Elvissey (34 page)

"Stole your predecessor," said Leverett. "Plan B, courtesy
of WDI. Art personified and readily programmable. So approximate a perfection as can be presently done."

"If you got this," E said, "what do you need me for?"

Leverett twisted the cylinder-end he held. The Elvisoid's
eyes enlivened; its chest gently heaved, and it took two stifflegged steps forward. When it worded its lips matched the
phrases sounded; simulated facial muscles motioned unerringly. "Good morning, Everett," it played, its voice evidencing no more life than a toaster's. Leverett eyerolled, but
made no move to correct its error.

"We had this readied before we even approached you,
Isabel. An approximate perfection, as said. But art demands
the human touch. Televised, it would pass. The construction
is such that its emanations read as flesh once broadcast. The
look tubes well. But personal appearances are essentialled,
and it'll never stand for those. There's naught of emotion in
it, leaving its words unimpacted. So here you are, Elvis.
You're multiblessed with the real feel. It's you we needed."

E drew further away from the Elvisoid; as I read him I
perceived an understandable fear, that were he to come too
close to it he might find himself subsumed into its form
without realizing it. "It's all science fiction. You can't do
this-"

"It's a recent improvement on a classic process," said
Leverett. "As told, it's you we prefer. If our point's grasped,
unconcern yourself. He'll be employed only if you fail us."

"What point're you talkin' about-?"

"You're here to serve as savior, Elvis," Leverett said. "So
serve. You're needed. You're wanted. All that we're doing,
we're doing for you. Had we left you where you were found,
where would you be now?" E turned; walked away from both
of us, holding his hands against his ears. "Swinging, rather
than singing, I'd suspect. Tennessee would capitalize for
murder, surely. That's not the case here, you've seen. We
backscratch, you bellyroll. Simply put, simply planned. Your
requirements are nil. Your benefits, unsurpassed. Think of
us as Dero if you wish, but whatever's seen in our cave, we've
preserved you to see it. Now preserve us."

"Who'd you say thinks I'm God?" E asked. "Them or
you?"

Leverett deafened, and readied the knife. "Your decision,
Elvis. If you trouble the project into impossibility, you'll be
made redundant. It's not as wished, but it will be done. Keep
minded, too, that as your overseer Isabel shall be considered, if it so events, to have failed along with you."

"What would you do to us?" E asked. "Send me back
home?"

"Impossible, Elvis," said Leverett. "This is your home.
Allow me correction. If you choose not to assist us as we
require, we've a new home for you. We drove through it,
coming down."

E wide-eyed as if he'd been charged. "That's not right-"

"All obsolesces," Leverett said. "Timing's all. You've a
choice. What's decided?"

E stared at me, as if I could answer for him; seeing I
readied no annotation he slumped, and headhung as if he'd
been sentenced long before. Leverett handclasped, seeming
to pray.

"Any picture suits once the right frame's found," he said,
sighing, countenancing unspeakable satisfaction. "Isabel,
henceforth you'll word me sole, incompany. If I didn't trust
you as I do I'd suspect you must be passing your observa tions along to Madam. Her perceptions, unaided, have
rarely been so keen of late."

"Leverett-"

"Your husband departed last night?" he asked. "You
wouldn't be awaiting his return, would you?" I shook my
head. "The project demands that both of you fully attend to
its needs at all times, sans comment or complaint. That's
understood, now?"

E and I nodded, staring at Leverett. We were exitless,
then; he would hereafter command me and there was
naught to be done but do. There was no regooding this; all
I could do was wait unto bitterend, and meantime take
silence as my given; interning all emotion, blanking all
thought, allowing myself no more life than the Elvisoid possessed, save enough to keep my baby kicking. Having allowed Leverett to sketch his own structure around me while
I dismantled my husband's, I'd enabled my new overseer to
build a more secure prison on foundations already laid.

"Shock's recognition worldround, yes?" he said, taking
our hands in his, squeezing mine until he hurt me. "Settled,
then. Questions?"

"What's scheduled next?" I asked.

"Close your eyes," he said. "Think of England."

"Fuck off, you fat bastard!" my host, Malloy, shouted through
our cab's open window as we scraped the red tripledeckers
alongsiding. "These burkes'll sarnie us if they keep playing
hogs of the road." Leaning forward until I could glimpse the
silver barette in skull's shape clasping his pony, he directed
our hack, voicing loud through the netting separating our
compartments. "Up, up, up. Loft us, Henry, sail us away."

Henry engaged a yellow lever beneath the wheel; Malloy
and I were thrown against our seats as our cab converted
into hovermode, lifting over the gridlock ahead. The resultant airblast blew Harrod's bags from passersby's arms, impaled children on Green Park's fence, flipped mopeds
beneath buses. As we parabolaed by the Ritz's bougainvillea
siding I felt anew the nausea known as the plane lowered
into Heathrow, stonefalling through London's overhead
mud.

"Funds saved riding black cabs pay for endless dinners,
later on," Malloy said. "Cuts assurance costs as well." A cab
several carlengths upstreet collided with one of the tall palms lining Piccadilly as it went skied; the topknot
dropped, blocking Fortnum and Mason's entrance, crushing haggis-laden shoppers as they emerged. Malloy tapped
a cigarette free of its pack and fired. The pack's warning
outsized the brandname, but said only Let's Not Smoke So
Much.

"Smoking's allowable here, Gog-?" I asked; the fume,
unexpectedly, made the air more breathable.

"Isn't drinking?" he gansered. "Malloy's the preferred
moniker, Isabel, as I specked." His name, uncondensed, was
Gogmagog St. John Bramhall Malloy; he oversaw Dryco's
London office, having worked there for years.

"Why'd your parents peg you so?" I asked.

"New Agers," he said. "Tossed out of the Theosophists for
heresy. Wanted to be harmonic convergers but never found
the right key. They foresaw my drawing strength from the
raw earth, so dubbed, as if I were a hillside figure. Never
made a move without consulting entrails. My sister's name is
Cropcircle, she doesn't tell everyone."

Our cab ascended several meters more as it entered Piccadilly Circus, circling toward Shaftesbury Avenue. A sculpture I'd not seen before replaced Eros, rising from the old
fountain's site; an ebon-hued stonework taller than the surrounding palms and eucalyptus, guised as a gargantuan
arm. Its hand's heavenstretched forefinger appeared to admonish Godness for having slacked during Creation. Unrobed citizens cleansed themselves in the nearby reflecting
pool.

"What is it?" I asked, blinking as if the horror might
vanish at second sight, nodding with lag; the flight from New
York took two hours, the drive in from Heathrow, three.

"The Thatcher Monument," Malloy said. Our cab sideswiped a palm at Shaftesbury's corner; rats were thrown
from its fronds into the throng below. "The punishment
suits the crime."

"Thatcher?" I replayed; imagined I saw a rat clinging to
the cab's hood.

"Not Thatcher Dryden. Mrs.," he said. "Indistinguishable, I'll grant you."

As we entered Frith Street, bearing toward Soho Square,
our cab regrounded, halting before Hazlitt's Hotel, where
I'd been booked. There wasn't room enough to allow the
planting of palms, baobabs or even olive trees along these
sidewalks. Flat metal squares affixed to uprights no thicker
than vacuum-hoses were inset at intervals along the pedway;
London plane trees trellised to the uprights had their limbs
snipped to fit within the boundaried squares. En masse, they
appeared as a display of green spatulas. I stepped out of the
cab, losing my breath as the air's oven blasted me; the afternoon temp, as airported, was thirty degrees centigrade. Malloy exited; he stood a half meter higher than I did, and wore
a kneelong black duster. As he outstretched his arms, retrieving my bags, he semblanced the look of the Tower's
oldest, largest rook.

"Such trees-" I said, onceovering the street while he
carded the driver.

"Topiary's overfashioned of late," Malloy said. "Flora's
forever being remastered around here to suit climate shifts.
Most's antipodean, generally. Tizzies the fauna. Forgive this
November summer."

"There's AC within?"

Malloy frowned; his eyes bugged as he twohanded my
bags. "Packed your pig iron collection, did you? AC, ah,
sorry. Historical Accuracy Laws forbid." All small-paned
windows in the rambling Georgian house were open; its
aqua-painted bricks coordinated so well as to be expected
with the pink trim. Periwinkle and banana trees gardened
the ground floor. Across the street was a restaurant whose
menu ribboned unceasingly along a metal strip above the
ingress. A neon pizza hung over the eatery next door, issuing
bubbles from its pepperoni dots. "Hazlitt died here, you know. I fear the room of demise was previously reserved.
Let's check you in. Ready yourself to strip if they ask. Need
for that lately, you know."

His warning went for naught; we transversed the entry,
neither alarming the detectors nor needing to denude. Stenciled on the side of the fluoroscope through which my bags
were shot was the command, DO NOT PUT LIVE ANIMALS OR
BODY PARTS IN THIS MACHINE. Malloy gathered my belongings
as they dropped from the chute.

"You'll bypass this hereout unless you're carrying," he
said. "Once you're keyed, that'll suffice the guards, the layabouts."

The hotel's guards wore eyeshading hats; they stonefaced,
listening to Malloy. The shortest bore scars running along
each cheek from lipedge to ear, as if at an early age he'd
attempted to widen his mouth enough to eat melons without having to chew. "Key," I replayed. "An actual key?"

Malloy nodded. "Historical Accuracy's iron fist slamming
as it will."

The deskclerk ran my listing; once my name onscreened,
she handed me my key. Its metal chilled my hand, and I
imagined they must be kept refrigerated when not in use.
Stepping through a doorway to the right of the desk, we
climbed the winding, shoeworn stairs.

"Are there elevators in London yet?" I asked, trailing
Malloy as he huffed ahead, bashing my bags wallways with
every step.

"We're lifted at Dryco, certainly," he said. At the second
landing we crossed a new threshold, and stumbled down
another hall. "Here we go," he said, shoving himself against
a corner so that I'd have space enough to reach round him,
and unlock my door.

"Period pieces," I said, thinking as we entered that we'd
mistakenly museumed ourselves, seeing furniture made two
hundred years earlier. An oversize window overlooked the
rear court's ficus and pine, and the chimneypots of other houses; beyond, topping all some blocks distant, was an old
postmodern tower, inscribed at its brim with the word CENTRE. The ceiling-fan lowered the temperature; mosquitonetting creamed the sunlight until I could bear its diffusion
against my skin.

"Lovely," I said. "So much cooler. So historicized."

"The tube's secreted within the chiffarobe," said Malloy,
unlatching its high mahogany doors. "View as desired, or
flip the button beneath to telecom." Setting down my bags,
holding the control, he onswitched the set. Its eye at once
imaged a whitecloaked man dissecting a fetal pig. "Infomercial, likely." Malloy gestured left, toward the bath. "Your
facilities." Most of that room housed the tub, which was
marble, and held a meter's depth; it resembled nothing so
much as a sarcophagus, and appeared designed solely to lull
its bathers into a sleep more relaxing than they might have
wished.