Perhaps we have, I said, although it seems unlikely. My name is Joseph Severn.
Of course, she said. Youre an artist!
I was not an artist. I was had been a poet. But the Severn identity, which I had inhabited since my real personas death and birth a year before, stated that I was an artist. It was in my All Thing file.
I remembered, laughed the lady. She lied. She had used her expensive comlog implants to access the datasphere.
I did not need to access a clumsy, redundant word which I despised despite its antiquity. I mentally closed my eyes and was in the datasphere, sliding past the superficial All Thing barriers, slipping beneath the waves of surface data, and following the glowing strand of her access umbilical far into the darkened depths of secure information flow.
My name is Diana Philomel, she said. My husband is sector transport administrator for Sol Draconi Septem.
I nodded and took the hand she offered. She had said nothing about the fact that her husband had been head goon for the mould-scrubbers union on Heavens Gate before political patronage had promoted him to Sol Draconi or that her name once had been Dinee Teats, former crib doxie and hopstop hostess to lungpipe proxies in the Mid-sump Barrens or that she had been arrested twice for Flashback abuse, the second time seriously injuring a halfway house medic or that she had poisoned her half-brother when she was nine, after he had threatened to tell her stepfather that she was seeing a Mudflat miner named
Pleased to meet you, M. Philomel, I said. Her hand was warm.
She held the handshake an instant too long.
Isnt it exciting? she breathed.
Whats that?
She made an expansive gesture that included the night, the glow-globes just coming on, the gardens, and the crowds. Oh, the party, the war, everything, she said.
I smiled, nodded, and tasted the roast beef. It was rare and quite good, but gave the salty hint of the Lusus clone vats. The squid seemed authentic. Stewards had come by offering champagne, and I tried mine. It was inferior. Quality wine, Scotch, and coffee had been the three irreplaceable commodities after the death of Old Earth. Do you think the war is necessary? I asked.
Goddamn right its necessary. Diana Philomel had opened her mouth, but it was her husband who answered. He had come up from behind and now took a seat on the faux log where we dined. He was a big man, at least a foot and a half taller than I. But then, I am short.
My memory tells me that I once wrote a verse ridiculing myself as Mr. John Keats, five feet high, although I am five feet one, slightly short when Napoleon and Wellington were alive and the average height for men was five feet six, ridiculously short now that men from average worlds range from six feet tall to almost
seven. I obviously did not have the musculature or frame to claim I had come from a high-g world, so to all eyes I was merely short. (I report my thoughts above in the units in which I think of all the mental changes since my rebirth into the Web, thinking in metric is by far the hardest. Sometimes I refuse to try.)
Why is the war necessary? I asked Hermund Philomel, Dianas husband.
Because they goddamn asked for it, growled the big man. He was a molar grinder and a cheek-muscle flexer. He had almost no neck and a subcutaneous beard that obviously defied depilatory, blade, and shaver. His hands were half again as large as mine and many times more powerful.
I see, I said.
The goddamn Ousters goddamn asked for it, he repeated, reviewing the high points of his argument for me. They fucked with us on Bressia and now theyre fucking with us on in whatsis
Hyperion system, said his wife, her eyes never leaving mine.
Yeah, said her lord and husband, Hyperion system. They fucked with us, and now weve got to go out there and show them that the Hegemony isnt going to stand for it. Understand?
Memory told me that as a boy I had been sent off to John Clarkes academy at Enfield and that there had been more than a few small-brained, ham-fisted bullies like this there. When I first arrived, I avoided them or placated them. After my mother died, after the world changed, I went after them with rocks in my small fists and rose from the ground to swing again, even after they had bloodied my nose and loosened my teeth with their blows.
I understand, I said softly. My plate was empty. I raised the last of my bad champagne to toast Diana Philomel.
Draw me, she said.
I beg your pardon?
Draw me, M. Severn. Youre an artist.
A painter, I said, making a helpless gesture with an empty hand.
Im afraid I have no stylus.
Diana Philomel reached into her husbands tunic pocket and handed me a light pen. Draw me. Please.
I drew her. The portrait took shape in the air between us, lines rising and falling and turning back on themselves like neon filaments in a wire sculpture. A small crowd gathered to watch. Mild applause rippled when I finished. The drawing was not bad. It caught the ladys long, voluptuous curve of neck, high braid bridge of hair, prominent cheekbones even the slight, ambiguous glint of eye. It was as good as I could do after the RNA medication and lessons had prepared me for the persona. The real Joseph Severn could do better had done better. I remember him sketching me as I lay dying.