in the nearest fountain, pal.”

Houbert continued:
Now, you will ask, my children: What are we to do? How are we to live, knowing that ALL beauty is ephemeral? And I shall tell you to dance! DANCE, and express the sorrow in your perfect and unfailing hearts! RENEW in your beautiful dance the pattern of the cosmos itself! Dance, my children, even as you hear the bell tolling and know it shall NEVER toll for thee!!
And the spotlight went out, causing him to vanish.

“Certainly,” said the waiter, drawing himself up in injured dignity just as the tolling of a very large, very loud bell reverberated through the place. “I’ll obey the Daughter of Heaven immediately. I’ll go right out to the nearest fountain, even in these clothes which require pressing and starching, and I’ll just leap in.” He turned to push his way through the crowd on the mezzanine, which had become pretty dense by this time, so I was able to grab his arm.

“What are you, nuts?” I demanded, and Lewis joined in: “Now, now, let’s not lose our tempers.”

“Look, you stupid bloody Indian—” Mendoza yelled in exasperation as a frenzied waltz began to play.

“Mendoza—”

“Why, of course this slave is stupid. But not so stupid that he has forgotten he’s under oath to obey any order whatsoever given him by a Child of Heaven, no matter how unpleasant or irrational. But stupid most assuredly. The Daughter of Heaven has said so.” The waiter jutted his ferocious nose in the air.

“Aw, come on, you don’t have to go jump in any fountains,” I told him.

“No, with all respect, Son of Heaven, I must obey.”

“Not if both he and I countermand her order,” Lewis proposed. “That would satisfy your oath, wouldn’t it? Two Children of Heaven surely overrule one. We both order you
not
to go jump in the nearest fountain. Don’t we, Joseph?”

“Yeah, we do, and not only that”—I looked sternly at Mendoza—”the Daughter of Heaven is going to reverse her order too. Aren’t you, Mendoza?”

She got an evil gleam in her eyes.

“And she’s not going to order you to do something painful and difficult with the champagne bottle, either!” I yelled.

“The Daughter of Heaven reverses her previous order,” Mendoza enunciated clearly. I released the waiter’s arm. He shook out his bar towel with a crisp snap, refolded it, and draped it over his wrist.

“Thank You. If You have no further orders, this slave is going to continue serving wine to other Children of Heaven, who have
also
disregarded the Father of Heaven’s request to dance.” And he moved away, back as stiff as a ramrod.

“Goodness, that was awkward,” observed Lewis. “But cheer up; soon enough we won’t have passive-aggressive members of a vanished empire to order about anymore.”

“Three cheers.” Mendoza leaned back wearily. “And I’m not getting up to dance, even if a whole priesthood of Mayans disapproves of me.”

“Good evening, all,” said a voice, seemingly from under the table. A moment later our fourth chair was pushed back, and a little figure clambered up into it.

Lewis nodded. “Good evening, Latif. I assume you have permission to stay up this late?”

“Naturally.” Latif settled back into his chair. The candy-box costume was gone; he wore now the school uniform for the neophyte class, with pleats pressed razor-sharp. “Any of you opening that champagne, by the way?”

“Oh, why not?” Lewis peered into his empty martini glass. He pulled out the drippy bottle and prized up the foil and wire with fastidious care. When the cork finally blew, he poured fresh drinks all around, and we sat for a while watching our fellow immortals dance.

Something I’ve noticed over the years: we don’t dance well, on the whole. None of us are clumsy on the floor, or anything like that; just the opposite. We’re too … smooth. Too perfect. Well, you can’t avoid saying it, we look mechanical. Like big sharks gliding around and around. Never a missed step or beat. Mortals move with a difference, with an awkward something that makes their motion beautiful. Maybe it’s passion. I don’t know. I only knew one immortal who danced well, and she won’t anymore. But maybe it’s just the heels she wears nowadays.

As the level in the champagne bottle grew lower, Lewis began to look green.

“Oh, dear,” he said faintly. “I don’t think I ought to have eaten that last helping of Theobromos mousse.”

“You were drinking martinis before the champagne, weren’t you?” Latif pointed out in his bright little voice. “Theobromine and gin don’t combine well, you know. Try metabolizing sucrose.”

“I haven’t taken in enough starches. Oh dear.”

“Here.” Mendoza pushed back her chair, and Lewis sort of toppled over into her lap, where she fed him sugar cubes from the little dish on the table. He lay there pale and wan. I ordered more champagne, which I shared with Latif. Mendoza just watched the whirling dancers as she stroked Lewis’s limp hair, her face sad and cold.

Hmmm. I looked at them out of the corner of my eye. Had they had a relationship or something, at one time? Lewis was hardly her type. On the other hand, he seemed funny and kind. I found myself hoping she’d made at least one friend during all these years and realized I was in for a lot of trouble on this next job if I let myself worry about the state of Mendoza’s heart. I looked away.

“You’re a lot more presentable in the uniform,” I told Latif. “How’d you get Houbert to let you out of the Hindu prince suit?”

“Nothing he can do.” How could a baby grin wolfishly? “A communication came through this morning. It seems my time-table’s been moved up. I’m to be posted to Labienus ahead of schedule. I leave day after tomorrow. Tell me, sir, have you ever been to Canada? Should one pack a heavyweight wardrobe?”

“Thermal underwear and flannel everything,” I advised. “And plenty of blankets and waterproof shoes. They won’t want you freezing if they’re in such a hurry to get you up there,” I told him. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have intercepted and altered a couple of transmissions to facilitate things, and I wouldn’t have blamed him either. What a cool little customer Latif was. Just like I’d been, once. What would he be like in twenty years?

“Well, we’ll just see, won’t we?” he remarked cheerily, and stood in his chair to pour us both more champagne.

Lewis felt better after a while and lurched upright, just in time to hear
La Valse
by Ravel pulse into its opening chords.

“I wondered when they’d play that,” he groaned. “That’s Houbert’s favorite piece of music, you know. After
The Phantom of the Opera.”
The lights in the ballroom deepened to an ominous and weird purple.

“Well, it’s appropriate for tonight, anyhow,” said Mendoza. “The way it evokes glittering empires about to crumble. Music full of death. God, that’s spooky. Look at everybody!”

I peered out on the dance floor, and I swear I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand. Houbert had worked some trick of lighting, some perversely brilliant special effect, that gave the illusion of death masks on each perfect clockwork dancer who skimmed the ballroom floor in time to that terrible, beautiful music. Swooping and circling, they moved, so many skeletons in satin clothes.

No, wait. They weren’t
human
skeletons. Something was picking up the alloy frame in each of them, the machine that had replaced their mortal, breakable bones, the indestructible casing that held their brains and eyes. Was it some quality in the purple light that caused them to glow through the flesh?

No, not the light—or at least not the light alone. The champagne we’d all been given! He’d had it adulterated with something, some chemical harmless in itself, or we’d have detected it in the first taste. That was what was making our hardware glow.

Slowly I looked down at my own hands. Fine jointed mechanisms riveted to a pivoting frame that disappeared into my lace cuffs. I tried to look at Lewis and Mendoza without turning my head much. They were staring out at the dancers with haunted eyes; they hadn’t noticed that they too were part of the show, a dapper gentleman skeleton machine and a lissome skull-faced lady machine. And Latif? Well, he wasn’t glowing much, because less of him had been replaced, you see. Just a little machine, yet.

And as the music soared to its crashing close, a deafening
chime was heard—two, three, four. The chimes kept coming, and the clock was striking midnight. Happy Hellish New Year, 1700! Things like snakes began to fall from the ceiling, and of course they were only black streamers. Our Mayan waiters began to blow paper horns and crank noisemakers. The waltz ended, and the lights came up. “Auld Lang Syne” was playing, the classic soupy Guy Lombardo arrangement.

Lewis looked gray and tired. Mendoza was pale, shaking. I thought she must have noticed the ugly illusion at our own table—well, not illusion, after all—but she drew a deep breath and said very quietly:

“Oh, how I hate parties. Here we sit tonight, and do you realize how unlikely it is any of us four will ever be together in the same room again?”

Was it loneliness she was afraid of? I reached out my hand to clasp hers.

“Hey, kiddo, you’ll see
me
again. We’re going on the same assignment together, remember?”

She bared her teeth at me.

B
UT WE FOUND OURSELVES ON
the same transport the next morning, strapped into our seats and watching New World One drop away beneath us.

“It was time for you to move on anyway,” I told Mendoza consolingly. “It was stuffy. Decadent. Dull. Nothing should be decadent
and
dull.”

“Your father was a Moorish groom and your mother performed circumcisions on sailors,” she informed me.

“Hey, that’s okay. I know you’re not really sore. You’re going to love it in California.”

“I won’t be able to get a cocktail there for at least a hundred years,” she brooded. “And longer, for a Ghirardelli’s hot fudge sundae.”

“Well, you hated parties anyway.”

She just snarled and opened her magazine, shutting me out. I didn’t mind; do I ever mind? I’m only the guy who gave her eternal life, after all. I settled back in my seat and closed my eyes. Forty winks after last night’s party seemed like a good idea.

I thought about Latif, the self-assured little administrator-in-training,
all his buttons polished, intent on asking the right questions and making the right moves. Funny that he so worshiped my buddy Suleyman, who was anything but a bureaucrat. Still, when you’re tiny and mortal and frightened, and this big god comes looming out of the darkness to offer you a hand—well, it makes an impression. I thought about what it must have been like, in the stinking hold of a slave ship, with all the comfort and safety you’d ever known lying beside you bewilderingly dead … and just as the loss got through to you, and the scream began to rise in your throat because you knew you were
alone
, just then the big man appeared and called your name.

I don’t know how he knew my name. I don’t even remember what my name was. But he was there, looming against the darkness, a god in a bearskin, and his axe and his hands were red. Lying around his feet were the bad guys, all smashed, the tattooed devils who’d caught my family away from the rock shelter. He didn’t smell or look anything like anybody else I’d ever seen. He looked like a mountain and his brow was a cliff, with his pale eyes staring out from its shadow. He saw me where I was hiding. He put out his red hand and called my name, in his flat high voice. I went to him. He took me out of the painted cave and past the fires where his army was burning the bodies of the tattooed men. He explained that the tattooed men had to die because they were bad and made war. I was glad they were dead and burning, because it meant that I wasn’t going to die.