Cyberpunk

into the darkness and relaxed. The place had been converted from the lower half of some young aristo’s townhouse; protruding bricks still marked the lines of the old walls. The patrons were locals, mostly, dressed in any Realtime garments they could scavenge. Rice even saw one kid wearing a pair of beige silk panties on his head.
    Mozart took the stage. Minuet-like guitar arpeggios screamed over sequenced choral motifs. Stacks of amps blasted synthesizer riffs lifted from a tape of K-Tel pop hits. The howling audience showered Mozart with confetti stripped from the club’s hand-painted wallpaper.
    Afterward Mozart smoked a joint of Turkish hash and asked Rice about the future.
    “Mine, you mean?” Rice said. “You wouldn’t believe it. Six billion people, and nobody has to work if they don’t want to. Five-hundred-channel TV in every house. Cars, helicopters, clothes that would knock your eyes out. Plenty of easy sex. You want music? You could have your own recording studio. It’d make your gear on stage look like a goddamned clavichord.”
    “Really? I would give anything to see that. I can’t understand why you would leave.”
    Rice shrugged. “So I’m giving up maybe fifteen years. When I get back, it’s the best of everything. Anything I want.”
    “Fifteen years?”
    “Yeah. You got to understand how the portal works. Right now it’s as big around as you are tall, just big enough for a phone cable and a pipeline full of oil, maybe the odd bag of mail, heading for Realtime. To make it any bigger, like to move people or equipment through, is expensive as hell. So expensive they only do it twice, at the beginning and the end of the project. So, yeah, I guess we’re stuck here.”
    Rice coughed harshly and drank off his glass. That Ottoman Empire hash had untied his mental shoelaces. Here he was opening up to Mozart, making the kid want to emigrate, and there was no way in hell Rice could get him a Green Card. Not with all the millions that wanted a free ride into the future—billions, if you counted the other projects, like the Roman Empire or New Kingdom Egypt.
    “But I’m really glad to be here,” Rice said. “It’s like . . . like shuffling the deck of history. You never know what’ll come up next.” Rice passed the joint to one of Mozart’s groupies, Antonia something-or-other. “This is a great time to be alive. Look at you. You’re doing okay, aren’t you?” He leaned across the table, in the grip of a sudden sincerity. “I mean, it’s okay, right? It’s not like you hate all of us for fucking up your world or anything?”
    “Are you making a joke? You are looking at the hero of Salzburg. In fact, your Mr. Parker is supposed to make a tape of my last set tonight. Soon all of Europe will know of me!” Someone shouted at Mozart, in German, from across the club. Mozart glanced up and gestured cryptically. “Be cool, man.” He turned back to Rice. “You can see that I am doing fine.”
    “Sutherland, she worries about stuff like all those symphonies you’re never going to write.”
    “Bullshit! I don’t want to write symphonies. I can listen to them any time I want! Who is this Sutherland? Is she your girlfriend?”
    “No. She goes for the locals. Danton, Robespierre, like that. How about you? You got anybody?”
    “Nobody special. Not since I was a kid.”
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “Well, when I was about six I was at Maria Theresa’s court. I used to play with her daughter—Maria Antonia. Marie Antoinette she calls herself now. The most beautiful girl of the age. We used to play duets. We made a joke that we would be married, but she went off to France with that swine, Louis.”
    “Goddamn,” Rice said. “This is really amazing. You know, she’s practically a legend where I come from. They cut her head off in the French Revolution for throwing too many parties.”
    “No they didn’t . . .”
    “That was our French Revolution,” Rice said. “Yours was a lot less messy.”
    “You should go see her, if you’re that interested. Surely she owes you a favor for saving her life.”
    Before Rice could answer, Parker arrived at their table, surrounded by ex-ladies-in-waiting in spandex capris and sequined tube tops. “Hey, Rice!” Parker shouted, serenely anachronistic in a glitter T-shirt and black leather jeans. “Where did you get those unhip threads? Come on, let’s party!”
    Rice watched as the girls crowded around the table and gnawed the corks out of a