Vanishing acts, p.3
Vanishing Acts, page 3
“You’re a Nandist, then,” I said. “Swami Nanda and his reincarnation crap.”
“I see no other explanation,” she said.
“It all makes sense to you?” I said.
“Yes.” She stroked her cheek with her orange-polished talons. “It’s a loan: We have lent our beautiful material world and our species’s bodies in exchange for your energetic souls and your rich, passionate culture.”
They are the crazy ones, not us.
Entry 22: Some wild-eyed young snake with his top feathers dyed blue took a shot at the swami this morning with an old-fashioned thorn gun.
They caught him. We watched on the news. The would-be assassin sneers at the camera like a real Earth punk. Sue Anne glares back and snorts derisively.
Entry 23: Dreamed of my mother at her piano, but her hands were Kondran hands. The fingers were too long, and the nails were set like claws, and her skin was covered in minute, grayish scales.
I think she was playing Chopin.
Entry 24: Sometimes I wish I were a writer, to do all this justice. I might have some function as a survivor.
Look at Sue Anne: Except for some terrible luck, she would have created out of us a new posterity.
Myers is doing prints these days, but not on Earth themes anymore, though the Kondrai beg him to concentrate on what’s “native” to him. He says his memory of Earth is no longer trust-worthy, and besides, images of Kondra are native to the eyes of reborn Earth souls now. He accepts Nandism openly and goes around doing Kondran landscapes and portraits and so on. Well, nobody will have to miss any of that in my account, then. They can always look at Myers’s pictures.
Walter Drake died last winter of Kondran cancer. I went to the funeral. For the first time I wore makeup.
Myers, the arrogant son of a bitch, condescended to share a secret with me. He used this face paint, plus a close haircut or a feathered cap, to go out incognito among the snakes so he can observe them undisturbed. Age has smoothed his features and made him thin, like most Kondrai, and he’s been getting away with it for years. Well, good for him. Look at what they’re trying to get away with along those lines!
Being disguised has its advantages. I hadn’t realized the pressure of being stared at all the time in public until I moved around without it.
They said, “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” and I got dizzy and had to sit down on a bench.
Entry 25: Four more years. My heart still checks out, Dr. Birgit Nilson tells me. I put on makeup and hang out in the bars, watching TV with the Kondrai, but not too often. Sometimes they make me so damn nervous, even after so long here. I forget what they are and what I am. I forget myself. I get scared that I’m turning senile.
When I get home Sue Anne gives me this cynical look, and my perspective is restored. I play copy-tapes of Dvořák for her. Also Schubert. She likes the French, though. I find them superficial.
To hear Brahms and Beethoven and Mozart, I go to the rooming house. I go whenever Ross and Chandler play. While the music sounds the constant crying inside me gets so big and so painful and beautiful that I can’t contain it. So it moves outside me for a while, and I feel rested and changed. This is only an illusion, but wonderful.
Entry 26: Poor Myers got caught in a religious riot on the other side of the world. He was beaten to death by a Kondracha mob. I guess his makeup job was careless. Dr. Birgit Nilson, much aged and using a cane, came to make a personal apology, which I accepted for old times’ sake.
“We caught two of them,” she said. “The ringleaders of the Kondracha group that killed your poor Mr. Myers.”
“Kondrachalations,” I said. Couldn’t help myself.
Dr. Birgit looked at me. “Forgive me,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come.”
When I told Sue Anne about this, she slapped my face. She hasn’t much strength even in her good arm these days. But I resented being hit and asked her why she did it.
“Because you were smiling, Michael.”
“You can’t cry all the time,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I wish we could.”
Dr. Birgit Nilson says that Kondrai are now composing music in classical, popular, and “primitive” styles, all modeled on Earth music. I have not heard any of this new music. I do not want to.
Entry 27: At least Sue Anne didn’t live to see this: They are now grafting lobes onto their ugly ear holes.
No, that’s not the real news. The real news is about Kondra-South, where a splinter group of Kondracha extremists set up a sort of purist, Ur-Kondran state some years ago. They use only their version of Old Kondran farming methods, which is apparently not an accurate version. Their topsoil has been rapidly washing away in the summer floods.
Now they are killing newborns down there to have fewer mouths to feed. The pretext is that these newborns look like humans and are part of the great taint that everything Earthish represents to the pure. The official Kondrachalikipon line is that they are feeding themselves just fine, thank you. The truth seems to be mass starvation and infanticide.
After Sue Anne died, I moved back into the rooming house. I have a whole floor to myself and scarcely ever go out. I watch Kondran TV a lot, which is how I keep track of their politics and so on. I’ve stopped looking for false notes that would reveal to any intelligent observer the hollowness of their performance of humanity. There isn’t much except for my gut reaction. The Kondran claim to have preserved human culture by making it their own would be very convincing to anyone who didn’t know better. Even their game shows look familiar. Young Kondrai go mad for music videos and deafening concerts by their own groups like the Bear Minimum and Dead Boring. I stare and stare at the screen, looking for slip-ups. I am not sure that I would recognize one now if I saw one.
I hate the lizards. I miss her. I hate them.
Entry 28: Ross and Chandler have done the unthinkable. At last night’s musicale they sprang one hell of a surprise.
They have trained two young Kondrai to a degree that satisfies them (particularly Gillokan Chukchonturanfis, who plays both violin and viola).
Now the four of them are planning to go out and perform in public together as the Retrieval String Quartet.
The Lost Earth String Quartet I could stomach, maybe. Or the Ghost String Quartet, or the Remnant String Quartet. But then, of course, how could Kondran musicians be in it?
I walked out in protest.
Ross says I am being unreasonable and cutting off my nose to spite my face, since as a quartet they have so much more music they can play. To hell with Ross. The traitress. Chandler, too.
Entry 29: I cut my hair and put on my makeup and managed to get myself one ticket, not as Michael Flynn the Earthman but as a nameless Kondran. The debut concert of the Retrieval String Quartet is the event of the year in the city: a symbol of the passing of the torch of human culture, they say. An outrage, the Kondracha scream. I keep my thoughts to myself and lay my plans.
Lizards are pouring into the city for the event. Two bombings have already occurred, credit for them claimed by the Kondrachalikipon, of course.
As long as the scaly bastards don’t blow me up before I do my job.
The gun is in my pocket, Morris’s gun that I took after he and Chu killed themselves. I was a good shot once. My seat is close to the stage and on the aisle, leaving my right hand free. I have had too much bitterness in my life. I will not be mocked and betrayed in the one place where I find some comfort.
Entry 30: Now I know who I wrote all this for. Dear Dr. Herbert Akonditichilka: You do not know me. Until a little while ago I didn’t know you either. I am the man who sat next to you in Carnegie Hall last night. Your Kondran version of Carnegie Hall, that is: constructed from TV pictures; all sparkling in crystal and cream and red velvet—handsomer than the real place was, but in my judgment slightly inferior acoustically.
You didn’t notice me, Doctor, because of my makeup. I noticed you. All evening I noticed everything, starting with the police and the Kondracha demonstration outside the hall. But you I noticed in particular. You managed to wreck my concentration during the last piece of fine music I expected to hear in my life.
It was the Haydn String Quartet Number One in G, Opus 77. I sat trying to hear the effect of having two Kondrai among the players, but your damned fidgeting distracted me. Just my luck, I thought. A Kondran who came for a historic event, though he has no feeling for classical Earth music at all. All through the Haydn you sat locked tight except for these tiny, spasmodic movements of your head, arms, and hands. It was a great relief to me when the music ended and you joined the crashing applause. I was so busy glaring at you that I missed seeing the musicians leave the stage.
I watched you all through the interval. I needed something to fix my attention on while I waited. The second piece was to be one of my favorites, the Brahms String Quartet Number Two in A minor, Opus 51. I had chosen the opening of that quartet as my signal. I meant to see to it that the Brahms would never be played by the traitors Ross and Chandler and the two snakes they had trained. In fact, no one was ever going to hear Ross and Chandler play anything again.
What would happen to me afterward I didn’t know or care (though it crossed my mind in a farcical moment that I might be rescued as a hero by the Kondracha).
I wondered if you would be a problem—an effective interference, once the first note of the Brahms piece sounded and I began to make my move. I thought not.
You were small and thin, Dr. Akonditichilka, neatly dressed in your fake blazer with the fake gold buttons; a thick thatch of white top feathers; a round face, for a lizard; and glasses that made your eyes enormous. I wondered if you had ruined your eyesight studying facsimile texts taken from Earth transmissions. I could see by the grayed-off skin color that you were elderly, like so many in this audience, though probably not as old as I am.
You fell into conversation with the Kondran on your left. I realized from what I could overhear that the two of you had met for the first time earlier that same day. She was now exploring the contact. “Oh,” she said, “you’re a doctor?”
“Retired,” you said.
“You must meet Mischa Two Hawks,” she said, “my escort tonight. He’s a retired doctor, too.”
The seat to her left was empty. Retired doctor Mischa Two Hawks may have withdrawn to the men’s room or gone out in the lobby for a smoke.
You must understand; my mind made automatic translations as fast as the thought finished: Imitation retired, imitation doctor Mischa S. (for Stolen names) Two Hawks was in the imitation men’s room or smoking an imitation cigarette.
His companion, an imitation woman in a green, imitation wool dress, wore a white wig with a blue-rinse tint. God, how Beamish used to rage over the tendency of Kondran females to choose the most traditional women’s styles as models! Beamish would have been proud of my work tonight, I thought.
Green Wool Dress, whose name I had not caught, said to you, “The lady with you this afternoon at the gallery—is she your wife? And where is she tonight?”
You shook your head, and your glasses flashed. It pleases me that the nictitating membrane prevents you snakes from wearing contact lenses.
“We used to go to every concert in the city together,” you said. “We both love good music, and there is no replacement for hearing it live. But she’s been losing her hearing. She doesn’t go anymore; it’s too painful for her.”
“What a pity,” Green Wool Dress said. “To miss such a great event! Wasn’t the first violinist wonderful just now? And, so young, too. It was amazing to hear him.”
Damned right it was. Chandler had literally played second fiddle to his own student, Chukchonturanfis. For that alone I could have killed my old crewmate.
I shut my eyes and thought about the gun in my pocket. It was a heavy goddamned thing. I thought about the danger of getting it caught in the cloth as I pulled it out, of missing my aim, of my elderly self being jumped by you two elderly aliens before I could complete my job. I thought of Chandler and Ross, no spring chickens themselves anymore, soon to die and leave me alone among you. The whole thing was a sort of doddering comedy.
Another Kondran, heavyset for a lizard and bald, worked his way along the row of seats. He hovered next to Green Wool Dress, clearly wanting to sit down. She wouldn’t let him until she had made introductions. This was, of course, retired doctor Mischa Two Hawks.
“Akonditichilka,” you said with a little bow. “Herbert.” And the two of you shook hands across Green Wool Dress. All three of you settled back to chat.
Suddenly I heard your voices as music. You, Doctor, were the first violin, with your clear, light tenor. Dr. Two Hawks’s lower register made a reasonable cello. Green Wool Dress, who scarcely spoke, was second violin, of course, noodling busily along among her own thoughts. And I was the viola, hidden and dark.
If this didn’t stop I knew I would use the gun right now, on you and then on myself. I listened to the words you were saying instead of your voices. I grabbed onto the words to keep control.
“A beautiful piece, the Haydn,” you were saying. “I have played it. Oh, not like these musicians, of course. But I used to belong to an amateur chamber group.” (How like you thieving snakes, to mimic our own medical doctors’ affinity for music-making as a hobby!) You went on to explain how it was that you no longer played. Some slow, crippling Kondran bone disease. Of course—your lizard claws were never meant to handle a bow and strings. What was your instrument? I missed that. You said you had not played for six or seven years now. No wonder you had twitched all through the Haydn, remembering.
Some snake in a velvet suit pushed past, managing to step on both my feet. We traded insincere apologies, and he went on to trample past you and your companions. They were all hurrying back in now. My moment was coming. The row was fully occupied, so I sat down and pretended to skim the program notes for the next piece.
On you went, in that clear, distantly regretful tone. I couldn’t stop hearing. “It’s been a terrible season for me,” you said. “My only grandchild died last month. He was fifteen.”
Your voice was not music. It was just a voice, taking a tone I remembered from when I and my crewmates first began to be able to say to each other, “Well, it’s all gone, blown up—mankind and womankind and whalekind and everykind smashed to smithereens while we were sleeping.” It’s how you sound instead of screaming. You have no more actual screaming left in your throat, but you can’t stop talking about what is making you scream, because the screaming of your spirit is going on and on.
My eyes locked on the page in front of me. Had you really spoken this way, to two strangers, at a concert? The other two were making sounds of shock and sympathy.
“Cancer,” you said, though of course you meant not our kind of cancer but Kondran cancer, and of course even if you were screaming inside it wasn’t the same as the spirit of a human being screaming that way.
You leaned forward in your seat to talk across Green Wool Dress to Dr. Two Hawks. “It was terrible,” you said. “It started in his right leg. None of the therapy even slowed it down. They did three operations.”
I sneaked a look at you to see what kind of expression you wore on your imitation human face while you recited your afflictions. But you were leaning outward to address your fellow doctor, and the back of your narrow lizard shoulders was turned toward me.
Between you two, Green Wool Dress sat with a blank social smile, completely withdrawn into herself. I tried to follow what you were saying, but you got into technical terms, one doctor to another.
The musicians were tuning up their instruments backstage. The gun felt like a battleship in my pocket. Under the dimming lights I could make out the face of Dr. Two Hawks, sympathetic and earnest. Amazing, I thought, how they’ve learned to produce the effect of expressions like our own with their alien musculature and their alien skin.
“But it’s better now than it was at first,” Dr. Two Hawks protested (I thought of Beamish’s babies and the death of Walter Drake). “I can remember when there was nothing to do but cut and cut, and even then—there was a young patient I remember, we removed the entire hip—oh, we were desperate. Dreadful things were done. It’s better now.”
All around, oblivious, members of the audience settled expectantly into their seats, whispering to each other, rustling program pages. Apparently I was your only involuntary eavesdropper, and soon that ordeal would be over.
The audience quieted, and here they came: Ross first, then Chandler (the Kondran players didn’t matter). Ross first: You wouldn’t see the blood on her red dress. No one would understand exactly what was happening, and that would give me time to get Chandler, too. I needed my concentration. My moment was here.
On you went, inexorably, in your quiet, melancholy tone: “As a last resort they castrated him. He lost most of his skin at the end, and he was too weak to sip fluids through a tube. I think now it was all a mistake. We should never have fought so hard. We should have let him die at the start.”
“But we can’t just give up!” cried Dr. Two Hawks over the applause for the returning musicians. “We must do something!”
And you sighed, Dr. Akonditichilka. “Aaah,” you said softly, a long curve of sounded breath in the silence before the players began. You leaned there an instant longer, looking across at him.
Then you said gently (and how clearly your voice still sounds in my mind)—each word a steep, sweet fall in pitch from the one before—“Let’s listen to Brahms.”
And you sat back slowly in your seat as the first notes rippled into the hall. After a little I managed to uncramp my fingers from around the gun and take my empty hand out of my pocket. We sat there together in the dimness, our eyes stinging with tears past shedding, and we listened.
Suzy McKee Charnas has been publishing long- and short-form fantasy and science fiction since 1974, as well as young adult fiction, nonfiction, and (so far) one play script that has had productions on both coasts. She is best known for her four-book feminist-futurist series, The Holdfast Chronicles, and for The Vampire Tapestry, a cult classic. Her work has won her a Hugo, a Nebula, a Gigamesh, and a Mythopeic award for Young Adult fantasy.
