The Best of Michael Swanwick (2 page)

The Feast of Saint Janis

Take a load off, Janis,

And

You put the load right on me.

—THE WAIT (TRAD.)

Wolf stood in the early morning fog watching the
Yankee Clipper
leave Baltimore harbor. His elbows rested against a cool, clammy wall, its surface eroded smooth by the passage of countless hands, almost certainly dating back to before the Collapse. A metallic grey sparkle atop the foremast drew his eye to the dish antenna that linked the ship with the geosynchronous
Trickster
seasats it relied on to plot winds and currents.

To many the wooden
Clipper
, with its computer-designed hydrofoils and hand-sewn sails, was a symbol of the New Africa. Wolf, however, watching it merge into sea and sky, knew only that it was going home without him.

He turned and walked back into the rick-a-rack of commercial buildings crowded against the waterfront. The clatter of hand-drawn carts mingled with a mélange of exotic cries and shouts, the alien music of a dozen American dialects. Workers, clad in coveralls most of them, swarmed about, grunting and cursing in exasperation when an iron wheel lurched in a muddy pothole. Yet there was something furtive and covert about them, as if they were hiding an ancient secret.

Craning to stare into the dark recesses of a warehouse, Wolf collided with a woman clad head to foot in chador. She flinched at his touch, her eyes glaring above the black veil, then whipped away. Not a word was exchanged.

A citizen of Baltimore in its glory days would not have recognized the city. Where the old buildings had not been torn down and buried, shanties crowded the streets, taking advantage of the space automobiles had needed. Sometimes they were built over the streets, so that alleys became tunnelways, and sometimes these collapsed, to the cries and consternation of the natives.

It was another day with nothing to do. He could don a filter mask and tour the Washington ruins, but he had already done that, and besides the day looked like it was going to be hot. It was unlikely he’d hear anything about his mission, not after months of waiting on American officials who didn’t want to talk with him. Wolf decided to check back at his hostel for messages, then spend the day in the bazaars.

Children were playing in the street outside the hostel. They scattered at his approach. One, he noted, lagged behind the others, hampered by a malformed leg. He mounted the unpainted wooden steps, edging past an old man who sat at the bottom. The old man was laying down tarot cards with a slow and fatalistic disregard for what they said; he did not look up.

The bell over the door jangled notice of Wolf’s entry. He stepped into the dark foyer.

Two men in the black uniforms of the political police appeared, one to either side of him. “Wolfgang Hans Mbikana?” one asked. His voice had the dust of ritual on it; he knew the answer. “You will come with us,” the other said.

“There is some mistake,” Wolf objected.

“No, sir, there is no mistake,” one said mildly. The other opened the door. “After you, Mr. Mbikana.”

The old man on the stoop squinted up at them, looked away, and slid off the step.

The police walked Wolf to an ancient administrative building. They went up marble steps sagging from centuries of footscuffing, and through an empty lobby. Deep within the building they halted before an undistinguished-looking door. “You are expected,” the first of the police said.

“I beg your pardon?”

The police walked away, leaving him there. Apprehensive, he knocked on the door. There was no answer, so he opened it and stepped within.

A woman sat at a desk just inside the room. Though she was modernly dressed, she wore a veil. She might have been young; it was impossible to tell. A flick of her eyes, a motion of one hand, directed him to the open door of an inner room. It was like following an onion to its conclusion, a layer of mystery at a time.

A heavyset man sat at the final desk. He was dressed in the traditional suit and tie of American businessmen. But there was nothing quaint or old-fashioned about his mobile, expressive face or the piercing eyes he turned on Wolf.

“Sit down,” he grunted, gesturing toward an old overstuffed chair. Then: “Charles DiStephano. Controller for Northeast Regional. You’re Mbikana, right?”

“Yes, sir.” Wolf gingerly took the proffered chair, which did not seem all that clean. It was clear to him now; DiStephano was one of the men on whom he had waited these several months, the biggest of the lot, in fact. “I represent—”

“The Southwest Africa Trade Company.” DiStephano lifted some documents from his desk. “Now this says you’re prepared to offer—among other things—resource data from your North American
Coyote
landsat in exchange for the right to place students in Johns Hopkins. I find that an odd offer for your organization to make.”

“Those are my papers,” Wolf objected. “As a citizen of Southwest Africa, I’m not used to this sort of cavalier treatment.”

“Look, kid, I’m a busy man, I have no time to discuss your rights. The papers are in my hands, I’ve read them, the people that sent you knew I would. Okay? So I know what you want and what you’re offering. What I want to know is
why
you’re making this offer.”

Wolf was disconcerted. He was used to a more civilized, a more leisurely manner of doing business. The oldtimers at SWATC had warned him that the pace would be different here, but he hadn’t had the experience to decipher their veiled references and hints. He was painfully aware that he had gotten the mission, with its high salary and the promise of a bonus, only because it was not one that appealed to the older hands.

“America was hit hardest,” he said, “but the Collapse was worldwide.” He wondered whether he should explain the system of corporate social responsibility that African business was based on. Then decided that if DiStephano didn’t know, he didn’t want to. “There are still problems. Africa has a high incidence of birth defects.”
Because America exported its poisons; its chemicals arid pesticides and foods containing a witch’s brew of preservatives.
“We hope to do away with the problem; if a major thrust is made, we can clean up the gene pool in less than a century. But to do this requires professionals—eugenicists, embryonic surgeons—and while we have these, they are second-rate. The very best still come from your nation’s medical schools.”

“We can’t spare any.”

“We don’t propose to steal your doctors. We’d provide our ownstudents—fully trained doctors who need only the specialized training.”

“There are only so many openings at Hopkins,” DiStephano said. “or at U of P or the UVM Medical College, for that matter.”

“We’re prepared to—” Wolf pulled himself up short. “It’s in the papers. We’ll pay enough that you can expand to meet the needs of twice the number of students we require.” The room was dim and oppressive. Sweat built up under Wolf’s clothing.

“Maybe so. You can’t buy teachers with money, though.” Wolf said nothing. “I’m also extremely reluctant to let your people
near
our medics. You can offer them money, estates—things our country cannot afford. And we
need
our doctors. As it is, only the very rich can get the corrective surgery they require.”

“If you’re worried about our pirating your professionals, there areways around that. For example, a clause could be written—“Wolf went on, feeling more and more in control. He was getting somewhere. If there wasn’t a deal to be made, the discussion would never have gotten this far.

The day wore on. DiStephano called in aides and dismissed them. Twice, he had drinks sent in. Once, they broke for lunch. Slowly the heat built, until it was sweltering. Finally, the light began to fail, and the heat grew less oppressive.

DiStephano swept the documents into two piles, returned one to Wolf, and put the other inside a desk drawer. “I’ll look these over, have our legal boys run a study. There shouldn’t be any difficulties. I’ll get back to you with the final word in—say a month. September twenty-first, I’ll be in Boston then, but you can find me easily enough, if you ask around.”

“A month? But I thought…”

“A month. You can’t hurry City Hall,” DiStephano said firmly. “Ms. Corey!”

The veiled woman was at the door, remote, elusive. “Sir.”

“Drag Kaplan out of his office. Tell him we got a kid in here he should give the VIP treatment to. Maybe a show. It’s a Hopkins thing, he should earn his keep.”

“Yes, sir.” She was gone.

“Thank you,” Wolf said, “but I don’t really need…”

“Take my advice, kid, take all the perks you can get. God knowsthere aren’t many left. I’ll have Kaplan pick you up at your hostel in an hour.”

***

Kaplan turned out to be a slight, balding man with nervous gestures, some sort of administrative functionary for Hopkins. Wolf never did get the connection. But Kaplan was equally puzzled by Wolf’s status, and Wolf took petty pleasure in not explaining it. It took some of the sting off of having his papers stolen.

Kaplan led Wolf through the evening streets. A bright sunset circled the world, and the crowds were much thinner. “We won’t be leaving the area that’s zoned for electricity,” Kaplan said. “Otherwise I’d advise against going out at night at all. Lot of jennie-deafs out then.”

“Jennie-deafs?”

“Mutes. Culls. The really terminal cases. Some of them can’t pass themselves off in daylight even wearing coveralls. Or chador—a lot are women.” A faintly perverse expression crossed the man’s face, leaving not so much as a greasy residue.

“Where are we going?” Wolf asked. He wanted to change the subject. A vague presentiment assured him he did not want to know the source of Kaplan’s expression.

“A place called Peabody’s. You’ve heard of Janis Joplin, our famous national singer?”

Wolf nodded, meaning no.

“The show is a re-creation of her act. Woman name of Maggie Horowitz does the best impersonation of Janis I’ve ever seen. Tickets are almost impossible to get, but Hopkins has special influence in this case because—ah, here we are.”

Kaplan led him down a set of concrete steps and into the basement of a dull brick building. Wolf experienced a moment of dislocation. It was a bookstore. Shelves and boxes of books and magazines brooded over him, a packrat’s clutter of paper.

Wolf wanted to linger, to scan the ancient tomes, remnants of a time and culture fast sinking into obscurity and myth. But Kaplan brushed past them without a second glance and he had to hurry to keep up.

They passed through a second roomful of books, then into a hallway where a grey man held out a gnarled hand and said, “Tickets, please.”

Kaplan gave the man two crisp pasteboard cards, and they entered a third room.

It was a cabaret. Wooden chairs clustered about small tables with flickering candles at their centers. The room was lofted with wood beams, and a large unused fireplace dominated one wall. Another wall had obviously been torn out at one time to make room for a small stage. Over a century’s accumulation of memorabilia covered the walls or hung from the rafters, like barbarian trinkets from toppled empires.

“Peabody’s is a local institution,” Kaplan said. “In the twentieth century it was a speakeasy. H.L. Mencken himself used to drink here.” Wolf nodded, though the name meant nothing to him. “The bookstore was a front, and the drinking went on here in the back.”

The place was charged with a feeling of the past. It invoked America’s bygone days as a world power. Wolf half-expected to see Theodore Roosevelt or Henry Kissinger come striding in. He said something to this effect, and Kaplan smiled complacently.

“You’ll like the show, then,” he said.

A waiter took their orders. There was barely time to begin on the drinks when a pair of spotlights came on, and the stage curtain parted.

A woman stood alone in the center of the stage. Bracelets and bangles hung from her wrists, gaudy necklaces from her throat. She wore large tinted glasses and a flowered granny gown. Her nipples pushed against the thin dress. Wolf stared at them in horrified fascination. She had an extra set, immediately below the first pair.

The woman stood perfectly motionless. Wolf couldn’t stop staring at her nipples; it wasn’t just the number, it was the fact of their being visible at all. So quickly had he taken on this land’s taboos.

The woman threw her head back and laughed. She put one hand on her hip, thrust the hip out at an angle, and lifted the microphone to her lips. She spoke, and her voice was harsh and raspy.

“About a year ago I lived in a row house in Newark, right? Livedon the third floor, and I thought I had my act together. But nothing was going right, I wasn’t getting any…action. Know what I mean? No talent comin’ around. And there was this chick down the street, didn’t have much and she was doing okay, so I say to myself:
What’s wrong, Janis?
How come she’s doing so good and you ain’t gettin’ any? So I decided to check it out, see what she had and I didn’t. And one day I get up early, look out the window, and I see this chick out there
hustling
! I mean, she was doing the streets at
noon
! So I said to myself, Janis, honey, you ain’t even trying. And when ya want action, ya gotta try. Yeah. Try just a little bit harder.”

The music swept up out of nowhere, and she was singing: “Try-iii,Try-iii, Just a little bit harder…”

And unexpectedly, it was good. It was like nothing he had ever heard, but he understood it, almost on an instinctual level. It was world-culture music. It was universal.

Kaplan dug fingers into Wolf’s arm, brought his mouth up to Wolf’s ear. “You see? You see?” he demanded. Wolf shook him off impatiently. He wanted to hear the music.

The concert lasted forever, and it was done in no time at all. It left Wolf sweaty and emotionally spent. Onstage, the woman was energy personified. She danced, she strutted, she wailed more power into her songs than seemed humanly possible. Not knowing the original, Wolf was sure it was a perfect re-creation. It had that feel.