Their Thousandth Season - Edward Bryant, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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//-->/* /*]]*/Their Thousandth SeasonEdward BryantEdward Bryant’s stories of the far-future city called Cinnebar have brightened many sciencefiction publications of late. Here is one of his best—a story of an immortal jet-set, of beautifulpeople and fading lives, of love and pain and the attempt to forget. But we never forget ourselves,do we?An A\NN/A Preservation Edition.NotesThe city. Forever the city. Within it rots the tissue of dreams.Tourmaline Hayes—“the bright and sensual, sometimes cynical Tourmaline Hayes” according toTheGuide to the Stars—musesalong the thin border between sleep and wakefulness. By choice she liesalone.She allows the characters to press their noses against her interface with fantasy. The most affecting face isthat of Francie, enduring ingenue.Tourmaline and Francie face each other across a gray, damp beach. Francie approaches with slow,deliberate steps. Tourmaline opens her arms in welcome.She looks at Francie’s face. Through the openings where Francie’s eyes should be, she can see the nightsky. Tourmaline stares, strains, searches the constellations forSpeculum,the mirror.It’s a party like all other parties, and by any other name aWalpurgisnacht.Yet dull. So much sin, toooften, breeds ennui. Everybody knows that. Everyone…“… who is anybody,” says Francie, completing an unconscious syllogism. She smiles up at Sternig thecritic of gay drama. She lightly sucks in her cheeks, hoping to emphasize the high cheekbones everyonesays will be beautiful later in life when the skin of her face begins to tauten. It’s a harmless deceit.The gesture doesn’t benefit Sternig. Two affinity groups beyond them lounges Francie’s prospectivelover. Kandelman bestows largess upon three literary sycophants, who giggle shrilly. He leans backagainst a walnut bookcase, thumbs hooked in his belt, hips cantilevered forward. Kandelman’s neglectedhis codpiece. It looks as though he’s storing tennis balls behind the buttoned fly.“Peanuts,” says Sternig.Francie’s chin jerks up. “What?”“Or pretzels. Whatever. You know, troll food.” Sternig shrugs.“I thought you said…”“Party food progressively deteriorates,” he says. “The second law of gastrodynamics.”Francie’s little catamount tongue strokes nervously between lips.“I need a drink,” says Sternig. Apparently disinterested, “You want?”“No.” She smiles mechanically. “You’ll excuse me? I have to use my spray.”He watches the back of her head blur in the aphrodisiac haze. Her diminishing skull takes all too long tovanish. Sternig brushes long brown hair back from his eyes. He mumbles his self-pity and yearns forbeer, dark and draft.The bathroom is decorated in a style the catalogue calls modern erotic. Surfaces gleam cold, opaque,and hard. Francie’s face explodes back at her from prismed mirrors. In her peripheral vision thewhite-on-white tiles fade to arctic vagueness.She takes the tube from her purse and hikes her skirt. The hiss echoes softly. Francie relaxes and enjoysa brief labial coolness. Scented excitement, no longer bland, she adjusts her panties. No hunter evermore carefully lubricated the action of her weapon.Francie examines her reflection in the faceted medicine chest. Why is the flesh around her eyes so puffy?Her dark eyes had once snapped—a former lover told her that one passionate afternoon in a motel roomin Tondelaya Beach. Francie’s heart-shaped face creases in a frown. Her eyes have the puckered sheenof day-old ripe olives.The door bangs open and shut; a ghost has passed.“Got a spare douche?” says the newcomer.“Need what I’ve got, Marlene.”Marlene removes a hairbrush from her purse. “Do you ever. Give me a shot.”“For Tourmaline?” She lazily proffers the jeweled tube. “Love to.”Marlene giggles and bares feral teeth. “Jealous, Francie? I wasn’t.”Francie snaps shut the purse, barely missing Marlene’s fingertips. “Shut up!”“You’re very sensitive, darling. Aretheystill sensitive?”Francie says again, “Shut up.”The brush hisses through Marlene’s light lank hair. The strokes are cadenced with her words. “I don’tcare, honey. Just because most guys have milk fetishes… I hope it’s worth it.”“It will be.”“Kandelman’s big on nipples.” Marlene is laughing. She drops the hairbrush and it clatters across the tilecounter. “Extremely big.”“Too big for you?”“Hardly,” says Marlene. “He’s such a complete bastard.”Francie smiles. “I can take it.” She stands up.“Want to hear a riddle?” says Marlene maliciously. “What’s eight inches long and glows in the dark?”“Glows?”“Sorry,” says Marlene. “I meant grows.”Francie looks back from the doorway. “I love it.”Sternig is talking with Tourmaline Hayes, the sex star. Half a head taller, she slouches against the piano tomake him feel at ease. Sternig smiles, aware of her charity.“I caught all your last performances.”“Not exactly your sort of thing, I’d think.”“Don’t confuse the work with the man,” says Sternig.Tourmaline’s eyes are matched to her name. Their corners crinkle slightly as she smiles. Sternig smiles inreturn, relaxing. “I know, Sternig. You love everyone, but mainly women. Do you love me?”Smiling. “Of course.”Laughing. “Liar. You love one person. Only one.”He stiffens. “Tourmaline…”“Apart from yourself, of course.”“Tourmaline, don’t…”“It’s not as though I hate her,” says Tourmaline.“Let’s talk about you,” says Sternig.“You never learn, do you?”“I’m only trying…”“… to divert the conversation,” finishes Tourmaline. “Do you know how many times we’ve gone throughthis?”“Christ,” says Sternig. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it.”Tourmaline touches his cheek, silk to sandpaper. “The one’s easy enough.”He lightly kisses her fingertips. “I’m beginning to forget the other.”“Doubly a liar.” She snatches away her hand. “Sternig, Sternig, you stupid ass.”“I need another drink,” Sternig says quickly. “Do you?”“I’m not finished,” she says, sloshing the glass. “And I’m not done with you either.”“Why me?” he asks.“You’re my good deed for the millennium.” She tosses back her long green hair. “I can’t save you fromyourself, but maybe I can keep…” The rest is blotted by laughter. The life of the party has arrived.“So that’s exactly what I said. The bastard couldn’t believe it.” Secondary chuckles run through the partypeople. It’s Jack Burton, star of the popular series “Jack Burton— Immortal.” His show has just beenrenewed for its one-thousandth season and this party is the celebration.Tourmaline smiles and speaks softly, as though reporting a sporting event, “Jack Burton grins at hisfriends, pumps hands, kisses lips, but there’s a forced quality to the gaiety. He moves across the roomwell attended, but the congratulations verge on the perfunctory. His eyes—and how I envy that piercingblue—sparkle with intelligence, but I see the vagueness flicker now and again. Jack Burton is like a ripered tomato and inside him are worms.”“What?” says Sternig.“Worms. They’ve begun eating through to his eyes.”Sternig grimaces. “You’re morbid.”“Watch his eyes, Sternig. You’ll see. Suddenly nothing there but blank holes.”“That drink,” says Sternig. “I’m going to get it. Stay here. I’ll bring two.”When he returns, Tourmaline Hayes still leans with her head against the piano. She accepts her new drinksilently.Sternig sips thoughtfully. “After the party…”She looks at him. He cannot decipher her expression.“After the party, I want you to go home with me.”Tourmaline smiles, more to herself than to Sternig. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”Sternig would like to ask why not, but…“Maybe another time,” she says. “We’re not ready for that. I’m going home with Marlene.”She overrides him. “And your Francie will go home with Kandelman. And Jack Burton will go home withhis agent. Sternig, who will take you home? Who?”Instantly alone and lonely, Sternig would like to cry. But he can’t. He’s a big boy now. Has been forlonger than he cares to remember. Longer than he can remember.“Who?” Tourmaline repeats.Sternig has to dream it, because the memory is too ancient and scoured to recall in his consciousness:They determined to live happily ever after. Through a friend, Francie obtained the lease on abeach cottage on an isolated stretch of the coast. Sternig moved in his things from the crampedcity apartment. The first few evenings they spent on the open porch watching the ocean, listening,feeling the last tailings of spray. They observed the rhythm of the waves sucking at the beach sandin millimeter portions. The house was set a hundred meters back from the water. They wouldn'thave to worry for a long time.Days, they swam in the early-morning sunshine before breakfast. Mornings were for work.Several times each week, Sternig flew the windhover into the city to see to the disposition of hiscolumn. Francie spent her mornings writing poetry and scanning tapes of her latest obsession,political history. She wrote essays which Sternig told her would be well received, had she everbothered to submit them somewhere.The air was heavy and sweet in the afternoon. The previous tenant had cultivated an extensiveflower garden in back of the cottage. Lush beds sprawled among grassy blocks in a patchworkeffect. Nothing exotic: scarlet tiger lilies, purple iris, brilliant yellow daisies. Flowers that bloomedrepeatedly with a minimum of care.Francie and Sternig made love in the grass. They lay quietly and smelled their own scent minglewith the heavy floral aroma.“I want this to go on forever,” said Francie. She looked up at her lover. “Can’t it?”“Yes,” said Sternig, not then understanding the deceit of time.Like all Sternig’s dreams, it fades with awakening, leaving no specific words or images; only feelings.Kandelman admires her breasts. He would touch them already, but etiquette demands a delay. Still, fiftypercent of his eye contact is below her collar bone. Under his gaze, erectile tissue stiffens and her nipplespoke against soft fabric. She loves it.“What are you writing now?” Francie asks.“I’m well into the new novel,” says Kandelman. “It’s a psychosexual thing.”“That’s very interesting.” Francie angles her chin, knowing her cheekbones appear to advantage.“What’s it about?”“Brothers and sisters. That’s about all I can tell you at this point. The book’s writing itself. I’ve got verylittle to do with the process, aside from feeding in the paper.”“Have you picked a title?”“Brothersand Sisters,I think.”“Oh.” Francie is losing interest in the novel. Unless, of course, Kandelman should volunteer a precis of atitillating passage.“It’s not really erotica,” he says, “though it might sound like it from the title.”“Oh,” she says vaguely. “I thought it might be, from the title.”“It may turn out that way,” he hastens to say. “But for now it’s a very serious book.”She says seriously, “Eroticacanbe serious.”He stares at her chest. Francie’s breasts have assumed an orogenic significance in his mind. They arelarge, yet possess no hint of sag. They project without visible support. Kandelman wonders silently thathe has not noticed them before this party.“I think it can,” Francie continues.“What?” Kandelman breaks free of his preoccupation. “Oh yes. Of course it can.”“I’d like to see you write a really erotic book.”“Well,” says Kandelman.“I’d like to help you with it.”
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