Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

After Neku’s third attempt to explain why she was in London, Kit decided it could wait. He decided this because every attempt to explain reduced Neku to tears which seemed to be of anger. She felt the answer should be obvious. “Who else knows you’re here?” he demanded, settling his back against the railings of the flat’s little roof garden.

“No Neck,” said Neku.

Kit was shocked.

“And Mrs. Oniji…I gave her Yoshi’s bowl,” Neku added, seeing Kit’s look. “Someone has to look after it. You were in hospital and I was frightened it might, you know…” She looked sick at the mere thought. “That would be a disaster.”

“What would?” Kit wanted to know.

“If the bowl broke.”

He took a deep breath. “Why should it break?”

“It has a crack,” said Neku, “down one side. Hairline, almost impossible to spot without X-rays.”

Kit stared at her.

“It begins below the rim,” said Neku. “And runs from there to the base. I’ve been wondering if the crack is intentional. An artist’s acknowledgement of the flaws inherent in all perfection…” Looking at Kit, she said, “You don’t have the faintest idea why this matters, do you?”

“No,” said Kit, going to fetch another jug of water.

Refilling her glass, Neku returned to her cushion. They were watching the sun settle behind slate roofs, as seagulls circled the London sky above and the western edge of the city finally turned from dark pink to purple. Searchlights already swept the sky, clustered above the obvious places—Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, and the financial centres of the city.

“Are you going to tell me?” Kit asked.

Neku considered the star-specked sky and shivered in the first stirrings of a night wind. This planet was weird, its cities chaotic and its social structures fragmented to the point of being incomprehensible. Every breath she took was probably poisoning her.

“No,” she said finally. “I don’t think I am. You wouldn’t understand anyway.” She shrugged, shuffled on her cushion, and got up, only to sit down again a few seconds later.

“What’s wrong?”

“This body,” she said. “I just can’t get used to it.”

“You will,” said Kit. “That’s just an age thing.”

“Yeah,” said Neku. It was the first time he’d seen her grin.

“Marriage?” So shocked was Lady Neku that she forgot to keep the horror out of her voice, but for once her mother seemed not to notice. The girl could remember that much.

“Happens to us all,” said Lady Katchatka.

“Whom will I marry?”

“Luc d’Alambert. You’ll like him.”

Lady Neku froze.

“I’ve got some pictures,” said her mother, touching the wall. “Here…”

I’ll like him?

A boy of Lady Neku’s age stared out at her. Ash blond hair, pale eyes, and skin so thin it was almost marble. Someone must have said something funny out of sight because Luc d’Alambert suddenly grinned. Although a glitch froze his top lip and shut one eye.

“What’s wrong with the picture?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” said Lady Katchatka, waving away the connection. “Luc has a tiny problem with one side of his face. Nerve damage. We’ll have it fixed when he arrives.”

“Why doesn’t he have it fixed himself?”

Lady Neku’s mother shrugged. “The d’Alamberts can be odd,” she said. “His father has firm views on augmentation. As I said, we can have it fixed when Luc arrives.”

Inbreds, throwbacks…Odd wasn’t a word her mother usually applied to the d’Alamberts. Although Neku had heard her use plenty of others. And little about this proposed marriage made sense.

“I thought we hated the d’Alamberts?”

“Neku…” The reprimand was swallowed. Instead, the elderly woman stood up and walked to a mirror, flicking her fingers so the glass revealed the dusty landscape laid out below. An ocean filled the window’s upper corner. It looked sullen and lifeless, matted with purple weed. The waters had been teeming with life once, or so the kami insisted. Unfortunately, nowadays the shade cast by High Strange covered less than a quarter of the Katchatka segment, and it was out there, in the naked sunlight, that Schloss Omga could just be seen clinging to the side of a mountain.

“It used to be beautiful,” said Lady Katchatka.

“The desert?”

“Grasslands back then. Grasslands and forest and savannah. The desert came later.”

“Can you remember when the world was different?”

Lady Katchatka glanced at her daughter to see if Neku was serious. “How old do you think I am?” she asked.

“How old would you need to be?”

Her mother smiled sourly. “Older than this.”

Lady Neku nodded. “Mother…” She was taking a risk using the word without an honorific to formalise it, but from the slight nod she got in reply, it had been a risk worth taking. “Where will I live?”

“With your husband.”

“Luc d’Alambert?”

It was Lady Katchatka’s turn to nod.

“And the wedding?”

“Will be here,” said Lady Katchatka with a smile. “We will invite the d’Alamberts and the major retainers. I have already ordered our major domo to open up the unused circles of High Strange. It will be magnificent.”

Lady Neku considered this. The idea still troubled her. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I really thought the d’Alamberts were our…”

“You don’t have to understand.”

She watched her mother rein in her anger and take a very deep breath, the kind most people followed by counting to ten.

“Something must change,” her mother said. “If it doesn’t then the families are going to tear each other apart. No one knows how much longer we can support life, at least at its present level. Five thousand years, ten thousand, maybe more…but first we need peace.” Lady Katchatka shrugged. “I’m sorry it comes at a price.”

That was when Lady Neku realised the price was her.

Personally Lady Neku doubted if the moon really had been split into six and divided between families like an orange. All reliable records suggested the moon had a mass of 7.35 x 1022 kg, roughly an eightieth of the original mass of the earth. The total mass of High Strange and the other five knots in Nawa-no-ukiyo, plus all the karman lines and the sails came to less than half this. So if the habitats had really been grown from segments of moon, then where had the rest of it gone?

Lady Neku raised this with Nico, but he wasn’t interested. As for her other two brothers they barely understood the question.

“Moon,” said Lady Neku, leaning against the wall of the duelling room. “You know, used to go round us like a baby planet back when the days were shorter?”

“Who’s us?” Petro asked.

“The earth,” said Lady Neku, nodding towards a window.

“We’re not earth,” said Petro. “We’re family.”

“Anyway,” said Antonio. “Who said days were shorter?” He glanced at Petro, who grinned. “Oh, I get it,” Antonio said. “The kami told you.”

Both brothers burst into laughter.

Lady Neku left them to their laughter and the fight. Since High Strange could protect itself and fugees were forbidden to use weapons, training with blades was utterly pointless. Apparently, the sheer pointlessness was the point. At least it was according to Nico, who could beat both his brothers without even breaking a sweat. Not caring was what he told Lady Neku, when his sister first asked how he managed it. She’d been working hard to copy him ever since.

The d’Alamberts arrived in eleven ships. They arrived on the morning of the third day after her mother told Lady Neku about her marriage and the whole of High Strange gathered to meet them.