Beast Of The Heartland And Other Stories Part 21

I have determined to continue the search for my daughter. It may be -- as Brent claimed -- that she does not exist, but it is all that is left to me, and I have made my resolve accordingly. Still, I have not managed to leave the station, because I am drawn to Reynolds' clone. Again and again I find myself in the rear of the auditorium, where I watch him pace the dais, declaiming in the most excited manner. I yearn to approach him, to learn how like Reynolds he truly is. I am certain he has spotted me on several occasions, and I wonder what he is thinking, how it would be to speak to him, touch him. Perhaps this is perverse of me, but I cannot help wondering...

--Carolyn Dulambre, Days In The Sun.

6.

Carolyn/Reynolds.

I had been wanting to talk with her since... well, since this peculiar life began. Why? I loved her, for one thing. But there seemed to be a far more compelling reason, one I could not verbalize. I suppressed the urge for a time, not wanting to hurt her; but seeing that she had begun to appear at the lectures, I finally decided to make an approach.

She had taken to frequenting a pleasure dome named Spider's. Its walls were holographic representations of the Spider, and these were strung together with golden webs that looked molten against the black backdrop, like seams of unearthly fire. In this golden dimness the faces of the patrons glowed like spirits, and the glow seemed to be accentuated by the violence of the music. It was not a place to my taste, nor -- I suspect -- to hers. Perhaps her patronage was a form of courage, of facing down the creature who had caused her so much pain.

I found her seated in a rear corner, drinking an Amouriste, and when I moved up beside her table, she paid me no mind. No one ever approached her; she was as much a memorial as the station itself, and though she was still a beautiful woman, she was treated like the wife of a saint. Doubtless she thought I was merely pausing by the table, looking for someone. But when I sat opposite her, she glanced up and her jaw dropped.

"Don't be afraid," I said.

"Why should I be afraid?"

"I thought my presence might... discomfort you."

She met my eyes unflinchingly. "I suppose I thought that, too."

"But...?"

"It doesn't matter."

A silence built between us.

She wore a robe of golden silk, cut to expose the upper swells of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and her hair was pulled back from her face, laying bare the smooth, serene lines of her beauty, a beauty that had once fired me, that did so even now.

"Look," I said. "For some reason I was drawn to talk to you, I feel I have..."

"I feel the same." She said this with a strong degree of urgency, but then tried to disguise the fact.

"What shall we talk about?"

"I'm not sure."

She tapped a finger on her gla.s.s. "Why don't we walk?"

Everyone watched as we left, and several people followed us into the corridor, a circ.u.mstance that led me to suggest that we talk in my apartment. She hesitated, then signaled agreement with the briefest of nods. We moved quickly through the crowds, managing to elude our pursuers, and settled into a leisurely pace. Now and again I caught her staring at me, and asked if anything was wrong.

"Wrong?" She seemed to be tasting the word, trying it out. "No," she said. "No more than usual."

I had thought that when I did talk to him I would find he was merely a counterfeit, that he would be nothing like Reynolds, except in the most superficial way. But this was not the case. Walking along that golden corridor, mixing with the revelers who poured between the shops and bars, I felt toward him as I had on the day we had met in the streets of Abidjan: powerfully attracted, vulnerable, and excited. And yet I did perceive a difference in him. Whereas Reynolds' presence had been commanding and intense, there had been a brittleness to that intensity, a sense that his diamond glitter might easily be fractured.

With this Reynolds, however, there was no such inconstancy. His presence -- while potent -- was smooth, natural, and unflawed.

Everywhere we walked we encountered the fruits of the Equations: matter transmitters; rebirth parlors, where one could experience a transformation of both body and soul; and the omnipresent students, some of them half-gone into a transcorporeal state, cloaked to hide this fact, but their condition evident by their inward-looking eyes. With Reynolds beside me, all this seemed comprehensible, not -- as before -- a carnival of meaningless improbabilities. I asked what he felt on seeing the results of his work, and he said, "I'm really not concerned with it."

"What are you concerned with?"

"With you, Carolyn," he said.

The answer both pleased me and made me wary. "Surely you must have more pressing concerns," I said.

"Everything I've done was for you." A puzzled expression crossed his face.

"Don't pretend with me!" I snapped, growing angry. "This isn't a show, this isn't the auditorium."

He opened his mouth, but bit back whatever he had been intending to say, and we walked on.

"Forgive me," I said, realizing the confusion that must be his. "I..."

"No need for forgiveness," he said. "All our failures are behind us now."

I didn't know from where these words were coming. They were my words, yet they also seemed spoken from a place deep inside myself, one whose existence had been hidden until now, and it was all I could do to hold them back. We pa.s.sed into the upper levels of the station, where the permanent staff was quartered, and as we rounded a curve, we nearly ran into a student standing motionless, gazing at the wall: a pale young man with black hair, a thin mouth, and a gray cape. His eyes were dead-looking, and his voice sepulchral. "It awaits," he said.

They are so lost in self-contemplation, these students, that they are likely to say anything. Some fancy them oracles, but not I: Their words struck me as being random, sparks from a frayed wire.

"What awaits?" I asked, amused.

"Life... the city."

"Ah," I said. "And how do I get there?"

"You..." He lapsed into an open-mouthed stare.

Carolyn pulled at me, and we set off again. I started to make a joke about the encounter, but seeing her troubled expression, I restrained myself.

When we entered my apartment, she stopped in the center of the living room, transfixed by the walls.

I had set them to display the environment of the beginning of The Resolute Lover : an endless sweep ofgolden gra.s.ses, with a sparkling on the horizon that might have been the winking of some bright tower.

"Does this bother you?" I asked, gesturing at the walls.

"No, they startled me, that's all." She strolled along, peering at the gra.s.ses, as if hoping to catch sight of someone. Then she turned, and I spoke again from that deep hidden place; a place that now -- responding to the sight of her against those golden fields -- was spreading all through me.

"Carolyn, I love you," I said... and this time I knew who it was that spoke.

He had removed his cloak, and his body was shimmering, embedded in that pale glow that once had made a weapon of my right hand. I backed away, terrified. Yet even in the midst of fear, it struck me that I was not as terrified as I should have been, that I was not at the point of screaming, of fleeing.

"It's me, Carolyn," he said.

"No," I said, backing further away.

"I don't know why you should believe me." He looked at his flickering hand. "I didn't understand it myself until now."

"Who are you?" I asked, gauging the distance to the door.

"You know," he said. "The Spider... he's all through the station. In the computer, the labs, even in the tanks from which my cells were grown. He's brought us together again."

He tried to touch me, and I darted to the side.

"I won't hurt you," he said.

"I've seen what a touch can do."

"Not my touch, Carolyn."

I doubted I could make it to the door, but readied myself for a try.

"Listen to me, Carolyn," he said. "Everything we wanted in the beginning, all the dreams and fictions of love, they can be ours."

"I never wanted that," I said. "You did! I only wanted normality, not some..."

"All lovers want the same thing," he said. "Disillusionment leads them to pretend they want less." He stretched out his hands to me. "Everything awaits us, everything is prepared. How this came to be, I can't explain. Except that it makes a funny kind of sense for the ultimate result of science to be an incomprehensible magic."

I was still afraid, but my fear was dwindling, lulled by the rhythms of his words, and though I perceived him to be death, I also saw clearly that he was Reynolds, Reynolds made whole.

"This was inevitable," he said. "We both knew something miraculous could happen... that's why we stayed together, despite everything. Don't be afraid. I could never hurt you more than I have."

"What's inevitable?" I asked. He was too close for me to think of running, and I thought I could delay him, put him off with questions.

"Can't you feel it?" He was so close, now, I could feel his heat. "I can't tell you what it is, Carolyn, only that it is, that it's life... a new life."

"The Spider," I said. "I don't understand, I..."

"No more questions," he said, and slipped the robes from my shoulders.

His touch was warmer than natural, making my eyelids droop, but causing no pain. He pulled me down to the floor, and in a moment he was inside me, we were heart to heart, moving together, enveloped in that pale flickering glow, and amidst the pleasure I felt, there was pain, but so little it did not matter...

...and I, too, was afraid, afraid I was not who I thought, that flames and nothingness would obliterate us, but in having her once again, in the consummation of my long wish, my doubts lessened...

...and I could no longer tell whether my eyes were open or closed, because sometimes when I thought them closed, I could see him, his face slack with pleasure, head flung back...

...and when I thought they were open I would have a glimpse of another place wherein she stood beside me, glimpses at first too brief for me to fix them in mind...

...and everything was whirling, changing, my body, my spirit, all in flux, and death -- if this was death -- was a long decline, a sweep of golden radiance, and behind me I could see the past reduced to a plain and hills carpeted with golden gra.s.ses...

...and around me golden towers, shimmering, growing more stable and settling into form moment by moment, and people shrouded in golden mist who were also becoming more real, acquiring scars and rags and fine robes, carrying baskets and sacks...

...and this was no heaven, no peaceful heaven, for as we moved beneath those crumbling towers of yellow stone, I saw soldiers with oddly shaped spears on the battlements, and the crowds around us were made up of hard-bitten men and women wearing belted daggers, and old crones bent double under the weight of sacks of produce, and younger women with the look of ill-usage about them, who leaned from the doors and windows of smoke-darkened houses and cried out their price...