Alternate Gerrolds (2 page)

Here’s all I have to say. I wrote these stories. I wrote them (most of them anyway) for some anthologies edited by Mike Resnick. And no,
I am not ashamed of it
. So there.

And now, whether you want to or not, you will
stop
reading this.

Why?

Because I say so.

 

AT FIRST, I thought her hair was on fire.

The light danced around her face in orange waves. Red and yellow highlights sparked and flashed. Biogenetic cellular-holography. She was a walking celebration.

I stopped what I was doing, which was easy, because I wasn’t doing anything. I was sitting and listening to myself die. I opened my mouth, realized I didn’t know what to say, closed it again and waited.

“May I come in?”

“You’re already in.”

The door slid shut behind her.

She wore an oil-slick daycoat. It parted for an instant and my heart stopped. Naked shimmersilk. Sprayed on. She did it deliberately. I was doomed and we both knew it.

“May I sit down?”

There were only two chairs in the room. There was no other furniture. I didn’t need furniture. Furniture is for resisting gravity. I’ve never had a problem with gravity. Levity, maybe. Gravity, never.

I waved a hand toward the other chair, a barely perceptible gesture. She poured herself into it. I envied the chair.

I cleared my throat, tried to clear my mind, and asked, “What is it you want?”

“I was told you might be able to help me.” Her voice had the same smoky rasp as a glass of hundred-year-old bourbon. You could die in it. “I’m looking for a bauble.”

I coughed mechanically. Another part of me slipped and died. Somehow, I got the words out. “I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed. I deal in trade goods.”

Translation: when there’s nothing else, I fence.

I was fencing now. We were both fencing. A different sense of the word. She was winning. I was dying. Faster than ever.

“It’s
very
important to me,” she insisted. “It’s worthless to anybody else, but it’s very important to me. It’s a necklace.” The violet huskiness in her voice was so rough you could climb it.

“I’d like to help you, but—” A lie. I wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Parts of me were trying to respond. No. Not right. Parts of me were demanding that other parts respond. Parts that no longer existed. Or operated. Or cared. “—I’m not what you think I am.”

“I know what you are,” she said, all honeysuckle and razors. She stopped. She studied me for a moment. Her eyes changed. She knew she didn’t have to pretend with me.

She pulled a silver cigarette case from her pocket. I watched as she opened it, a graceful unfolding gesture. Her fingers danced a little ballet, selected a cigarette and lifted it to her molten lips. Her nails gleamed like ice.

She waited. I made no move to light it. She lifted an eyebrow at me.

“No, I don’t mind if you smoke,” I said, pretending to misunderstand. Discourteous, perhaps, but energy conservation ranks higher than courtesy to a dying thing.

Over the dancing flame, she said, “I was told that you sometimes manage private investigations. This necklace was taken from me. I need it back. I’ve followed it across five worlds. I’ll do
anything
to get it back.” The emphasis was heart-stopping. “You understand me, don’t you?”

She was a fantasy of pink and gold magic, and she had eyes as green as ocean dreams. I understood. But it was empty understanding. Too late.

Without breaking the connection from her eyes to mine, I shook my head slowly.

She inhaled, held it, closed her eyes, opened them, exhaled, glanced sideways over at me. “Does the name Kilrenko mean anything to you?”

I looked at my fingernails. They needed cleaning. I looked at her fingernails. They were made of diamond. They glittered. They were silver knives. I thought of the scratches those nails could leave on a man’s back and decided I was safer thinking about anything else. Almost anything else.

“Never heard it before,” I said. She didn’t believe me either.

I knew who she was. I couldn’t
not
know. There were only a few of them. And they were all famous. She was one of the ones they called the Alluras. They said the Alluras were the most beautiful. I believed it.

A hundred years ago, I sold off the last part of my humanity. For the first time, I was beginning to regret it. I could almost remember what I lost, what it felt like. I could
almost
wish for it again.

“When I was a little boy—” she began. “Yes,” she said, to my look. “They start with boys. There are good reasons for it. And no—” she said, to my unasked question, “I’ve never once stopped to wonder if I’ve missed anything.”

That was the difference between us. Light years.

She shrugged out of her coat. I watched in fascination. It slid off her shoulders and carelessly down her sides. She juggled the cigarette from one hand to the other. It was a performance for an audience of one.

Too bad it was wasted.

Maybe not.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew. And she knew that I knew too.

“When I was a boy,” she began again, comfortable now, “they told me that one of the reasons I was selected was because of my persistence. My refusal to quit. That’s part of the transformation process. So much of it is beyond your imagination.” Another languorous puff on her cigarette. Tongue against teeth. Lips pursing in a seductive promise. The cigarette moaned and died happy. “Yes, I’m completely female now. In fact, I’m more female than if I had been genetically designed and born female. But getting here requires persistence. I have persistence.
Do you understand what I’m saying?
I want that necklace. Whoever has it. Wherever it is. No questions asked. I’m going to have it back.”

“What makes it so valuable?” I asked. My throat was dry.

“That’s not your concern.”

“It is if you want my help.”

Silence. She considered my words. “I couldn’t even begin to explain it,” she said.

“Try me.”

Her eyes narrowed. “All right. It looks like a simple strand of silver beads. Nothing really extraordinary about it at all. If you didn’t know what it was, you’d assume it was just a trinket. Polished volcanic rock.”

“What is it?” I asked.

She dropped her cigarette to the floor. She placed the toe of one bare foot on it and scuffed it out in one swift, violent movement. She brought her eyes back to mine. They had changed color. They were black, with little glimmers of crimson at the back of them. “It’s me,” she admitted. “It’s the part of me that doesn’t walk around.”

“Memory beads?” I asked.

“Of a sort.” She conceded. “Memory, yes. Processing too. And ...
more.”

“It’s an identity platform, right?”

“You’ve seen it.” A statement, not a question.

I shrugged. “I might have heard about it. “

“Without it,” she said, and her voice took on a terrifying quality, “I’m dead. The body walks around, but the soul—the soul is in the necklace.” She looked at me perceptively. She stood up and turned around. Slowly. If the shimmersilk could hug her any closer, it would be behind her.

“Look at me,” she whispered. “Do you think it’s right that a body like this should be walking around without a soul?”

Long pause. “You play dirty, lady.”

“So they tell me.”

“I’m dying,” I said.

“I knew that before I walked in.”

I tapped the chair arm. My fingers clicked like granite. “I began two centuries ago,” I said. “I’m wearing out. I’m running on empty. Do you know that term. It’s an anachronism now. It means there’s nothing left. It means that I’m running on my own momentum.”

She listened politely. She had time. I didn’t. I talked anyway.

“When I started, I had three brains. Now, I have one. I have no backup. If I lose a memory, it’s gone forever. And the
last
one is wearing out. I’m losing memories every day, a bit at a time, a bit at a time, a bit at a time—” I stopped myself, rebooted the thought.

“Yes,” she said. Then she added, “Please don’t ask me to be sorry.”

“I know,” I said. “You don’t do sorry.”

“I can’t help you,” she said slowly.

“Actually, you can.”

“I won’t,” she clarified. “I don’t do
sympathy.”

I tapped the chair arm again. A portion of the wall beside me opened. A drawer slid out. She came alert. She didn’t move a muscle, but she came completely, totally,
absolutely
alert.

I reached over and pulled out a self-destruct box just large enough to hold a dagger. “I’m the only one who can open this,” I said. “If anyone else tries—”

She nodded, knowingly.

I opened the box and faced it toward her. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

Her glance dropped to the box. Her pupils expanded. Her eyes met mine. Her face lit up—she
glowed
—as if just being near the beads was enough to complete the connection. Her voice fell to an almost inaudible whisper. “Thank you,” she said.

I shook my head. “If you take them, I’ll die.” I tapped my forehead meaningfully. “I was hoping to have those beads wiped and installed. They’re not a perfect match, but—”

“They’ll never work for you,” she said. “Not for you, not for anyone. They won’t work for anyone but me.”

“So I discovered. I was hoping to sell them instead.” I closed the box again. “I’m waiting for my buyer. Perhaps, he’ll help you.”

Her glow faded. “He isn’t coming,” she said with quiet finality.

I didn’t ask. She didn’t volunteer.

“So what do we do now?” I said.

She studied me.

I studied her. My view was infinitely better than hers.

At last, she said, “If I had the resources, I’d pay you. Instead, I can offer you only my gratitude. For whatever that’s worth.”

“It’s worth my life,” I said.

She smiled. A little joke. Very little. But it was her first real smile. She nodded.

I opened the box again.

She stepped over to me, the closest she’d come to me yet. I stiffened as she leaned forward and lifted the beads out of the box. She fastened
them around her neck. They began to glow. But she began to
blaze.
If she had been beautiful before, now she was blinding. I had to avert my eyes.

She approached me. With one elegant silver finger, she tilted my chin upward. She lowered her face to mine. “I will never forget you.” I felt parts of my autonomic circuitry overloading. She pressed her lips against mine. I might have died.

I didn’t. But I might have.

She straightened. She retrieved her coat. And left in silence.

I sat alone in the slanting gray sunlight and listened to my breath rasp and my heart throb. Amazed. I still lived.

The Allura models were supposed to be the most elegant practitioners of personal entertainment in the spiral arm. That was an ancillary joy. You died happy. The Alluras were also the most successful assassins.

I’d probably committed high treason, letting her recover herself. God knew who was going to die. It wasn’t going to be me though. I’d bought my life with the bauble. What was left of it.

I couldn’t wish her well. She was no more alive than I. But, for two dead people, for just one instant, we’d struck one hell of a spark. Whatever the cost, it had been worth it.

I sat. I listened to myself die. I smiled.