Out on Blue Six Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE WORK OF IAN McDONALD

  “[McDonald is] a master for a new generation of sf.” —Analog

  King of Morning, Queen of Day

  Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award

  “Filled with wondrous language, marvelous events.” —Science Fiction Chronicle

  “A brilliant book.” —Charles de Lint

  Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone

  “Cyberpunk’s first lyrical poem, mixing Kabbalah, manga, pop-culture trivia and Zen with enough style and dexterity to actually pull it off … [McDonald] does more in a page than most writers do in a chapter.” —Neal Stephenson

  The Broken Land

  “At once disturbing and beautiful; superbly realized.” —The Times (London)

  “Ian McDonald takes on all the atrocity and strife of the 20th Century, radically displaces it, and dares to envision a means of change. It’s a brilliant achievement.” —Locus

  “McDonald is a superior writer.” —Booklist

  Sacrifice of Fools

  “A spell-binding tale of intrigue and empathy.” —SF Site

  “A powerful and effective story.” —Jo Walton

  Out on Blue Six

  Ian McDonald

  Contents

  Introduction

  Voices On …

  Chapter 1

  Nameless

  Communing With the Rain

  Chapter 2

  Kilimanjaro West

  Chapter 3

  Apostles I

  New Mysteries

  Chapter 4

  Apostles II

  Chapter 5

  Cupid, Draw Back Your Bow …

  Byrne and West

  Chapter 6

  Byrne

  Chapter 7

  In the Editing Suite

  Kilimanjaro West

  Chapter 8

  West/Celestial/Byrne

  Chapter 9

  Apostles III

  A Love Policeman’s Lot …

  Chapter 10

  God Prefers Gothic …

  Chapter 11

  Celestial

  Out on Blue Six …

  Voices Off …

  Thanks

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Welcome, lucky reader, to a glad moment in literary history: the republication of Ian McDonald’s magnificent 1989 novel Out on Blue Six, a book I’ve read dozens of times, and by which I am still awed and delighted.

  I won’t try and summarize the plot. There’s no point. Picture a sixteen-car pileup in Dr. Seuss country—where the colliding zithermobiles are piloted by William Gibson’s console cowboys and Mad magazine caricatures—have P. K. Dick and Orwell do alternating rewrites on the text, and you’ll be getting close to the kind of novel that this is.

  Anyone can make soup. You just make some stock, bung in an ingredient or two, and simmer. Stew, on the other hand, is tricky. Combining a few ingredients is simple. Combining a hundred ingredients is hard. Most often, the stew ends up tasting of nothing, or of whatever the most overpowering flavor in the pot happens to be. But when you get an amazing stew, one of those traditional dishes from Louisiana or the French Riviera or certain parts of Mexico, the result is indescribably wonderful. Each of those flavors is somehow still perceptible in the mix, adding something to it, making an infinitely varied texture that is different every time you dip your spoon. Stews are things you remember for the rest of your life.

  This is a masterful stew of a novel. McDonald is one of those pop-culture mavens who manages to combine the banal and the familiar with the profound and the solemn, without ever being merely ironic. So when he narrates a football match, or adapts the Rosary prayer, or plays around with Orwell and Terry Gilliam, he’s doing more than simply juxtaposing. He’s teasing out the wonder that lives beneath each of them. He gathers up all the emotions that we’ve poured into our symbols and rituals and uses them to power a story that is as moving as it is flashily clever.

  This is an important book. Not important in the sense of being difficult and dry and esoteric. Out on Blue Six is none of those things. It is fun, it is fast, it is convulsively funny, and it is packed with enough action for six books.

  But it is important nevertheless. It’s important because it does to all the SF that came before it what a Coltrane solo did to the musical conversation that had taken place among all his peers before he picked up his horn. This is a book that shows the unexpected connections between the high and the low, the serious and the frivolous, the sacred and the profane. It’s a novel that marks the end of the Cold War and the start of a too-short techno-optimistic period, and it is prescient in its shrewd guesses about where all that optimism is likely to end.

  Vast hordes of schoolkids and university undergrads are required to read and contrast Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, and that’s good as far as it goes. But imagine what a weird and fabulous world it would be if they had to have their minds blown by Out on Blue Six before they were allowed to write their term papers.

  —Cory Doctorow, London, November 2012

  Voices On …

  “GOOD MORNING! GOOD MORNING! Good morning! This is Phantomas your famulus waking you to another wonderful morning with a selection of your favorite music, news, gossip, information, and appointments for your day from your personal diary program! And the weather this morning is: much the same as ever, I’m afraid; changeable, maximum temperature a steamy twenty-four, probability of rain before noon ninety-four percent, winds, strong, variable with gusts of up to fifty-five kilometers per hour; yes, just another monsoon day out there in the Big City …”

  SAATCHI & AUGUSTINO: CUSTOM LIFESTYLE CONSULTANTS. YOUR DAYS THE WAY YOU WANT THEM. INDIVIDUALLY TAILORED ROMPAKS FOR YOUR FAMULUS/LARES-PENATES SYSTEM. MINIPAIN APPROVED, ABSOLUTE CONFIDENTIALITY ASSURED. CUSTOM-CLIENT PSYCHOFILING ASSURES MINIMUM 90% COMPATIBILITY. ITS YOUR LIFE, YOU LIVE IT, WITH SAATCHI & AUGUSTINO!

  Dear sir,

  the Bureau of Happiness regrets to inform you that your application for Aptitudinal and Vocational Training as a toymaker Class 16/B has not been successful.

  Whilst your Manual Dexterity, Spatial Orientation, and Creative Interpretation factors were all well within the required parameters, Motivational Analysis, Social and Structural Apperception, and Vocational-Altruistic Cross-Correlations indicate that this career would not afford you the maximum of personal happiness and satisfaction which we, as organs of the Compassionate Society, are obliged to provide for you. Therefore, the Bureau has forwarded your application and psychofile results to Career Training and Orientation in Nonfunctional Natural-Wood Furniture Construction. Should you have any queries or questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, Hester Birkenshaw, at the following tellix code …

  Hello? Hello? Pantycar Twenty-seven? Report from Data Retrieval: a disturbance in Simbimatu Covered Market: Privacy infringement. PainCrime probability currently sixteen percent—no immediate increase forecast. Suggest you investigate intervention level three. And bring me back a bag of guavas, will you? Damn famulus’s on the fritz again, didn’t get me up in time for breakfast and I’m ravenous.

  Mulu the Rainforest:

  Pray for us.

  Mudmother, Soulsister:

  Pray for us.

  Green One, Patroness of Planted Things:

  Preserve us.

  From the sweeping monsoon rains, from the terror of environmental collapse, from radiation, from the stalking horror of mutated disease, from cat, rat, and raccoon:

  Preserve us. Hear our prayer.

  Hear the prayer of this thy humble servant, laborer in the fields beneath the earth, harvester of the crops of thy bounty:

  Hear our prayer.

  “So I said, like, whazz
new, I mean, like new new, not old new, yuh know, like last-week new, so she said, this yulp in the shop, ‘This is new,’ like, she said, ‘Cheez, like everyone, but everyone’s going to be wearing one this week,’ like, whazz a yulp know ’bout fashion? anyway, I thought, I thought, well, maybeez sheez right, so, I got one, so I did, like, whadjou think? Isn’t it wheeeee! like. Isn’t it the most? Meanasay, you not got fashion, you not got nothing!”

  Chiga-Chiga Sputnik-kid, Captain Elvis in neon skin-hugger and power-wheels, rides the high wires in the wee wee dawn hours when the cablecars sleep in their barns, when four A.M. TAOS gurls call the Scorpios from the high and the low places; silver-maned, forgotten samurai in a world with honor without swords; out on blue six through the vastnesses of Great Yu.

  See! Chiga-Chiga Sputnik-kid run the wires! Power-wheels squeal-shreel on steel ten, twenty, fifty, hundred stories above flat-life ground-zero. See! the speed’o’light flickers of information zigzagging along the circuit webbing of Chiga-Chiga’s chromium ’hugger; pray pray pray to San BuriSan Celestial of silicon and fiberoptics and bioprocessors and young turks up on the wires that the cizzen on the gyro-stabilizer production line wasn’t Monday-or-Fridaying when they built Captain Elvis’s set of power-wheels. Danger on the cables of Yu: if the Love Police ever catch Chiga-Chiga, he will be seeing the remainder of his yearlong walkabout from the inside of a Social Responsibility Counseling Center learning that words like “danger” and “thrill” cannot be allowed to have any meaning in the age of the Compassionate Society. But Chiga-Chiga Sputnik-kid is too fast, too young, too shiny for that, isn’t he?

  Citizen Tambuco? Citizen Tambuco? Selma Whiteside here, Ministry of Pain, Childwatch Department.

  Yes, I know you have a constitutional right to children, that is not the issue here. The issue here is April’s constitutional rights. Can you hear me, Citizen? Mizz Tambuco? She has as much right to a happy, fulfilled life as you do, Mizz Tambuco; how would you like it if you were taken out of your caste and forced into one quite wrong for you? Of course you wouldn’t be happy.

  Citizen Tambuco, the tests are infallible. Can you not accept that your April is just not suited psychologically, emotionally, physically, to be an athleto?

  No, I don’t have to explain the Department’s decisions to you, Mizz Tambuco.

  It has to do with sexually dimorphic structures in the brain. In April’s brain. Mizz Tambuco, please stop crying, please try to listen. April will be much happier as a george, the trans-sexing process is safe, painless, and utterly reliable.

  Mizz Tambuco, the Compassionate Society does not use words like “perversion” anymore. It is as normal for her to be a george as it is for you to be an athleto. The Ministry of Pain does not judge, who are you to say what is normal and what is not? To some other castes, you might not appear to be normal, Mizz Tambuco. Mizz Tambuco, the Ministry of Pain has the constitutionally enshrined duty to provide each citizen with the greatest possible personal happiness. Can you deny your daughter the only happiness she may ever know?

  Her fosterers are good and loving people. Yes, of course they will look after April. Yes, they will love her. I’m sorry, but no, you will not be allowed to visit. Or even call on the public dataweb. I know it sounds hard, Mizz Tambuco, but it is in April’s best interests. At this early and vital developmental stage we cannot allow April to be in any way confused as to her social identity. Now, are you going to send April out to me? Please …

  Mizz Tambuco, I’m waiting. Mizz Tambuco, please open the door. Citizen Tambuco, think. Not only are you obstructing a representative of the Ministry of Pain in their appointed duty, but by denying April her right to personal happiness, you are committing a PainCrime. …

  Chapter 1

  THE FIRST LIGHTNING OF the southwest monsoon flared over the dark canyonscapes of Yu. Their flanks streaked with rain and glittering with lights, the arcologies and co-habs and manufactories shouldered close to each other like nervous thugs; the perpetual clouds drew together, glowering darkly about their shoulders. From the fifty-third-level editorial penthouse on the upper slopes of the Armitage-Weir publishing mastaba, Courtney Hall (profession: cartoonist; caste: yulp; sex: female; age: approximately; height: approximately; weight: approximately) watched the lightning flicker down to earth somewhere out among the black steel chimneys of Charlemont, counting one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, all the way up to twelve hippopotamus before the windowpanes of Marcus Forde’s glass conservatory-office rattled to distant thunder. Fifteen kilometers, give or take; come, great monsoon, and at least put an end to this head-pounding mugginess. Outside the darkness deepened further, as if in some grand wicked conspiracy with itself; the summits of all the towers along Heavenly Harmony Boulevard were suffocated in cloud. Lights came on automatically in the arbor, window louvers closed in anticipation of cold wind. Courtney Hall’s editor maintained his jungle of an office with almost religious zeal.

  “He’s in conference.” Tixxi Teshvalenku, his personal assistant, had informed her in between painting golden stripes down the center of each five-centimeter-long nail. “Say, Courtney, what do you think of my noo dress, neat, neh?” A black silk frill, all lace and roses, that went right up at the sides and over each shoulder … “Isn’t it just wheeeee, neh? Like I only got it this lunchtime from my designer, she says it’s the latest fashion, so I had to wear it before everyone else gets one.”

  “I’ll show myself in if you don’t mind, Tixxi,” Courtney Hall had said. She knew better than to be drawn into talking fashion with a zillie.

  That had been twenty minutes ago. In the intervening time, Courtney Hall had, despite a long-term allergy, made the acquaintance of each of the four and twenty cushioncats with which Marcus Forde adorned his private jungle. From seal-point Siamese to collapsar black, he had built them all from kits, as he had indeed built his entire office, from the panelwoods and flowering vines that formed the walls through the livewood floform desk unit to the carpetgrass—his personal tour de force, it being green, soft as moss, and four centimeters deep. Marcus Forde’s sexual partners (of which he had many, being a member of a caste given over almost entirely to the exploration of sexual pleasure) were regularly invited up to his penthouse rather than his apt in an all-winger co-hab over in Ranves. Given his twin proclivities, Courtney Hall did not doubt that biotoys of a more sinister and intimate nature lurked pulsing and tumescent among the blossoms. She wiped sour sweat from her brow onto the sleeve of her best business three-piece. Her designer had assured her she looked every millimeter the professional yulp (but to be a yulp was to be a professional, a caste of professionals), but she was not convinced.

  “You know, Benji, I am definitely experiencing severe distress.”

  “If you want, I can have a mild tranquilizer dispensed from the office Lares and Penates system,” replied the rather stifled voice of her famulus. She considered the offer.

  “No. Thanks, Benji.” But she did take the cuddly toy-dog puppet out of her workbag and slipped it onto her drawing hand. She flexed her fingers and the famulus came to life: Benji Dog, her famulus, her watch, her ward, her jiminy-cricket conscience since she had joined Armitage-Weir five years ago to produce Wee Wendy Waif, Nobody’s Child, the vicariously adoptive daughter of the almost third of a billion readers of Armitage-Weir’s daily newssheet.

  “Oh, what is keeping him.”

  “You are keeping him, CeeHaitch.” Sometimes she wished she hadn’t been given a famulus with a voice like an idiot on a children’s cartoon show. Sometimes she wished she hadn’t been given a famulus that looked like a flock glove puppet. But the Ministry of Pain, in its omniscience …

  “And I also have to inform you, CeeHaitch, that I am still not happy about your decision to press ahead independently with these ideas for revamping Wee Wendy Waif, Nobody’s Child; you should have gone through the proper channels, the Department of Arts and Crafts, the Bureau of Media Affairs, the Office of Socially Responsible Literature … they are there to h
elp you, you know.”

  “One more Socially Responsible cheep out of you, doggy, and it’s back in the workbag for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “And I feel I have to remind you,” the famulus continued in its high-pitched squeaking, “that it is technically a Category Two SoulCrime to remove or conceal a Ministry of Pain–assigned famulus from your immediate person.”

  Lightning flared again as, muttering and mouthing, Benji Dog was stuffed back into Courtney Hall’s bag. For an instant the stupendous hulks of the arcologies were backlit brilliant, stark white. The horizon crawled with fire. One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three hippopotamus, four hippopotamus … thunder bawled. Four and twenty cushioncats howled.

  The door opened. In rushed Marcus Forde, Courtney Hall’s editor, slipping out of the paper modesty robe he wore for conferences into the casual nudity he maintained for the office.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Did you tell them about me? Did you put my plans on the table, did you show the board my sketches, the new plotlines and characters, did you show them my storyboards, what did they think of my new idea?”

  “I showed them.”

  Her editor sat down behind his desk; the floform seat molded wood to flesh.

  “And?”

  “Ah.”

  She was not certain whether it was the room’s heartbeat she was hearing, or her own.

  “Would you like to sit down?”

  Her voice sounded as if coming from kilometers away as she said, “No. Thank you.”

  Marcus Forde was absentmindedly stroking his famulus, a soft fabric pouch on a string around his neck containing herbs, dried semen, pubic hair, bioprocessors, and speech synthesizers, in that way he tended to when he was once again ever so nicely asking Courtney Hall just when she thought she was going to have the next week’s storyboards ready.