The Postutopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus by Michael Swanwick

Author:Michael Swanwick [Swanwick, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: con artist, postapocalyptic, artificial intelligence, urban, animals, swanwick
ISBN: 9781596069374
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2020-04-29T21:00:00+00:00

SEEKING AN HEIRESS

ARE YOU…

A YOUNG WOMAN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 18 AND 21?

FATHERLESS?

TATTOOED FROM BIRTH ON AN INTIMATE PART OF

YOUR BODY?

IF SO, YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO GREAT RICHES

INQUIRE DAYTIMES, SUITE 1, MAISON FEMA

“You’d think I’d be tired of this by now,” Darger commented during a brief break in the ritual. “And yet I am not.”

“The infinite variety of ways in which women can be beautiful is indeed amazing,” Surplus agreed. “As is the eagerness of so many to display that beauty.” He opened the door. “Next.”

A woman strode into the room, trailing smoke from a cheroot. She was dauntingly tall—six feet and a hand, if an inch—and her dress, trimmed with silver lace, was the same shade of golden brown as her skin. Surplus indicated a crystal ashtray on the sideboard and, with a gracious nod of thanks, she stubbed out her cigar.

“Your name?” Darger said after Surplus had regained his chair.

“My real name, you mean, or my stage name?”

“Why, whichever you please.”

“I’ll give you the real one then.” The young woman doffed her hat and tugged off her gloves. She laid them neatly together on the sideboard. “It’s Tawnymoor Petticoats. You can call me Tawny.”

“Tell us something about yourself, Tawny,” Surplus said.

“I was born a carny and worked forty-milers all my life,” Tawny said, unbuttoning her blouse. “Most recently, I was in the sideshow as the Sleeping Beauty Made Immortal by Utopian Technology But Doomed Never to Awaken. I lay in a glass coffin covered by nothing but my own hair and a strategically placed hand, while the audience tried to figure out if I was alive or not. I’ve got good breath control.” She folded the blouse and set it down by her gloves and hat. “Jake—my husband—was the barker. He’d size up the audience and when he saw a ripe mark, catch ’im on the way out and whisper that for a couple of banknotes it could be arranged to spend some private time with me. Then he’d go out back and peer in through a slit in the canvas.”

Tawny stepped out of her skirt and set it atop the blouse. She began unlacing her petticoats. “When the mark had his trousers off and was about to climb in the coffin, Jake would come roaring out, bellowing that he was only supposed to look—not to take advantage of my vulnerable condition.” Placing her underthings atop the skirt, she undid her garters and proceeded to roll down her stockings. “That was usually good for the contents of his wallet.”

“You were working the badger game, you mean?” Surplus asked cautiously.

“Mostly, I just lay there. But I was ready to rear up and coldcock the sumbidge if he got out of hand. And we worked other scams too. The pigeon drop, the fiddle game, the rip deal, you name it.”

Totally naked now, the young woman lifted her great masses of black curls with both hands, exposing the back of her neck. “Then one night the mark was halfway into the coffin—and no Jake.

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