Roundabout midnight, Elvis gets his turn on stage. With Bogart in his white tux handling an open bar things have turned lively, so he jumps straight into Hound Dog and then Blue Suede Shoes. He duets with Jim doing Riders On The Storm, then gives way to Booker T Washington, and Diana Ross and the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Yow!
Garnett’s men are dazzled, delighted, bewitched, bewildered. Clumsy, untried caterpillars, they stretch and reach until elegant, astonishing women touch their new wings, caress them, shape them, make of each young roughneck a butterfly, pulling them into a world like it never was, like it should be, like it could be if people cared enough for the right things. Wake up, boys! This is who you really are! Music and singing, dancing and stories and laughter…
Somewhere around dawn, the gradual, deliberate increase of carbon monoxide in the recirculated air system puts even the tireless Davis gently to sleep. Marilyn watches sadly as the young man settles back in one of the booths with his head on Dusty Springfield’s lap, and his eyes flicker closed for the last time.
“Hardly more than a boy,” she says.
Elvis puts an arm around her shoulders, and she leans into him. “At least they got one good night,” he says. “Best show we ever did.”
“Will they be back?”
Elvis shrugs. “Garnett was a cowboy. Indira touched his records back east for us. He pulled a lot of favors to set this up. Burned a few bridges. I’ll use his transmitters, send back a message like they got trouble with the Pacific Coast bunch. Can’t guarantee nothing, but I don’t reckon we’re likely to hear much more from Garnett’s people.”
“Best audience we ever had,” says Marilyn. “It’ll be hard to go back to performing for ourselves.”
“Better than decontaminating waste dumps,” Elvis says.
Marilyn shakes her head sadly. “Don’t they know they need us?”
Elvis looks across at Garnett, lying on a couch. Audrey sits on the floor next to him, holding his hand but the colonel’s not moving, nor like to move ever again. Audrey smiles a sad little smile, and folds his two hands onto his chest, together.
“They need us,” Elvis says, “but they don’t know they need us. They got caught up in making money and fighting over money and they wrecked the whole damn’ world, and now they’re too busy staying alive to know what they lost. But we’re still here.” He takes Marilyn’s little hand in his, holds it tight.
“I suppose.” She squeezes his hand. “The show must go on, huh?”
“That’s right,” Elvis says. “And hey. Long as we’re still here, maybe someday they’ll figure it out. And then they can make a comeback.”
Marilyn smiles, and somewhere outside, dawn breaks over a city of dust and ruins.
Relict:
(noun) A widow; a thing remaining from the past.
By Alison Goodman
Five Miles Outside London, 1817
I drew my gig up to the gate of the Royal Celestial Port, my horse shifting at the squawk of the communication box set into the wall of the guardhouse. The very young RCP soldier eyed me through the glass then bent to his transmittere.
“Name, please? Who are you here to see?” The words were barely audible through the battered box.
I gathered the reins in my hands and leaned closer. “Lady Grayle to see Lady Carnford.”
It had been two years since my sister-in-law, Isabel, had last contacted me. Now this abrupt summons to Grayle Celestial Transport company headquarters. It could only mean one thing: my husband was dead. Or at least dying.
“Weapons, please,” the box crackled. A drawer slid open with a tinny clank. “They will be returned upon exit.”
Would I, in fact, be exiting? There was every possibility that I was walking into a trap. I pulled the blaster from my velvet reticule and unclipped the three micro flash grenades from the gold chatelaine pinned to the bodice of my pelisse. When I had dressed this morning, I considered wearing a gown for the sake of occasion and Isabel’s sense of propriety, but sense prevailed. I could not run or fight in long skirts and I had a feeling that both activities were in my immediate future. So, a compromise: my ankle-length, blue, silk pelisse over moleskin breeches, hussar boots, fingerless lace gloves, and a sleek, velvet mameluke cap. If it came to it, a good ensemble to die in.
I could, of course, just turn the horses around and go. But where? If Charles was dead, there was no safe place on Earth.
I placed the weapons in the drawer. They were more for show than anything; the notorious Countess Knife did not need such fripperies to defend herself against footpads and highwaymen, and they were useless against my true adversaries.
Still, I did like a flash grenade.
Through the RCP gate, I could see one of the family’s freight craft upon the grid, ready to make the hop across planet. The Grayle rampant bear was emblazoned upon each of the ship’s three graceful fins, the family’s amended motto along its side: Per Dei gratiam, in terra et in aere. ‘By God’s grace, on land and in air.’
God’s grace: a typical Grayle interpretation of the Landing.
I peered through the glass at the guard. What was taking him so long? Perhaps he did not know who I was. He was young enough to have been a child when, ten years ago, the sixty plague ships from the stars crash-landed across the Earth, nine on the estate of my husband, the Earl of Grayle. The fleet was full of dead and dying Celestials from a faraway planet, pleading for help. Instead of help, however, my husband and his family had waited for all of the visitors to perish from their singular plague, then cleaned out the craft with amber and saltpeter and captured all nine without bloodshed. Voila! An instant transport monopoly in England, and one of a four-pronged oligopoly across the rather astonished and rapidly expanding world.
“Our scan indicates a further weapon. Place it in the tray, please.”
“I suspect you do not know who I am,” I said.
Another man—of higher rank and sourer expression—joined him. The new arrival bent and whispered something in his subordinate’s ear. From the chastened look on the boy’s face, he had just been roundly informed of his ignorance.
“I beg your pardon, Countess Grayle. Of course the wary knife can pass with you.”
Of course she could, since she could kill them in an instant if they tried to disarm me. I stroked my silk-clad forearm where Havarr lay sheathed under three layers of my skin. In my mind, I felt the knife’s sentience check my intent, then sigh and settle back. Nothing interesting to see or slice here.
Not yet, anyway.
Both men saw me stroke my arm and quickly crossed themselves. I had seen it so often that it usually did not register, but today it stung.
I was an abomination, a danger to all; everyone knew women did not have the strength of mind or emotional control to wield a wary knife. Especially a woman of the bon ton born only for decoration and breeding heirs, neither of which I had managed to supply in my marriage. Indeed, my husband had privately stepped away from me soon after I partnered Havarr. What man would wish to consort with a woman who was no longer the weaker sex? To be fair, Charles did not totally abandon me: he made it clear to the world that I was still under the political protection of the Grayle family name.
All name, no family.
Still, I had Havarr. Her abrupt entry into my life three years ago had been a terrible—and glorious—accident.