Cherubimbo and Other Stories

By Gabriel S. de Anda

Few writers can create worlds so rich and fully-realized the reader immediately feels at home, even when the concepts have not yet been fully laid out. Fewer still can do so with language so rich and lyrical it is a joy to read, with details so rooted in the human experience that one cannot help but be absorbed into the story.
Gabriel de Anda is such a writer.
Whether delineating the struggles of a law firm dealing with the demands of an ex-partner --- about as ex as one can get --- or the dichotomy of rich and poor spreading out among the galaxies or even musing on the irrelevance of a classic icon which somehow makes it seem more relevant than ever de Anda nails it.
Readers, you are in for a treat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462847334

Gabriel S. de Anda

Gabriel S. de Anda, a practicing attorney as well as a writer, lives in Los Angeles, California. His stories have appeared in Gordon Linzner’s New York magazine “Space and Time,” and Chris Reed’s British magazine, “Backbrain Recluse.” He has also published poetry in “The Best Chicano Literature 1986”, edited by, among others, Mario Vargas Llosa. Mr. de Anda is the author of the science fiction novel, “Scissors, Rock and Paper Doll,” and is currently working on a novel about two generations of a Latino family, spanning their origins in early 1900’s Mexico, and following them into post-millennium Los Angeles, California.

Book preview

Cherubimbo

& Other Stories

Gabriel S. de Anda

Copyright © 2011 by Gabriel S. de Anda.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011911470

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4628-4732-7

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4628-4731-0

ISBN: Ebook          978-1-4628-4733-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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101994

CONTENTS

1. Sphinx

2. Greatly Exaggerated

3. Par Autre Vie

4. My Year To Be A Horse

5. The Girl Of My Dreams

6. Local Color

7. Cherubimbo

8. 1969

9. The Crystal Heart

For Stacy, who makes it possible, with love

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THESE STORIES HAVE been previously published, as follows:

Greatly Exaggerated in Space & Time, Summer 1990, Issue # 78

Copyright © 1990 by Gabriel S. de Anda

The Crystal Heart in Back Brain Recluse, 1992, Issue # 21

Copyright © 1992 by Gabriel S. de Anda

Sphinx in Space & Time, Spring 1993, Issue # 81

Copyright © 1993 by Gabriel S. de Anda

The Girl of My Dreams in Space & Time, Spring 1994, Issue #83

Copyright © 1994 by Gabriel S. de Anda

The following stories have received the following recognition:

Local Color and My Year To Be A Horse were Quarter-Finalists in the 2002 Ray Bradbury Fellowship/New Century Writer Awards

Par Autre Vie was the Second Place Winner in the Magnolia & Moonlight Fiction Contest of January 2002, Judged by Writer James Van Pelt

Local Color received an Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, September 2007

SPHINX

IN GENERAL, WE leave the beast alone.

The Outworlders that come to our ancient Metropolis no longer believe that this is the same creature of old, our Sphinx. By the outskirts of the Mecca, where the plains begin their seemingly endless stretch towards the skyline, the animal can be seen sleeping by the distant hulks of ruined starships. It appears at times to graze on the wavering mirages. Occasionally, it interrupts its senile frolic, conversing with no one in particular, unless it be the illusion of a traveling pilgrim, a product of the sun’s unceasing caresses.

One might ask what the beast is stilling doing in this part of the world, why it hasn’t moved on, being that all the enigmas of this age have been exhausted to our satisfaction. Few are the citizens left on our Earth. Most have abandoned her for newer, greener worlds.

Indeed, no longer do visitors to our gates fear denial of passage. When the Sphinx occasionally stirs from its stupor, it is only to ask the wrong questions. There is no doubt today as to what the total sum of man is. Whether morning, noon or night, the rebuff comes the same. Move aside, doddering old fool! Have you no shame, asking the same question over and over again? Have you lost your bearings, have you misplaced your walking stick? Who cares what it is that walks on four, two or three legs nowadays? One needn’t even walk anymore, if that’s the way one wants it. Now move aside, impertinent fossil: we are on holiday!

It is true, our Sphinx has grown old and ugly. There are books that tell of its once awesome and terrible beauty, but that, alas, is only in books. They are rarely opened today.

There was a time when the beast would migrate, with the passing seasons, but no longer. It simply lies by the edge of the city, growing older and uglier. Its skin is like rough stone: cracked, dusty and pale. The only time its cheeks show a suspicion of hue is when the school children, released from their studies, fling stones at it or poke it with dried branches. Sometimes it will stare at the flaring, cloudless sky, watching the departing pearls of ships that announce the hour.

But even then, more often than not, it simply lies there like a tremendous beast of burden, awaiting a traveler who might show an interest in antiquities.

We who see this every day have grown used to it.

GREATLY EXAGGERATED

"GOOD MORNING. JOYCE, Tsurukawa and Fuentes. May I hell . . . Oh! Mr. Madrigal!"

Carlos Luis Madrigal had turned to look behind him before the connection was made, and had just turned to face the public videophone in time to catch the receptionist-simulate in mid-sentence. He smiled.

Mornin’, Isabel, he said, addressing the AUI program by her Christian moniker. Her eyes seemed to study him with a mimetic, electronic sentience, her head tilting coquettishly to the side. A few strawberry blonde curls fell over one of her long-lashed, video-blue eyes, each composed of pixels of light. Isabel brushed the stray curls back with a computer-generated hand and licked her man-dreamt lips; red gloss sparkled.

How are you, Mr. Madrigal? Have a good weekend?

Miss-ter Ma-dri-gall, she drawled in mock admonishment, and-by God!—she actually blushed. You know better than to ask me that. Her eyes executed a comical roll for his amusement. The Adaptive User Interface programs were like that: always eager to please.

Right, said Madrigal, studying her pleasant image. Just trying. Maybe someday you’ll slip up and tell me where you really go when the switches are turned off.

She laughed demurely. Madrigal felt a mild wave of desire when watching Isabel, videographically luxurious and sensual as she’d been designed, the paradigm receptionist. Sometimes he lamented the fact that she was just a series of cleverly arranged on-off signals, a binary baby.

I’m running late, Izzy. I’ve left my calendar at home. Do I have any afternoon appointments?

If you hold just a sec I’ll check.

But . . .

The screen flowered into a riot of symmetrically writhing hues signaling the com’s holding pattern. Madrigal sighed.

Isabel had been one of the firm’s concessions to the spirit of the times, the capitulation of JT&F’s recently deceased senior partner whose name was still first in line. Old Joyce (bless his soul, if he’d ever had one) had always gotten his way, but his reactionary turn of heart had lapsed on occasion in his autumn years. Madrigal had pitched for the AUI programs, pointing out to the partners that there was hardly anything frivolous in the notion of updating the firm’s hard and software. Joyce, always extolling the virtues of the old ways, had chomped on his Havana and tried to explain how the really big boys eschewed the glib evanescence of the day, neither advertising nor chasing ambulances, preferring live, human receptionists over the pretty compugenic female headshots that had been the vogue for nearly half a decade. Not that most could now tell the difference, pointed out Madrigal. Perhaps, Joyce had sniffed, but this was, after all, a professional law firm pretending to a modicum of elegance, sophistication and respectability. It was the principle of the thing, like the difference between Murata and faux pearls. Even so, perhaps to keep Madrigal happy, Joyce had given in, indulged his moody protégé. Madrigal had never forgiven the old man for having had to fight so hard for so small a grant. He valued Isabel all the more for it.

Usually once Isabel was on the line there was no need for her to leave the screen. A host of pour-over programs linked her with the heart of the firm’s operations: message-waiting, monitoring of incoming and outgoing calls, direct access to individual as well as corporate legal files, direct jacking into the law library, and so on. Isabel could and did carry on conversations with numerous people concurrently. She was limited only by the complexity of the time-shared net linking all the building’s tenant’s computers. But it was hard to overload the net, and only an overload would require Isabel’s icon to leave the screen.

She popped back on unceremoniously. Oh yes. You’ve got a three o’clock with Colette Smith.

Oh yeah, right, right.

Where’re you calling from, Mr. Madrigal?

Huh? Oh. ‘Frisco. Listen, Izzy: Where’d you go just a moment ago?

She smiled reprovingly, as a mother might while gently cuffing a prankster child. It’s not nice to try and fool . . .

No, no, really, you were gone for five or six seconds. Everything okay? Where’d you go?

Why . . . nowhere, Mr. Madrigal. She pouted, the freckles on her nose reddening a little, her forehead furrowed in ersatz thought. She looked the model of innocence, inhumanly feminine and unnaturally disarming. I was right here all along. She bit her lip. Wasn’t I?

Oh, don’t worry about it, said Madrigal reflexively, waving a hand. That’s it?

Um-humh. Just the Smith thing. Will you be able to handle it? Or would you like . . .

No no no, no problem. The time blinked in tiny ice-pink alphanumerics on the screen’s lower left-hand corner. The appointment was hours away. I’ll be there with time to spare. Have Rudy ready when I get in. Gotta go.

You’ve also some messages, she rushed in. Pause. An attorney by the name of Blackburn called and . . .

Blackburn? Richard Blackburn? He was an old Harvard colleague. About?

He didn’t specify. He called to . . .

No, no, never mind then. I’ve gotta run. I’ll handle the calls when I get in.

Isabel smiled, the image of happiness once again, an efficient glitter of video-styled sexuality. She adjusted an earring, her eyes flashing with a static-free calm. See you when you get in. Fly safely.

Isabel’s image imploded to a pinpoint of light, was replaced by Bell Atlantica’s corporate logo, the calling codes and service charges. Madrigal withdrew his credit card and left.

Joyce, Tsurukawa and Fuentes’ fifty-third floor suite had its main conference room nestled in the building’s southwest corner. Two of the four walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, and on a clear day you could see Catalina Island, small but held fast by the distant, glimmering Pacific Ocean planes.

Today was not a clear day; the sky directly overhead was an inexplicably limpid blue, the pinnacle of a small dome which, followed to the skyline, was composed of a succession of seamless tiers of deepening smog. Although the sun was a good eight fingers from the horizon, already a major portion of the sky was settling into a premature and exquisitely false sunset, courtesy of industrial pollution. The sun’s light mingled with thick, odious layers of smog; the sky, consequently, was an enchanting confluence of shades of red: a right band of citron bleeding into a ring of orange flame, quickly transmuting into a spray of dull vermilion. Autos, aeroplanes and government hovercraft glinted through the overcrowded skies. If Madrigal had been asked to recall the last time he’d actually seen the island, he would have been at a loss.

But the window views and air traffic were not foremost in Madrigal’s thoughts as he walked into the spacious conference room. He sat his attaché case on the long, narrow table of polished teak. He had a law firm to supervise.

Of the firm’s three figureheads, Joyce had been the last of the influential Old Guard to die. Peter Jose Fuentes, the eldest of the trio, had died before the end of the nineties, and Yukio I. Tsurakawa had been on the Nebular Americana solar freighter that had been lost somewhere near the orbit of Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, in ’24. The ship was never recovered.

Yet business was business, and their names remained on the old-fashioned sheets of letterhead still used by the firm. Of course, new legal combatistes fought the current caseload, but over the years the firm had steadfastly held its place on the Amicus Curiae 500, giving it the equivalent of juridical blue chip. JT & F was a name that commanded respect and summoned to mind qualities that generated trust and goodwill: a well-rooted tradition, a comforting stability and professional reliability.

Madrigal sat down in a swivel chair and pulled his spine up straight. Motionless for seconds, a gaze of internalized abstraction playing over his features, he turned abruptly to the eastern wall and called out to the oversize dark screen cuddled between a holograph of a De Chirico painting and an Andy Ray laser poem.

Isabel!

After a sliver of a pause, the screen pulsed with a bright raster scan of Isabel’s pointillistic face. The movement of color always drew Madrigal in.

Ah, Mr. Madrigal. You’re here.

Isabel was as user-friendly as things got in this day and age, designed to accommodate and react meaningfully with discrete personalities, artificial and human. She was quite short of a standard AI, lacking significant memory storage. Having access to a treasure-trove of programs, she became a genius when linked to one, but on her own she was a beautiful, inarticulate wizard with Alzheimer’s. Even so, her limited palette of responses and stock of short-term memories, when accessed with the personality files of the person with whom she was speaking, gave her an integrity beyond that of most humans, at least according to Madrigal’s misanthropic sensibilities.

Where’s Rudy? Colette Smith’s due within the hour.

Smith’s rep called. Her shuttle is running late, and she’ll be here at 5:30 or so.

Well. I still have to confer with Rudy. Find ’em and send ’em in.

Of course.

Now.

Yes sir.

Maybe I should have a talk with Mr. Wender, thought Madrigal, as he had on many an occasion. Somehow he never did. Rudy was the resident whiz kid, all of twenty-one. All the big firms had at least one, though usually not quite as young as Rudy: the maverick paralegal allowed to roam unfettered through the corporate data fields. One good paralegal, the saying went, was worth six good cases. They were pampered and, like all swords, handled with a resilient and sometimes lenient hand that was mindful of its two edges.

Rudy had been brought in by Joyce himself, one of the old man’s last (and wisest, conceded Madrigal) moves. The world, especially the legal slice of it, had grown impossibly rich and convoluted in the last quarter century, and technology continually eroded the already slippery slopes of the legal terra firma. No sooner did the law expand to encompass new technologies when newer applications came along to render current case law and legislation outdated. It was precisely because of the existence and the need for Rudy’s likes that the paralegal profession gained the prestige and importance it now had, one rung below attorneys. A paralegal with a legal patron could pretty much write his own ticket. Rudy himself had clerked a number of years (he was only twenty-one!) for Justice Douglas O. Angus of the New York Court of Appeals. He’d obtained his Masters in the ever-expanding field of jurimetrics, a quantitative approach to the law. The Law Review article he’d been invited to pen had dealt with the increasing evidentiary unreliability of photography and video due to computer tampering and manipulation. A more than passing reference to it could be found in the landmark case of Zeigler Panis v. Jacaranda Holografix.

Even so, the old divisions persisted, and there was a certain amount of chafing between attorneys and the paralegals they so relied upon. A precarious balance. He’s still just a paralegal, thought Madrigal, and on a more subliminal level he resolved to remind Rudy of this.

Madrigal sighed. He’d made it a point to be here, in-house, to personally interview Ms. Colette Smith. She was an actress, a poetess and singer, a famous representative of the media-rich and gigabuck-raking Beautiful Faces that launched thousands, no, billions of electronic ships. Just the sort of clientele Madrigal was courting.

The earlier troika had been resistant to the notion, looking on the show biz industry as essentially frivolous. JT & F had evolved on the conservative side of the law: land sale and development contracts, insurance defense, mergers and acquisitions, orbital law.

The firm had cemented its rep of securing favorable verdicts and minimal jury awards against its insurance carrier clients in the very public class action suit against DuPont in the late nineties. Certain things go together in the public consciousness, such as soup and sandwich, coffee and cigarettes, politicians and insincerity. It was the trinal identification between chlorofluorocarbons, cancer and JT & F that Madrigal had spent years and energy trying to erase. Courting Hollywood clients would go a long way towards such a rehabilitation.

A client such as Colette Smith would give JT & F high visibility and send a clear signal it was ready for a facelift. Ergo, this Smith interview was crucial. Old Joyce would have frowned upon this meeting. Madrigal unbuttoned his double-breasted, pinstriped Italian suit, leaned back in the swivel chair and sighed contentedly.

The wall screen chimed and Isabel smiled to life. Oh, Mr. Madrigal. I’ve found Rudy. He’s collecting some equipment and supplies. He’ll be in momentarily. Pause. There’s a call for . . .

Who is it?

. . . you. Attorney Blackburn. Again.

Put ’im on, said Madrigal, grinning and leaning forward.

The screen flowered with the lines of a familiar face. The edges of Blackburn’s wiry, thinning hair were saltier than memory sketched, and flesh about the face heavier, sallow, limp. Blackburn smiled noncommittally, eyes flashing with unreadable regret. Madrigal felt himself instinctively tense up, but masked his discomfort.

"Hey, cabrón. What gives? You look like shit. I’m gonna hafta talk with Claire. Isn’t she takin’ care of you?"

Blackburn smiled ruefully, nodded. She sends her love.

Ah. Good. Tell her she has a place when she’s ready to dump you. I’ll give her a deal on the divorce, just ’cause you’re my friend. They both laughed with a heavy sense of ritual. Blackbum looked worriedly wistful.

You look fine yourself, Chuck. The years’ve been kind to you.

Madrigal said nothing.

How’s biz? queried Blackburn.

Show biz? asked Madrigal. Never been better. Now that Joyce is outta the . . .

Blackburn held up an interrupting hand. You might not want to talk about that, Chuck, not yet. Not without an attorney.

Madrigal cocked his head, leaned back, his eyes narrowing to a wily and cautious calibration.

Sorry, Chuck. This isn’t exactly a social call. I should’ve said so right off. We might as well get the business out of the way first.

Madrigal knew then it would be business first and last.

You’re being sued, and maybe you should know more about it before you vent your feelings about Joyce without the presence of counsel.

"I’m being sued?"

Right. And JT & F.

By whom?

By George S. Joyce.

Madrigal’s eyes widened and he barked a caustic laugh.

You mean by his estate.

No. I mean by George S. Joyce.

Cut the shit, Rick. Joyce is dead. They buried him last week.

That’s right, Chuck. And he’s asked us to represent him in this matter. He wants his old seat in your firm back.

Isabel.

The genie in the tube blew forth in a froth of videographic plumes.

Yes sir!

Did you record that call?

The call from attorney Blackburn is stored. Shall I call it up?

No, don’t call it up. He said they faxed a complaint to us. Did they?

Yes sir.

Get me a copy. Two copies. Rudy’s gonna need one, too.

Of course, Mr. Madrigal.

The lawyer paused. He cocked his head as if straining to hear something out of range. He ran the nail of his left index finger between his bottom front teeth, debating in silence.

Isabel. I want you to shield our conversation in a penumbra. This is highly confidential.

We’re isolated, sir.

Okay. I’ll break the news to the partners at the morning conference. But ’til then I want this quiet. I’ve gotta think. And I want you to ferret out all our materials on George S. Joyce.

Joyce? The firm’s senior partner?

Madrigal looked at Isabel with undisguised annoyance. Ex-senior partner. He felt a conscious distaste at times with Isabel’s casual mockery of human speech and behavior. Don’t be precious. I’m not interested in ‘meaningful’ dialogue just now, okay?

Isabel nodded with unruffled severity, impossible to offend, conveying an excellent mimicry of human concern and acquiescence. Of course, she acknowledged laconically.

So gather up all you can, all we’ve got. Personnel file, psyche spools, medical records, family history, financial contracts with the firm. The old partnership agreement. Everything. And don’t limit yourself to our banks. Did he leave a will? Who probated it, or’s going to? Crack some ice if you have to, and refrigerate whatever we pull in. Scan the complaint, too, for cues.

Isabel nodded, her visual construct pretending to take dictation.

Oh, he added quickly, and start a file on all this, accessible only to me. At least for now. Retinal lock and plenty of magnetics.

Certainly, Mr. Madrigal.

Madrigal knew that Isabel was but a bit of ingenious software. Even so, the illusory human presence she wove was powerful, convincing and seamless to the quotidian eye. The fact that in times of impatience he chastised her for her precious mannerisms was testimony to just how accomplished her preciousness was.

Izzy. Do you understand what’s going on?

Sure, Mr. Madrigal, she said in a soft, serious voice. We’re being attacked from the outside and we must defend ourselves.

Madrigal nodded and smiled