Tonight is different. Tonight is the final night. The audience glitters in jewels, colorful capes, extravagant hairstyles. Only the wealthy are here tonight, the wealthy and their guests. There are four in our own theater party: our host, the Baron; his beautiful daughter, Svanneshal; a wonderfully eccentric old woman dressed all in white who calls herself the Grand Duchess de Vie; and me. I work at the university in records and I tutor Svanneshal Himmlich in history.
The Grand Duchess stands beside me now as we watch Juliet carried in to the tombs. "Isn’t she lovely?" the Duchess says. "And very sweet, I hear. Garriss wrote her program. He’s a friend of the Baron’s."
"An absolute genius." The Baron leans towards us, speaking softly. There is an iciness to Juliet, a sheen her false death has cast over her. She is like something carved from marble. Yet even from here I can see the slightest rise and fall of her breasts. How could anyone believe she was really dead? But Romeo will. He always does.
It will be a long time before Romeo arrives and the Baron suggests we walk over to the Capulets’ to watch Juliet’s nurse weeping and carrying on. He offers his arm to the Duchess though I can see his security cyber dislikes this.
It is one of the Baron’s own models, identical in principle to the simulants on stage—human body, software brain. Before the Baron’s work the cybers were slow to respond and notoriously easy to outwit. The Baron made his fortune streamlining the communications link-up and introducing an element of deliberate irrationality into the program. There are those who argue this was an ill-considered, even dangerous addition. But the Baron has never lacked for customers. People would rather take a chance on a cyber than on a human and the less we need to depend on the poor, the safer we become.
The Duchess is looking at the cyber’s uniform, the sober blues of the House of Himmlich. "Watch this," she says to me, smiling. She reaches into her bodice. I can see how the cyber is alert to the movement, how it relaxes when her hand reappears with a handkerchief. She reverses the action; we watch the cyber tense again, relaxing when the hand reemerges.
The Baron shakes his head, but his eyes are amused. "Darling," he says, "you must not play with it."
"Then I shall walk with Hannah instead." The Duchess slips her hand around my arm. Her right hand is bare and feels warm pressed into my side. Her left hand is covered by a long white glove; its silky fingers rest lightly on the outside of my arm.
The Baron precedes us, walking with Svanneshal, the cyber close behind them. The Duchess leans against me and takes such small steps we cannot keep up. She looks at the Baron’s back. "You’ve heard him called a ‘self-made man’?" she asks me. "Did it ever occur to you that people might mean it literally?"
She startles me. My eyes go at once to the Baron, recognizing suddenly his undeniable perfection—his dark, smooth skin, his even teeth, the soft timbre of his voice. But the Duchess is teasing me. I see this when I look back at her.
"I like him very much," I answer. "I imagine him to be exactly like the ancient aristocracy at their best—educated, generous, courteous…"
"I wouldn’t know about that. I have never studied history; I have only lived it. How old would you guess I am?"
It is a question I hate. One never knows what the most polite answer would be. The Duchess’ hair, twisted about her head and held into place with ivory combs, is as black as Svanneshal’s, but this can be achieved with dyes. Her face, while not entirely smooth, is not overly wrinkled. Again I suspect cosmetic enhancements. Her steps are undeniably feeble. "You look quite young," I say. "I couldn’t guess."
"Then look at this." The Duchess stops walking and removes the glove from her left hand. She holds her palm flat before me so that I see the series of ciphers burnt into her skin. IPS3552. It is the brand of a labor duplicate. I look up at her face in astonishment and this amuses her. "You’ve never seen anything like that before, have you, historian? But you’ve heard perhaps how, in the last revolution, some of the aristocracy branded themselves and hid in the factories? That’s how old I am."
In fact, I have heard the story, a two-hundred-year-old story, but the version I know ends without survivors. Most of those who tried to pass were detected immediately; a human cannot affect the dead stare of the duplicates for very long. Those few who went in to the factories gave themselves up eventually, preferring, after all, to face the mob rather than endure the filth, the monotony, and the endless labor, "I would be most interested in interviewing you," I say. "Your adventures should be part of the record." If true, but of course that is something I do not say.
"Yes." The Duchess preens herself, readjusting an ivory comb, replacing her glove. We notice the Baron, still some distance away, returning to us. He is alone and I imagine he has left the cyber with Svanneshal. The Duchess sweeps her bare hand in the direction of the hurrying figure. "I am a true member of the aristocracy," she tells me. "Perhaps the only surviving member. I am not just some wealthy man who chooses to call himself Baron."
This I discredit immediately as vanity. Revolution after revolution—no one can verify a blood claim. Nor can I see why anyone would want to. I am amazed at the willingness of people to make targets of themselves, as if every time were the last time and now the poor are permanently contained.
"I must apologize." The Baron arrives, breathless. "I had no idea you had fallen so far behind."
"Why should you apologize," the Duchess chides him, "if your guest is too old for such entertainments and too proud to use a chair as she should?" She shifts herself from my arm to his. "Verona is so lovely," she says. "Isn’t it?"
We proceed slowly down the street. I am still thinking of the Duchess’ hand. When we rejoin Svanneshal it is as though I have come out of a trance. She is so beautiful tonight I would rather not be near her. The closer I stand, the less I can look. Her eyes are very large inside the dark hood of her gown which covers her hair and shoulders in a fine net of tiny jewels. In the darkened amphitheater the audience shines like a sky full of stars, but Svanneshal is an entire constellation—Svanneshal, the Swan’s throat, and next to her, her father, the Dragon. I look around the amphitheater. Everyone is beautiful tonight.
Juliet’s nurse is seated in a chair, rocking slowly back and forth in her agony. She is identical to the nurse I saw before and I tell the Baron so.
"Oh, I’m sure she is the one you saw before. I saw her once as Amanda in The Glass Menagerie. You didn’t imagine they started from scratch every time, did you? My dear Hannah, anyone who can be recycled after the run certainly will be. The simulations are expensive enough as it is." The Baron smiles at me, the smile of the older, the wiser, to the young and naive. "What’s amazing is the variation you get each time, even with identical parts. Of course, that’s where the drama comes in."
Before, when I saw Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence was killed on the second night, falling down a flight of stairs. That’s mainly why I went. I was excited by the possibilities opened by the absence of the Friar. Yet the plot was surprisingly unchanged.
It makes me think of Hwang-li and I say to the Baron, "Did you know it was a historian who created the simulations?"
"I don’t have your knowledge of history," he answers. "Svanneshal tells me you are quite gifted. And you have a specialty… forgive me. I know Svanneshal has told me."
"Mass movements. They don’t lend themselves to simulation." The Duchess has not heard of Hwang-li either, but then only a historian would have. It was so many revolutions ago. I could argue that the historians are the true revolutionary heroes, retaining these threads of our past, bringing them through the upheaval. Many historians have died to protect the record. And their names are lost to us forever. I am glad for a chance to talk about Hwang-li.