Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

Never much given to unnecessary speech, Ed Gallacelli lowered his magazine and smiled a subtle smile. That night he left on the Meridian Express without telling his brothers when he would be back. There were seven days to Persis Tatterdemalion’s twentieth birthday. Those seven days passed in a flurry. Louie prosecuted sixteen hours a day in Dominic Frontera’s petty sessions: the pilgrims had brought petty crime and petty criminals and though mayor and harassed attorney heard up to fifty cases per day the town lock-up was always full. The three goodnatured constables Dominic Frontera had seconded from the Meridian constabulary barely contained the flow of small crime.

Umberto had made the short move from farming to real estate. Renting his fields had proven so profitable that he went into business with Rael Mandella converting bare rock and sand into tillable farmland and letting it out at rents only slightly less than ruinous. Even Persis Tatterdemalion was so hardworked that she had taken on extra staff and was considering opting for a lease on the house across the alley to extend the premises.

“Business is booming.” she declared to her regulars, and nodded in the direction of the pinched pious pilgrims sitting in their corners with their guava cordials, thinking pure thoughts of the Lady Taasmin. “Business is booming.” Then Sevriano and Batisto would skip out together the same time every night and she would look at them and sigh and wonder how they had gotten so big in only nine years. They had their fathers’ devilish good looks and rakish charm. There was not a girl in the whole of Desolation Road who did not want to sleep with Sevriano and Batisto, preferably simultaneously. Remembering this, she would call them to the bar and fuss over them and smooth down their curly black hair which would spring up again the second they walked out the door, and while no one was looking slip packets of male contraceptive pills into their shirt pockets.

Nine years. Not even time was what it used to be. Nostalgia certainly wasn’t. With a start Persis Tatterdemalion realized her twentieth birthday was only five days off. Twenty. The halfway point. After twenty there was nothing to look forward to. Funny how time flies. Ah, flies. She hadn’t thought about flying for… she couldn’t remember how long. The sting was gone but the itch remained. She was not a pilot. She was a hotelier. A good hotelier. It was no less honourable a profession than pilot. So she told herself. When people talked about a pilgrimage to Desolation Road, they talked Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel. She should be proud of that, she told herself, but she knew in her heart of hearts she would rather be flying.

With a start she realized she had a customer.

“Sorry. Way long way away.”

“It’s all right,” said Rael Mandella. “Two more beers. Any sign of that runaway husband of yours? Umberto says it’s been three days.”

“He’ll turn up.” Ed was the black clone in the brood. While his brothers were hungry for success and had made themselves attorneys and realtors, Ed was content to remain in his shed fixing small things and asking no money for the privilege. Dear Ed. Where was he?

The twentieth birthday dawned and Umberto and Louie threw a surprise breakfast party for their wife with cakes and wine and decorations. Still Ed did not appear.

“No-good bum.” said Umberto.

“What kind of husband is not present at his wife’s birthday?” said Louie. They presented their gifts to Persis Tatterdemalion.

“I give you the earth,” said Umberto the soily-fingered farmer, and gave his wife a diamond ring, hand-crafted by the dwarf jewelsmiths of Yazzoo.

“And I give you the sea,” said Louie, and he gave her a voucher for a holiday on the Windward Islands in the Argyre Sea. “Ten years you’ve worked here without a holiday. Now, you take off all the time you want. You’ve deserved it.” And they both kissed her. And there was still no Ed.

Then Persis Tatterdemalion heard a noise. It was not a very big noise, it would have been easily lost in the happy din of partymaking had she not been listening for it for ten years. The noise grew louder but still only she could hear it. As if gripped by the compulsion of an Archangelsk, she stood up. The sound called her from the hotel into the open. She knew what it was now. Twin Maybach/Wurtel engines in push-pull configuration. She shielded her eyes against the sun and peered. There it was, coming out of the sun, a speck of black dirt that became first a bird, then a hawk, then a howling thundering Yamaguchi & Jones twin-engine stunter that blasted over her head and she stood in the cloud of dust and pebbles thrown up by the prop-wash and watched the airplane make its turn. She saw Ed Gallacelli wave from the passenger seat, quiet Ed, dark Ed, happy-to-be Ed. From that moment onward Persis Tatterdemalion loved only and utterly him, for of all her husbands, he alone had understood her sufficiently to give her the one thing she wanted most. Umberto had given her the earth, Louie the sea, but Ed had given her back the sky.

Areminiscent weakness she had been unable to break brought her back time and time again to Raano Thurinnen’s Seafood Diner on Ocean Boulevard. It was not the quality of the chowder, indisputable though that was. It was not the cheery countenance of Raano Thurinnen, rosy from Stahler’s beer, even though he called her “Miss Quinsana” now. It was, she thought, that the three years she had worked here could not be washed away into forgetfulness.

“Usual, Miss Quinsana?”

“Thanks, Raani.”

The bowl of steaming fresh chowder was served by a dull-eyed paanchewing teenage girl.

—Kid won’t last three months, let alone three years, Marya Quinsana thought. But the chowder was very good. Strange that in all the years of working here when she could have had the stuff for nothing she’d never once tasted it.

The energy she’d possessed then amazed her still. Sixteen to midnight serving chowder, bouillabaisse and gumbo, then up at eight in the morning and off to the Party offices on Kayanga Prospect to fill envelopes and canvas down on Pier 66. Party supporter, party member, party worker, then the time had come to decide between party candidate and fish chowder. No choice, really, but she was still thankful for Raano and his dollars. She had learned a lot from the chowder-stuffed mouths of his clients, enough to rewrite the party manifesto for the Syrtia Regional Assembly Elections and sweep the party onto victory balconies all across the continent. She’d been there on the balcony with the other loyal party workers, applauding the successful candidates, but the thought in her heart had been “poor puppets, poor puppets.” She had manipulated them into power by telling them to listen to the people.

Listen, she’d said, listen to the people, listen to what they like, what they hate, what makes them angry, what makes them happy, what they care about and what they don’t care about. The party that listens is the party that wins. But what she’d really wanted them to listen to was Marya Quinsana telling them to listen.

“You should run for office yourself,” Mohandas Gee had suggested, “you who know so much about what the people want.” She had declined. Then. It had looked like dedication. It was ambition. Her time would come with the world elections in two years. In the intervening years she was the hammer and her manifesto the anvil upon which the New Party was forged. A zealous mood of reform swept the cadres. A new Electoral College was adopted and many an old reactionary ("the professional politicians” Marya Quinsana denounced them) found himself without nomination when the regional ballots came around again. Yet Marya Quinsana trod carefully. Her essential hypocrisy must never be disclosed: that she, the decrier of professionalism, sought to bring a whole new dimension of professionalism to the political arena. There were still too many political luminaries who possessed the power to destroy her.