The Group

Intellectual sci-fi

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Chapter One

The Group

“Now us, we’s what’s knowed as butchers.”

--Micah

Picture a man on a brightly lit catwalk.

He’ll be a black man, around sixty, dressed in ceremonial robes of blinding gold. In the background you’ll see a forest of upturned faces, a frozen pyrotechnic flare, and a full moon hanging fatly in a crystalline sky.

Now pretend it’s a real-time image.

See that flare get blown to shrapnel, watch the crowd rear back and roar:

“Thirteen… twelve…”

Zoom out, in your head.

Imagine a couple of screwballs, on a dock twenty feet below that catwalk, hilariously arguing physics, mob mentality, and plague stats, the way you and I would go on and on about faceball scores, chickie chambers, and a good old bare-knuckle carrier-whooping.

“… eleven…”

Grab a breath and get ready. Because there’s something in the air, man. There’s something about the next number that obliges you to holler in sync, as if its place in the sequence holds a magical significance for anyone who can count.

“… Ten…”

And you’re in! Throw back your virtual head.

“… nine…”

There’s that sweet party moon, with her winking corona of satellites--

… eight…”

--catching and bending the sun, reflecting it--

“… seven…”

--onto a thousand lunar mirrors--

“… six…”

--perfectly spaced, servo-aligned--

“… five…”

--to spell out our holiday message.

“… four…”

And there it is: written bright-on-white--

“… three…”

--and right on time. So shout it out!

“… two…”

Let go, pal! Howl like a lunatic.

“… one!”

No, damn it, scream it:

“HAPPY NEW YEAR, 1347!”

“And that,” said Abel, “was that.” He snapped his fingers. “Less than that. An instant, the wink of an eye, and…gone! Once again the crowd’s immortalized a moment that exists solely as a symbol of its own pinwheeling mortality. Why can’t we dedicate a day to something that mellows with age, eh, Doctor?”

He rammed the psychoanalyst into the crowd, and someone unseen rammed him right back. The return impact bounced Abel off the throng’s opposing flank, incidentally knocking Izzy back on track. In this manner they crossed the dock like a wobbly old wheel.

Every party has its bullies. The one who came after Abel was no drunker than the rest, just uglier. He shoved Izzy so hard the doctor shot through the press of flesh and was doubled at the east rail.

“You push this little freak on me again,” the punk snarled, “and I’ll kill you. Do we understand each other, old man?”

A second later he was gone, swept up in the jostling promenade.

Abel called after him, “I’ll push the little freak on anyone I want!” and carefully stepped between the strolling families and hooting rowdies, muttering, “and I’m not yet fifty.” A few rubbernecks at the rail were slow to part. “Air,” Abel explained. “Just a little room, please. He’ll be fine.”

Now a flurry of rockets crisscrossed the night sky, momentarily lighting the Burghs a ghastly white-and-purple.

Izzy rolled up his streaming eyes. Not two miles away lay the Colony, denuded on the surface, but peopled below by a race hidden for so many generations it was recognizable only in folk legends and bedtime horror stories. “Hullo, megalopolis!” he bawled.

Every drunk within earshot cheered, urging him to complete the old salutation.

Izzy inhaled until his eyes were popping. “And burn in hell, you stupid plague Colony!”

Fists were raised, empties hurled, throats screamed raw.

Izzy rocked back around, his jaw dropping at the flash of gold. “Speak of burning. What in the who is that?”

The man on the catwalk looked like he didn’t know which way to spit. Fireworks were going up all over the place, but he didn’t raise his eyes. Everybody else went nuts.

“Okay. That’s our guy.” Abel waved his arms, showing five fingers on one hand and two on the other.

Security at Gate 7 immediately began ushering patrons to adjacent gates. There were garbled protests and a few shouted threats.

Abel watched impassively before turning to study the black-and-gold gargoyle. “Lost in a crowd. Sad, really. The party’s just starting, and there he stands; without a friend or a clue.”

“Surfeit of study,” Izzy gasped. “Now you hold steady! Don’t you…barrass me.”

Head of Security rolled his forearms one over the other.

“We’re on,” Abel said. “Wipe your chin.” He looked up at the catwalk and a broad smile cut his face in two. “Moses! Moses Amantu!” Cupping his hands round his mouth, he called over the crowd, “Professor!” and lustily climbed the gangplank. Abel swung round the gatepost and approached the startled historian like an old friend, his hand extended warmly.

Amantu’s head jerked back a notch for each step advanced. When the two were face to face, Abel panted happily, “My name’s Abel Joshua Lee, Professor, but my pals just call me Josh. I also go by ‘AJ’. We’re from Titus Mack.”

He pointed at his partner, now inching up the gaily adorned gangplank. “That’s Israel Weaver, psychoanalyst extraordinaire and my best damned friend on the planet.”

As if reading Abel’s lips, Izzy gave a cheerful wave-back, then jumped and laughed at an abruptly-launched Screamer behind him. Clinging to the rail, he renewed his laborious climb, bending forward and backward like a punching clown.

“Ti,” Abel elaborated, “Titus, that is, said you’d be expecting us. He might have just mentioned us as the other two members of a little frat he founded, known colloquially around the Burghs as the ‘Group’. Kind of makes us sound both standoffish and regular at the same time, don’t you think? Anyways, I’m really amazed to meet you, sir.” He thrust his hand forward insistently.

Amantu considered the palm as though it were a rotting lab specimen. “And to,” he muttered. The arm dropped. In the awkward pause a flash of magenta blew into a zillion falling stars.

“Well!” Abel’s grin was killing him. “My nephew’s got a big hand in particle mapping. He’s cleared us with the Director on down.” He snapped his fingers like castanets. “One View, all fired up and ready to go! So let’s not dally. We can cruise along in comfort and with dignity. Let the masses have their hoot.”

Amantu looked away from the rides, from the merrymakers, from all things insufferably pedestrian.

“These experimental amusements. I do not approve. They are dangerous, outrageously overpriced displays. I expected a cab.”

“On this, of all days? No, no, no, Professor. You must be our guest. And the bill’s on Ti. He’d have it no other way.”

The black head reared. “Titus Mack demanded we ride one of these things?”

“Well,” Abel laughed, “of course Titus didn’t specify any particular conveyance. I mean, he spends so much time cooped up in that remote old observatory of his I doubt he’s ever even seen a View. Look, all I know is, I get a buzz only yesterday. Ti wants to show me a discovery he’s been keeping under wraps, and he’s fit to bust. Haven’t seen the man in a blue moon. ‘Bring Izzy’, he says, ‘and do me a favor. I put out a special invite to Professor Moses Amantu of Burghsbridge, and hang me if he didn’t accept. You guys hook up with him halfway and show him along’. And so of course I was excited, and reserved us a ride. Moses Matthew Amantu! Mister Up The System himself.”

“And what,” Amantu asked icily, “would a waveman want with an historian?”

Abel blew out his cheeks. “It’s like I told you, sir. We’re just here to show you along. He’s got a surprise for us. And, if I know Ti, it’s sure to be a good one.”

Amantu’s crosshairs swerved onto Doctor Weaver, now feeling his way around the gatepost. The highly-cited psychoanalyst turned out to be a balding, portly little sot with the pout of a spoiled child. Amantu made no attempt to hide his disappointment.

When all three were at arm’s-length, Izzy raised his eyes and winked blearily.

“Happy You Near, ’Fessor! So what say you we all tickle old… tonsil?”

Amantu looked away. “Thank you, no. I do not imbibe.”

“For Cry sake, man!” Izzy’s head bobbled round to face Abel. “Never?”

The hard eyes slid back. “Not ever!” Faces in the crowd turned. Nostrils were flaring; was there a fight in the air?

Amantu’s voice cut through the din like a buggy whip. “I do not disdain celebration, sir. Nevertheless, I feel no urge to run cartwheeling through a vomitorium simply because my calendar needs replacing. In public, Doctor Weaver, it is mature behavior that separates professional men from the mob. Do you not agree?”

Izzy froze as though he’d been slapped. A half-grin raised one side of his face and passed. “What you trying say I--”

Abel squeezed right in. “Perhaps we’re getting off on the wrong foot here, fellows. Please accept my apologies, Professor. I so wanted to meet you congenially, and maybe absorb your brilliant theories on Cultural Recall firsthand. I’m certain Titus’ll be fascinated.” He very gently took Amantu’s elbow and guided him around the gatepost.

The professor bent a kinder ear. “Oh? Mack is familiar with my research?” They picked their way down.

“Absolutely familiar. The Group has its own theories on suppressed historical data, but this work you’re pursuing--wherein the brain retains, actually hard-wires memory over generations--well, that’s the kind of stuff that gets a man in trouble. And, speaking for the Group, it’s also the kind of passionate research that makes a man admired.”

“Yes.”

Izzy and Abel descended behind Amantu, who was parting the climbing file by presence alone.

“And how is it that my work has become so public?”

They spilled out onto the dock.

“You know how students talk.” Abel clasped his hands behind his back, affecting a cosmopolitan stroll while the New Year raved around them. “But just a word to the wise about scholarly immunity, Professor. Please have the good sense to know when the Barrier’s notoriously thin skin has been breached. I’d hate to hear you’d been ‘debarked’, or shot in cold blood, for that matter. Oh, don’t look so skeptical. There are perfectly credible stories of healthy, sane men being labeled as carriers. Sensible men.” He squinted at a magnesium starburst. “Intellectuals.”

“Stories,” Amantu mumbled. “Distorted, like everything else, by the popular imagination. Recall volunteers are specifically instructed to ignore plague-related material of an anecdotal nature.”

Abel nodded sourly; the professor was hooked. He steered Izzy through the crowd, studying faces all the while, and let Amantu roll on:

“Recollection, sir, is fundamental to our survival as a species. Memories of powerful events are therefore retained at the cellular level and passed onto descendants. Distortions do occur over time, but the university’s equipment treats culled statements as outright lies, then uses an inversion program to reconstruct similarities into a cohesive picture. The greatest liar in the world could not construct a system of perfect liars; human beings are far too idiosyncratic. Devices do not have this problem.”

“Do tell.”

The professor halted. “Pardon me?”

Abel smacked his signet on the turnstile at Gate 7. The faceplate lighted, but the wheel remained locked while four softly glowing columns rose out of the deck beyond. At their apices these shafts developed horizontal limbs that extended until all four columns were linked by a misty cylindrical rail. The faceplate went dark and the wheel unlocked. Abel backpedaled through the turnstile.

“I submit, Professor, that your conveniently receptive students are in fact carriers--and it bothers the hell out of me to have to put it so bluntly. They belong in the Colony. At least under quarantine they won’t run the risk of being shot outright. Cultural Recall, indeed.”

His fists did a spongy drum roll on the rail. “But perhaps you’re doing a backhanded service. Weed out these individuals, sir, and report them immediately. Secure that university.”

He rolled his neck and hunched his shoulders. “Secure all universities. Anyway, let’s cud some. How’s about perco and a snack? Izzy, order what you like. But for Christ’s sake let’s talk about something else. Anything else.”

He flipped his hand, placing the signet and rail in direct contact.

“Table for three. Destination, the Outskirts. Titus Mack’s.” Abel glowered over the ride’s menu. “Eight miles an hour. Transit time, forty minutes. What was I thinking? Well, we’d might as well get comfortable. Everybody move up to the rail. It says here the sensors need sixty-four square feet of clearance.” They stepped back.

The map trembled with a sickly radiation. Five new columns broke the surface; one at each corner, one at dead center. The corner posts ceased climbing at two feet, three developing foot-square seats out of their caps, the fourth broadening to form a fuzzy drink stand. The central column continued an additional foot. A horizontal plane grew out of its cap, producing a perfectly square tabletop.

Amantu tucked in his robes. “Delightful.”

The View’s deck commenced a gratingly slow extension from the dock, its eerily pulsing tip marking time with a tracking pulse miles away. Though the Group were soon rising gently over the Burghs, there was no real sense of being airborne; rather, cruising on a View gave one the feeling of riding uphill in a rickety amusement park train. Still, there were brief moments of exhilarating weightlessness, every hundred yards or so, when the deck was electromagnetically nudged by a massive ground arbor. But even that exhilaration soon gave way to a kind of rhythmic nausea.

Dozens of these bile-green arcs were rising every which way over the city, most conveying parties of drunken screaming celebrants. Rented space above Views erupted with holographic pyrotechnics, with laser-driven pixel images, and with briefly reflective messages of a recklessly publicized personal nature. And now, swimming along in that wide popping sky, the good old moon was back to her familiar unadorned self.

Abel rapped his signet on the table. “Order.”

A life-sized projection appeared; half mannequin template, half pretty brown-eyed waitress. The template side scrolled through a spectrum of sample types before adopting a mirror copy. Pen poised eagerly over pad, the recovered projection gave Abel its full attention.

“Blonde,” he said. “With pigtails. Blue eyes. Native blouse.”

These details applied immediately. The projection’s posture and expression remained in type.

“Perco all around, please. Blue Mountain in china. You may leave the pot.”

Izzy rolled back his head. “None of your blasted greasy brown beans for me, Josh! I mean it, man! Your embarrass us. We’re aluminaries, damn it. So let’s…get aluminated!”

“Make that a Lazy Sun,” Abel drawled, “for our glowing friend. And a plate of sweet cakes. Something luminous.”

The projection made as though deleting a line.

Izzy threw an exaggerated wink at Abel, reached around cagily, slapped the likeness on its apparent bottom. “Okay, ‘Sweet Cakes’?”

His hand, passing through, skipped across the tabletop like a stone on a pool. Izzy pitched off his seat and landed on the fat of his back. His tough little skull bounced hard on the deck.

The waitress appraised him uncertainly before taking in the table in general. A second later she broke into a mosaic of interlocking facial samples, and was instantly replaced by the image of a towering policeman, its entire head locked up in a shiny black helmet and visor.

The telepresence stared hard at Izzy, ignoring the rest of the Group. “Signate?”

Abel sat right up. “That would be me, officer. Um, Happy New Year. I’m responsible for Doctor Weaver here. He’ll be fine.”

The telepresence only intensified its study. In a minute it was replaced by an equally grim apparition wearing a medical smock. A ruby beam lanced out of this image’s mock ophthalmoscope. For a wild instant Izzy’s sprawled body became a living anatomy chart; every nerve, every blood vessel, every bit of cartilage beautifully delineated. The beam dimmed and the medical telepresence vanished.

The cop reappeared in its place. “Signate?”

“Here.”

“This individual requires monitoring. Be wary of further impairment.”

“Done.”

The image was displaced. Abel bounced his forehead repeatedly on the table.

“Eminent,” Amantu muttered.

Izzy had just found his stool when the waitress reappeared, a wide misty chest in her hands. Abel touched his signet to the lid’s imprimatur. The chest waxed solid and the waitress dissolved.

Pressing the lid released a thin tail of steam and the bland aroma of instant coffee. The cups were disappointing little inverse cones of disposable lined plastic, but Abel laid them out neatly, and made a show of savoring the odor as he poured. The cakes, flat dry cookies that had shattered with the release of pressure, boasted the Escalateur Company’s arcing View logo in green sugar sprinkles.

Izzy gloomily unzipped his pouch and poured the vodka-rum mixture into one of the neat little plastic glasses. The accompanying pouch of freeze-dried ingredients revealed lemon-flavored seltzer in powder form, a packet of chipped honey, and a petrified cherry with a hollow sulfur-tipped stem. These items he poured into the liquid, then lit the floating cherry’s stem with the included striker. The brandied drupe flared and sizzled, causing the bubbles of bicarbonate to glimmer and the honey to glow. He studied the sorry concoction for a few seconds before knocking it back.

“We three grown men,” Amantu said through his teeth, “have just been admonished, in the space of only five minutes, by no less than two officials!”

Izzy hurled down his glass. “To hell with ’em!” The plastic tumbler didn’t crack, but sprang back feebly. “To hell…to hell alla them!” He turned on the professor. “And to hell with--”

“Doctor Weaver!”

Izzy glared one to the other. He tore the flask from his vest’s pocket.

The professor pushed his coffee aside. “Perhaps our confluence was ill-advised.”

“Bladderdash!” Izzy wobbled to his feet. “The time is right!”

“Izzy!”

Corrected, Izzy cried, “The time izzy right!” He then appealed, at the top of his voice, to anyone within earshot: “Time to celebrate!”

Cheers rang from proximate Views.

“See?” Izzy screamed, losing his train of thought. “It’s time! It’s time! It’s time, time, time! It’s time we celebrate; it’s time!” He snarled down at that jet-black, unflinching face. “Why izzy every jackman on planet understand but you?”

“You celebrate,” Amantu seethed, “and you celebrate.” The professor slapped his palms on the table. “Doctor Weaver, why an individual of your stature should celebrate, rather than cerebrate, eludes me completely.”

Izzy smacked down his flask. “Who statue?”

Abel rose quickly. “Gentlemen. Leave us remember that these festivities are not meant to commemorate time’s passage in a literal sense. The mood is symbolic.”

Amantu dabbed at his forehead. “The mood is imbecilic.”

“Simbasicle? Why, you son of a…I’ve--I’ve shaken all I can!” Izzy tried to achieve a pugilistic pose while simultaneously rolling up his sleeves, rocking back and forth as he did so. “Is human nature celebrate!”

Tiny furnaces appeared in Amantu’s eyes.

“Human nature, certainly. However, this annual excuse for bacchanalia does little to aggrandize the gap between Homo sapiens and the so-called ‘lower animals’. Midnight on January First of the year 1347 was destined chronometrically, and, technically speaking, appeared and concluded instantaneously. The interval separating this year and last was less than a heartbeat, and I see no appreciable change in the world. Yet you celebrate still!”

Izzy managed to get it all out in one breath. “Then I celebrate that heartbeat, damn you, right here and now, and no less fervently!”

“Gentlemen! We’ve been all over this.”

Izzy wobbled round. “No, Abel, you bend over for it!”

Amantu very slowly made his feet. “You damn me?” He felt his blood rising with him. “You…damn…me? Why, if you were not such a self-deluded little--” The professor was cut short by a pinching sensation in his chest. Lava rolled down his left arm. Amantu knew the feeling well--the shortness of breath, the veil of sweat, the profound sense of morbidity. A voice addressed him from miles away:

“Professor?”

Abel leaned across the table and peeled up an eyelid, saying, “Doctor Weaver, you’re an a*s.” He snatched Izzy’s flask and shoved it under Amantu’s nose.

“Professor, I want you to drink this immediately.”

Amantu raised a leaden hand. “No…I--”

“Drink it!”

The professor swallowed weakly.

“Another.” Abel pushed the flask’s mouth between Amantu’s lips so that brandy rolled over his chin. “I’ve been practicing for close to thirty years, and I know the symptoms of angina when I see them. Now swallow!” Amantu got down another sip.

Abel fell back on his stool. “Give him some air.” He placed two fingers on the carotid. “Did you bring any nitro? Like an idiot, I came unprepared for the least predicament.” When Amantu didn’t answer he rapped his signet on the table. “I’m summoning an ambulance.”

“No,” Amantu gasped. “Not pernicious. I am…I am fine.”

Abel couldn’t buy an emergency confirmation, couldn’t shout one up, couldn’t wave one down. He was dangerously close to blowing his own gasket when a canned voice began rotating above the urgently throbbing tabletop--breaking up, falling out, breaking up:

Signate…signate…Interruption. Party of three. Interruption. Signate. Party of three…please…interruption…signa…party of…

“Now what!”

By way of reply a hazy image appeared at his elbow; stuttering with pixels, entering and deleting contours, finally falsifying three dimensions.

The telepresence belonged to a haggard middle-aged street peddler, dressed in rags on top of rags. Affixed to his shredded trench coat were alphabetized noisemakers, light flashers, and a miscellany of fairly sophisticated pyrotechnic devices. It took him a second to get his bearings. When he saw Amantu’s flashy gold robes his eyes flashed back. “Signate?”

“Outrageous!” Abel barked. “How’d you get in here?”

“Only a moment!” the image begged. “I have all you need, friends and citizens, to make your New Year’s fete complete. Things to razzle. Things to dazzle. Things to make your party the envy of all. Or…to really rise above the crowd--” He threw open his coat, exposing enough fetish toys to stagger a leash of perverts.

“I repeat! How did you get in here!”

The man dipped a gnarly hand into an inner pocket. On his palm was an oddly glowing oval box.

“Well I’ll--” Izzy marveled. “A pocket scrambler! The man’s got…pocket scrambler.” His head tipped back up. “Have you know, good man, that’s an…ill eagle.”

The peddler eyed him keenly. “And you, sir, will be elated by the range of aqua vitae I have to offer. Cut rate, yes! Cut quality, never!” He displayed tiers of frayed body belts, each containing rows of hand-sewn pockets that held stoppered miniature carafes. The telepresence swiveled the goods seductively, watching Izzy’s eyes roll side to side.

Abel leaned in. “Out of the question! It’s my party, and I’ll make Group decisions in this matter. There’ll be no contraband on my signet.”

“But I’ve--”

“No negotiating! Beat it.”

The peddler flicked his tongue and hissed like a snake. He raised his arms melodramatically, incidentally revealing a hazy row of vials clipped to a threadbare belt.

“You,” Abel said quietly. “That’s Swirl, isn’t it?”

The image hissed again. “It’s mine is what it is, pigeon!” Catching himself, he swept a vial filled with heaving blue smoke under Abel’s nose. “Only the best, good sir! Absolutely pure, absolutely clean.”

“Absolutely dilute, I’ll wager. Leave it. How do I get around a trace?”

The telepresence extended a hand. The banged-up signet round his finger was the only substantial aspect of his attendance. “Not a problem! Straight into my account.”

Abel looked into Amantu’s glassy eyes and grudgingly clicked signets. He brought his head up close, saying with exaggerated clarity, “Professor Amantu. I am aware your personal ethic prevents your indulging in certain substances. But I’m addressing your health right now. It’s a medical fact that Swirl is an extremely effective vasodilator. The drug will quickly relieve even your most distressful symptoms. In limited use it is not only safe, it is highly beneficial. Like most medications, however, it has received a bad name through abuse. I urge you to partake of it medicinally, and with the utmost haste. It will do you a world of good.”

Amantu peered blearily. The men appeared to loom as they looked on, the whites of their eyes glowing a green jaundice from the particle map underfoot. Blue and violet skyrockets branched out behind them, erupting into multicolored blossoms. The telepresence sputtered and crackled correspondingly. “But my mind,” Amantu managed. “Will it not affect me adversely?”

“The effects are most agreeable. Consume it now and be done with it--I assure you a completely safe experience, along with a pain-free night thereafter. Understand that, in any case, I will be close by.”

Amantu looked uncertainly at the eerily lit faces. “If it produces relief…perhaps it will improve my company.” He regarded the newly corporeal vial guiltily. “Pardon me.”

“Of course.” Abel uncapped the little bottle and slid it over. At the disturbance its smoky contents began wafting from the mouth in a corkscrew motion. The professor drew it to his lips and hesitated. “Sip it,” Abel advised, “just as you would a beverage. Only inhale as you do so.” The men watched curiously as Amantu closed his eyes and tilted the vial back. The blue smoke rushed out and into his lungs.

He reopened his eyes.

“Pleasant,” he reported. “Rather on the tart side. Refreshingly cool, with a metallic palate.”

“No ill effects?”

“None as yet.” He thought about it. “As a matter of fact, I am aware of an escalation in pulmonary responsiveness, and of spirit in general.” He closed his left eye. The staring men became a fish-eye portrait on the lens of his right eyeball. The portrait swung smoothly to his left, sewing shut the open eyelids as it rolled. For a while all was darkness. Then, in the exact center of his skull, a vertical slice of light began widening like the crack between a jamb and opening door, rounding out as it progressed. In the midst of this light a dark upright line distended correspondingly, but, rather than continuing to fill out uniformly, grew constricted in its center, so that the dark area became a black, sinuous squiggle with classic female curves.

Amantu’s breath quickened; the shape undulated in response.

A heavy drum beat opened between his ears, jumping back and forth, back and forth, accompanied by a solo oboe playing an odd melody in a minor key. It took him a few seconds to realize that the drum was actually his pulse, and that the sound of the oboe was coming from the very heart of that wiggly shape.

But then a dancing black woman, clad only in satiny gold bangles, was swaying side to side through a white-hot spotlight’s beam, her full lips clamped suggestively round an ebony oboe’s reeds, her bangles falling like leaves at every thrust and shimmy.

Amantu gripped the table’s edge and writhed on his seat, his breath catching in his throat. The woman blew a long ascending legato scale in reply, dropped the oboe, and threw out her arms. With her head tossed back and her lips spread wide, she shook and shook and shook until the bangles fell from her belly, her thighs, her bosom, her bottom.

The professor tensed and, for one crazy second there, was this close to letting go.