Chris Adrian - The Great Night

“Soylent Green is people!” Huff shouted again, and he thought he heard a faint reply: “People!” It was like an echo, except it was a women’s voice. He was not familiar with the part of the park he was in — he had run up when everyone else had run down. He generally never penetrated up into the higher parts if he could help it, not being a fan of steep hills and not caring much for views. He was on a wide path now, flanked by tall white eucalyptus on either side, and some thoughtful person had put colored lanterns high in the branches. There were thick wisps of fog blowing among the trees, and these combined pleasingly with the lanterns, so the reds and greens and blues and purples were softly muted. It was something to admire. Views made him dizzy and seasick, but he was not indifferent to beauty.

The woman’s voice sounded again. “People!”

“Soylent Green!” he called back.

“People,” came the voice again. Huff ran, as much as he could run, down the lighted road, which seemed to go on and on and on. He ran for a full minute, and still the scene ahead of him didn’t change. He looked back, and the road stretched serenely into the dark. But when he turned around, there was a little something different up ahead after all: something was swinging over the road. He half ran — it was a sort of unwhimisical skip — calling out his coded greeting again, and the swinging package called back.

“Princess!” he said. “Is it you?” When he ran up closer, he got a better idea of what exactly was going on with her. She was tied by a long rope to a tree branch that arched over the path, swinging in a wide arc and gently striking the trunks on either side of the road, cursing each time she hit. Someone had wrapped her in a shroud, as if to bury her.

“It’s me,” she said.

“How did you get up there?”

“Shrug,” she said.

“Shrug?”

“Shrug. I’m saying it, since I can’t do it.”

“Was it the Mayor’s men?”

“Shrug. I was just walking, trying to get the fuck out of here.”

“I’ll get you down. This is all getting very serious, I think. Little people! Traps!” Perhaps it was ill-advised to say traps . Or maybe he was talking too loud. In a moment he was swinging off-tandem with Princess, wishing he had been more sneaky.

“Like that!” Princess said, and laughed.

“It’s not funny,” he said. “We are defeated, and we haven’t even gotten through a full rehearsal yet.”

“I have gotten where I am in life by learning to enjoy everything that happens to me,” she said, but she didn’t laugh again.

“I suppose they’ll come get us down and then take us to jail. I don’t want to go to jail. And we didn’t even do anything. Not yet. But maybe it will generate some outrage, when they put us in jail for no other reason than daring to speak truth to power.”

“I am really marveling at this technology,” Princess said, stretching in her shroud. “I never saw it coming. Not even when I saw it happening to you.”

“Well, this is San Francisco, isn’t it? Who knows what sort of devices that man has at his disposal? He’s probably watching us right now.” He looked around for a camera, but of course it wouldn’t be the kind that you could see. They swung there for a while, not unpleasantly, Huff thought. He liked spending time with Princess, when she was in the right mood — or right moods, since she often seemed to hold on to more than one of them at once, and combine them in sometimes sophisticated flavors that could be pleasant or unpleasant, depending, Huff believed, on the measure of tension in the combination. Sad envy made for a gentle Princess, while raging joy made her too much to handle, and anxious tristesse left her quiet and bemused. She almost sustained his interest sometimes, with her ever-changing personality, but he had never met a woman who sustained his interest, and indeed he had had a dream on the eve of his sexual debut in which an old hag had stood over his crib and declared that he would never meet a woman who could sustain his interest; there was something so awful and so great in him that he would never find a partner who could tolerate his potential. He was grateful to that old lady for bringing him that information. A lifetime of failed relationships might otherwise have been even more dispiriting. But predestination was a relief in this case, and he had always made a habit, in his foreknowledge, of enjoying the ladies while they lasted.

“I like you, Princess. I thought you should know that, here at the end.”

“You’re all right,” she said, and spat at a squirrel that came out on a nearby branch to stare at them. “Shoo!” she said, but that only seemed to invite another squirrel onto the branch. It was joined shortly by a third and a fourth, and in very little time that branch, and all the branches, and the ground below them, were crowded with raccoons and owls and even bluejays and wrens, creatures that really ought to have been asleep. They all stared, much too quietly, and Huff stared back, totally unsure of what to say. One or two or three of them he might have confronted as agents of the Mayor, sophisticated animatronic squirrel-bots, but a whole silent Snow White symphony of woodland creatures was something else entirely. He liked to think that he tolerated more strangeness than most people, because he knew from experience that life was generally much stranger than most folks could imagine. But this suddenly seemed of a different order. This was all much stranger than anything else he’d ever lived through, and yet it didn’t feel at all unreal. “My dear,” he said, “we are not dreaming.”

“Pinch,” said Princess. The silent animals continued to stare, but now the ones on the ground, who had been crowding the path, started to shuffle to either side, making an aisle. A moment later a figure came walking down the path. Huff could tell right away that it was a lady, though she wasn’t dressed like a lady. Something ladylike went before her, figuratively speaking, to which he was sensitive. Two of the Mayor’s dwarves walked beside her, stepping very carefully — perhaps even timidly — down the path in a way that contrasted sharply with the lady’s confident stride.

“My Lady,” the two said in unison. They were both the size of schnauzers, and one had an old man’s face while the other had an old woman’s face. “It is not the Beast that we have captured.”

“Are you with the Mayor’s office?” Huff called down to the lady, who was close enough for him to examine in a little more detail. She was very tall, and her face was harsh, and the battle-ax resting in her arms, while it brought to mind certain ladies he had known, was decidedly unladylike.

“I am with the office of eternity,” she said. “And the office of regret, and the office of love renounced, but of the Mayor I know nothing at all.”

“It’s just two mortals,” said the dwarf with the old man’s face.

“And not pretty ones, even,” said the other one. Princess spat on her, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Still, they may come,” said the lovely lady. “It wouldn’t do, to leave them unattended on the hill. And the Beast is their enemy, as much as ours. Get them down.” The little man and woman clapped their hands, then did a little do-si-do with each other, slapped each other on the cheek, and finally whistled, high and clear for a few seconds, but then the tone descended. Huff and Princess descended with it, not too fast, but still they landed on their heads and lay crumpled and bound among the animals and the goons.

“You had no right—” Huff began, but the animals and the little people and the tall lady were already starting to move down the path. The white ribbon that bound Huff’s arms and legs was already unraveling, and the same thing was happening to Princess; they freed themselves and stood up at the same time. They took each other’s hands and then each tried to lead the other in the opposite direction. Huff pulled Princess after the remarkable lady. Princess pulled him away from her.