Paul J. Mcauley - Fairyland

Science fiction has seen fashions come and go, but there are still a few out there who keep the faith, and McAuley is one of the best

Independent

McAuley matches the best of his American rivals in zest and scope

Guardian

McAuley [has an] acute ability to get under his characters skins and convey a rich sense of place

The Times

Paul McAuley is better than most of the established giants in the field

Lisa Tuttle, Time Out

Complex and rich vividly imagined, strongly plotted, a constant surprise

New Scientist

McAuley is one of our most versatile and talented SF writers. Hes created space opera in the grand tradition

Publishers Weekly

400 Billion Stars

Secret Harmonies

Eternal Light

Red Dust

Pasquales Angel

Fairyland

Cowboy Angels

The Quiet War

Gardens of the Sun

the Goddess starts her endgame in Britain,
where nobodys looking

Fraser Clark, August, 1994

The room is full of ghosts.

Transparent as jellyfish, dressed in full Edwardian rig, they drift singly or in pairs around and around the newly restored Ladies Smoking Room of the Grand Midland Hotel at St Pancras, adroitly avoiding passengers waiting to board the 1600 hours Trans-Europe Express. Alex Sharkey is the only person in the room who pays the ghosts any attention; to pass the time, he has been trying to derive the algorithm which controls their seemingly random promenade. He arrived twenty minutes early, and now, according to the watch he bought on his way here, it is twelve minutes past three, and his client is late.

Alex is edgy and uncomfortable, sweating into his brand-new drawstring shirt of unbleached Afghan cotton. The raw cotton is flecked with nubbles of chaff that scratch his skin. The jacket of his suit is tight across his shoulders; although the salesman assured him that its green tweed check complemented his red hair, Alex thinks it makes him look a little like Oscar Wilde, who wouldnt be out of place in the lovingly restored heritage dcor of the Ladies Smoking Room, with its salmon pink and cream walls, marble pillars and plush red upholstered easy chairs, its potted palms and flitting population of Edwardian ghosts.

Alex is wedged into a low, overstuffed armchair, chain-smoking and feeling the buzz from his second cup of espresso. One thing hes learned today is they make wonderful espresso here, oily and bitter and served scalding hot in decently thick thimble-sized cups, with a twist of lemon in the bowl of the dainty silver spoon, and a bitter mint chocolate and a glass of flash-filtered water served on the side.

Caffeine is such a simple, elegant, necessary drug Alex remembers one of Gary Larsons Far Side cartoons, goofy lions sprawled around a tree and off in the distance a rhino pouring a cup of coffee for its mate, whos saying, Whoa, thats plenty. The title was African Dawn, and Alex smiles now, remembering the way he laughed out loud the first time he saw it. Which was when? One Christmas back before the end of the twentieth century, he must have been five or six. It would have been in the damp, ant-infested, twelfth floor council flat on the Isle of Dogs, looking out over the Thames. Lexis always got him a book for Christmas, somehow or other. To improve him.

And now here he is, surrounded by hologram ghosts and waiting for his man, trying to blend in with the suits and the rich tourists waiting for the express train out of this shitty country. Most of them are chattering in French, the lingua franca of the lite of the increasingly isolationist European Union. The women are defiantly tanned, in flimsy blouses and very short shorts, or miniskirts with artfully tattered hems. A few, this is the very latest in BodiCon fashion, are enveloped in chadors made of layers of translucent chiffon woven with graphic film that flashes odd images and shifting patterns, revealing and concealing breasts, the curve of a hip, smooth tanned skin hollowed over a collar bone. The men wear chunky suits in earth colours, a lot of gold on their wrists, and discreet makeup. Earrings flash when they speak or glance at themselves in the tall gilt mirrors behind the bar. Unnervingly, the mirrors do not reflect the ghosts. At the bars mahogany counter, half a dozen Ukrainians in shiny black suits make a lot of noise, toasting each other with rounds of malt whisky.

One woman has a pet doll. It sits quietly beside its mistress, dressed in a pink and purple uniform edged with gold braid. A chain leash is clipped to the studded dog collar around its neck. Its prognathous blue-skinned face is impassive. Only its eyes move. Dark, liquid, sad-looking eyes, as if it knows that somethings wrong deep down in every cell of its body, knows the burden of sin thats been laid on it.

Alex feels sorry for it its displaced from Nature, dazed by the violence done to its genome. Its a crufty creature, he thinks, the epitome of his belief that theres no point gengineering anything more advanced than yeast: the more complex the organism, the more unpredictable the side-effects.

Alex lights another cigarette and checks the time again. He has an edgy sliding feeling that things have gone wrong. He has always hated waiting around, having to be on time. For this one occasion, when he had to be punctual, he bought a watch, and all it does is make him more nervous. It is a piece of recyclable Polish street shit that cost less than a single espresso, graphic film on a hexagon of varnished fibreboard, a bright orange cloth strap. It runs on the faint myoelectric field generated by Alexs wrist muscles its a time-binding parasite. Theres a black eagle impressed on the watch-face, and the eagle raises its wings and breathes fire when Alex tilts his wrist to look at it. The hands are black slivers generated by the same chip that runs the eagle. The graphic film is already wrinkling: the eagle has a broken wing; the hour hand is kinked. It is eighteen minutes past three.

Alex once had a genuine antique stainless steel oyster Rolex; it came with a certificate proving it was manufactured in Switzerland, in 1967. It was given to him by the Wizard the Wizard was always giving him stuff like that, in the days when Alex was the brightest and best of the Wizards apprentices. But Alex lost the Rolex when he was banged up with the Wizard and the rest of his crew. Either the cops or one of Lexiss asshole toy boys swiped it. Alex lost a lot, then, which is one reason why hes in a hole with Billy Rock, and making risky, desperate deals with junior grade Indonesian diplomats.

Twenty-eight minutes past. Shit. Alex signals to the waiter and orders another espresso, speaking slowly and carefully because the tall, silver-haired man is an Albanian refugee who has only a glancing relationship with the English language.

Its twenty to four, and the boarding announcement for the Trans-Europe Express has been made, and the passengers are beginning to leave, when the waiter brings Alex his espresso. Alex pays with a credit card which doesnt have his name on it, knocks back the coffee and walks over to the woman with the leashed doll. He stands there, looking at her. Its silly and he knows it wont really make him feel better, but he has to do it.

When she finally looks up, a tanned woman of about forty with that tightness around her jaw that indicates a facelift, Alex says, I only just figured out that the animal at the end of the lead is the one getting smashed on Campari, and walks out of there, straight through two ghostly women in small-waisted day dresses who break apart around him in spangles of diffracted laser light.

Gilbert Scotts great curving stair takes Alex down to the busy lobby. He shakes out his black, wide-brimmed hat (yeah, Oscar Wilde) and claps it on to his head, trying to look nonchalant despite the ball of acid cramping his stomach. A doorman in plum uniform and top hat opens a polished plate glass door and Alex walks out into bronze sunlight and the roar of traffic shuddering along Euston Road.