Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

They stepped up to the first table and took the seats they were eagerly offered. Three men, two women, in outfits that had stepped straight off one of the old album covers. Winter looked across at Calder for a moment, returned his eyelash hint of a wink, and then settled in to the serious business of keeping the loyal happy. As he sipped beer and answered earnest questions he’d heard a thousand times before, and asked questions whose answers he forgot before they were finished, he began to enjoy himself. Back in the early days, the after-show party had been a way to relax among friends and relatives. Later it had become more of a strain, a meeting with strangers who presumed an acquaintance, but it remained a necessary decompression after the gig. If he and Calder had just walked away, they’d have ended up roaming drunk and alone, or together and knocking lumps out of each other. It had happened.

They moved on to another table and cluster every ten minutes or so, with relief and feigned regret. One or two people here had actually been fans back in the Solar system, but the musicians knew none of them personally. After the third or fourth move they met Shlaim, who shook hands then sat back with a wary half-smile. He was among local notables of one kind or another, not fans or friends.

‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ Winter said.

‘Really?’ said Shlaim. ‘You mean I’m not a giant lizard from another star? Or maybe zombie spawn?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Winter, taken aback. ‘Christ, man, I don’t think that way. We don’t care which side you were on.’

‘We sold plenty in America,’ said Calder. ‘And in the client states,’ he added, unhelpfully.

‘That’s all past,’ Winter laboured on. ‘I mean, Calder here was a bloody … Reformer. Bygones.’

Shlaim tipped his head backward. ‘You seem to have invited a lot of Returners.’

Winter shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about that, these are just people Ben-Ami said to put on the guest list… . ’ His gaze reached where Shlaim had indicated. ‘And General Jacques, well, we knew him. I’m looking forward to meeting him again.’

Armand was sitting with Kowalsky, Al-Khayed, and Ben-Ami, and with a woman he didn’t know, and with Carlyle. Winter felt his heart lurch, as it had when he’d glimpsed her in the front row. Her long dress was the exact colour and style of a white dress in an Old West sepia photograph. She had one of those faces so distinctive it was difficult to remember in detail, and impossible to forget. Seeing her would always be a surprise.

(Now where had that thought come from?) Winter blinked and shook his head.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ he asked.

Shlaim looked irritated. ‘I said, so why are you pleased to meet me? Conventionalities aside, that is.’

‘All right,’ Winter said, striving to keep his tone affable. ‘It’s because it gives me hope, that other people can be recovered, like you were.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a small hope.’

A woman sitting beside Shlaim leaned forward. ‘You are still a Returner,’ she said. It wasn’t clear whether this was a question or an accusation. Winter stared straight back at the strange beautiful woman. In her renaissance fair garb she looked like an actor playing some sinister Medici duchess. She was probably a spy for the Joint Chiefs. He almost laughed.

‘I still believe in what I believed in … just a couple of weeks ago, as it seems to me.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re living in a different world now. I understand we could go back to Earth if we wanted, when the FTL ships turn up or the wormhole opens or whatever. I don’t know, maybe there are other politics involved now, but the old Runner-Returner thing has been bypassed. The whole issue seems redundant.’

‘It’s like asking Shlaim if he’s still a Zionist,’ said Calder, in the tone of someone making a helpful and pertinent observation.

‘You bastard !’ Shlaim snapped. ‘Fucking Eurab!’

Winter laid a hand on Calder’s shoulder. ‘That’s another war that’s over,’ he said mildly. ‘We all died in it, OK? Well, in a manner of speaking. Let it go, man, let it go.’

He stood up the moment it was polite to do so, made a stiff goodbye and moved to another table, not the next one.

‘There are times when I could fucking strangle you,’ he told Calder.

T

hey reached Ben-Ami’s table an hour or so later, in the spirit of saving the best for last. Ben-Ami made what introductions were necessary. Winter made sure he sat down beside Carlyle. Calder gave him a glare and sat by Andrea Al-Khayed, who as it happened was quite friendly towards him.

But the first person they both talked to was Jacques Armand.

‘This is the most amazing thing,’ Winter said. ‘Seeing you again.’

‘To be honest,’ Armand said, ‘I do not remember you personally. There were a lot of bodies in the Black Sickle clinics.’

Calder sighed and fiddled with a cigarette. ‘Yeah, and you greeted us all, one by one.’

‘It was a daily duty,’ said Armand. ‘For morale. But of course, I remember you as performers. Your work has lost none of its quality. Hearing you again, and live, was an experience I shall not forget.’

His wife, Jeanette, laughed. ‘He means he dislikes it as much as ever.’

Jacques Armand shrugged, smiling. ‘What can I say? My tastes are classical.’

‘Ah well,’ said Winter, ‘mine are romantic.’ He turned to Lucinda Carlyle, smiling. ‘As are yours, I see.’

She smiled wryly back. ‘I just follow the fashion.’ She flicked fingernails at her lacy skirt. ‘This isnae me.’

Winter nodded earnestly. ‘Aye, it’s far too … demure for you, I’m sure. But it also kind of looks well on you.’ This was getting him nowhere fast. He wanted nothing more, at this moment, than to be able to sit here and look her in the face. ‘Anyway … ’ He said the first stupid thing that came into his head. ‘Have you ever been to Earth?’

‘Yes, I have,’ she said.

Winter and Calder yelped something at the same moment.

‘Really?’ said Winter. ‘What’s it like?’

Her gaze flashed a look past him, to Armand, then back.

‘It’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘It’s recovering. Growing back. It makes terraformed worlds—even this one—look thin. Impoverished, ye ken?’

‘Oh aye,’ said Winter. ‘I ken all right. But what about the people?’

‘And the machines,’ said Calder.

‘Well, the people are fine. Back up tae a billion, last I heard. And the machines, they’re no daen very much. The ones that arnae wreckage just kind of sit there and hum away.’

‘You beat the war machines?’ Calder asked.

‘No exactly. They just like, gave up. Ran out of juice or something.’ She shrugged. ‘Or something inside them went away.’

‘What we were wondering,’ Winter said, ‘was if it’s possible to, you know, do the Returner thing. The resurrection thing, like you did with—’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating Shlaim.

‘Yon wee bugger? Aye. Well maybe. There is a problem wi that.’ She leaned in, talking quietly to them both, and maybe to Armand. The others at the table had gotten involved in other conversations. ‘Earth is a big place, right? No one power can dominate it. Well, no any mair! And we, the Carlyle firm that is, we got hold ae the wormhole skein early on, and we still have it, obviously. But we didnae get everything. The posthuman machines, all of them, are very firmly in the hands of another power, the Knights of Enlightenment. Which disnae like anyone else poking around in them.’

‘Ah,’ said Calder. ‘I suppose we should talk to them, then.’