COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2002 by Paul Di Filippo
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“Stone Lives” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1985.
“A Short Course in Art Appreciation” first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1988.
“Phylogenesis first appeared in Synergy, in 1988.
“A Thief in Babylon” first appeared in Amazing in 1989.
“Babylon Sisters” first appeared in Interzone in 2001.
“Solitons” first appeared in Semiotext(e) SF in 1990.
“Gravitons” first appeared in Hardware in 1990.
“Any Major Dude” first appeared in New Worlds in 1991.
“Mud Puppy Goes Uptown” first appeared in Back Brain Recluse in 1994.
“Otto and Toto in the Oort” first appeared in Science Fiction Age in 1995.
“Life Sentence” first appeared in Interzone in 1996.
“Angelmakers” first appeared in Interzone in 1999.
“The Reluctant Book” first appeared in Science Fiction Age in 2000.
“The Scab’s Progress” first appeared online in Sci Fiction in 2001.
DEDICATION
This one goes out to the editors, their honored names reflected in the ordering of stories above: Ed Ferman, George Zebrowski, Patrick Price, David Pringle, Rudy Rucker and Peter Lamborn Wilson, Jimm Gall, David Garnett, Chris Reed, Scott Edelman, Ellen Datlow, and of course, for his work on this volume, Nick Gevers. Thanks, Chums!
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And, as always, to Deborah, my favorite human, post-, pre-, or baseline.
STONE LIVES
Odors boil around the Immigration Offices, a stenchy soup. The sweat of desperate men and women, ripe garbage strewn in the packed street, the spicy scent worn by one of the guards at the outer door. The mix is heady, almost overpowering to anyone born outside the Bungle, but Stone is used to it. The constant smells constitute the only atmosphere he has ever known, his native element, too familiar to be despised.
Noise swells to rival the stench. Harsh voices raised in dispute, whining voices lowered to entreat. “Don’t sluff me, you rotty bastard!” “l’d treat you real nice, honey, for a share of that.” From the vicinity of the door into Immigration, an artificial voice is reciting the day’s job offerings, cycling tirelessly through the rotty choices.
“—to test new aerosol antipersonnel toxins. 4M will contract to provide survivors with a full Citrine rejuve. High-orbit vakheads needed by McDonnell Douglas. Must be willing to be imprinted—”
No one seems eager to rush forward and claim these jobs. No voices beg the guards for entrance. Only those who have incurred impossible debts or enmity inside the Bungle ever take a chance on the Rating-10 assignments, which are Immigation’s disdainful handouts. Stone knows for sure that he wants no part of these rigged propositions. Like all the rest, he is here at Immigration simply because it provides a focal point, a gathering place as vital as a Serengeti water hole, where the sneaky sluffs and raw deals that pass for business in the South Bronx FEZ—a.k.a. the Bronx Jungle, a.k.a. the Bungle—can he transacted.
Heat smites the noisy crowd, making them more irritable than usual—a dangerous situation. Hyperalertness parches Stone’s throat. He reaches for the scratched-to-his-touch plastic flask at his hip and swigs some stale water. Stale but safe, he thinks, relishing his secret knowledge. It was pure luck that he ever stumbled upon the slow leak in the inter-FEZ pipe down by the river fence that encircles the Bungle. He smelled the clean water like a dog from a distance, and by running his hands along several meters of chilly pipe, he found the drip. Now he has all the manifold cues to its exact location deeply memorized.
Shuffling through the crowd on bare calloused feet (amazing what information can he picked up through the soles to keep body and soul intact!), Stone quests for scraps of information that will help him survive another day in the Bungle. Survival is his main—his only—concern. If Stone has any pride left, after enduring what he has endured, it is pride in surviving.
A brassy voice claims, “I booted some tempo, man, and that was the end of that fight. Thirty seconds later, all three’re dead.” A listener whistles admiringly. Stone imagines he latches on somehow to a boot of tempo and sells it for an enormous profit, which he them spends on a dry, safe place to sleep and enough to fill his ever-empty gut. Not damn likely, but a nice dream nonetheless.
Thought of food causes his stomach to churn. Across the rough, encrusted cloth covering his midriff, he rests his right hand with its sharp lance of pain that marks the infected cut. Stone assumes the infection. He has no way of telling for sure until it begins to stink.
Stone’s progress through the babble of voices and crush of flesh has brought him fairly close to the entrance to Immigration. He feels a volume of empty air between the crowds and the guards, a quartersphere of respect and fear, its vertical face the wall of the building. The respect is generated by the employed status of the guards; the fear by their weapons.
Someone—a transported felon with a little education—once described the guns to Stone. Long, bulky tubes with a bulge halfway along their length where the wiggler magnets are. Plastic stocks and grips. They emit charged beams of energetic electrons at relativistic speeds. If the scythe of the beam touches you, the kinetic energy imparted blows you apart like a squashed sausage. If the particle beam chances to miss, the accompanying cone of gamma rays produces radiation sickness that is fatal within hours.
Of the explanation—which Stone remembers verbatim—he understands only the description of a horrible death. It is enough.
Stone pauses a moment. A familiar voice—that of Mary, the rat-seller—is speaking conspiratorially of the next shipment of charity clothes. Stone deduces her position as being on the very inner edge of the crowd. She lowers her voice. Stone can’t make out her words, which are worth hearing. He edges forward, leery though he is of being trapped inside the clot of people—
A dead silence. No one is speaking or moving. Stone senses displaced air puff from between the guards: someone occupies the door.
“You.” A refined woman’s voice. “Young man with no shoes, in the—” Her voice hesitates for the adjective hiding beneath the grime. “—red jumpsuit. Come here, please. I want to talk to you.”
Stone doesn’t know if it is he (red?), until he feels the pressure of all eyes upon him. At once he pivots, swerves, fakes—but it is too late. Dozens of eager claws grab him. He wrenches. Moldy fabric splits, but the hands refasten on his skin. He bites, kicks, pummels. No use. During the struggle he makes no sound. Finally he is dragged forward, still fighting, past that invisible line that marks another world as surely as does the unbreachable fence between the Bungle and the other twenty-two FEZ.
Cinnamon scent envelops him, a guard holds something cold and metallic to the back of his neck. All the cells in his skull seem to flare at once, then darkness comes.
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Three people betray their forms and locations to the awakened Stone by the air they displace, their scents, their voices—and by a fourth, subtle component he has always labeled sense-of-life.
Behind him: a bulky man who breathes awkwardly, no doubt because of Stone’s ripe odor. This has to be a guard. To his left: a smaller person—the woman?—smelling like flowers. (Once Stone smelled a flower.)
Before him, deskbound: a seated man.
Stone feels no aftereffects from the device used on him—unless the total disorientation that has overtaken him is it. He has no idea why he has been shanghaied, and wishes only to return to the known dangers of the Bungle.
But he knows they are not about to let him.
The