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Page 13.
8. Father Mercury
 On his way to the General Assembly or Starmeer to report to Cyrus Mbe, Jared resolved to take a short time and see Lyxa. He did not call an official car, in order to steal that hour or so from his duties. Instead, he walked the several blocks through the drying air, into the Dome.
He thought less about Lyxa than about Stella. Stella’s reaction was enigmatic to read, as always. Sometimes he thought maybe she was deeply in love with him. A djia should not be able to have such feelings, and he should not have strong feelings for a djia. He had a strangely guilty feeling that she trusted him so much, and he dreaded that anything should happen to her through his fault; or that anything should happen to her at all, because she had become part of his life.
Rain drops picked shiny spots on the pavement in the narrow streets, and neon lights changed rhythmically. The festive air—it was the New Year spirit. After all, this was the new millennium.
He heard the noise before he saw the lights, the people, the dancing, and of course Father Mercury on his throne, a white-bearded chubby sot in a red suit, with a pretty girl on each knee. As mythology would have it, he emerged every New Year’s Day as an infant in diapers—a myth dating to the pre-space age—and grew old through the months until he was an elderly Bacchus by year’s end, at New Year’s Eve, which was tonight. At midnight, the revelers would flee, and Death would come for Father Mercury. In the deserted square, he would be replaced by a terrifying hooded figure swinging a scythe, with a sickly glow about him and a stench of death. Jared had seen it once or twice on holos—you did not want to literally be anywhere near Victory Square during that still and morbid hour. Then, sometimes during the night, one of the city hospitals (it was always a lottery) would announce the glad tidings that the first baby of the new year had been born, and with him the spirit of New Year’s Day. The revels would resume by dawn, the baby would be displayed and whisked away to anonymity, and the actor playing Father Mercury was probably by now naked and unconscious in some bodega after partying all night. It was all in good fun, and nobody really got hurt—but you never knew. It was best to play it safe, and Jared was glad he’d avoid the midnight hour.
He’d had a few drinks. Must stop now. His stomach was slightly upset.
Maybe, too, he didn’t really give a damn. On New Year’s eve a man should be able to walk on the streets of his own city without feeling uneasy.
Softly colored reflections changed rhythmically on puddles, as neon lights changed rhythmically in dark nooks at crazy angles high up in the gloomy walls of the ancient city.
Parts of the city were protected by airy transparent domes. Like rippling scarves, discarded cloth and dove-like shreds floated laxly in the high-up cool breezes of the air-regulators.
Jared walked in the rain. Down the street he could see a two-hundred-foot-high portal, one of the entrances to the bubble of the Old City. The City reminded him of an old, dying animal. It lay slumped on its belly in the spell of a mortal dizziness, with night-black skin draped over its tall, projecting bones…a bedragglement of wet lights and shining pavements. I am being digested, he thought.
Rain thinned. Cool winds blew scattered droplets away. Wreathed in mountainous shrouds of clouds, the city remained—silent and enduring as it had for over two thousand years. Towers loomed, whose broad, flat walls glittered with tiny windows glowering out of torture-browed concrete. City of the Universe…
He walked through the portal. The bubble lay open to him without comment. His feet padded softly on the street, where no rain had fallen in centuries. Different winds blew against his face. Music came to greet him.
Everywhere was loud music. The little streets between the canyon walls of the buildings were filled with a wild music. People ran in groups, near-naked and uncaringly happy. Flowers were everywhere. Jared smiled. It was good to be small, to walk among ordinary people. The grim walls were silent and drawn in upon themselves forbiddingly, but the streets had become a world of laughing, noisy people, happy people, happy music.
Walking through the small, blind side streets he knew so well, he recalled what he had seen in earlier years in Victory Square under the central dome, and tonight was a living replay.
Countless persons shrieked and laughed while tinny music flowed from a forest of loudspeakers and drink flowed freely from acres of dark-stacked barrels. The air had a heavy smell of roasting meat and nuts, of bread and onions, and all sorts of good things. He smelled wine, and brandy, and beer, and even coffee or tea (but nothing as precious or exotic as the Sea Tea of Alda Meina III. How nice that had been; he must take Stella there again. He laughed as he caught himself thinking of his diaphane or djia almost like a girlfriend or a wife. Maybe it was because she was demi-human and lacked much of what was so imperfect in a woman.
A portly, chalk-powdered, red-cheeked Father Mercury sat on his throne in the center of the square, wearing a skimpy toga and holding a gold scepter whose head flickered with the electronic illusion of a flame, and he slapped his thighs and howled approvingly.
Giddy young women threw themselves at him to pull his beard, and he rubbed their fannies. The noise all around was deafening.
Anything goes. Happy New Year’s Eve.
Four huge, inflated halcyon nymphs turned obliviously round and round in a blizzard of confetti and scent-bubbles. The nymphs were of glastic, twenty feet in height, and their eyes were demure, their lips sweet, their hair loose.
Smiling young men and women danced around Jared as he walked. He accepted more than one sip from a mug of fresh, spicy beer, until he could feel himself growing tipsy. He welcomed the relief, trying not to think of the ordeal ahead.
He had to now visit the woman he still, somewhere in his core, loved, who had ruined his life and turned him into her own sort of djia. He had even wondered if he might be a djia himself and not know it, but that was impossible. He had all the dreams, failings, and strong points of a fully human man. Not a farmed girl or man, not a holo guy or a djia boy. He was a farm boy from Lesht and Oudangad, a laughable hick from the sticks, who had accomplished incredible feats in acing out the Academy ahead of many city slickers. He’d become the galaxy’s most celebrated athlete for one short day, celebrated with his run over the Arch of Victory. He’d become a hot commodity, and had been purchased in the city’s exchanges of lies and excuses, the propaganda (as he saw it) of how great we are versus the reality of how low we have sunk because we walk with our shoes in mud and our brains in clouds of self-delusion.
Jared nodded as people left a path open for him wherever he went, because he was in uniform. He wore a common, ash-gray greatcoat over the uniform to hide it and be less of a target with all the crazies out tonight, but he still looked different. He was not a reveler but an important looking, dignified and handsome young man hurrying on a mission.
As he hastened along over the trash-strewn streets, the mercurial laughter of children closed unheedingly behind him. One street scene after another fell behind him. Each street corner seemed to have its own ongoing fiesta.
Victory Square still lay a few long city blocks ahead, along narrow streets loomed over by dark buildings and shuttered windows.
He came to the palace, which occupied a whole city block. Even the royal honor guard, who daily marched up and down in their Vegan and Mercurial livery, were gone for the night. They had locked up the watchmen’s posts, taken in the flags and pennants, and locked the doors.
Jared stepped before a brass-bound wooden door. Amber coach lights out of a previous century flickered on either side, burning real halom oil from the fields of rural Vega.
He raised his palm and let a discreet scanner read it.
A mechanical voice said: “Welcome, Jared. You are expected.”
With that, the door swung open, and he entered the palace.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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