Budayeen Nights: Stories

or so Van Helsing chose to believe. Audran saw it, too.

“She’s as moddy-driven as Van Helsing,” Audran thought. “He’s a self-righteous, demented maniac, as murderous as she is. Maybe she deserves some compassion.” With an exhausting effort of will, Audran and Van Helsing reached up and popped the moddy out.

“Jeez,” I muttered, dropping the plastic moddy to the ground. It was a great relief again to be rid of Van Helsing’s monomania. Meanwhile, I had little time to think. I was still trying to control the enraged Sheba, who struggled and bucked in my grasp.

Bill had evidently vanquished his enemy. “That’s right, pal,” he said, reaching for one of the fire-hardened stakes. “You hold her and I’ll ostracize her.”

The first thing I did, while I ignored Bill, was to pop out Sheba’s vampire moddy. The transformation was immediate and dramatic. The knowledge of what she’d done while under its influence flooded in, horrifying her. “I just couldn’t take it out,” she gasped between loud sobs. “Other moddies I can take or leave alone, but this one was different. I couldn’t control myself.”

“Some irresponsible programmer wrote that into the moddy,” I said. I tried to speak in a soothing voice. I no longer feared or hated Sheba; I felt only immense sadness. She just collapsed in tears as if she hadn’t heard me.

“Hey,” Bill said proudly, “you notice that I took care of my guy all right?”

“Bill,” I explained wearily, “you were savagely going ten rounds with a date palm.”

He stared at me. “A date palm? Well, hell, who knows what afrit was inside it when it hit me. Maybe we should get somebody up here to exorcise that tree.”

“It didn’t hit you, Bill. I saw the whole thing from the beginning.”

Bill scratched uneasily with one foot in the black soil. “Anyway, I think I killed it. Now I’m sorry, if it’s only a date palm.”

I gave him a reassuring smile, although I didn’t really feel like it. “Don’t worry, Bill. I’m sure it’s only stunned.”

He brightened considerably. “That’s easy for you to say,” he said.

I smashed both the Dracula and Van Helsing moddies with the brick. Who can say how much good that did, because the next homicidal blazebrain still had plenty of murderous moddies to choose from, at Laila’s store or any of the other modshops in the Budayeen. I let out a deep sigh. I’d worry about those killers when the time came.

I helped Sheba to her feet. She was still hysterical, but now she clung to me for comfort. Her violent sobbing subsided. I saw that her vampire’s elongated canine teeth were fake, a bodily modification that Sheba had paid for at one of the Budayeen store-front surgical clinics. I reached up slowly and gently pulled the fangs free.

I knew Sheba had an addictive personality — there was a lot of that going around the Budayeen these days — and although she wouldn’t wear the vampire moddy again, she was more than likely going to become something just as dangerous to herself and to other people in the near future.

Still, I thought, I could hope that the sudden awareness of what she’d done would get her to seek help. There was nothing more that I could do for her now. The rest was up to Sheba herself.

In the same way, my own future would be shaped in part by the moddies I bought and wore. Hell, I’d just come very close to killing a seriously troubled young woman while I was under the influence of the Van Helsing moddy. I was certainly in no position to judge her.

That gave me an awful lot to think about, but I could put that off until later, or tomorrow, or some other time. Right then I turned my attention to Musa Ali’s little sister. I untied her and satisfied myself that although she was exhausted and terrified, she was otherwise unharmed. Bill bent down and picked her up in his arms. He always got along well with children.

As the Budayeen characters began to arrive at the cemetery, drawn by the shouting and racket of our small battle with the Undead, I took Sheba’s arm and led her out of the graveyard, back down the Street to her long- unused apartment. As of that moment, all she had was hope.

Introduction to King of the Cyber Rifles

A number of people asked George why he never mentioned anything that was going on in the rest of the world during When Gravity Fails. This would be a little like having Jane Austen mention the Napoleonic Wars during Pride and Prejudice — which she never does — or Raymond Chandler take a break during The Big Sleep to discuss the conquest of Poland by Nazi Germany.

The Budayeen is the only world its inhabitants care about.

Even as personality-transfer technology was assimilated by prostitutes and pomographers, so it has been incorporated into modem warfare. Like the denizens of the Budayeen, the hero of this tale doesn’t know much of what’s going on in the rest of the world, and doesn’t care. All he knows is where he is, and what he has to do for the rest of the day. With the amount of lies — propaganda and electronic — going around, it’s all he CAN know, and sometimes not even that.

The story is almost surrealist, hut has a horrifyingly genuine feel. Its hero doesn’t really know why he’s there or how his technology works, any more than the folks in the far-off Budayeen do. They’re quite clearly in the same world, and haven’t the faintest idea of each other’s existence.

Like the heroes of many of George’s stories, the soldier Jan Muhammad is agonizingly isolated, a reflection, I think, of George’s own perception of himself. For a man as gregarious as George was, and as good at dealing with all kinds of people, he was in fact half-afraid of people, seeking solitude while simultaneously dreading it.

And, like the heroes of so many of George’s stories, Jan Muhammad is simply trying to do his job in the best way that he knows how, taking what pride he can in the miniscule, mindless, and insignificant tasks he’s been given.

And getting absolutely no thanks from anybody.

— Barbara Hambly

King of the Cyber Rifles

JAN MUHAMMAD STOPPED HALFWAY UP THE STONY hill and put down his double armload of dry sticks. By the Persian calendar, it was the second week of Mordaad, the hottest part of the summer. What little grass grew on his hillside was already burnt brown for lack of rain. The dust was thick and the tumbled red rocks gave off an arid, baked smell. Jan Muhammad mopped the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform tunic. Flies buzzed all around his head, but he had long ago given up trying to chase them away. High overhead, the sun was a plate of brass hanging motionless. Jan Muhammad looked down reluctantly at his burden of firewood, then opened the catch at the throat of his tunic. Sand and grit had worked down under his collar and had begun to rub his neck raw. He wished he had enough water to rinse his sweat-streaked skin.

He carried the wood up the rest of the way to the observation post. He had a box for the fuel inside the small bunker, so he wouldn’t need to step outside again to fetch it. If he were under attack and the broken branches were outside, he would have to suffer in the icy night of the wasteland, or do without hot soup and tea. It was still too early in the day to think of lighting the stove, though. He had a lot of work to do before evening.

The narrow room where he ate, slept, kept watch, and fought was solidly built of roughly dressed stone and cement. He had a cot and a chair he had lashed together himself out of tree limbs, a blanket, a jug of water and a basin, another basin for evacuation, a small stove, and his data deck. He did not understand how the power source worked. It was buried in the hillside beside the observation post, and supplied current to the data deck, the weapons systems, the portable communications equipment, and two bare light bulbs that glared starkly through the