Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

“Ed, Louie and Umberto,” one of them introduced themselves.

“Looking for a place for the night,” explained another.

“Clean beds, hot baths and hot dinners,” said the third.

Persis Tatterdemalion emerged from the beer cellar, where she had been fitting a fresh barrel.

“Yes?” she said.

“Ed, Louie and…” said Ed.

“Looking for…” said Louie.

“Clean beds, hot…” said Umberto, and all at once, all at the same instant, they fell dreadfully, desperately passionately in love with her. There is a theory, you see, that states that for everyone there is one person who will fulfill their love perfectly and absolutely. The Gallacelli brothers, being the same person multiplied three times, of course shared that common, unique love, and the absolute fulfillment of that common life was Persis Tatterdemalion.

The next morning the Gallacelli brothers went to see Dr. Alimantando about becoming permanent residents. He gave Umberto a large patch of land, he gave Ed a shed where he could fix machines, and because he could not give Louie an office or a district court or even a corner of the bar to practice his art, he gave him a piece of land almost as big as Umberto’s and advised him to take up animal husbandry, that being the closest thing Desolation Road could offer to jurisprudence.

Mikal Margolis had a problem. He was painfully in love with the lady veterinarian across the road in House Twelve. But the object and satisfaction of his lust was Persis Tatterdemalion, his bed-and-business partner. The lady veterinarian in House Twelve, whose name was Marya Quinsana, had a problem too. It was that she was the object of lust of her brother Morton. But she did not love him, even fraternally, nor did she love Mikal Margolis. The only person she loved was herself. But that self-love was cut like a diamond with many shining facets so that beams of that self-love reflected off Marya Quinsana onto those about her and deceived them into thinking that she loved them, and they her.

One such was her brother Morton Quinsana, a dentist of strange obsessions whose possessiveness of his sister fooled no one. Everyone knew he secretly desired her, and he knew he secretly desired her, and she knew he secretly desired her, so it was no secret desire with so many people knowing. But such was Morton Quinsana’s respect and possessiveness that he could not bring himself to lay so much as one finger upon his sister. So he burned an arm’s length away in a hell of frustration. And the longer he burned the hotter grew the fires of obsession. One evening he caught his sister flirting with the Gallacelli brothers, laughing at their coarse farmyard humour, drinking their drinks, touching their rough and ugly hands. He swore then and there that he would never ever treat any of the Galiacelli brothers, not even when they came to him screaming and begging with toothache, not even when the agony of rotting dentine loosed the animal inside them and set them beating their heads against walls; no, he would turn them away, turn them away without another thought, banish them to moaning and suffering and gnashing of teeth for having cast the net of their prurient desires at his sister Marya.

Another such fool was Mikal Margolis. Because of his mother, he had never been happy in love. Once his mother announced her engagement, he became happy in love, happy with enthusiastic, vivacious, voracious Persis Tatterdemalion. Then Morton and Maiya Quinsana stepped down from the weekly supply train from Meridialt Mikal Margolis had been collecting beer barrels and crates of spirits from the station, when he noticed the tall, strong woman walking down the platform with the natural grace and implied power of a hunting cat. Their eyes had met and then passed on, but in the flicker of contact Mikal Margolis felt a shock of spinal electricity fuse the base of his heart, where all decency and honesty lay, into thick black glass. He loved her. He could not think of anything else but that he loved her.

When Dr. Alimantando gave the Quinsanas a cave, he had rushed to help build them a home. “Hey, what about the polishing, what about cleaning some glasses?” Persis Tatterdemalion had demanded. Mikal Margolis waved and went. When Dr. Alimantando gave the Quinsanas an allotment, Mikal Margolis came and ditched, dyked, and dammed until the moonring sparkled like diamonds. “How about serving a few drinks?” said Persis Tatterdemalion. “How about making some dinner for these hungry people?” And when Morton Quinsana and his sister came to the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel, he gave them each a bowl of hot lamb pilaf and as much complimentary beer as they could drink, then joked and chattered with them until closing time. When a chicken fell sick in the hotel even though it was destined for that night’s pot, it was taken all the same to Marya Quinsana, who poked it and probed it with her skilled fingers while Mikal Margolis fantasized about her fingers doing the same thing to him. A lot of Margolis’s and Tatterdemalion’s animals fell ill that autumn.

Yet Mikal Margolis was not happy. He oscillated between the love of a good woman and the love of a bad woman, like a little quartz crystal ticking away time. Persis Tatterdemalion, worldly and innocent as an eagle upon the sky, asked him if he was sick. Mikal Margolis groaned a groan of pure frustrated lust.

“Maybe you should go and see someone, love, your mind hasn’t been on your work these past few days. What about that lady vet, eh? I mean, humans are just another kind of animal, aren’t they? She might be able to help.”

Mikal Margolis turned to look at Persis Tatterdemalion.

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“No. Straight up.”

Mikal Margolis groaned all the louder.

As for Marya Quinsana, she did not care. Exactly that, she did not care, she had nothing but contempt for anyone weak enough to love her. She despised her fool of a brother, she despised that silly boy who ran the bar. Yet she could not resist a challenge. She would win that silly boy away from the doting simpleton he lived and loved with. It was the game, the game; the pieces don’t matter in the game, the mind that moves them is what is important; that and the winning, for in winning she came to despise the losers all the more. With one inspired gambit she could triumph over both Mikal Margolis and her damned brother. Then she could at last break away from him and let the world hear her name. “Look after Morton” had been the dying words of her iron mother; “look after him, take care of him, let him think he’s making all the decisions but ensure he makes none. Marya, I command it.”

Take care of Morton, take care of Morton; yes, she had been faithful to her mother’s will for five years now. She had followed him out into the desert after that affair with the little girl in the park, but the time must come, Mother, when Morton stands alone, and on that morning she would be on the first train to Wisdom.

That was why there were the games. They amused her, they kept her sane through the five years of Morton’s growing infatuation, they gave her hope that through them she would be strong enough to step on that morning train to Wisdom. Oh, yes, the games kept her sane. So she contrived to be out feeding her chickens at the same time every day as Mikal Margolis across the alley in the backyard of the B.A.R./Hotel was feeding his. It was the game that made her ask him to come and look at her methane digester to see why it wasn’t working properly, though Rajandra Das would have done the job better. “Chemical problems, miss,” said Mikal Margolis, “someone’s dumped a load of used sterilant into it and inhibited the bacteriophages.” Marya Quinsana smiled. She had poured three bottles of surgery sterilizing fluid into the tank just that morning. The game was going well. Out of gratitude she invited him in for drinks, then conversation, then bed (all the while Mikal Margolis trembled like a reed), then sex.