INVOLUTION OCEAN
by
Bruce Sterling
Chapter 1
An Unfortunate Occurrence and Its Remedy
We all have some emptiness in our lives, an emptiness that some fill with art, some with God, some with learning. I have always filled the emptiness with drugs.
Because of this I found myself, duffel bag in hand, ready to go on a whaling voyage on that obscure planet, Nullaqua.
Hie Nullaquan dustwhale is the only source of the drug syncophine. At the time of my voyage, knowledge of this fact was becoming more and more widely spread. Because I had learned it, I, John Newhouse, was living with nine others on 488 Piety Street in the Highisle, Nullaqua’s largest city.
The two-story metal building was known simply as the New House to us, its inhabitants. We were a motley group; the only tilings uniting us were our extra-Nullaquan origins and our connoisseur’s delight in Flare, the initiate’s term for syncophine. We were all human beings or close facsimiles thereof. First among us was white-haired old Timon Hadji-Ali. Timon never told lis his age, but he was obviously at that period when the body’s own subconscious wish to die begins to take precedence over the ego’s desire for life. I often heard him speak of his friendship, centuries ago, with Ericald Svobold, the legendary discoverer of syncophine. Now, however, pessimism had overcome old Timon, and for years he had refused any rejuvenation. He wanted only to spend the last of his life depleting his slowly amassed capital and savoring Flare’s fierce brain-kick. In matters of policy concerning bur little group, we usually deferred to him as he still had the most money.
Second was Agathina Brant, a large, muscular woman with a ramrod posture. She was evidently a retired military officer, and she was extremely terse, even sullen. She almost always wore a uniform, clean but old. There was no telling which one of humanity’s numberless armies had issued it She never told us; I suspect that she sewed it herself. Her addiction was extremely strong.
Third and fourth were a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Undine. Her maiden name was Stuart; his, Foster. They also were quite old. One could tell their age from their unnatural grace and the occasional archaisms in their speech. They were handsome people, if you discounted their barrel chests and the rather tasteless jewelry grafted into their bodies. As they never tired of telling us, they had both lived through several marriages and could not stand the idea of the pain involved in breaking up their latest one. They had resolved to commit suicide together, preferably by overdose. Many times I was tempted to advise them to use. a poison other than syncophine, but that, I thought, might be a boorish invasion of their privacy.
The fifth of our company was a poet named Simon. Through cosmetic surgery he had acquired a kind of haggard handsomeness, although his eyes woe of different colors. In an attempt to “return to the roots” as he told us, he had bought a primitive stringed instrument and was trying to teach himself to play It, in order to accompany himself while chanting his own works. We had soundproofed his upstairs room. Syncophine, he said, “stimulated his brain.” There was certainly no denying that.
Simon was accompanied by a mousy woman named Amelia, who had long brown hair parted severely in the middle. Her father was a scholar, and sent her enough money for her own support and that of her quasi-melodious companion. She had lived with us for a month before trying syncophine. Now she was developing a taste for it.
Our seventh was a neuter, Daylight Mulligan. It was a charming conversationalist, and its speech revealed a great breadth of knowledge. It and I might have become close friends were it not for its extreme paranoia regarding anyone possessing organs of reproduction. It itself had, of course, been neatly cloned, and its suspicions had some justification in that it had a definite sexual appeal for members of both sexes. It was often melancholy, perhaps tormented by guilt. The antique Timon told me once that it had been responsible for the double suicide of a married couple, friends of its, who both wanted to commit—or attempt to commit—adultery with it. This may or may not have been true.
Our eighth was an extremely tall, almost cadaverous woman named Quade Altaian. Born on a planet with a gravity half that of Nullaqua, or of Earth for that matter, she approached eight feet. She was always pale, her sunken eyes ringed with delicate blues and purples. She often complained of dizzy spells. She spent a lot of time supine, working on her three-dimensional mosaics.
Ninth and next to last was my own mistress of the moment, Millicent Farquhar. Millicent was short, snub-nosed, red-haired, closer to plump than thin. I had met her on Reverie a year before, just before going to Nullaqua. After a particulary abandoned party, I had awakened to find myself in her bed. We had been introduced, but we had forgotten one another’s names. Our mutual rediscovery had been very pleasant, and we had spent the last year in something like contentment.
Last, me, John Newhouse. Understand that I am not the same person who underwent the adventures I am about to describe. The personality is a changing, fleeting thing, and except for a few memories, now blurring, I have nothing to do with the man who called himself by my name at that time.
But that John Newhouse, then, was the son of a lumber baron on the planet Bunyan and was as well educated as that planet could manage. For political reasons and those of vanity, I claimed to have been born on Earth. Like most sectarian planets, Nullaqua has an exaggerated respect for anything Terran. The lie helped.
I was five feet ten inches tall and had very dark hair, growing rather sparse in the back, although I refused to admit it. I parted it on the left My eyes were also dark, and the left one had a slight grayish spent, almost a cataract where I had once ill-advisedly dropped syncophine optically. I was pale from long amounts of time spent indoors, but I was capable of tanning very deeply. My nose had perhaps too pronounced a hook to be called handsome. I was—let me confess it—somewhat of a dandy, and I was fond of wearing rings, usually five at a time. I owned two dozen. I was thirty-five—forgive me, reader, have I not sworn honesty—I was forty-three standard years old.
I will not name my father. I took the name Newhouse from my abode, as was once the custom on Earth. Before my whaling voyage, I earned my living exporting high-quality syncophine to my numerous friends back on Reverie. While not spectacularly profitable, it was a pleasant way to spend one’s time. My hobby was developing cheaper and more efficient ways of extracting syncophine from the basic oil.
It was a snug, almost smug existence. Then came disaster.
The expansion of the syncophine trade had not gone unnoticed. The bureaucrats of the Confederacy, that loose and steadily weakening association of worlds, issued a decree. Nullaqua heard, and, amazingly, obeyed.
We first heard of the news from our dealer, a Nullaquan named Andaru. Andaru was a retired whaler, and he supplied us with what he called gut oil at an almost nominal fee. There was no other demand for the product; the intestinal oil could not be burned, and Nullaquans refused to eat h, deeming it poisonous. More fools they, we thought.
On the seventeenth day of the tenth month of the year, Andaru knocked at the door and I answered it.
“It’s Andaru,” I said loudly to the rest, who were eating in the kitchen.
“Good. Wonderful. Fantastic,” they all said. Their moods never failed to alter for the better at the prospect of another gallon.
“And there’s someone with him,” I continued more quietly, as a young man with a sharp nose and blond hair like tangled nylon stepped out from behind the Nullaquan and extended his hand. I shook it.