Fury_ A Novel Part 3

Neela Mahendra called an hour later. "Do you remember? We met during that football game. The Dutch thrashing Serbia." "They still call it Yugoslavia in football circles," Solanka said, "on account of Montenegro. But yes, of course I remember. You're not that easy to forget." She didn't even acknowledge the compliment, receiving such flattery as a minimum: her merest due. "Can we meet? It's about Jack. I need to talk to someone. It's important." She meant immediately, was used to men abandoning, when she beckoned, whatever plans they had made. "I'm across the park from you," she said. "Can we meet outside the Metropolitan Museum in let's say half an hour?" Solanka, already worried about his friend's well-being, more worried as a result of this phone call, and-yes, very well!-unable to resist the summons from gorgeous Neela, got up to go, even though these had become his day's most precious hours: Mila's time. He put on a light overcoat-it was a dry but overcast and unseasonably cool day-and opened the apartment's front door. Mila stood there with his spare key in her hand. "Oh," she said, seeing the coat. "Oh. Okay." In that first instant, when she'd been taken by surprise, before she had time to gather herself, he glimpsed her face naked, so to speak. What was there, without question, was disappointed hunger. The vulpine hunger of an animal denied its-he tried not to think the word, but it forced its way in-its prey.

"I'll be back soon," he said lamely, but she had recovered her composure now, and shrugged. "No big deal." They went through the outside door of the building together and he walked rapidly away from her, toward Columbus Avenue, not looking around, knowing that she'd be with Eddie on the neighboring stoop, angrily sticking a thirsty tongue down his bemused, delighted throat. There were posters everywhere for The Cell The Cell, the new Jennifer Lopez movie. In it, Lopez was miniaturized and injected into the brain of a serial killer. It sounded like a remake of Fantastic Voyage Fantastic Voyage, starring Raquel Welch, but so what? n.o.body remembered the original. Everything's a copy, an echo of the past, thought Professor Solanka. A song for Jennifer: We're living in a retro world and I am a retrograde girl.

11.

"In the future, sure theen', they don't listen no more to this type talk radio. Or, jou know wha' I theen'? Porhap' the radio weel listen to oss oss. We'll be like the entortainmon' and the machines weel be the audien', an' own the station, and we all like work for them."-"Yo, lissen up. Dunno what jive sci-fi c.r.a.p ol' Speedy Gonzalez there was handin' out. Sound to me like he rent The Matrix The Matrix too many times. Where I'm sittin' the future plain ain't arrive. Ever'thin' look the same. I mean the exact same shinola goin' down all over. Ever'body in the same accommodation, gettin' the same education, doin' the same recreation, lookin' for the same ... ploymentation. Check it out. We gettin' the same bills, datin' the same girls, goin' to the same jails; gettin' paid bad, laid bad 'n' made bad, am I right? That would be cor-recto, senor. And too many times. Where I'm sittin' the future plain ain't arrive. Ever'thin' look the same. I mean the exact same shinola goin' down all over. Ever'body in the same accommodation, gettin' the same education, doin' the same recreation, lookin' for the same ... ploymentation. Check it out. We gettin' the same bills, datin' the same girls, goin' to the same jails; gettin' paid bad, laid bad 'n' made bad, am I right? That would be cor-recto, senor. And my my radio? It come wit' a on-off switch, daddy-o, and I turn that sucker off anytime I choose."-"Boy, does he don' get eet. That guy jus' now, he don' get eet so bad he won't see eet comin' till eet sittin' on his face. Jou better wise up, hermano. They got machine now eat food for fuel, jou hear that? No more gasoline. Eat human food like jou an' me. Pizza, chili dog, tuna melt, whatev'. Pretty soon Mr. Machine gonna be takin' a table in a restauran'. Gonna be, like, gimme the bes' booth. Now jou tell me what's the differen'? If eet eatin', eet alive, I say. The future here, man, right now, jou better watch jou b.u.t.t. Pretty soon Mr. Live Machine gonna be comin' for that employmentation jou talkin' 'bout, maybe for jour pretty girlfrien' too."-"Hey, hey, my paranoid Latino friend, Ricky Ricardo, I missed the name, but slow down, Desi, okay? This here's not that communist Cuba you escaped from in yo' rubber boat an' got sanctuary in the land of the free ..." "Don' insul' me, please, now. I'm sayin' please, because I was raise polite, no? The brother here, how he's call, Senor Cleef Hoxtaboo' or Mr. No Good from the 'Hood, maybe hees mother never tol' heem right, but we goin' out live on air here, we talkin' to the whole metro region, less keep eet clean."-"Can I get in here? Excuse me? I'm listening to all this?, and I'm thinking, they have electronically generated TV presenters now?, and there's dead actors selling motor vehicles?, Steve McQueen in that car?, so I'm more with our Cuban friend?, the technology scares me? And so in the future?, like, will anyone even be thinking about our like needs? I'm an actress?, I work mainly in commercials?, and there's this big SAG strike?, and for months now I can't earn a dollar?, and it doesn't stop one single spot going on air?, because they can get Lara Croft?, Jar Jar Binks?, they can get Gable or Bogey or Marilyn or Max Headroom or HAL from radio? It come wit' a on-off switch, daddy-o, and I turn that sucker off anytime I choose."-"Boy, does he don' get eet. That guy jus' now, he don' get eet so bad he won't see eet comin' till eet sittin' on his face. Jou better wise up, hermano. They got machine now eat food for fuel, jou hear that? No more gasoline. Eat human food like jou an' me. Pizza, chili dog, tuna melt, whatev'. Pretty soon Mr. Machine gonna be takin' a table in a restauran'. Gonna be, like, gimme the bes' booth. Now jou tell me what's the differen'? If eet eatin', eet alive, I say. The future here, man, right now, jou better watch jou b.u.t.t. Pretty soon Mr. Live Machine gonna be comin' for that employmentation jou talkin' 'bout, maybe for jour pretty girlfrien' too."-"Hey, hey, my paranoid Latino friend, Ricky Ricardo, I missed the name, but slow down, Desi, okay? This here's not that communist Cuba you escaped from in yo' rubber boat an' got sanctuary in the land of the free ..." "Don' insul' me, please, now. I'm sayin' please, because I was raise polite, no? The brother here, how he's call, Senor Cleef Hoxtaboo' or Mr. No Good from the 'Hood, maybe hees mother never tol' heem right, but we goin' out live on air here, we talkin' to the whole metro region, less keep eet clean."-"Can I get in here? Excuse me? I'm listening to all this?, and I'm thinking, they have electronically generated TV presenters now?, and there's dead actors selling motor vehicles?, Steve McQueen in that car?, so I'm more with our Cuban friend?, the technology scares me? And so in the future?, like, will anyone even be thinking about our like needs? I'm an actress?, I work mainly in commercials?, and there's this big SAG strike?, and for months now I can't earn a dollar?, and it doesn't stop one single spot going on air?, because they can get Lara Croft?, Jar Jar Binks?, they can get Gable or Bogey or Marilyn or Max Headroom or HAL from 2001?" 2001?"-"I'm going to interrupt, ma'am, because we're out of time and this is something I know a lot of people feel strongly about. Can't blame cutting-edge technological innovation for the fix your union's got you in. You chose socialism, union made your bed, now you're lying in it. My personal take on the future? You can't turn back the clock, so go with the flow and ride the tide. Be the new thing. Seize the day. From sea to shining sea."

Sitting on the steps of the great museum, caught in a sudden burst of slanting, golden afternoon sunlight, scanning the Times Times while he waited for Neela, Professor Malik Solanka felt more than ever like a refugee in a small boat, caught between surging tides: reason and unreason, war and peace, the future and the past. Or like a boy in a rubber ring who watched his mother slip under the black water and drown. And after the terror and the thirst and the sunburn there was the noise, the incessant adversarial buzz of voices on a taxi driver's radio, drowning his own inner voice, making thought impossible, or choice, or peace. How to defeat the demons of the past when the demons of the future were all around him in full cry? The past was rising up; it could not be denied. As well as Sara Lear, here in the TV listings was Krysztof Waterford-Wajda's little Ms. Pinch-a.s.s back from the dead. Perry Pincus-she must be, what, forty by now-had written a tell-all book about her years as the eggheads' premier groupie, while he waited for Neela, Professor Malik Solanka felt more than ever like a refugee in a small boat, caught between surging tides: reason and unreason, war and peace, the future and the past. Or like a boy in a rubber ring who watched his mother slip under the black water and drown. And after the terror and the thirst and the sunburn there was the noise, the incessant adversarial buzz of voices on a taxi driver's radio, drowning his own inner voice, making thought impossible, or choice, or peace. How to defeat the demons of the past when the demons of the future were all around him in full cry? The past was rising up; it could not be denied. As well as Sara Lear, here in the TV listings was Krysztof Waterford-Wajda's little Ms. Pinch-a.s.s back from the dead. Perry Pincus-she must be, what, forty by now-had written a tell-all book about her years as the eggheads' premier groupie, Men with Pens Men with Pens, and Charlie Rose was talking to her about it this very night. Oh poor Dubdub, Malik Solanka thought. This is the girl you wanted to settle down with, and now she's going to dance on your grave. If tonight it's Charlie-"Tell me what sort of qualms this project gave you, Perry; as an intellectual yourself, you must have had serious misgivings. Say how you overcame those scruples"-then tomorrow it'll be Howard Stern: "Chicks dig writers. But then, a lot of writers dug this chick." Halloween, Walpurgisnacht, did indeed seem to be early this year. The witches were gathering for their sabbat.

Yet another story was being half told behind his back; another stranger's fairy tale of the city poured into his defenseless ear. "Yeah, it went great, honey. No, no problems, I'm en route to the trustees' meeting, that's why I'm calling you on my cell. Conscious all the time, but doped-up, sure. So, semi semiconscious. Yeah, the knife comes right at your eyeball, but the chemical a.s.sistance makes you think it's a feather. No, no bruising, and let me tell you it's amazing what my visual world now contains. Amazing grace, yeah, good one. Was blind but now I see. Really. Look at all this stuff out here. I've been missing so much. Well, think about it. He really is the laser king. I asked around a lot as you know and the same name kept coming up. A little dryness is all, but that goes away in a few weeks, he says. Okay, love ya. I'll be home late. What can you do. Don't wait up." And of course he turned around, of course he saw that the young woman was not alone, a man was nuzzling at her even as she flipped her cell phone shut. She, gladly allowing herself to be nuzzled, met Solanka's eye; and, seeing herself caught in her lie, beamed guiltily, and shrugged. What can you do, as she had said on the phone. The heart has its reasons, and we are all the servants of love.

Twenty minutes to ten in London. Asmaan would be asleep. Five and a half hours later in India. Turn the watch upside down in London and you got the time in the town of Malik Solanka's birth, the Forbidden City by the Arabian Sea. That, too, was coming back. The thought filled him with dread: of what, driven by his long-sealed-away fury, he might become. Even after all these years it defined him, had not lost any of its power over him. And if he finished the sentences of that untold tale? ... That question must be for another day. He shook his head. Neela was late. Solanka put down his newspaper, pulled a piece of wood and a Swiss Army knife out of an overcoat pocket, and began, with complete absorption, to whittle.

"Who is he?" Neela Mahendra's shadow fell across him. The sun was behind her, and in silhouette she looked even taller than he remembered. "He's an artist," Solanka replied. "The most dangerous man in the world." She dusted off a spot on the museum steps and sat down beside him. "I don't believe you," she said. "I know a lot of dangerous men, and none of them ever created a credible work of art. Also, trust me, not a single one of them was made of wood." They sat there in silence for a while, he whittling, she simply still, offering the world the gift of her being in it. Afterward Malik Solanka, remembering their first moments alone together, would dwell particularly on the silence and stillness, on how easy that had been. "I fell in love with you when you weren't saying a word," he told her. "How was I to know you were the most talkative woman on earth? I know a lot of talkative women and, trust me, compared to you, every single one of them was made of wood."

After a few minutes he put the half-finished figure away and apologized for being so distracted. "No apology required," she said. "Work is work." They got up to make their way down the great flight of steps toward the park, and as she rose, a man slipped on the step above her and rolled heavily and painfully down a dozen or more steps, narrowly missing Neela on his way down; his fall was broken by a group of schoolgirls sitting screaming in his way. Professor Solanka recognized the man as the one who had been necking so enthusiastically with the mobile-phone prevaricator. He looked around for Ms. Cell Phone, and after a moment spotted her storming off uptown on foot, hailing off-duty cabs that ignored her angry arm.

Neela was wearing a knee-length mustard-colored scarf dress in silk. Her black hair was twisted up into a tight chignon and her long arms were bare. A cab stopped and expelled its pa.s.senger just in case she needed a ride. A hot dog vendor offered her anything she wanted, free of charge: "Just eat it here, lady, so I can watch you do it." Experiencing for the first time the effect about which Jack Rhinehart had been so vulgarly effusive, Solanka felt as if he were escorting one of the Met's more important possessions down an awestruck Fifth Avenue. No: the masterpiece he was thinking of was at the Louvre. With a light breeze blowing the dress against her body, she looked like the Winged Victory of Samothraki, only with the head on. "Nike," he said aloud, puzzling her. "It's who you remind me of," he clarified. She frowned. "I make you think of sportswear?"

Sportswear was certainly thinking of her. As they turned into the park, a young man in running clothes approached them, rendered positively humble by the force of Neela's beauty. Unable to speak directly to her at first, he addressed himself to Solanka instead. "Sir," he said, "please don't think I'm trying to hit on your daughter, that is, I'm not asking for a date or anything, it's just that she is the most, I had to tell her"-and here at last he did turn toward Neela-"to tell you, you're the most ..." A great roaring rose in Malik Solanka's breast. It would be good now to tear this young man's tongue out from that vile fleshy mouth. It would be good to see how those muscled arms might look when detached from that highly defined torso. Cut? Ripped? How about if he was cut and ripped into about a million pieces? How about if I ate his f.u.c.king heart? How about if I ate his f.u.c.king heart?

He felt Neela Mahendra's hand come to rest lightly on his arm. The fury abated as quickly as it had risen. The phenomenon, his unpredictable temper's rise and fall, had been so rapid that Malik Solanka was left feeling giddy and confused. Had it really happened? Had he really been on the verge of tearing this super-fit fellow limb from limb? And if so, then how had Neela dissipated his anger-the anger to combat which Solanka sometimes had to lie in darkened rooms for hours, doing breathing exercises and visualizing red triangles-by the merest touch? Could a woman's hand really possess such power? And if so (the thought offered itself to him and would not be denied), was this not a woman to keep by his side and cherish for the rest of his haunted life?

He shook his head to clear it of such notions and returned his attention to the unfolding scene. Neela was giving the young runner her most dazzling smile, a smile after receiving which it would be best to die, for the rest of life was sure to be a big letdown. "He isn't my father," she told the smile-blinded wearer of sportswear. "He's my live-in lover." This information struck the poor fellow like a hammer blow; whereupon, to underscore the point, Neela Mahendra planted on the still-befuddled Solanka's unprepared but nevertheless grateful mouth a long, explicit kiss. "And, guess what?" she panted, coming up for air to deliver the coup de grace. "He's absolutely fantastic in bed."

"What was that?" that?" a flattered, more than somewhat overcome Professor Solanka asked her dizzily after the runner had departed, looking as if he were off to disembowel himself with a blunt bamboo stick. She laughed, a great wicked cackle of a noise that made even Mila's raucous laughter seem refined. "I could see you were on the edge of losing it," she said. "And I need you here right now, paying attention, and not in a hospital or jail." Which explained about eighty percent of it, Solanka thought as his head stopped whirling, but didn't fully translate the meaning of everything she had been doing with her tongue. a flattered, more than somewhat overcome Professor Solanka asked her dizzily after the runner had departed, looking as if he were off to disembowel himself with a blunt bamboo stick. She laughed, a great wicked cackle of a noise that made even Mila's raucous laughter seem refined. "I could see you were on the edge of losing it," she said. "And I need you here right now, paying attention, and not in a hospital or jail." Which explained about eighty percent of it, Solanka thought as his head stopped whirling, but didn't fully translate the meaning of everything she had been doing with her tongue.

Jack! Jack! he reproved himself. The subject for this afternoon was Rhinehart, his pal, his best buddy, and not his friend's girlfriend's tongue, no matter how long and gymnastic it was. They sat on a bench near the pond, and all around them dog walkers were colliding with trees, Tai Chi pract.i.tioners lost their balance, rollerbladers smashed into one another, and people out strolling just walked right into the pond as if they'd forgotten it was there. Neela Mahendra gave no sign of noticing any of this. A man walked past with an ice cream cone, which, owing to his sudden but comprehensive loss of hand-to-mouth coordination, completely missed his tongue and instead made contact, messily, with his ear. Another young fellow began, with every appearance of genuine emotion, to weep copiously as he jogged by. Only the middle-aged African-American woman sitting on the next bench (who am I calling middle-aged? She's probably younger than I am, Solanka thought disappointedly) seemed impervious to the Neela factor as she ate her way through a long egg salad hero, advertising her enjoyment of every mouthful with loud mmm mmms and uh-huh uh-huhs. Neela, meanwhile, had eyes only for Professor Malik Solanka. "Surprisingly good kiss, by the way," she said. "Really. First cla.s.s."

She looked away from him, across the shining water. "It's over between Jack and me," she went on quickly. "Maybe he already told you. It's been over for a while. I know he's your good friend, and you should be a good friend to him at this time, but I can't stay with a man once I lose respect for him." A pause. Solanka said nothing. He was replaying Rhinehart's last phone call and hearing what he had missed: the elegiac note beneath the s.e.xual boasting. The use of the past tense. The loss. He didn't push Neela for the story. Let it come, he thought. It'll be here soon enough. "What do you think about the election?" she asked, making one of the dramatic conversational tacks to which Solanka would soon enough become accustomed. "I'll tell you what I think. I think the American voters owe it to the rest of the world not to vote for Bush. It's their duty. I'll tell you what I hate," she added. "I hate when people say there's no difference between the candidates. That Gush-and-Bore stuff is getting so old old. It makes me hopping mad." Not the moment, Solanka thought, to confess his own guilty secrets. Neela wasn't really expecting a reply, however. "No difference?" she cried. "How about, for example, geography? geography? How about, for example, knowing where my poor little homeland is on the d.a.m.n map of the world?" Malik Solanka remembered that George W. Bush had been ambushed by a journalist's crafty question during a foreign policy Q-and-A one month before the Republican convention: "Given the growing instability of the ethnic situation in Lilliput-Blefuscu, could you just indicate that nation to us on the map? And what was the name of its capital city again?" Two curve b.a.l.l.s, two strikes. How about, for example, knowing where my poor little homeland is on the d.a.m.n map of the world?" Malik Solanka remembered that George W. Bush had been ambushed by a journalist's crafty question during a foreign policy Q-and-A one month before the Republican convention: "Given the growing instability of the ethnic situation in Lilliput-Blefuscu, could you just indicate that nation to us on the map? And what was the name of its capital city again?" Two curve b.a.l.l.s, two strikes.

"I'll tell you what Jack Jack thinks about the election." Neela swerved back to the subject, the color rising in her face along with her voice. "New Jack, A-list Black-and-White-Ball Truman Capote Rhinehart, he thinks whatever his 'Caesars' in their 'Palaces' want him to think. Jump, Jack, and he'll jump sky-high. Dance for us, Jack, you're such a great dancer, and he'll show them all the obsolete thirty-year-old moves old white people like, he'll swim and hitchhike and walk the dog, he'll do the mash, the funky chicken and the locomotion all night long. Make us laugh, Jack, and he'll tell them jokes like some court jester. You probably know his favorites. 'After the FBI tested Monica's dress, they announced they couldn't make a positive I.D. from the stain, because everybody in Arkansas has the same DNA.' Yeah, they like that one, the Caesars. Vote Republican, Jack, be pro-life, Jack, read the Bible on h.o.m.os.e.xuals, Jack, and guns don't kill people, ain't that right, Jack, and he goes, yes, ma'am, people kill people. Good dog, Jack. Roll over. Fetch. Sit up and f.u.c.king beg. Beg for it, Jack, you ain't gonna get it, but we do like to see a black boy on his knees. Good dog, Jack, run off now and sleep in the kennel out the back. Oh, darling, would you throw Jack a bone, please? He's been so sweet. Yes, she'll do, she's from the South." Oh, so Rhinehart had been a bad boy, Solanka thought, and he guessed that Neela wasn't used to being cheated on at all. She was used to being the Pied Piper, with lines of boys following wherever she was pleased to lead. thinks about the election." Neela swerved back to the subject, the color rising in her face along with her voice. "New Jack, A-list Black-and-White-Ball Truman Capote Rhinehart, he thinks whatever his 'Caesars' in their 'Palaces' want him to think. Jump, Jack, and he'll jump sky-high. Dance for us, Jack, you're such a great dancer, and he'll show them all the obsolete thirty-year-old moves old white people like, he'll swim and hitchhike and walk the dog, he'll do the mash, the funky chicken and the locomotion all night long. Make us laugh, Jack, and he'll tell them jokes like some court jester. You probably know his favorites. 'After the FBI tested Monica's dress, they announced they couldn't make a positive I.D. from the stain, because everybody in Arkansas has the same DNA.' Yeah, they like that one, the Caesars. Vote Republican, Jack, be pro-life, Jack, read the Bible on h.o.m.os.e.xuals, Jack, and guns don't kill people, ain't that right, Jack, and he goes, yes, ma'am, people kill people. Good dog, Jack. Roll over. Fetch. Sit up and f.u.c.king beg. Beg for it, Jack, you ain't gonna get it, but we do like to see a black boy on his knees. Good dog, Jack, run off now and sleep in the kennel out the back. Oh, darling, would you throw Jack a bone, please? He's been so sweet. Yes, she'll do, she's from the South." Oh, so Rhinehart had been a bad boy, Solanka thought, and he guessed that Neela wasn't used to being cheated on at all. She was used to being the Pied Piper, with lines of boys following wherever she was pleased to lead.

She calmed down, slumping back on the bench, and briefly closed her eyes. The woman on the next bench finished her hero, leaned over to Neela, and said, "Oh, dump that that boy, honey. Cancel boy, honey. Cancel his his a.s.s a.s.s today today. You don't need no relationship with n.o.body's pet poodle." Neela turned to her as if greeting an old friend. "Ma'am," she said, seriously, "you've got milk in your refrigerator with a longer life than that relationship."

"Let's walk now," she commanded, and Solanka rose to his feet. When she was sure they were out of earshot, she said, "Look, I'm p.i.s.sed at Jack, that's one thing, but I'm scared for him, too. He really needs a true friend, Malik. He's in a pretty bad jam." As Solanka had guessed from his phone call, Rhinehart was depressed, and not only about the collapse of his perishable milk carton of a love affair. The Sara Lear encounter, which had begun as an interview for an article about the power divorces of the age, had rebounded badly against Jack. Sara had taken against him, and her enmity had hit him hard. After the loss of the Springs place to Bronislawa, he'd found himself the tiniest of shoe boxes in the middle of a golf course way out toward Montauk Point. "You know his thing for Tiger Woods," Neela said. "Jack's compet.i.tive. He won't be happy till Nike-the other Nike, I mean," she said, flushing with undisguised pleasure, "the Nike he hasn't disgusted yet, starts sponsoring his game too, right down to the swoosh on his cap." After Rhinehart's offer for the little house had been accepted by the seller, two things happened in quick succession. On Rhinehart's third visit to the place, to which the broker had handed him the key, the police showed up less than ten minutes after he did and invited him to a.s.sume the position. Neighbors had reported an intruder on the property, and he was it. It took him close to an hour to persuade the cops that he wasn't a burglar but a bona fide purchaser. A week later the golf club blackballed his application for membership. Sara's arm was long. Rhinehart, for whom, as he said, "being black's just not the issue anymore," had rediscovered, the hard way, that it still was. "There's a club out there that got started so Jews could play golf," Neela said contemptuously. "Those old Wasps can sting. Jack should've known the score. I mean: Tiger Woods may be of mixed race, but he knows his b.a.l.l.s are black.

"That's not the worst of it." They had reached Bethesda Fountain. Double takes and slapstick routines continued all around them; they walked on until they reached a gra.s.sy slope. "Sit," said Neela. He sat. Neela lowered her voice. "He's become involved with some crazy boys, Malik. G.o.d knows why, but he really wants in with them, and they're the dumbest, wildest white boys you could imagine. Did you ever hear of a secret society, it's not even supposed to exist, called the S & M? Even the name's a bad joke. 'Single and Male.' Yeah, right. Those boys are twisted way, way out of shape. It's like that Skull and Crossbones thing they have at Yale?, right?, where they buy up stuff like Hitler's mustache and Casanova's d.i.c.k?-only this one's not school-specific, and it doesn't collect memorabilia. It collects girls, young ladies with certain interests and skills. You'd be surprised how many, especially if you knew the games they're expected to play, and I'm not talking strip poker now. Zips, nips n' clips. Saddles, reins, harnesses, they probably end up looking like the surrey with the fringe on top. Or, you know, lash me with lashes and tie me with strings, these are a few of my favorite things. Rich girls. I swear. Your family owns a horse farm, so you get turned on being treated like a horse? I wouldn't know. So much that's so desirable comes so easy to these kids"-Neela couldn't be more than five years older than the dead girls, Solanka thought-"that nothing turns them on. They have to travel further and further in search of kicks, further from home, further from safety. The wildest places of the world, the wildest chemicals, the wildest s.e.x. That's it, my five-cent Lucy a.n.a.lysis. Bored little rich girls let dumb rich boys do weird stuff to them. Dumb rich boys can't believe their luck."

Solanka reflected about Neela's use of the word "kids" to describe what were, after all, members of her own generation. The word seemed honest in her mouth. Compared to, say, Mila-Mila, his own guilty secret-this was an adult woman. Mila had her charms, but they had their roots in a childlike wantonness, a greedy whimsicality born of this same crisis of dulled response, this same need to go to extremes, beyond extremes, in order to find what she needed in the way of arousal. When forbidden fruit has been your daily diet, what do you do for thrills? Lucky Mila, Solanka thought. Her rich boyfriend hadn't understood what he might have done with her, and had let her go. If these other rich boys had ever heard about her, how far she was willing to go, what taboos she was willing to ignore, she could have been their G.o.ddess, the child-woman queen of their hidden cult. She could have ended up in the Midtown Tunnel with a smashed-in skull. "The affectless at play," Solanka said aloud. "A tragedy of insulation. The unexamined life of the folks who've got their units." He had to explain that, and was happy to hear her laugh again. "No wonder so many of those h.o.r.n.y gorillas-those Stashes, Clubs, and Horses-want in, no?" Neela sighed. "The question is, why does Jack?"

Professor Malik Solanka felt his stomach tighten. "Jack's a member of this S & M thing?" he asked. "But aren't these the men ..."-"He's not a member yet," she b.u.t.ted in, driven by her need to share her terrible burden. "But he's hammering on the door, begging to be let in, the stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d. And that's after the evil s.h.i.t in the press. Once I knew that, I couldn't stay with him. I'll tell you something that wasn't in any of the papers," she added, dropping her voice even further. "Those three dead girls? They weren't raped, they weren't robbed, right? But something was done to them, and that's what really links the three crimes, only the police don't want it in the papers because of the copycat problem." Solanka was beginning to be genuinely frightened. "What happened to them?" he asked weakly. Neela covered her eyes with her hands. "They were scalped," she whispered, and wept.

To be scalped was to remain a trophy even in death. And because rarity created value, a dead girl's scalp in your pocket-O most gruesome of mysteries!-might actually possess greater cachet than would be conferred by the same girl, alive and breathing, on your arm at a glamorous ball, or even as a willing partner in whatever s.e.xual antics you cared to devise. The scalp was a signifier of domination, and to remove it, to see such a relic as desirable, was to value the signifier above the signified. The girls, Solanka in his revolted horror began to understand, had actually been worth more to their murderers dead than alive.

Neela was convinced of the three boyfriends' guilt; convinced, too, that Jack knew a great deal more than he was telling anyone, even her. "It's like heroin," she said, drying her eyes. "He's in so deep he doesn't know how to get out, doesn't want want to get out, even though staying in there will destroy him. My worry is, what is he ready to do, and who is he ready to do it to? Was to get out, even though staying in there will destroy him. My worry is, what is he ready to do, and who is he ready to do it to? Was I I being lined up for those a.s.sholes' delectation, or what? As for the killings, who knows why? Maybe their little s.e.x games went too far. Maybe it's some insane s.e.x and power thing those rich boys have. Some blood-brother manhood s.h.i.t. f.u.c.k the girl and kill her, and do it so d.a.m.n cleverly that you get away with it. I don't know. Maybe I'm just expressing cla.s.s resentment here. Maybe I've just watched too many movies. being lined up for those a.s.sholes' delectation, or what? As for the killings, who knows why? Maybe their little s.e.x games went too far. Maybe it's some insane s.e.x and power thing those rich boys have. Some blood-brother manhood s.h.i.t. f.u.c.k the girl and kill her, and do it so d.a.m.n cleverly that you get away with it. I don't know. Maybe I'm just expressing cla.s.s resentment here. Maybe I've just watched too many movies. Compulsion. Rope Compulsion. Rope. You know? 'Why do such a thing?' 'Because we can.' Because they want to prove what little Caesars they are. How above and beyond they are, how exalted, G.o.dlike. The law can't touch them. It's such murderous c.r.a.p c.r.a.p, but Mr. Lapdog Rhinehart just goes on being loyal. 'You don't know jack s.h.i.t about them, Neela, they're decent enough young men.' Bulls.h.i.t. He's so blind, he can't see that they'll take him down with them when they go, or, worse still, maybe they're setting him up. He'll take the fall for them and go to the chair singing their praises. Jack s.h.i.t. Good name for that weak little f.u.c.k. Right at this moment, that's about what he means to me."

"Why are you so sure of this?" Solanka asked her. "I'm sorry, but you're sounding a little wild yourself. Those three men were questioned, but they haven't been arrested. And as I understand it, each of them has a solid alibi for the time his girlfriend died. Witnesses, et cetera. One was seen in a bar, and so on, I forget." His heart was beating hard. For what felt like forever, he had been accusing himself of these crimes. Knowing the disorder in his own heart, the bubbling incoherent storm, he had linked it to the disorder of the city, and come close to declaring himself guilty. Now, it seemed, exoneration was at hand, but the price of his innocence just might be his good friend's guilt. A great turbulence was churning in his stomach, making him nauseous. "And the scalping business," he forced himself to ask. "Where on earth did you hear a thing like that?"

"Oh G.o.d," she wailed, letting the worst thing come out into the open at last. "I was tidying his f.u.c.king wardrobe. G.o.d knows why. I never never do ch.o.r.es like that for a man. Get a housekeeper, you know? That's not what I'm do ch.o.r.es like that for a man. Get a housekeeper, you know? That's not what I'm for for. I really dug him, I guess for about five minutes there I allowed myself ... so anyway, I was clearing up for him, and I found, I found." Tears again. Solanka put his hand on her arm now, and she moved against him, hugged him hard, and sobbed. "Goofy," she said. "I found all three of them. The f.u.c.king man-sized fancy-dress costumes. Goofy and Robin Hood and Buzz."

She had confronted Rhinehart and he had bl.u.s.tered, badly. Yes, for a joke, Marsalis, Andriessen, and Medford would dress up in these outfits and spy on their girlfriends from a distance. Okay, yes, maybe it was a joke in poor taste, but it didn't make them killers. And they hadn't worn the outfits on the nights of the murders, that was nonsense: garbled reporting. But they were afraid, wouldn't you be, and had asked Jack to help. "He went on and on protesting their innocence, denying that his precious club is a front organization for the lewd practices of the privileged cla.s.s." Neela had refused to let the subject drop. "I set out everything I knew, half knew, intuited, and suspected, piled it all up in front of him and told him I wasn't going to let up until he'd said what there was to say." Finally he'd panicked and cried out, "You think I'm the kind of man who goes out at night and cuts off the tops of women's heads?" When she'd asked him what that that meant, he'd looked scared to death, and claimed he'd read it in the paper. The swish of the tomahawk. The victorious warrior's taking of the spoils. But she had gone on-line to examine the archives of every paper in the Manhattan area, and she knew. "It's not there." meant, he'd looked scared to death, and claimed he'd read it in the paper. The swish of the tomahawk. The victorious warrior's taking of the spoils. But she had gone on-line to examine the archives of every paper in the Manhattan area, and she knew. "It's not there."

Neela had dressed for beauty, not for warmth, and the afternoon had lost its glow. Solanka took off his coat and put it over her trembling shoulders. All around them in the park the colors were fading. The world became a place of blacks and grays. Women's clothes-unusually for New York, it had been a season of bright colors-faded to monochrome. Under a gunmetal sky, the green leached out of the spreading trees. Neela needed to get out of this suddenly ghostly environment. "Let's get a drink," she proposed, getting up, and in the same instant was off in long strides. "There's a hotel bar that's okay on Seventy-seventh," and Solanka hurried after her, ignoring the now familiar shocks and catastrophes she was leaving, like hurricane damage, in her wake.

She had been born "in the mid-seventies" in Mildendo, the capital of Lilliput-Blefuscu, where her family still lived. They were girmityas girmityas, descendants of one of the original migrants-her great-grandfather-who had signed an indenture agreement, a girmit girmit, back in 1834, the year after the abolition of slavery. Biju Mahendra, from the little Indian village of t.i.tlipur, had traveled with his brothers all the way to this double speck in the remote South Pacific. The Mahendras had gone to work in Blefuscu, the more fertile of the two islands, and the center of the sugar industry. "As an Indo-Lilly," she said over her second cosmopolitan, "my childhood bogeyman was the Coolumber, who was big and white and spoke not in words but in numbers and would eat little girls at night if they didn't do their homework and wash their private parts. As I grew up I learned that the 'coolumbers' were the sugarcane laborers' overseers. The particular one in my family's story was a white man called Mr. Huge-Hughes, really, I suppose-who was 'a devil from Tasmania,' and to whom my great-grandfather and great-uncles were no more than numbers on the list he read out every morning. My ancestors were numbers, the children of numbers. Only the indigenous Elbees were called by their true last names. It took us three generations to retrieve our family names from this numerical tyranny. By then, obviously, things between the Elbees and us had gone badly wrong. 'We eat veggies,' my grandmother used to say, 'but those Elbee fatsos eat human meat.' In fact there is a history of cannibalism in Lilliput-Blefuscu. They are offended when you point this out, but it's just so. And for us the very presence of meat in the kitchen was a defilement. Long pork sounded like the devil's own food."

Words for drink played a distressingly big part in her back-story. In the matter of grog, yaqona, kava, beer, as in little else, the Indo-Lilliputians and Elbees were as one; both communities suffered from alcoholism and the problems a.s.sociated with it. Her own father was a big boozer, and she had been glad to escape him. There were very few scholarships to America available in Lilliput-Blefuscu, but she won one of them, and fell for New York at once, as did everybody who needed, and found here, a home away from home among other wanderers who needed exactly the same thing: a haven in which to spread their wings. Yet her roots pulled at her, and she suffered badly from what she called "the guilt of relief." She had escaped her drunkard of a father, but her mother and sisters had not. And to her community's cause, too, she remained pa.s.sionately attached. "The parades are on Sunday," she said, ordering a third cosmopolitan. "Will you come with me?" And Solanka-it was Thursday already-inevitably agreed.

"The Elbees say we are greedy and want everything and will chase them out of their own land. We say they are lazy and if it wasn't for us they would sit around doing nothing and starve. They say that the only end of a soft-boiled egg to break is the little one. Whereas we-or at least those of us who eat eggs-are the Big Endians, from Big Endia." She cackled again, tickled by her own joke. "Trouble is coming soon." It was a question, as so many things were, of the land. Even though the Indo-Lilliputians on Blefuscu now did all the farming, were responsible for most of the country's exports, and therefore earned most of the foreign exchange; even though they had prospered and cared for their own, building their own schools and hospitals, still the land on which all this stood was owned by the "indigenous" Elbees. "I hate that word, 'indigenous,'" Neela cried. "I'm fourth-generation Indo-Lilly. So I'm indigenous too." The Elbees feared a coup-a revolutionary land grab by the Indo-Lillys, to whom the Elbee const.i.tution still denied the right to own real estate on either island; the Big Endians, for their part, feared the same thing in reverse. They were afraid that when their hundred-year leases expired in the course of the coming decade, the Elbees would simply take back the now valuable farmland for themselves, leaving the Indians, who had developed it, with nothing.

But there was a complication, which Neela, in spite of her ethnic loyalty and three quick cosmopolitans, was honest enough to admit. "This isn't just a question of ethnic antagonism or even of who owns what," she said. "The Elbee culture really is different, and I can see why they are afraid. They're collectivists. The land isn't held by individual landowners but by the Elbee chiefs in trust for the whole Elbee people. And then we Big Endia-wallahs come along with our good business practice, entrepreneurial ac.u.men, free-market mercantilism, and profit mentality. And the world speaks our language now, not theirs. It is the age of numbers, isn't it? So we are numbers and the Elbees are words. We are mathematics and they are poetry. We are winning and they are losing: and so of course they're afraid of us, it's like the struggle inside human nature itself, between what's mechanical and utilitarian in us and the part that loves and dreams. We all fear that the cold, machinelike thing in human nature will destroy our magic and song. So the battle between the Indo-Lillys and the Elbees is also the battle of the human spirit and, d.a.m.nit, with my heart I'm probably on the other side. But my people are my people and justice is justice and after you've worked your b.u.t.ts off for four generations and you're still treated like second-cla.s.s citizens, you've got a right to be angry. If it comes to it I'll go back. I'll fight alongside them if I have to, shoulder to shoulder. I'm not kidding, I really will." He believed her. And was thinking: how is it that, in the company of this impa.s.sioned woman I barely know, I feel so completely at ease?

The scar was the legacy of a bad car accident on the interstate near Albany; she had almost lost her arm. Neela by her own admission drove "like a maharani." It was up to other road users to keep out of her imperious, supra-legal way. In areas where she and her car became known-Blefuscu, or the environs of her smart New England college-motorists, when they saw Neela Mahendra coming, would often abandon their vehicles and run. After a series of small dings and near misses, she experienced the very unfunny Big One. Her survival was a miracle (and a close thing); the preservation of her heartbreaking beauty was an even greater astonishment. "I'll take the scar," she said. "I'm lucky to have it. And it's a reminder of something I shouldn't forget."

In New York, fortunately, it was unnecessary for her to drive. Her regal att.i.tude-"my mother always told me I was a queen, and I believed her"-meant she preferred to be driven anyway, although she was also a terrible backseat driver, full of yelps and gasps. Her rapid success in television production enabled her to afford a car service, whose drivers quickly grew used to her frequent cries of fear. She had no sense of direction, either, and so-remarkably for a New Yorker-never knew where anything was. Her favorite stores, her preferred restaurants and nightclubs, the location of the recording studios and cutting rooms she regularly used: they could have been anywhere. "Where the car stops is where they are," she told Solanka over the fourth c.o.c.ktail, all wide-eyed innocence. "It's amazing. They're always right there. Right outside the door."

Pleasure is the sweetest drug. Neela Mahendra leaned into him in their black leather booth and said, "I'm having so much fun. I never realized how easy it would be around you, you looked like such a stuffed shirt at Jack's place, watching that stupid game." Her head tilted toward his shoulder. Her hair was down now, and from where he was sitting it veiled much of her face. She let the back of her right hand move slowly against the back of his left hand. "Sometimes, when I drink too much, she comes out to play, the other one, and then there's nothing I can do. She takes charge and that's that." Solanka was lost. She took his hand in hers and kissed the fingertips, sealing their unspoken compact. "You have scars, too," she said, "but you never talk about them. I tell you all my secrets and you don't say one single word. I think, why does this man never talk about his child? Yes, of course Jack told me, you think I didn't ask? Asmaan, Eleanor, that much I know. If I had a little boy, I'd talk about him all the time. You apparently don't even carry his photograph. I think, this man left his wife of many years, the mother of his son, and even his friend doesn't know why. I think, he looks like a good man, a kind man, not a brute, so there must be a good reason, maybe if I open up to him he'll tell me, but, baba, you just keep mum. And then I think, here is this Indian man, Indian from India, not Indo-Lilly like me, a son of the mother country, but apparently that also is a forbidden topic. Born in Bombay, but on the place of his birth he is silent. What are his family circ.u.mstances? Brothers, sisters? Parents dead or alive? n.o.body knows. Does he ever go back to visit? Seems like not. No interest. Why? The answer must be: more scars. Malik, I think you've been in more accidents than me, and maybe you were even more badly hurt somewhere along the line. But if you don't talk, what can I do? I have nothing to say to you. I can only say, here I am, and if human beings can't save you then nothing can. That's all I'm saying. Talk, don't talk, it's up to you. I'm having a good time and anyway now the other one is here, so shut up, I don't know why men always have to talk so much when it's obvious that words are not the thing required. Not required right now at all."

12.

LET THE FITTEST SURVIVE:.

THE COMING OF THE PUPPET KINGS.

Akasz Kronos, the great, cynical cyberneticist of the Rijk, created the Puppet Kings in response to the terminal crisis of the Rijk civilization, but on account of the flaw in his character that made him unable to consider the general good, he used them to guarantee n.o.body's survival or fortune but his own. In those days the polar ice-caps of Galileo-1, the Rijk's home planet, were in the last stages of melting (a large stretch of open sea had been sighted at the North Pole) and no matter how high the dikes were built, the moment was not far off when the glory of the Rijk, that highest of cultures set in the lowest of lands, which was just then enjoying the richest and most prolonged golden age in its history, would be washed away.

The Rijk fell into decline. Their artists artists put down their brushes for good, for how could art-which relied, like good wine, on the judgment of posterity-be created once posterity had been canceled? put down their brushes for good, for how could art-which relied, like good wine, on the judgment of posterity-be created once posterity had been canceled? Science Science failed the challenge as well. The Galileo solar system lay in a failed the challenge as well. The Galileo solar system lay in a "dark quadrant" "dark quadrant" near the rim of our own galaxy, a mysterious area in which few other suns burned, and in spite of their high level of technological achievement, the Rijk had never succeeded in locating an alternative home planet. A cross-section of Rijk society was dispatched, cryogenically frozen, in the near the rim of our own galaxy, a mysterious area in which few other suns burned, and in spite of their high level of technological achievement, the Rijk had never succeeded in locating an alternative home planet. A cross-section of Rijk society was dispatched, cryogenically frozen, in the Max-H Max-H, a computer-controlled s.p.a.cecraft programmed to wake its precious cargo if a suitable planet came within range of its sensors. When this s.p.a.cecraft malfunctioned and exploded a few thousand miles into s.p.a.ce, people lost heart. In that most open, broad-minded, and reasonable of societies there now arose a number of fire-and-brimstone preachers preachers, who blamed the coming catastrophe on the G.o.dlessness of Rijk culture. Many citizens fell under the spell of these new, narrow men. Meanwhile the sea continued to rise. When a dike sprang a leak, the water pushed through with such violence that whole counties were sometimes flooded before repairs were complete. The economy collapsed. Lawlessness increased. People stayed home and waited for the end.

The sole surviving portrait portrait of Akasz Kronos shows a man with a full head of long silver hair framing a soft, round, surprisingly boyish face dominated by a wine-dark Cupid's bow of a mouth. He wears a floor-length gray tunic, with gold embroidery at the cuffs and neckline, over a frilled white high-collared shirt: the very picture of the dignified genius. But the eyes are mad. As we peer into the darkness around him, we make out fine white filaments floating from his fingertips. Only after much study do we notice the small bronze-colored figure of a puppet man at the bottom left of the picture, and even then it takes a while before we realize that the puppet has broken free of the puppeteer's control. The homunculus turns its back on its maker and sets off to forge its own destiny, while Kronos, the abandoned creator, takes leave not only of his creation but of his senses, too. of Akasz Kronos shows a man with a full head of long silver hair framing a soft, round, surprisingly boyish face dominated by a wine-dark Cupid's bow of a mouth. He wears a floor-length gray tunic, with gold embroidery at the cuffs and neckline, over a frilled white high-collared shirt: the very picture of the dignified genius. But the eyes are mad. As we peer into the darkness around him, we make out fine white filaments floating from his fingertips. Only after much study do we notice the small bronze-colored figure of a puppet man at the bottom left of the picture, and even then it takes a while before we realize that the puppet has broken free of the puppeteer's control. The homunculus turns its back on its maker and sets off to forge its own destiny, while Kronos, the abandoned creator, takes leave not only of his creation but of his senses, too.

Professor Kronos was not only a great scientist but an entrepreneur of Machiavellian daring and skill. As the Rijk lands drowned, he quietly moved his center of operations to the two small mountain-islands that formed the primitive but independent nation of Baburia Baburia, at the Galilean antipodes. Here he negotiated and signed an advantageous treaty with the local ruler, the Mogol Mogol. The Baburians would retain ownership of their territory, but Kronos would be granted long leases over the high mountain pastures, for which he agreed to pay what seemed to the Mogol a very high rent indeed: an annual pair of wooden shoes for every Baburian man, woman, and child. In addition, Kronos undertook to guarantee the defense of Baburia against the a.s.sault that must certainly come as the Rijk's lands sank below the rising waves. For this he was accorded the t.i.tle of National Savior National Savior and granted and granted droit de seigneur droit de seigneur over all the islands' new brides. Having come to terms, Kronos proceeded with the creation of the masterpieces that would prove his undoing, the so-called over all the islands' new brides. Having come to terms, Kronos proceeded with the creation of the masterpieces that would prove his undoing, the so-called Monstrous Dynasty of Puppet Caesars Monstrous Dynasty of Puppet Caesars, also known as Professor Kronos's No-Strings Puppet Kings Professor Kronos's No-Strings Puppet Kings.

His own lover, Zameen Zameen, the legendary beauty of the Rijk and the only scientist whom Kronos regarded as his peer, refused to accompany him to his new antipodean world. Her place was with her people, she said, and she would die with them if that was what destiny decreed. Akasz Kronos abandoned her without a second thought, perhaps preferring the s.e.xual multiplicity available on the other side of the world.

The broken strings in the Kronos portrait are purely metaphorical. The Professor's artificial life-forms were string-free from the start. They walked and talked; they had "stomachs," "stomachs," sophisticated fueling centers that could process ordinary food and drink, with solar-cell sophisticated fueling centers that could process ordinary food and drink, with solar-cell backup systems backup systems that enabled them to stay alert, and work, for longer hours than any flesh-and-blood human being. They were faster, stronger, smarter-"better," Kronos told them-than their human, antipodean hosts. "You are kings and queens," he taught his creatures. "Carry yourselves well. You are the masters now." He even gave them the power to reproduce themselves. Each cyborg was given his or her own blueprint so that it could, in theory, endlessly re-create itself in its own image. But in the master program Kronos added a that enabled them to stay alert, and work, for longer hours than any flesh-and-blood human being. They were faster, stronger, smarter-"better," Kronos told them-than their human, antipodean hosts. "You are kings and queens," he taught his creatures. "Carry yourselves well. You are the masters now." He even gave them the power to reproduce themselves. Each cyborg was given his or her own blueprint so that it could, in theory, endlessly re-create itself in its own image. But in the master program Kronos added a Prime Directive: Prime Directive: whatever order he gave, the cyborgs and their replicas were obliged to obey, even to the point of acquiescing in their own destruction, should he deem that necessary. He dressed them in finery and gave them the illusion of freedom, but they were his slaves. He gave them no names. There were whatever order he gave, the cyborgs and their replicas were obliged to obey, even to the point of acquiescing in their own destruction, should he deem that necessary. He dressed them in finery and gave them the illusion of freedom, but they were his slaves. He gave them no names. There were seven-digit numbers seven-digit numbers branded on their wrists, and they were known by these. branded on their wrists, and they were known by these.

No two Kronosian creations were the same. Each was given its own sharply delineated personality traits: the Aristocratic Philosopher; the Promiscuous Child-Woman; the First, Rich Ex-Wife (a b.i.t.c.h); the Aging Groupie; the Pope's Driver; the Underwater Plumber; the Traumatized Quarterback; the Blackballed Golfer; the Three Society Girls; the Playboys; the Golden Child and His Ideal Mother; the Deceitful Publisher; the Angry Professor; the G.o.ddess of Victory the Aristocratic Philosopher; the Promiscuous Child-Woman; the First, Rich Ex-Wife (a b.i.t.c.h); the Aging Groupie; the Pope's Driver; the Underwater Plumber; the Traumatized Quarterback; the Blackballed Golfer; the Three Society Girls; the Playboys; the Golden Child and His Ideal Mother; the Deceitful Publisher; the Angry Professor; the G.o.ddess of Victory (an exceptionally beautiful cyborg modeled after Kronos's abandoned lover, Zameen of Rijk); (an exceptionally beautiful cyborg modeled after Kronos's abandoned lover, Zameen of Rijk); the Runners; the Cell-Phone Woman; the Cell-Phone Man; the Human Spiders; the Woman Who Saw Visions; the Astro-Adman; the Runners; the Cell-Phone Woman; the Cell-Phone Man; the Human Spiders; the Woman Who Saw Visions; the Astro-Adman; even a even a Dollmaker Dollmaker. And as well as characters-strengths, weaknesses, habits, memories, allergies, l.u.s.ts-he gave them a value system value system by which to live. The greatness of Akasz Kronos, which was also his downfall, may be judged by this: that the virtues and vices he inculcated in his creations were not wholly, or not only, his own. Self-serving, opportunistic, unscrupulous, he nevertheless permitted his cybernetic life-forms a degree of ethical independence. The possibility of idealism was allowed. by which to live. The greatness of Akasz Kronos, which was also his downfall, may be judged by this: that the virtues and vices he inculcated in his creations were not wholly, or not only, his own. Self-serving, opportunistic, unscrupulous, he nevertheless permitted his cybernetic life-forms a degree of ethical independence. The possibility of idealism was allowed.

Lightness, quickness, exact.i.tude, visibility, multiplicity, consistency: these were the six high Kronosian values, but instead of embedding single definitions of these principles in the cyborgs' default programs, he offered his creations a series of multiple-choice options. Thus these were the six high Kronosian values, but instead of embedding single definitions of these principles in the cyborgs' default programs, he offered his creations a series of multiple-choice options. Thus "lightness" "lightness" might be defined as "doing lightly what is in reality a heavy duty," that is to say, grace; but it might also be "treating frivolously what is serious," or even "making light of what is grave," that is, amorality. And might be defined as "doing lightly what is in reality a heavy duty," that is to say, grace; but it might also be "treating frivolously what is serious," or even "making light of what is grave," that is, amorality. And "quickness" "quickness" could be "doing swiftly whatever is necessary," in other words, efficiency; however, if the emphasis were to be placed on the second part of that phrase, a kind of ruthlessness could result. could be "doing swiftly whatever is necessary," in other words, efficiency; however, if the emphasis were to be placed on the second part of that phrase, a kind of ruthlessness could result. "Exact.i.tude" "Exact.i.tude" could tend toward "precision" or "tyranny," could tend toward "precision" or "tyranny," "visibility" "visibility" might be "clarity of action" or "attention-seeking," might be "clarity of action" or "attention-seeking," "multiplicity" "multiplicity" was capable of being both "open-mindedness" and "duplicity," and was capable of being both "open-mindedness" and "duplicity," and "consistency," "consistency," the most important of the six, could mean either "trustworthiness" or "obsessiveness"-the consistency of-we may use our own world's models here, for the sake of easy comparison-Bartleby the Scrivener, who preferred not to, or of Michael Kohlhaas, with his inexorable and world-shattering search for redress. Sancho Panza is consistent in the "reliable" sense of the word, but so, contrariwise, is erratic, fixated, chivalry-maddened Quixote. And note, too, the tragic consistency of the Land Surveyor, eternally yearning toward what he can never attain, or of Ahab in his pursuit of the whale. This is the consistency that destroys the consistent; for the Ahabs perish, while the inconsistent, the Ishmaels, survive. "The fullness of a living self is inexpressible, obscure," Kronos told his mechanical fictions. "In that mystery is freedom, which is what I have given you. In that obscurity is light." the most important of the six, could mean either "trustworthiness" or "obsessiveness"-the consistency of-we may use our own world's models here, for the sake of easy comparison-Bartleby the Scrivener, who preferred not to, or of Michael Kohlhaas, with his inexorable and world-shattering search for redress. Sancho Panza is consistent in the "reliable" sense of the word, but so, contrariwise, is erratic, fixated, chivalry-maddened Quixote. And note, too, the tragic consistency of the Land Surveyor, eternally yearning toward what he can never attain, or of Ahab in his pursuit of the whale. This is the consistency that destroys the consistent; for the Ahabs perish, while the inconsistent, the Ishmaels, survive. "The fullness of a living self is inexpressible, obscure," Kronos told his mechanical fictions. "In that mystery is freedom, which is what I have given you. In that obscurity is light."

Why did he permit the Puppet Kings such psychological and moral liberty? Perhaps because the scientist and scholar in him could not resist seeing how these new life-forms resolved the battle that rages within all sentient creatures, between light and dark, heart and mind, spirit and machine.

At first the Puppet Kings served Kronos well. They made the shoes that paid for the land leases, tended the livestock, and tilled the soil. He had dressed them all in court finery, but their long brocaded skirts and dress uniforms quickly grew soiled and torn, and they made themselves new clothes more suited to their labors. As the ice-caps continued to melt and the water levels rose, they prepared to defend their shrinking new home against the foretold Rijk attack Rijk attack. By now they had learned how to modify their own systems without Kronos's help, and they added new skills and apt.i.tudes by the day. One such innovation enabled them to use the local firewater as flying fuel flying fuel. Carrying bottles of the toddy with them in case they wanted topping up, the cyborg air force took flight without any need for airplanes, and caught and destroyed the incoming Rijk craft in spydernets spydernets, the giant b.o.o.by-trapped metal webs that they hung across the sky. Underwater Underwater, too, they laid similar spidery traps (they had modified their "lungs" for submarine use and were therefore able to sabotage and scuttle the entire Rijk fleet from below). The so-called Battle of the Antipodes Battle of the Antipodes was won, and the skies and seas fell silent. On the far side of Galileo-1, flood-waters engulfed the Rijk. If Akasz Kronos felt any compa.s.sion as his countrymen drowned, he did not record it. was won, and the skies and seas fell silent. On the far side of Galileo-1, flood-waters engulfed the Rijk. If Akasz Kronos felt any compa.s.sion as his countrymen drowned, he did not record it.

After the victory, however, things changed. The Puppet Kings returned from the wars with a new sense of individual worth, even of "rights." To bring them into line, Kronos announced an urgent maintenance-and-repair schedule. Many cyborgs failed to keep their appointments at his workshop, preferring-in the case of those damaged in battle-to live with their disabilities: their malfunctioning servo-mechanisms and partially burned-out circuitry. Groups of the Puppet Kings became secretive, conspiratorial, surly. Kronos suspected that they were meeting covertly to plot against him and heard rumors that at these meetings they addressed one another not by number but by new names, which they had chosen for themselves. He became tyrannical, and when one of the Three Society Girls was insolent to his face, he made an example of her, turning against her his much feared "master blaster," which caused an instant, irreversible deletion of all programs: in other words, cybernetic death.

The execution was counterproductive. Dissension grew more rapidly than before. Many cyborgs went underground, erecting, around their hideouts, sophisticated anti-surveillance electronic shields, which even Kronos could not easily penetrate