Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (33 page)

Charles smiled cynically. "Well, that's one way for a young man to find out about Ambrosia," he muttered, and allowed his bot driver to waft him home.

If he thought he'd gotten rid of Mike, he was wrong. Next day Charles was in the embassy's public office, checking on the bots who handled routine business, when the reporter entered with his droid.

"Good day, sir," said he, bright-eyed. "Since you're here and I'm here, could you spare me just a few minutes for an interview?"

Charles sighed and murmured, "Delighted." Clearly, the only way to get rid of the fellow was to give him a quote or two for his article. While the droid plugged into the nearest wall socket, he led Mike into his private office and asked politely what he'd learned so far about Ambrosia.

"Alice just gave me the grand tour." Mike shrugged. "Basically, it's nothing but a big hollow ball with twenty residential and two service levels and ramps connecting them. Like a spherical parking garage, except for the French-pastry palaces and phony gardens. Is this your first time here, sir?"

"First and last."

"Same here. Up to now I've spent my career, such as it is, reporting mainly riots and massacres."

Charles summoned a bleak autumnal smile. "I used to settle things like that. It was my job."

"Mine was to make them look important. They're always bloody and tragic close up, with all the screaming and bleeding and so on, but as soon as you get ten clicks away they're just boring."

Charles nodded. Despite his regrettable tailoring, Segretti was no fool. But that didn't mean he wanted to protract the interview. "Since I'm new in Ambrosia, I don't see what I can tell you about it," he said.

"Well, sir, I want the angle of a knowledgeable outsider. I'd like to stick a paragraph in my article answering the question,
Why Ambrosia
? And the fact is, I don't know why these people didn't just stay on Earth. In spite of everything, Terra's a lot more interesting than living inside a gilded beach ball."

Charles explained that Ambrosia belonged to a millennia-old tradition of gated communities, penthouse co-ops, island getaways, and moated granges.

"Rulers don't like to associate with the ruled. They don't like the way common people look or smell or talk or act. It's not just fear of thieves and beggars, it's a kind of visceral loathing for what they used to be themselves before they got lucky. That's why the French kings built Versailles and the Chinese emperors built the Forbidden City—so they'd never have to see anybody who wasn't either a servant or a courtier."

"I wonder how I can put that
tactfully
. I can't just say snobs don't like slobs. The Editorial Computer would never accept it."

"That, my young friend, is your problem."

Charles walked him back to the entry hall where Alice joined them, moving in more sprightly fashion after her plug-in. Noting the superbly supple rhythm of her hips and legs, Charles thought it would be a shame if she burned out her circuits, like so many droids who got addicted to energy flows. For a moment he wondered if she had a sexual app—then sternly repressed that voyeuristic fancy, and said farewell.

The rest of his day was filled with mostly nothing. His one piece of ambassadorial work was arranging the deportation to Terra of a tech who'd been declared persona non grata as an agitator. Charles asked the ferret-like little man who he'd been agitating, and he said everybody.

"I tried to set up a union," he said. "They don't like organizers here."

"I'm sure they don't. What was your job?"

"Maintenance on the police droids. When that bastard Lewinski told me they were booting me out, I made some final adjustments he won't like," he added, with rather a nasty smile. "Delayed action, too. I'll be long gone when the gadgets start acting up."

"I hope you didn't sabotage a droid named Alice."

"Alice? I guess you mean an AL-20. I never worked on no 20s. They're almost human. The cops don't have to be. In fact, it's better if they ain't."

Charles personally stamped his visa and handed him over to the bots for routine out-processing. Then, having nothing else on his agenda, he left the building to stretch his legs and do a bit of sightseeing.

 
LEVEL XII HAD, besides the embassy and rows of luxury co-ops and the Palace, its own patch of faux nature. Charles had been a hiker in his younger days and felt almost at home striding past ancient trees, choirs of singing birds, and tame deer that approached on delicate hooves, only to sprint away again. But when he left the porcelain walkway to go exploring, the trees, grass, birds, and deer flowed silently away to either side, like a carpet being rolled up. When he returned to the path, the woods followed him.

"It's
Alice in Wonderland,
" he thought.

The Alice part proved prophetic, for Mike's droid was coming down the path toward him, her hips moving as musically as ever. He smiled and nodded.

"Oh, Mr. Ambassador," she said. "How nice to see you again. Are you enjoying the enchanted forest?"

"Yes and no. It's an amazing conjuring trick. I was wondering how it's done."

"Something with lasers," she said vaguely. "I'm here to schedule some interviews for Mike at the Palace. He wants to talk to Lewinski, and since he's Mike's boss as well as the Chairman, I can just imagine what a groveling session that'll turn into."

Charles smiled. He'd always been susceptible to attractive and clever women, and Alice scored on the attractive and clever parts at least. They strolled in the general direction of the palace, chatting. She said something about the dinner the night before, and he told her Mike had been looking for her afterward.

"That's odd. He told me not to wait for him. He said he was going to worm his way into some VIP's limo and pick his tiny brain."

"Ah," said Charles. "I should have known."

At the palace gates, they paused and stood for a moment facing each other. His replacement eyes gazed deeply into hers, and what he saw there made him smile even more broadly than before.

"Why d'you pass yourself off as a droid?" he asked.

For an instant she was startled, then laughed. "I got so tired of guys hitting on me all the time. Now I just do my job and go home to my cat, which by the way is a real cat."

"So you're actually one of the human workers. I hear talk about getting rid of people like you."

"Fine with me. I just hope they don't do it right away. The pay's good up here, so I want to work another year or two to build up a nest egg. Then I'll go back to the real world and start to live like a human being."

"What's all the plugging-in about?"

"Helps to make the droid shtick more believable. The plug's a dummy, of course. I just act a little more vivacious afterward, and everybody thinks, Oh, the gadget's gotten itself juiced up." She laughed gaily, and so did he.

"Never feel a longing for love?" he teased.

"Sure. But that can wait.
You're
not going to hit on me, are you?"

"No, I've become a monk in my old age." On impulse he added, "If you don't mind an invitation that's strictly on the up and up, why don't you let me squire you to that damned costume ball next week? I'd far rather talk to you than the locals."

Alice kissed her fingertips and touched them lightly to his chin. "Underneath all that armor plate, you really
are
sweet," she said. "I'd love to go with you."

"My antiquity doesn't bother you?"

"So you're a million years old, so what? Everybody's got
some
little thing wrong with them. What night is it, and what's the theme?"

For Charles, the days that followed their chance encounter weren't as empty as before. Whenever she could get away from Mike, Alice came to lunch or cocktails at the embassy, and despite the age difference they found plenty to talk about. He told her about trying to negotiate between people whose greatest joy in life was murdering one another. She told him about living as a droid, and about working with Mike.

"It's like baby-sitting a hyperactive six-year-old. Every once in a while I say I have to plug in, just to get a break. By the way, he's going to the ball too. Some woman with the incredible name of Poppaea Mosul Delcombray is taking him."

Briefly Charles tried to imagine a couple made up of a short elf and a tall hermo, then decided he'd just have to wait and see what they looked like. He asked what Alice had decided to wear to the ball, but she wouldn't tell him.

"I want to astound you," she said.

But he was already rather astounded, because he found himself being happy for the first time in he couldn't remember when. He enjoyed getting up in the morning, and the days passed swiftly. He was even looking forward to the ball.

When the big night came, it turned out to be a surprise for everybody, especially Mike. Wearing a garish Hussar costume that Alice had obtained for him, he climbed into Poppaea's limo only to find her dressed not for Old Vienna, but for a Goth party.

Her coltish body was clad in black vinyl, with a silver chain for a belt and a padlock for a buckle. Another chain hung from a jeweled collar around her neck. As the car began descending one ramp after another, she informed him that they were headed for something much more interesting than the waxworks at the Palace.

"Voilá le scenário pour la nuit,"
she said, taking his arm cozily among the deep cushions of the back seat. "Until dawn, I'm your slave. I got the idea reading de Sade, and it sounds like such fun. I stop being a rich bitch for a while, give up my will to my master, and just take it easy. Here, hold my leash," she added, looping it around his wrist.

"Where are we going?" he asked, trying to be sophisticated, though he'd never previously used a leash on anything except his dog Lew, who was named for his boss.

"To the depths. To Level III. To the Underworld."

"I thought the underworld was what people moved to Ambrosia to get away from."

"That's what they thought too. Unfortunately, their children came with them."

She explained that many young Ambrosians were idlers, dropouts from expensive schools who found any form of work demeaning. The passive ones spent their time drinking and screwing and playing golf with "smartballs," which always went in the cup. Others were more violent. The Council kept the troublemakers on Level III, just above the level where the police droids were stored. The denizens called it the Underworld, and amused themselves by forming gangs, committing vandalism, and having drug-fueled orgies.

"Some die." She shrugged. "But that's rather the point, isn't it? Dying is the ultimate way to distress their parents."

"Great story!" Mike enthused, wondering how he'd ever get it past the Editorial Computer.

Level III, like all the others, had a faux moon and stars. But the streets, despite being lined by fancy lamps resembling birdcages, were dark as tunnels. Poppaea explained that knocking out the lights was a popular sport—the denizens smashed them at night and repair bots fixed them in the morning, so they could be knocked out again.

When the limo stopped, they exited into moon-cast shadows. A narrow, dimly glowing path opened ahead of them through a black forest of cypress trees, and Poppaea quoted, "
Here once, through an alley titanic of cypress, I roamed with my soul
."

"That's Edgar Allan Poe," said Mike. "Did you ever read his story called 'The Imp of the Perverse'? I was just thinking about it. A man destroys himself for no reason at all, except a random impulse."

Through the taut leash he felt her shrug. "
C'est tout l'histoire de l'homme. Oops, here come the denizens
."

A throng of adult trick-or-treaters began emerging from the trees. Young or youngish people with painted faces, dressed (if they were dressed at all) as cannibals, witches, spiders, demons, werewolves, ghosts, goblins, and who-knew-whats. All were armed with what looked like toys, but actually weren't—their spears and swords and knives were made of black duroplast, a synthetic almost as hard as steel, and had wicked-looking points and edges.

Giggling and squeaking, the mob surrounded them. Mike smelled the familiar dry musk of cannabis mixed with exhalations of costly wines and brandies and liqueurs. Underneath were earthier reeks—unwashed armpits, feces used as body paint. Pushed and jabbed and jostled by this noisome crew, Mike wished he were back on Senior Level, where his apartment would take care of him.

"Da fucka you?" growled a tall, hoarse somebody in the crowd, imitating the rough language of the lower classes.

"Oh, Donny,
cher,
it's Poppaea, the girl with the great big clit. This is Mike, who's a writer and will make you famous."

"Hi," said Donny, stepping forward. A cloak of faux fur thrown over his shoulders emitted a subtle odor of decay. Eyeing the leash, he said, "So, Poppy, you're his slave for the night?"

"
Oui, Monsieur
."

"Well, this is mine. Say hello, Sporus."

"Hiya," said Sporus, who was very pale and thin and wore a leash, a loincloth, and a spiked slave collar. "My real name's Pavl Lewinski. I've got a sort of genetic contact with writers, Mike. My father runs Informat."

"Good Christ," said Mike. "I
work
for Informat."

"Then you're a lot more of a slave than I am, Honey."

"Enough," growled Donny, yanking Pavl's leash so hard he squeaked. "We're hunting tonight. The question is, who's the quarry?"

"I have a suggestion," said Poppaea, breathing faster. "Why don't you hunt Mike and me? If you catch us, you can gang-rape us. That's always
terribly
exciting."

"Now, wait a minute," said Mike, but nobody else wanted to wait, so the hunt got underway
tout de suite.

In a moment he and Poppaea were plunging through the dense forest of faux cypress, pursued by the mob howling, "Hai-hai-hai-hai!" She dragged him by the leash, not the other way around. Her method of escape was to run straight at a large tree or boulder or stone wall until it dissolved, flowed around them, and took form again behind. She seemed to think this would confuse their pursuers, but Mike had his doubts.