Although Lewis Shiner entered the fiction world with the burgeoning cyberpunk movement of the early 1980s, he prefers not to be bound by the tropes of any one literary genre or movement, instead writing fiction that transcends these limitations. When he does write science fiction or fantasy, as in the novels Frontera, Deserted Cities of the Heart, and Glimpses, he combines realistic extrapolations of the future with sparse prose that acknowledges elements of mystery and literary fiction as well. He is also an accomplished short story writer, with more than thirty-five stories published in all fiction areas, from children’s books to fantasy to horror. He has also written several nonfiction articles, including an appreciation of James P. Blaylock and articles for The New York Review of Science Fiction, and edited the anthology When the Music’s Over.
FROM THE HILL north of the city, Rice saw eighteenth-century Salzburg spread out below him like a half-eaten lunch.
Huge cracking towers and swollen, bulbous storage tanks dwarfed the ruins of the St. Rupert Cathedral. Thick white smoke billowed from the refinery’s stacks. Rice could taste the familiar petrochemical tang from where he sat, under the leaves of a wilting oak.
The sheer spectacle of it delighted him. You didn’t sign up for a time-travel project, he thought, unless you had a taste for incongruity. Like the phallic pumping station lurking in the central square of the convent, or the ruler-straight elevated pipelines ripping through Salzburg’s maze of cobbled streets. A bit tough on the city, maybe, but that was hardly Rice’s fault. The temporal beam had focused randomly in the bedrock below Salzburg, forming an expandable bubble connecting this world to Rice’s own time.
This was the first time he’d seen the complex from outside its high chain-link fences. For two years, he’d been up to his neck getting the refinery operational. He’d directed teams all over the planet, as they caulked up Nantucket whalers to serve as tankers, or trained local pipefitters to lay down line as far away as the Sinai and the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, finally, he was outside. Sutherland, the company’s political liaison, had warned him against going into the city. But Rice had no patience with her attitude. The smallest thing seemed to set Sutherland off. She lost sleep over the most trivial local complaints. She spent hours haranguing the “gate people,” the locals who waited day and night outside the square-mile complex, begging for radios, nylons, a jab of penicillin.
To hell with her, Rice thought. The plant was up and breaking design records, and Rice was due for a little R and R. The way he saw it, anyone who couldn’t find some action in the Year of Our Lord 1775 had to be dead between the ears. He stood up, dusting windblown soot from his hands with a cambric handkerchief.
A moped sputtered up the hill toward him, wobbling crazily. The rider couldn’t seem to keep his high-heeled, buckled pumps on the pedals while carrying a huge portable stereo in the crook of his right arm. The moped lurched to a stop at a respectful distance, and Rice recognized the music from the tape player: Symphony No. 40 in G Minor.
The boy turned the volume down as Rice walked toward him. “Good evening, Mr. Plant Manager, sir. I am not interrupting?”
“No, that’s okay.” Rice glanced at the bristling hedgehog cut that had replaced the boy’s outmoded wig. He’d seen the kid around the gates; he was one of the regulars. But the music had made something else fall into place. “You’re Mozart, aren’t you?”
“Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, your servant.”
“I’ll be goddamned. Do you know what that tape is?”
“It has my name on it.”
“Yeah. You wrote it. Or would have, I guess I should say. About fifteen years from now.”
Mozart nodded. “It is so beautiful. I have not the English to say how it is to hear it.”
By this time most of the other gate people would have been well into some kind of pitch. Rice was impressed by the boy’s tact, not to mention his command of English. The standard native vocabulary didn’t go much beyond radio, drugs, and fuck. “Are you headed back toward town?” Rice asked.
“Yes, Mr. Plant Manager, sir.”
Something about the kid appealed to Rice. The enthusiasm, the gleam in the eyes. And, of course, he did happen to be one of the greatest composers of all time.
“Forget the titles,” Rice said. “Where does a guy go for some fun around here?”
AT FIRST Sutherland hadn’t wanted Rice at the meeting with Jefferson. But Rice knew a little temporal physics, and Jefferson had been pestering the American personnel with questions about time holes and parallel worlds.
Rice, for his part, was thrilled at the chance to meet Thomas Jefferson, the first President of the United States. He’d never liked George Washington, was glad the man’s Masonic connections had made him refuse to join the company’s “godless” American government.
Rice squirmed in his Dacron double knits as he and Sutherland waited in the newly air-conditioned boardroom of the Hohensalzburg Castle. “I forgot how greasy these suits feel,” he said.
“At least,” Sutherland said, “you didn’t wear that goddamned hat today.” The VTOL jet from America was late, and she kept looking at her watch.
“My tricorne?” Rice said. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s a Masonista hat, for Christ’s sake. It’s a symbol of anti-modern reaction.” The Freemason Liberation Front was another of Sutherland’s nightmares, a local politico-religious group that had made a few pathetic attacks on the pipeline.
“Oh, loosen up, will you, Sutherland? Some groupie of Mozart’s gave me the hat. Theresa Maria Angela something-or-other, some broken-down aristocrat. They all hang out together in this music dive downtown. I just liked the way it looked.”
“Mozart? You’ve been fraternizing with him? Don’t you think we should just let him be? After everything we’ve done to him?”
“Bullshit,” Rice said. “I’m entitled. I spent two years on start-up while you were playing touch football with Robespierre and Thomas Paine. I make a few night spots with Wolfgang and you’re all over me. What about Parker? I don’t hear you bitching about him playing rock and roll on his late show every night. You can hear it blasting out of every cheap transistor in town.”
“He’s propaganda officer. Believe me, if I could stop him I would, but Parker’s a special case. He’s got connections all over the place back in Realtime.” She rubbed her cheek. “Let’s drop it, okay? Just try to be polite to President Jefferson. He’s had a hard time of it lately.”
Sutherland’s secretary, a former Hapsburg lady-in-waiting, stepped in to announce the plane’s arrival. Jefferson pushed angrily past her. He was tall for a local, with a mane of blazing red hair and the shiftiest eyes Rice had ever seen. “Sit down, Mr. President.” Sutherland waved at the far side of the table. “Would you like some coffee or tea?”