Pat Cadigan - Johnny Come Home

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2024-11-24 0 0 24.55KB 11 页 5.9玖币

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PAT CADIGAN

JOHNNY COME HOME

There was nothing for me to do in Moscow but drink.

Well, that and look for Johnny, and I no longer really had to do that. The

Sense told me he was in the city, eventually our paths would cross and I would

reel him in. But until that happened, I had to do something and drinking was

it. Bars as Westerners know them were still relatively new in Moscow. Most of

them little more than empty storefronts with the bare essentials; if you wanted

atmosphere, you brought it with you. Or, if you were an especially wealthy

tourist, you could go to one of the headjob parlors, where they gave you a

happy-hood and a couple of gloves so you could enjoy your Stoli in whatever

virtual environment they were running that night--provided, of course, you'd

made your reservation the required six to eight months in advance.

I figured it was artificial reality either way and not being an especially

wealthy tourist, I opted for the austerity plan. Besides, in Moscow, it was the

booze that carried importance, not the place where you drank it, and Stoli

seemed to have a deeper understanding of the drinking organism. It certainly

understood `me'--besides being mellow and friendly, it had the salutary effect

of enhancing the Sense. The bad news was that sobering up dulled me, but that

was easy enough to take care of.

So there I was, boozing and cruising in Moscow. They all envied me back

home--my turn to fetch Johnny and I got to go to Russia to do it. First time

I'd ever been off the North American continent, too. But here's a little home

truth for you (and why not home truth, seeing as how we've had the awful truth,

nothing but the truth, and cheap truth, God help us each and every one): One

place is pretty much like another, and once I understood what I could do in

Moscow, I might have been anywhere, the language difference notwithstanding.

Even now--or maybe especially now, in the last weeks before the millennium

turned. Well, not a full turn--next year would be the real first year of the

new millennium, but everyone in the world seemed to be stuck on the idea that

2000 was the big year. Certain ideas die hard, and others don't die at all.

Like Johnny's ideas.

He could live a thousand years himself and never give up on those sweet, mad

ideas. Master of my fate, captain of my soul, world full of miracles,

tomorrow's another day (or another millennium), anything can happen and it

probably will.

Yah. Dream about it, Johnny. He'd be doing that right now, somewhere in

Moscow, living in his own brand of artificial reality, dreaming hard enough to

kill someone while I held my place at a bar that had once been some kind of

counter-kitchen? grocery?--it was hard to tell in this light--in another dingy

ex-storefront.

As usual, there were lots of foreigners. Some were tourists and business

travelers, but a good many of them were what the government was calling

"temporary long-term." No doubt plenty of those were skating along on forged

papers, hoping to find some way to establish residency later. Russia had been

through a lot of changes in the Nineties right along with the rest of the world,

but people themselves never really change, no matter where they are. Nor do

situations. That's some more home truth, and you could figure that one out even

without the Sense.

So I maintained, anyway. The Sense is not one hundred percent infallible but

the group back home believed it was a constant, all-over advantage. I was of

two minds, you should pardon the expression, about that, myself, and it

sometimes caused more friction among us than Johnny's periodic coop flying.

"Loyal opposition" is not an easy concept to put over to organisms like us, but

we all understood disloyal opposition. We had Johnny. Or we would when I

brought him home again, tired, disillusioned, and hung over from his freedom

bender, to play docile prodigal and rejoin. Until all those sweet, mad ideas

built up enough to set him off again.

I was on my third Stoli, watching the bartender sort out orders and make change,

when the front door opened wide with a blast of frigid winter air. Over the

multilingual gabble, someone started calling for papers in six different

languages, and the person on my left dropped like a stone.

I looked down. A pretty, heartshaped face framed by dark blond hair looked back

up at me, eyes wide.

"Pamageeteh menye," she whispered. Help me.

I was on the verge of telling her I wasn't Russian. Then I moved so that I was

standing directly in front of her, my ankle length coat spread to hide her. She

had been at the end of the bar next to the wall, so perhaps no one had seen her

duck. Even if someone had, this wasn't the type of crowd that would alert the

immigration officers now moving through the place and shining flashlights on

documents held up for inspection.

Chatter became hushed and most movement ceased, except for the sweep of the

flashlight beams standing out hard in the smoky air, like light swords in some

old science-fiction movie. The bartender moved slowly down the counter, picking

up empty glasses, running a rag over the chipped Formica, until he came to where

I was standing. Folding his arms, he leaned against the wall and looked around

in an aimless, bored way before letting his gaze rest pointedly to my left.

I showed him my passport and shrugged.

He made a fist, wincing. His thoughts were like a bellow in my skull, a mostly

incoherent expression of anger, at me with my coat so obviously spread, at the

woman hiding behind it, at the immigration officers, at the world in general for

interfering with him. He was very young, one of the post-glasnost generation,

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Pat Cadigan - Johnny Come Home

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