Too, Too Solid Flesh Page 5

  Would she kill Capek if she thought that the next HeadTek might let her join the company?

  He looked down the hall one last time. The omnilights flickered and, as he pulled his head back hastily, he smiled. He had no reason to think she could evade the omnilights.

  Paulette was stretched against a liveoak trunk on the lobby wall. “Lay on, Macduff,” he said.

  * * * * *

  So far Horatio had had no chance to see the city. His impressions of it were formed from simula productions, Access, and vague memories.

  Before entering the subway, he saw only one landmark, but one which thrilled him: a moss-hung, chipped steroplasty sign which said,

  “BROADWAY.”

  Horatio remembered the subways from his visit to New York with his mother. The trains were dirtier but, except for the power units, exactly as they’d been then—exactly as they’d been for nearly fifty years, in fact.

  On the ride to Queens, Horatio listened while she babbled about her neighbors (“The dregs of the earth—you wouldn’t believe the squalor”), about their complaints against her dancing (“You’d think Lefties would be more tolerant of artists—or maybe they’re not Lefties, but simply downtrodden, the poor filthy things”), about chips she’d read, all of which were already simulas.

  She chatted over the soft perpetual sound of Newzak (“There when you care”), commercially popular news-simulas telling people pleasant items about the Middle Eastern Chemwar, about speedtrade and superstocks, about a crack-brained theory from a West Coast college that genetic tests could detect Leftism.

  She ignored it all. “I have chips of three dozen plays, darling. You can read, can’t you? Simula isn’t the same—but you must see Arkady Potemkin, the last of the greats—”

  Horatio watched her in the soft light of the photolumen panels, trying to imagine her killing Capek.

  In the corner of the car sat a girl he had seen in front of the theater. She had a deadcloth rag, much like a shawl, pulled across her shoulder. She was keeping it tight across her body by pinning it against the train wall with one shoulder and pulling it across herself with her other arm. Opposite her a gaunt Greenhouse Poolsider, wearing a deadcloth jacket and canvas pants, was taking long pulls from a bottle of something purple.

  The Poolsider was making noises to himself and at them: a chicken, a crow, a kookaburra. Horatio wrapped part of his cloak around Paulette, who shrugged it off and said to the Poolsider, “Do a loon.” The Poolsider shut up.

  Paulette’s apartment building was old brick and stone, rundown enough that the owner couldn’t afford to lay lichens over the exterior. Eventually lichens would spread from other buildings, though not many in this neighborhood had them; by then it might not be fashionable. They ran up the stairs to her flat, and Horatio thought the echo from stairs fifty years dead sounded ghostly.

  She made a few quick hand-signals at her door and it opened, nearly blinding them. “Bright light at last. God, I’ve felt like a cave fish.” She strode straight through the entry room.

  Horatio followed, glancing at the film posters, the playbills, the pictures of actors and actresses sixty and seventy years dead, all simula stars now. Some of the posters looked genuine; if so, they were terribly expensive.

  “Do you live here alone?” He followed her cautiously, checking for other occupants.

  “Completely, darling. It’s my one extravagance” She smiled at Horatio. Her eyes were blue, with cat’s pupils; she’d been taking a fashion drug that relaxed and constricted the iris in relation to gravity. The drug would inevitably blind her, but the corrective medication was inexpensive, for people who could afford the constrictor.

  Horatio tried to smooth his cloak, then gave up and dropped his hands.

  “You look nice,” she said and cocked her head to one side as she laughed.

  Her earrings sang, echoing her laughter. Probably she had reset them for echo-music. Clearly, they were sophisticated. Horatio wondered if they could do simula projections.

  She tilted her head the other way and said, “Do you like these? They’re my one extravagance.”

  She sat on the mattress. Horatio heard the ghost of a sigh. She patted the bed. “Join me.” It quivered.

  Horatio sat easily, then jumped up. The bed, warm and yielding, had moaned.

  She laughed at his expression. “You’ve never tried one?” She pulled back the sheet, exposing soft pink skin with a fine down of blonde hair. “Darling, you are from out of town.”

  “I’m not from anywhere, remember?” He stared at the bed. “What is it?”

  “Fleshbed, cloned from Terri Ashenfelter, the live model from the teens.” She stroked the mattress, which quivered.

  “It’s alive.” He touched it, then Paulette.

  “Of course it’s alive.” She patted it like she would a dog, and it sighed again. “For what it costs, it should be. It has a life support system, vocal cords, a neolung—”

  “Does it think?” He sat carefully. “Can it feel?”

  “Of course it can feel. That’s the point.” Paulette took off an earring, swinging it from her finger. It chimed softly. “But it’s only got a lump of neuroputty the size of a dog’s brain. I didn’t want one that could talk.”

  She made a face. “Some people make them say incredible things. It’s enough to make you sick.” She patted it again. “This one just makes noises.”

  Somewhere, Horatio had heard a book say that the rich were not like you or me. He had never been as poor as a Poolsider, but he had clearly never been as rich as Paulette was. “Noises.” He touched it, pulling his hand back as the bed gasped and arched toward him. Something smelled strange in the room: human and physical.

  “It can’t help it, the poor thing.” Paulette swung the earring toward him, making it chime again.

  Horatio’s throat tightened; her removing that one earring excited him. More than it should, really. “Why I—why can’t it help it?” He nearly called the bed “she.”

  “You are naïve, aren’t you?” Paulette stroked the bed near him, and suddenly he was dizzy. “Pheromones. Human-specifics in the life-support system.” She touched it again, then rubbed her moistened hand across his nose.

  His mouth was watering. “Do they affect the bed, too?”

  “Of course. It’s always ready, never satisfied.” She looked sad, then giggled. “I’ve named it Fugit Amor; that’s an old statue of two lovers trapped back-to-back in Hell. Isn’t that just perfect?”

  “Perfect?” Just now it sounded horrifying. Horatio’s nostrils flared. He said, trembling, “You look silly wearing one earring”

  “Take the other off me.”

  He hung them both from a swing-chain over her jewelry box. It took him three tries, and he leaped back when he was done, setting the chain in motion. The jewelry laughed the entire time that the bed gasped and cried.

  5

  Shouting men and women in dirty coveralls laid liveplank walkways across sawhorses in the square. Horatio stepped around the tidal pools in the potholes upshore from Ocean Boulevard. It was dawn: low tide in the Greenhouse Pools, the parts of old Queens that were barely above sea level.

  The workers talked about offshore winds and storm surges. A couple of them chalked yesterday’s high-water marks on a shop, betting on today’s. The shop had a new floor added three feet above street level. One of the younger workers pointed to the highest mark, then to the second-story window. “The higher the dryer, huh?”

  Horatio had risen quietly, while Paulette’s room was still gray and colorless. The bed whimpered, but Paulette slept.

  The paving, he noted with distaste, was crawling with walking catfish, stumping determinedly to the warm and comparatively fresh sewer water under high ground. When the incoming tide turned back, they’d turn with it, flowing from pipe to pipe until a grille stopped them, then walking from pool to pool until the salt content kept them back. They were nasty things, brought in by eco-terrorists in the twenties.

&
nbsp; He also saw several deer, two mountain goats, and countless flying squirrels. The wildlife would be harder to spot later, when more people were out.

  The offshore breeze stank of salt, fish, and the rich, rotten odor of small crabs, shellfish, and seaweed. Horatio could remember, in Chicago on High State Street after the lake had spilled over, the sweet live smell of modified sea oats on the dikes. This morning he watched an eight-point buck bound away and thought how once, walking near Chicago’s Old Water Tower in the early morning, he’d seen a bobcat.

  Buried deep in him were still earlier memories of what cities used to smell like: bus fumes, urine, garbage.

  He stared at Queens from the elevated train, watching as the storefronts to either side grew fancier. Cypress gave way to cedar. The Manhattan subway station entrance was oak. He walked quickly back to the theater, staring at the Tudor facade and thatch roof.

  * * * * *

  The breakfast room of the Globe Hamlet Troupe was lifeless, the walls and floors smooth and glowing. Horatio gratefully accepted coffee from one of the courtiers.

  Gertrude, crown and all, wore a hand-sewn housecoat. Ro-sencrantz and Guildenstern wore matching flannel pajamas. Osric affected a satin nineteenth century smoking jacket. The ghost shimmered at the end of the table, holding a translucent coffee-mug that said, in dripping letters, “SHOW SOME RESPECT FOR THE DEAD.”

  Horatio listened to last night’s gossip:

  “—Wanted me to fence. That’s all. Called it ‘hostility-free violence.’ Can you imagine? I had to be careful not to hurt him—”

  “Told me to ask, slapped me when I did, lay in my arms and wept like a baby—”

  “And, my dear, you should have seen my face when she said, ‘Wear this.’ I felt like John Wayne in the simula of Some Like It Hot.”

  Osric set his teacup down showily. “And you, darling boy, how was your night?”

  “Me?” Horatio nearly dropped his cup. “I—”

  “Don’t have to answer.” All heads turned as Hamlet strolled through the autodoor and prevented it from closing by framing himself in the doorway. “Horatio is a gentleman, and a scholar, and probably a judge of—tact. Look in the play. Does he ever talk about a lady friend?”

  “Exactly why I wondered,” Osric said shrewdly, crooking a finger off the cup handle. His little finger had an absurd filigree of miniature ivy twined around it in gold. “Will you talk about a lady friend now?”

  Horatio said evenly, “If I don’t, I’ll disappoint you—and if I do, I’ll certainly disappoint you.”

  There were a few chuckles. Rosencrantz threw a napkin, which Horatio caught. Osric sniffed. “Well, I just thought—and you came in late, as if there were nothing to do today—” If he said anything more, it went into his teacup.

  Hamlet bowed politely to Gertrude. “Did you have a good night, Mother?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She smiled and, even to Horatio, the barren room seemed cozier. “Come kiss me good morning.” Hamlet slid around the table, patting shoulders and touching hands, and kissed Gertrude on the cheek.

  She kissed his lips lightly. “And your night?”

  “I slept, but not well.” He glanced at Horatio. “You’d think solitude would be more restful than company.”

  Laertes said, “Not for you.”

  Rosencrantz said, “Have you tried sipping tea to drop off?”

  Guildenstern said, “Have you tried humming to yourself?”

  Claudius said, “Have you tried taking poison?”

  Hamlet smiled. “I have. It gives me headaches.” He spread his arms. “Cast, friends—family—” His look took in Claudius, as well as his mother. “We have a fully initiated cast member now.”

  “I know,” Osric leaned on his hand.

  The gravedigger, from his side table, snorted. “Always eager for a new male member, ain’t we?”

  Hamlet rested his hands on Horatio’s shoulders. “He has performed. He’s one of us.” The entire table stood—Gertrude and Claudius regally, Ophelia lightly, Polonius painfully—and they applauded.

  Horatio blushed, but noted that Hamlet didn’t clap.

  Polonius extended his hands. “Now you’re one of the bunch, and we’ll teach you the tricks of the trade.” He held up a warning forefinger. “The show must go on, but never perform with children or animals. There’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway. Don’t swallow your lines, upstage the star, or turn your back on an audience, and never forget that an actor shot Lincoln.”

  Gertrude applauded. Claudius sighed.

  Hamlet took a scrollscreen from his doublet and unrolled it against the wall, where it clung. “The usual. Highlight performers, check the blocking and comments—the rest of you check, too. Especially you, Barnardo.”

  To Horatio he said, “Come with me. Some extra notes, and then we’ll go outside.”

  The others froze. Claudius said, “You, Hamlet?”

  “Outside,” Hamlet said firmly. “To get notes for a later production.”

  He turned away just as Gertrude said anxiously, “Do be careful. It’s awful out there; everything’s alive.”

  Polonius called, “Never rush an exit, but always leave ‘em wanting more. Break a leg.”

  The doors closed on muffled swearing. Hamlet smiled. “Poor Barnardo. I criticize him every performance. He has the first line in the play. It primes the others for my criticism.” He sighed. “He’s also too fast, or too slow, or too wooden, or too lively. I wish he’d do better.”

  “What happens the day you can’t criticize him?”

  “Then he’ll get no better.”

  At the outside door, Theater Access said simply, “Hamlet. You’re leaving?”

  He glanced at Horatio. “I’ll be with a human. You can track my movements, can’t you?”

  “Of course. Please be back for rehearsal.”

  Hamlet said happily as they went down the theater steps, “I knew they wouldn’t let us out so often unless we had some kind of tracking device.”

  Horatio said, “You think that’s good?”

  Hamlet nodded. “It means we’re important. Where are we going?”

  Horatio glanced at the Circle-A signs for Access and said simply, “To a lab in a park. Someone you know once worked there.” He walked Hamlet quickly to the subway.

  It pulled in quietly, a single multi-seat car stopping for body heat. The car inside had graffiti: names, cartoons, and, on the far wall, a slogan: “THE POSITION YOU STATE IS ONLY AS IMPORTANT AS THE POSITION YOU HOLD.”

  Horatio picked up a leaflet on the floor and snorted. “I knew it.” He passed it to Hamlet.

  Hamlet, staring around the unclean car delightedly, read the headline: “THE ZURICH TREATY: AN AGREEMENT TO PRESERVE WAR.” He cocked an ear. “Why isn’t this on the news station?”

  “Is that thing on? I don’t even hear it any more. Infobases wouldn’t cover a peace conference.” He mocked the slogan, in a rich baritone. “‘EZNews. All the news you care to hear.’ Peace conferences are dull, and politics unpleasant.” He took the leaflet from Hamlet and tossed it away. “Newzak and EZNews don’t carry political trash.”

  Hamlet said solemnly, “Censorship.”

  Horatio was genuinely shocked. “Not in America.”

  “Then why isn’t the leaflet on an infobase?”

  Horatio thought how childlike Hamlet’s questions were. “Because its views aren’t profitable.”

  “That’s always true of odd views,” Hamlet said firmly. “Until they’re popular.”

  Horatio changed the subject. “My lord? Was my acting good?”

  “It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “Look, it’s not Hamlet. It’s just Horatio.”

  Hamlet stopped dead. “Never ‘just Horatio.’ You’re an actor, and that’s important. Even if you’re really a cop, you’re an actor.”

  Horatio looked away, embarrassed that he wasn’t really either one. “I’m no actor.”

  Hamlet pa
tted his shoulder. “You are now.”

  * * * * *

  As Horatio and Hamlet came up from the subway exit, passenger pigeons flapped away from the stone steps and worn deadwood banister. A woman with a ragged loaf of bread glared at the two of them.

  Hamlet ducked automatically. Horatio strode through the flock of over a hundred birds, waving his arms to frighten them.

  Hamlet walked carefully toward the woman, who clutched her bulky deadcloth jacket and watched him nervously. He slowly raised his arms, looking like a crucifix or like the long-ago scarecrows of farm country.

  The pigeons settled on his shoulders and arms, clutching his cloak with their talons. One perched on his head. Hamlet turned slowly. The birds occasionally flapped for balance, but stayed where they were. The old woman clapped.

  Horatio frowned, “We’d better hurry.”

  Hamlet, with quick dexterity, caught the pigeon on his head and tipped it like a hat to the woman. She giggled. He ran to catch up with Horatio. “What were those birds?”

  “Passenger pigeons.” He never broke stride.

  Hamlet stared at the sky, where thousands more circled. “Where did they all come from?”

  Horatio didn’t look up. “Cincinnati.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Around the 1900’s, Martha—the last passenger pigeon—died in the Cincinnati zoo. They had her stuffed. Ten years ago somebody pulled her gene pattern from a feather cell and grew a whole female out of Synthcell.

  “Then they hit up the Museum of Natural History for a male, and—” He shrugged. “The passenger pigeons were back in business.”

  “How do you know so much about it?” Hamlet hurried to keep up.

  Horatio strode along, not looking at him. “Access runs simulas about it once in a while. Martha was the first retroclone. After her, they brought back everything: the dodo, the great auk, even whales. But everybody remembers Martha.”

  Hamlet looked to either side at the flowers—thousands of them. The beds had long since turned into a tangle of species and colors. He said suddenly, “Has anyone retrocloned humans?”