Authors: John Barnes
Mother of Storms (80 page)
Berlina Jameson looks startled, to say the least, and that’s what Hardshaw had hoped for. When you run into smart, tough reporters, the thing to do is to co-opt them, and this will do it. “Well, fellow passenger,”
Hardshaw says—“and that’s off the record because there are enough old voters out there who would confuse that with ‘fellow traveler’—shall we get on the ride and see where history is taking us?”
Hardshaw says—“and that’s off the record because there are enough old voters out there who would confuse that with ‘fellow traveler’—shall we get on the ride and see where history is taking us?”
“With you all the way, Ms. President.”
Attagirl
, Hardshaw thinks,
that’s what I was hoping for.
, Hardshaw thinks,
that’s what I was hoping for.
The first sight of Monte Alban, from the road, is not impressive until you realize what you are looking at. The mountain, and the road with it, slope up sharply into the visitor center, one of those ugly little block buildings that could just as easily be a highway patrol office, a maintenance building for a cemetery, or the conjugal-visit facility for a prison, anywhere on Earth.
What rises behind the visitor center looks like just more mountain; then you realize that it’s man-made, and not by any modern men … and then you see the bits of ancient walls and surfaces, and realize how much the whole site towers above you.
The road winds after the visitor center, and if you take the turn to the right you find yourself among the Zapotec tombs outside the city proper, and come into Monte Alban itself by the back way; Mary Ann remembers more of it than she thought she would, and she doesn’t need to check with Carla except to confirm that they should go in by the main way.
This means a left turn on the trail, and another long, surprising rise, followed by the startling entrance into a central courtyard. By now, there’s more blue than white in the sky—Louie must really be bombing those clouds—and plenty of bright, early evening sunset.
There are two logical locations there for any really major event—the Southern Pyramid, which towers over the whole site, and the Northern Platform, with its superb view of the whole site and of the surrounding area. Which? Mary Ann thinks.
Neither. Use Building J, in the middle,
Carla responds at once.
The holo facilities are better set up there, too.
Carla responds at once.
The holo facilities are better set up there, too.
You’re not going to run those horrible holo films of human sacrifices and priestly orgies and all that?
Mary Ann asks, her esthetic sense offended.
Surely you know that
—
Mary Ann asks, her esthetic sense offended.
Surely you know that
—
We just need the projectors to help the effect,
Carla says.
Really, we’re not human anymore, but we’re not as inhuman as that!
Carla says.
Really, we’re not human anymore, but we’re not as inhuman as that!
Mary Ann laughs, and realizes that she can hear a billion people laughing along through Carla, in the distant way you can hear a party at the other end of a hotel corridor. Of course they all know pretty much what Mary Ann knows, and they’re going to see the place through her eyes; she supposes this absolutely ruins Monte Alban for any future romance-oriented XV. Just one more fringe benefit … .
Jesse, beside her, says, “I suppose we’ll have to talk about what we do while the crowd is coming in? i supposed to be a hundred thousand of them, and even if you figure you can get twenty thousand into the city and another ten thousand or so watching on the Southern Pyramid and Northern Platform each, most people won’t be close enough to see. And it’s still going to take quite a while for them all to get in; the sun will be almost down before everyone has somewhere to be.”
Carla speaks through Mary Ann. “Not to worry. I’ve got a few hundred police I’ve borrowed one way or another, and one battalion of the Mexican Army, to get the crowd into place—they’re all on earphone direct to me. It will move pretty fast. Just get up there, watch it all, and try to relax and wait. Louie and I will let you know when we’re ready to start.”
They have to be content with that. Building J is a sort of lumpy rock pile, not like any other pre-Columbian building anywhere in the hemisphere—it’s asymmetrical, and tunneled all through like a kid’s fort. The holo system they’ve put in here does its “adults only” late-night show on this building, decking it with visions of flowers and then giving the Euro and Japanese tourists a sadistic version in which young, plump girls, breasts and buttocks jiggling, dance naked up the stairs to be brought to orgasm with huge stone dildos, their throats then slit and their corpses, still impaled on the dildos, thrown down into the well. There is absolutely no basis in fact for it but it’s probably Monte Alban’s biggest moneymaker, and certainly most tourist guides say it’s what you mustn’t miss.
Now as Jesse and Mary Ann climb the long stairs, she has a stray vision of how they might have used her in such a video, displaying her expensive body, rebuilt as she is, her outsized breasts slapping up and down as she runs up the steps, her too-taut, too-small buttocks exposing her labia, and feels a little ill at it; she knows the vision is leaking through to the rest of the world (the Passionet staff, in the old days, would just have
loved
that) and that god knows how many men are getting their switches thrown by it.
loved
that) and that god knows how many men are getting their switches thrown by it.
Well, she’ll never have an audience like this again. She sends them a solid wave of nausea;
now that technology is allowing us to feel what others feel, let’s give them the whole works, shall we?
now that technology is allowing us to feel what others feel, let’s give them the whole works, shall we?
They reach the main upper surface; anything farther than this will require using their hands to climb, and Carla tells them they can stop here.
When Jesse and Mary Ann look back, they see that the crowd is coming in great numbers. “Do we even know anyone’s name anymore?” she asks. “The first few days there were so many, and I felt—oh, I don’t know, at one with them. Of course I know it was an illusion and I didn’t know anyone at all well … but I used to feel like most of these people were individuals, and like I had moved in among them, and now here I am seeing them as a big faceless Third World mass again.”
Jesse glances at her sideways. “I was thinking I’d really like to find Tomás. It would be fun to see this with him, and I’m not really any use to you.”
Mary Ann is about to say something when Carla’s voice comes through. “Sure, go ahead—we can find you afterward.”
Jesse kisses her, very nicely but very quickly, and he goes down the steps to fade into the great swirl of white shirts and white dresses made gray with rain. Mary Ann has a long moment of feeling very alone, and a deep wish to go down and do the same thing he’s doing; she looks up and away and sees that there are long lines of people snaking up the side of the Southern Pyramid, filling in the surface in great blocks, the blocks then turning lighter as more white shirts and white dresses join. “It will be all white soon,” she says.
No, each head and face forms a dark dot in it, see? And the dots move and change against each other, and you can see that individuals walk differently. They don’t completely disappear into a faceless mass unless you make the effort to see them that way,
Carla’s voice says, in Mary Ann’s head.
Carla’s voice says, in Mary Ann’s head.
Mary Ann sighs. She’s feeling very strongly that all she is here is an expensive piece of broadcasting equipment, and although for once it’s not her breasts but her rebuilt skull that they want, it comes down to the same thing.
She’s amazed at the wounded feeling that comes to her from Carla at that.
I hope we haven’t made you feel that way. We like you a lot, Mary Ann, and we know a lot about you, you know—we’ve looked at every bit of the record, including all the transcripts that Passionet kept on you. No one has ever known you better, and you were our choice for this because we preferred to work with you.
I hope we haven’t made you feel that way. We like you a lot, Mary Ann, and we know a lot about you, you know—we’ve looked at every bit of the record, including all the transcripts that Passionet kept on you. No one has ever known you better, and you were our choice for this because we preferred to work with you.
Mary Ann sits down on one of the blocks of stone, hugging herself. The water from the cool stone is soaking through her jeans, but she’s already so wet that it doesn’t matter much. It’s not a matter of feeling used, she realizes, but a matter of feeling herself vanish into something much bigger than merely a crowd. No matter how much by choice, hers and others’, she is standing right here, and everything flows out from this moment—
She feels Carla laughing gently, and Louie joining in. There’s empathy in it, because, she suddenly realizes, certainly neither of them would have chosen to be what they have become … and a sense of comedy rooted in the fact that no, it’s not true at all that it all depends upon her—if this doesn’t work out, there are many, many more experiments to try, so there is much to be gained but little to lose, except that both of them feel somehow that it might be better drama, a better story, if it happens today, on the day that—
My god. Clem’s eye will breach in a matter of—minutes. The superhurricanes
are beginning to succumb to the ice Frisbees. So that’s what they’re here for? To celebrate?
are beginning to succumb to the ice Frisbees. So that’s what they’re here for? To celebrate?
Partly,
Louie admits.
Seems like people might enjoy having that announced. But also because this is a good setting, we like and trust you, and so it seemed like the time and place to do this.
Louie admits.
Seems like people might enjoy having that announced. But also because this is a good setting, we like and trust you, and so it seemed like the time and place to do this.
The crowd outside by now has reached the point where the gates and pathways into the ruined city are clogging, so that there are great pileups of people waiting on the rain-wet green slopes, and then a clot at each entryway, and finally a relatively open, swift-moving flow after the gate.
“Why are they all in white?” Mary Ann asks suddenly.
They’re not. If you look around you’ll see the occasional suit and now and then a dress in bright colors. But for most of them, white is their best clothes, what you wear when something special happens—and so they found a way to change into their best clothes before they came up here. They are doing all of us considerable honor,
Carla explains.
Carla explains.
Mary Ann had understood that much, but it hadn’t been what she meant. The question was why this should be anything to honor. She didn’t necessarily see any reason why these people should feel happy or even interested in the chaos that had been made by people like her. Without the squabblings of power and the fussings of the media—and for that matter without the whole silly business of making things matter by making them happen to a woman with red hair, taut butt, and huge teats—wouldn’t they be better off?
The clathrates were always down there waiting to be unlocked—they have done it in the past and they will do it again.
Carla’s voice is infinitely patient, but then given that Carla may very well be holding thousands of humanyears of conversation with Louie between each word she speaks to Mary Ann, undoubtedly she can afford to be patient.
As for the rest … people make too much of that. They find you important because you are on XV, and they find XV important because it’s interesting and something they have to go into the big town to try—the idea of having it in their homes, like
los
norteamericanos, is still strange to them. But none of that means they think they themselves are a faceless mass, and none of it means that they see themselves only in the light of the media from the wealthy nations.
Carla’s voice is infinitely patient, but then given that Carla may very well be holding thousands of humanyears of conversation with Louie between each word she speaks to Mary Ann, undoubtedly she can afford to be patient.
As for the rest … people make too much of that. They find you important because you are on XV, and they find XV important because it’s interesting and something they have to go into the big town to try—the idea of having it in their homes, like
los
norteamericanos, is still strange to them. But none of that means they think they themselves are a faceless mass, and none of it means that they see themselves only in the light of the media from the wealthy nations.
Mary Ann sits and thinks, her arms clutching hard at the long calves that she thinks probably are what got her here. It’s true, of course, that like so many others, she always assumed that what people saw of themselves was how they thought of themselves … but then the thought comes to her, again and again, now that Carla has suggested it, that perhaps the image they had of themselves is the kind of thing that mattered, not to the people who swing the picks and wait the tables, but to the people sitting at the tables watching them do it. And if that should be the case, then … maybe
people like Mary Ann,
or no, dammit, let’s keep a little dignity and say people like Synthi Venture,
have had a slightly exaggerated notion of their own importance for a long time?
people like Mary Ann,
or no, dammit, let’s keep a little dignity and say people like Synthi Venture,
have had a slightly exaggerated notion of their own importance for a long time?
She looks up into the now-blue sky and sees how the surrounding valleys are bathed in sunlight, but also that Louie is holding the clouds all around back by main force, so that on the horizon in all directions there is a long, low blue streak like an inky smear that someone has put along the horizon of a painter’s landscape. The low sun is warming everything rapidly, and sunlight dances on the water coating the ancient stones.
She laughs. Though water has run off these stones many times before, now that it’s doing it in front of her, and people everywhere are seeing it through her eyes, it means something—it’s the way that everyone will remember it forever. It’s too much like what her old Uncle Jack, actually her father’s uncle, used to say—“That goddam media makes too big a deal out of things.”
But surely there
are
such things as big deals? Just because there were eight billion people on the planet—down from nine and a half billion six months ago—and on any given night, what was for their individual dinners mattered more to them than dynasties, economies, and all of religion and art … that didn’t mean those things went away, and after all, those things also, partly, determined what was going to be for dinner or if there would be a dinner at all.
are
such things as big deals? Just because there were eight billion people on the planet—down from nine and a half billion six months ago—and on any given night, what was for their individual dinners mattered more to them than dynasties, economies, and all of religion and art … that didn’t mean those things went away, and after all, those things also, partly, determined what was going to be for dinner or if there would be a dinner at all.
She sits up here and thinks to herself,
All that a billion people will get of this moment is what they get through me, and most of them will then take what they get through me and plug it into themselves. But all I will get is what I see, plus of course … my own feelings and experiences, which all of them get. They will eventually get up from the XV and think about things their fathers said fifty years ago, or smell the sauce of something cooking, or turn back to shoring up the sandbag walls of their shelters, but I will see and perceive less than anyone else here; I’m the only person here who will have only the media experience and nothing else.
All that a billion people will get of this moment is what they get through me, and most of them will then take what they get through me and plug it into themselves. But all I will get is what I see, plus of course … my own feelings and experiences, which all of them get. They will eventually get up from the XV and think about things their fathers said fifty years ago, or smell the sauce of something cooking, or turn back to shoring up the sandbag walls of their shelters, but I will see and perceive less than anyone else here; I’m the only person here who will have only the media experience and nothing else.
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