Ascendancies (76 page)

The unearthly landscape of the Taklamakan was hosting a robot war. A spreading mechanical prairie of inching, crawling, biting, wrenching, hopping mutations. And pillars of fire: Sphere satellite warfare. Beams pouring down from the authentic heavens, invisible torrents of energy that threw up geysers of searing dust. A bio-engineer's final nightmare. Smart, autonomous hell. They couldn't kill a thing this big and keep it secret. They couldn't burn it up fast enough. No, not without breaking the containment domes, and spilling their own ancient trash across the face of the earth.

A beam crossed the horizon like the finger of God, smiting everything in its path. The sky and earth were thick with flying creatures, buzzing, tumbling, sculling. The beam caught a big machine, and it fell spinning like a multi-ton maple seed. It bounded from the side of a containment dome, caromed like a dying gymnast, and landed below Spider Pete. He crouched there in his camou, recording it all.

It looked back at him. This was no mere robot. It was a mechanical civilian journalist. A brightly painted, ultramodern, European network drone, with as many cameras on board as a top-flight media mogul had martinis. The machine had smashed violently against the secret wall, but it was not dead. Death was not on its agenda. It was way game. It had spotted him with no trouble at all. He was a human interest story. It was looking at him.

Glancing into the cold spring sky, Pete could see that the journalist had brought a lot of its friends.

The robot rallied its fried circuits, and centered him within a spiraling focus. Then it lifted a multipronged limb, and ceremonially spat out every marvel it had witnessed, up into the sky and out into the seething depths of the global web.

Pete adjusted his mask and his camou suit. He wouldn't look right, otherwise.

“Dang,” he said.

PART V:

LATER SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

The Sword of Damocles

“The Sword of Damocles” is an ancient Greek story with the deeply satisfying structure of classical legend. It's chock-f of eternal human truths, which, believe-you-me, still have plenty of meaning and relevance, even for our so-called-sophisticated, postmodern generation.

I've been looking the story over lately, and the material is great. It's just a question of filing off a few serial numbers, and bringing it up-to-date. So here we go.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Damocles, a minor courtier at the palace of Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse. Damocles was unhappy with his role, and he envied the splendor of the Tyrant.

Actually the term “Tyrant” is a bit misleading here, because it didn't mean at the time what it means today. All “tyrant” really meant was that Dionysius (405 BC-367 BC) had seized the government by force, rather than coming to power legitimately. It doesn't necessarily mean that Dionysius was an evil thug. After all, it's results that count, and sometimes one has to bend the rules a bit, just to get things started.

Take this “Once upon a time” business I just used, for instance. It starts the story all right, but it doesn't sound very Greek, when you come right down to it. It's more of a Grimm Brothers fairy-tale riff, kind of a kunstmarchen thing. Using it with a Greek myth is like putting a peaked Gothic spire on a Greek temple. Some people—Modernist critics—might say it's a bad move aesthetically, and kind of bastardizes the whole artistic effort!

Of course, real hifalutin Modernist critics must have a pretty hard time of it lately. They must find life a trial. I bet they don't watch much MTV. Modernists like coherent, systematic structures, but it's all hybridized by now. Especially in the places that are really moving, like Tokyo. Postmodern Japan is like a giant Shinto temple with smokestacks. Culturally speaking, the whole place is a chimera, but people don't criticize Japan's set-up much, because capitalistically speaking they're kicking everybody's ass. Whatever works, man.

You know—this is amazing, but I swear it's true—there are people nowadays who literally live in Tokyo “once upon a time.” They're bankers and stockbrokers from New York and London, and they moved to Tokyo as expatriates, because they had to settle the Tokyo timezone. It's a fact! Postmodern bankers have to do twenty-four-hour trading, and the stock market closes in New York hours before it opens in London. So nowadays all the big financial operators send people out to major markets all around the world, to colonize Time. “Time” is just another postmodern commodity now.

So that kind of blows my opening sentence, but the important thing is to get the story across. Simply, directly, in an unpretentious, naturalistic fashion. So forget the Gothic fairy-tale riff. I'm just gonna tell it straight. The way I'd talk to close friends, in my own living room, here in Austin, Texas.

So y'all listen up. There was this dude named Damocles, see, and he used to hang out in this palace, in Sicily. Ancient Sicily. Damocles was Greek though, not Italian, because, y'see, way back then…This was before Rome got started, and the Greeks were really good sailors, so they got all these remote colonies started up…

Okay, never mind the historical analysis, y'all. It's kinda vital to the background, but I can't get it across in this casual hick tone of voice without making it sound really goofy. So let's stick to the drama, okay? The important plot-thing is that Damocles really envies his boss, this magnificent prince, Dionysius. So one day Damocles puts on his chiton—that's a kind of Greek tunic—and his buskins—those were tall sandals like you see in the opera, if you ever go to those, which I don't, personally. But you've probably seen them on public TV, right?

In fact, now that I mention it, since we're all here in my living room, why don't we just give this up, and watch some TV? I mean, forget this “oral storytelling tradition.” When was the last time you listened to some pal of yours tell a story out loud? I don't mean lies about what he and his pals did last Friday, I mean a real myth-type story with a beginning, middle, and end. And a moral.

Let's face it, we don't really do that anymore. We postmoderns don't live in an oral storytelling culture. If we want a story we can all enjoy together, we can rent a goddamn video.
Near Dark
is pretty good. My treat.

So, yeah—if I'm gonna make this work, it's gonna have to be
literary
. It'll have to hit some kind of high archaic note. We'll have to really get into it—tell it, not like postmoderns, but just as the ancient Greeks would have told it. Simple, dignified, classical, and stately. Full of
gravitas
, and
hubris
, and similar impressive terms. We'll cast a magic net of words, something to take us across the centuries…back to the authentic, ancestral world of Western culture!

So let's envision it. We're in an olive grove together, on a hillside in ancient Athens. I'm the mythagogue, probably some blind or lame guy, kept alive for my storytelling skills. I may be a slave, like Aesop. I'm making up (or reciting from memory) these marvelous mythic tales that will last forever, but I'm no particular big deal, personally.

You, my audience, on the other hand, look really great. You're all young rambunctious aristocrats whose parents are paying for this. Your limbs are oiled, your hair is curled, and every one of you is a whiz at the discus and javelin. Some of you are naked, but nobody cares; even the snappiest dressers are essentially wearing tablecloths held together with big bronze pins.

Did I mention that you were all guys? Sorry, but yeah. Those of you who are young rambunctious women are, uhmmm…well, I'm afraid you're off weaving chitons in the darkest part of your house. You don't get to listen to mythagogues. It might give you ideas. In fact you don't get to leave the house at all. We guys will be back to see you, sometime after midnight. After we get drunk with Socrates. Then we'll have our jolly way with you.

And we'll probably get you pregnant. Decent contraception hasn't been invented yet. At least, not the nifty plastic-wrapped kinds people will use in the late twentieth century. That's one reason why Damocles has a very dear male friend called Pythias.

But wait a sec—since I'm an authentic Greek mythagogue, I have to call him “Phyntias.” “Pythias” was called “Phyntias,” originally. A medieval scribe made a mistake transcribing the story in the fourteenth century, and he's been “Pythias” ever since. There's even a high-minded twentieth-century club called “The Pythian Society,” that's named after a misprint! What a joke on them, huh? Goes to show what can happen if a storyteller gets careless!

So anyway, Damocles and Pythias were two close friends who lived in the court of Dionysius. One day, Damocles offended the Tyrant, and was sentenced to death. Damocles begged a few days' mercy, to bid farewell to his family, who lived in another town.

But the cruel Dionysius refused him this mercy. At that point, the noble Pythias stepped forward. “I will stand in the place of my dear friend, Damocles,” he declared, to the assembled court. “If he does not return in seven days, I will die in his place!”

The vindictive heart of Dionysius was touched by this strange offer. Curious to see the outcome, he granted the boon. The two friends embraced and wept, and Damocles left to carry the sad news to his family. Pythias, in his place, was clapped in a dungeon. Days passed, one by one.

Wait a minute. Damn! Did I say “Damocles”? I meant “Damon.” It's “Damon and Pythias,” not “Damocles.” Hell, I always get those two confused.

Christ on a Harley, man! I was off to such a great start, too. I was really rolling there for a minute. Now look at me! I don't even have a character in my story. There's no real character here except
me
, the author.

I can't believe I got myself into this situation. I mean, that postmodernist lit-mag experimental stuff where authors use themselves as characters. That kind of crap really burns me up. I'm a sci-fi pop writer, myself. I write action-adventure stuff. Sure, it's weird, but it's not
structurally
weird; it's weird 'cause it's about weird
ideas
, like fractals and cranial jacks.

But now look at me. Not only am I a character in my own story, but my only real topic so far is “narrative structure.” I can't stand it when postmodern critics talk about stories in terms like “narrative structure.” These hard-hat deconstruction-workers harass stories as if they were gals passing by on the sidewalk. They yell out stuff that's not only obnoxious, but completely bizarre and impenetrable. It's like they yell: “Hey, check out the pelvic biomechanics on that babe! What a set of hypertrophied lactiferous tissues!”

I should have stuck to hard-SF, that's my real problem. It was clear from the beginning this was going to be one of those weird-ass historical-fantasy things. I'm not even the proper author to be a character in this story. What this story needs is a character like Tim Powers, author of
The Anubis Gates
and
On Stranger Tides
.

“Suddenly, Tim Powers appeared. He looked about himself alertly.”

No, if I'm gonna do this at all, I'd better try it Powers-style.

“Suddenly, Tim Powers burst headlong into the story! His hair was on fire, and he was perched on a pair of stilts. Gnashing his teeth, he glared wildly from under layers of peeling clown-makeup and said:

“‘What the heck kind of fictional set-up is this? There's nothing here but some kind of half-collapsed ancient Greek stage-set! I could do better research than this in my sleep! Anyway, I prefer Victoriana.'”

And then a voice emerged into the story from an area of narrative discourse that we can't even reach from here. It said, “-‘-“Tim, what's going on in there?”-'-”

And Powers said: “I dunno, sweetheart, I was just sitting here at the word-processor, and—ow! Somebody set my hair on fire! Serena, get the shotgun!”

Aw, jeez!…uhm:

“Tim Powers quickly disappeared from the story. The makeup disappeared from his face, and he looked just like he always did. And his hair stopped burning. There was no real damage done to it. He went into the bathroom of his Santa Ana apartment, got a comb, and lent fresh meaning to his hair. Then he forgot he had even been involved in this story.”

‘“Don't bet on it, pal.'”

I swear it'll never happen again. Don't get mad! Lots of writers do it. Like the wife of Damocles, “Pandora.” She's not the original Greek-legend Pandora, wife of Epimetheus. Pandora hasn't appeared in this story yet, but she's a really interesting character. She likes to make blunt declarations to the reader, from a really weird narrative stance. Stuff like:

“‘Am I not the sister of Adolf Hitler and Anne Frank? Have I not eaten, drunk, and breathed poison all my life? Do you take me for an innocent, my colluding reader?'” That sort of thing.

“Pandora” is actually the thinly disguised author-character from Ursula K. Le Guin's experimental SF epic
Always Coming Home
! How “Pandora” got into this story I'm not really sure, I guess it's my mistake, but I'll fight any man who claims that
Always Coming Home
isn't “real SF”! Even if it's not really, exactly, a “book.” For one thing,
Always Coming Home
has got an audiotape that comes with it, which puts a pretty severe dent in its narrative closure. I'd have liked to supply an audiotape with this story—maybe some Japanese pop music, or John Cage—but I was too cheap. Instead, I'll just play the
Always Coming Home
tape here in my office. I ordered it from a P .O. box in Oregon. It's got weird mellow chanting in made-up languages.

So much for Pandora. I was going to have a scene where Damocles wakes up in bed with Pandora, and she makes some biting remarks about having to weave the chitons and everything, but I guess you get the idea.

So here's Damocles quickly leaving his home and going straight to work. He's so eager to start the story that, not only does he jump right in with a Homeric “in medias res” routine, but he's willing to settle for a breathless present-tense. Damocles works as a minor palace official in the court of Dionysius. Actually he's a “flatterer,” according to Cicero's
Tusculan Disputations
. He's not a bureaucrat, like a postmodern official. There's no bureaucracy in Syracuse, it's all done by a tiny group of elite families, who run everything. Syracuse is a pre-industrial city-state of maybe fifty thousand people. An independent city-state about the size of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.