Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 53

There was a momenf s eye contact; an exchange of understanding so deep, so profound that, released from it, Kim felt giddy. He knows me ...

That fact, so obvious and yet so unexpected, was perhaps the most frightening thing of all. Even Jelka did not know him one tenth as well as this stranger did.

This stranger who was himself. Or all but.

"If s strange, isn't it?" K. said, coming across and sitting on the edge of the desk beside him.

Kim shivered, then asked what was on his mind. "Your physique..." "This?" K. stood, turning about, as if to let Kim study him, as he'd studied the ring. "Vanity, I'm afraid. If s a special drug treatment I concocted." Kim frowned. "Why?"

"To see if I could ... be normal, that is."

"Normal?"

"Physically."

"Ah .. ." Kim looked away. In recent years he had barely thought about it, but there had been a time when it had worried him. To be thought of as some stunted, large-eyed dwarf all the time - it was hard not to let that affect you.Even so, he had never once thought of actually doing something about it That seemed such a waste of his talent when there was so much else that needed to be done. Vanity. Kim looked up again. "I'm surprised."

"Yes. I knew you would be. But then you don't know me as well as I know you."

"Clearly not."

"Then perhaps you should get to know me a little better before we decide whaf s to be done." K. nodded towards the journals. "I tried to be as candid as I could. You see, I knew you'd read them. Or someone like you."

Kim opened the journal to the first page and began to read: "To be truthful, I did not know what to expect. My death, perhaps; the soft tissues of my body imploding under vacuum conditions, flesh and bone freezing even as they shattered; cold sculptures, drifting for eternity. But no. I did not die. There was no searing cold, no pain beyond enduring. Pa.s.sing through that burning hoop I stepped out into a place I knew. Or had known, in another life.

The day. Its stench so awful that I almost gagged. And dark. A darkness unimaginable. That, too, I had blocked off in memory. It was like being blind. And yet, all about me, I could hear the scufflings of a thousand unseen creatures.

Why here? I asked, wishing even as I did that I had brought some kind of tight to pierce the sfygian gloom.

A wish at once fulfilled, for even as I turned, the darkness just behind me split, a shaft of burning, shimmering light spilling out across those dead lands.

The Gateway! And there before it the pool'And finally - there at the pool's far edge - myself, a stick-like creature of sinew and bone, sat back upon its heels, both hands shielding those obscenely bulging eyes against the blinding light, the mouth gaping, an expression of pure awe on the emaciated face. I knew the moment. Knew that in that one instant the vision had been imprinted w me; the seed of light sown deep in the rich, dark earth of my psyche - the same seed that would one day drive me up and out until I finally reached the stars. Back I'd gone. Back in time. But why?

It did not see me there. Did not, or maybe could not, it was so bright. Yet the three who came down from the Above -Lehmann, Berdichev and Wyatt - he did see. Oh yes, he saw them and trembled, thinking them G.o.ds, gaping as the unrelenting tight glittered off the gla.s.s of their tall, domed helmets and the silvered metal of their contamination suits.

The child's screech - my screech, I guess it was - surprised me. It was a raw, high-pitched sound that seemed almost to have been torn from deep within the stick-like creature. Yet even as it faded, two shots rang out, the sound of their concussions deafening in that enclosed s.p.a.ce. I stared, shocked, at the smoking gun in Berdichev's hand.

Horrified, I took a step towards myself. 'No-oh!' But already things were losing substance. Even as the life-blood pumped from my other self, even as the three men turned, surprised, to stare at me, so the world about me - the three men, the Gate, the Qay itself- shimmered like a film that has had every other frame removed.

And then, with a suddenness that literally took my breath, I was back here, in this room, the image of the burning hoop fading in the air." Kim looked up thoughtfully, giving a little nod to the air, then read on, devouring the pages.

After a while he sat back, rubbing at his eyes. He was beginning to understand, to see what K. had meant about the narrowness of the spectrum in which they existed. Gates. The gate by the pool had been the first, but there had been endless gates in his life. In this existence he had pa.s.sed through all of them unscathed, or relatively so, yet in another life ... No, he corrected himself, in other lives.

In other lives he'd failed. In some he had not even begun. Oh yes, he saw it clearly now. Endless worlds in which he had not existed. Worlds where he had not met and married Jelka and so had not conceived Sampsa or Mileja. Worlds where DeVore had triumphed because he, Kim Ward, had not been there to counter him. Or was that the truth? Had he really made a difference?He looked back down, reading on, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. It was almost two hours before he looked up again. K. was sitting just across from him. Kim blinked, surprised. He had not even noticed him return. "So?" K. asked. "What do you think?"

What did he think? The accounts that had followed the first were all equally graphic. And always, without fail, he'd died. It was as if his life had been a maze and at any point along the way he might have made the wrong turn and come upon a dead end. His end. His death.

His tutor, T'ai Cho, who in this life had loved him and cherished him, yes and saved him many a time - particularly that time after the fight with Janko when Director Andersen would have trashed him without a second thought - in other worlds had ga.s.sed him, unable to see the light of intelligence that burned within him.

And even when he'd made it through - to Rehab and beyond - it was to die in stupid, silly ways, in accidents, or at the hands of overzealous guards. Or, in the worst case, at the hands of Marshal Karr - executed on Li Yuan's palace steps as an uncaring Jelka looked on with dispa.s.sionate eyes. To have survived at all was a miracle of kinds.

So what did he think?

"I think someone must have trod these paths before us. To find us, I mean."

"Master Tuan?"

"He certainly implied as much."

K. blinked, surprised. "Did he?"

"You mean he hasn't spoken to you?"

"Yes, but not of that Not of seeking and finding us." Kim sat back. "I remember him telling me something once, about that time after the attack on SimFic's labs, when he found me and looked after me. He told me that he'd first dreamed of me, and then, how he had later followed the dream, step for step, and how it had come true, almost though if he were still dreaming. And yet it was real. It really had come to pa.s.s, almost as if there were but a single path to follow. But now... well, now we are in a hall of mirrors, and who is to say which path is the right path, and which dream the reality?" "Then maybe thaf s our purpose, Kim. To make things singular again. To unify the universes, so that there's only one. Maybe it was never meant to be like this, fragmented like the veins of a leaf into a thousand million pathways. Maybe we're meant to be the glue that bonds it all together again." "And maybe not" "Maybe not And yet I feel certain that we have some purpose." Kim glanced at the open pages of the journal, then met K's eyes once more. "Can I finish reading this?"

"Of course. But look, I'm being a very poor host. You must be hungry. Can I get you supper?"

"Supper?" And then he remembered. Jelka. Jelka would be worried if she went down to his workroom and found him gone. She would think ... What would she think? That he had gone without telling her? Well, so he had, only ... Only what?

"Okay," he said. "But then I must get back." He said it as if it were a simple thing, as if he only had to catch a train, perhaps, or go through a door and walk down a hallway, whereas the truth was he would have to trust to that device again - to pa.s.s through a wheel of burning fire into another universe entirely. It hit him. Until that moment he had been sleepwalking. Drifting. But suddenly ... Kim held on to the desk. K stared at him, concerned. "Are you all right?" "Yes. Yes, I ..." He laughed, dismissing it "I felt giddy, thaf s all. I felt..." "... like a ghost of yourself?"

Kim nodded. "All those other worlds. Their very existence seems to drain you. To rob you of your essential solidity."

K. smiled; a faint smile, but the first he'd given Kim. "If s okay. I call it the Existentiality Effect It wears off, after a while." "Does it?" Kim paused then. "For a moment then, I felt like a painted figure on a canvas. I felt..."

The same gap. The same words. I fdt... And then a gap. Because what he felt wasn't like anything he'd felt before. Was something there were no words for. Kim felt...

As if I were both here and not here.

Which was impossible, and yet the physical truth. "You need to eat," K. said, getting up. "There's something very real about eating."

"Yes ... yes, I guess there is."

"Then come. There's some stew on the hob."

There was a moment before he knew. A moment when he had all of the pieces he needed, but hadn't yet connected them. The ring. The abnormal, almost psychotic moroseness. That driven quality in the eyes.

And that single word he'd uttered when K. had asked him what he wanted to see. Her. By which he'd meant his mother. But K. had not meant her. No, he had meant her - Jelka.

Kim stood there in the kitchen, staring open-mouthed at the picture on the wall, struck by the significance of the black frame that surrounded that familiar face, filled with a sudden, gut-wrenching understanding. "Aiya..."

K turned and saw at once where Kim was looking. "She didn't make it back," he said, continuing to ladle the steaming lamb stew into a bowl. "It was the virus. You know, Golden Dreams. She was too weak. Her and Mileja both. There was nothing we could do."

He came across and offered Kim the bowl. "Do you want bread with that?"

Kim shook his head. For a moment longer he stood there, stunned, trying to imagine how he would have felt had Jelka died that time; how he'd have coped, that was, if he'd have coped at all, for he could not imagine a life without her there at the still centre of it all. There like a rock to which his soul was anch.o.r.ed.

He could simply not imagine it

But then, he did not have to. He had only to look at his other self, there on the far side of the kitchen. That strange, unhappy man. "I'm sorry," he said. "I..."

A moment's sudden realisation stopped him dead in his tracks. He had what this man had lost Had lost and thought irredeemable. The most important thing in his life. And he had it Identical in all respects.

"The G.o.ds help us ..." Kim whispered.

K turned. "Pardon?"

Kim sat, the bowl unregarded on the table before him. How did he even begin to broach this?

K. came across and sat, then began to spoon up his stew. After a moment he stopped and looked across at Kim. "Aren't you hungry, Kim?" Not now, Kim thought, but in lieu of an answer that would suffice, he picked up his own spoon and began to eat in a desultory fashion. Strange thoughts were filling his head. Indeed, the strangest thoughts he had ever had. And pictures, too. Images ...

Squeezing his eyes tight shut, he let his spoon fall with a clatter to the table.

"Kim?"

He felt KL's hand upon his arm.

"Kim, are you all right?"

Kim nodded, then opened his eyes again. K. was leaning right across the table, staring into his face. "Is it about that?"

His head gestured past Kim towards the painting. Kim nodded, afraid to say what he'd been thinking. Afraid because, once said, it could not be retracted.

"Are you afraid of me?" K. asked, his eyes staring into Kim's candidly. "Because if you are, you have no reason to be. I would not harm you. No, nor your Jelka." Kim shivered. So he understood.

"It must be hard," Kim said after a moment "I mean, this situation.""Yes .. ." K. relaxed back into his seat, but his eyes remained locked with Kim's. "I've tried not to think too much about it Tried not to ... well, picture things."

Again Kim shivered. Too dose, he thought, finding this intimacy of understanding almost unbearable. Yet at the same time he knew it could not be helped. This was the price of their doubleness.

"I know what you mean."

K. nodded. "Myself, I would be guarded. Oh, and jealous, too." Kim swallowed but did not answer. He did not have to answer. It was the truth, after all, "All the same, I would like to see her again. Or should I say, I would like to meet her... as she is now. With your permission, of course."

How could he deny such a request? If their fates had been reversed, would he not have wanted precisely that? To see the woman he'd loved - the woman he'd thought lost forever? Of course he would. Yet he feared it Feared it more than he'd feared anything in his whole life.

Kim looked away, knowing that what he felt showed in his face - that the other could read him as clearly as one read a page. But he could not help it "You must not be ashamed of what you feel, Kim. I understand. You do not want to share her with me."

Kim looked to him. It was unfair. He knew it was unfair. But that was how he felt He nodded.

Yes, and saw the disappointment in the other's face. And behind it, the longing.

Oh G.o.ds, the longing. How he understood that. 'I'm sorry .. ." But K. waved the apology away. "It was some while before I got up the courage to visit you, you know. I found you months ago. I spent one whole evening watching you from the shadows of your workroom. But then she came into the room. Until then, you see, I thought you'd lost her too. I thought..." K. looked down, then pushed his bowl away, as if he too had lost his appet.i.te."I imagined how you'd feel. Or rather, how I'd feel if I were in your place. How I'd rather die than share her, even with myself. Strange that, eh? I mean, where's the logic in it? But then, when it comes down to feelings, there is no logic is there, only gut reaction. Which is to say, my soul's brother, that I understand. Yet if I could meet her once and talk with her." Kim hesitated, then nodded.

"Then let that be enough."

They went back to Kalevala. Back to Kim's reality. And there, while K. waited in the workroom, Kim went up to speak to Jelka.

As he came into the kitchen she turned, smiling at him. "How's it going?" Kim went across and, without a word, held her, closing his eyes, drinking in the wonderful smell of her, the warmth of her body against his own, knowing in those few instants that he was blessed. Blessed beyond all imagining. He moved back a little, his eyes studying her eyes. "We've a visitor."

"A visitor? But I didn't hear the bell."

"No ... I mean I've brought someone back with me."

She laughed, confused. "Back?" Then her expression changed. "You mean ... back?" He nodded. "But there's something you have to understand. Something very important You see, if s ma" "You?"

"Yes, me. Or almost me. Like me, but not exactly me."

He saw her mouth fall open, the lips parting in shock. "You." "That's right. But thaf s not all. In his universe, he lost you. Lost you to the Golden Dreams plague."

Her eyes widened. He saw the understanding there, the deep compa.s.sion, and felt again that awful stab of jealousy. Pure jealousy. He was trembling now. "But I'm afraid."

"Afraid?""About you ... and him."

"But he is you, Kim."

"No, he isn't And that's the point."

"Ahh ..."

Jelka sat, then shook her head, trying to think it through. "So you're afraid I'll fall in love with him? And maybe want to leave you for him?" "Or share you with him."

Jelka's eyes met his. "Is that what you're afraid of?"

He nodded.

"And still you brought him?"

Again he nodded. His mouth was dry now. "I told him that I wouldn't" "You told him." There was a flicker of a smile, quickly suppressed. "And what about me? Did you consult me before you told him?"

"I..." He looked down, ashamed of himself. G.o.ds, it was a mess. And there he'd been thinking it was all a simple matter of equations. But where was the mathematics of love and jealousy? Where was the graph that charted the movements of the human heart? '1 love you, you know."

His head came up. He swallowed, then nodded. "I know." But it didn't help. He was still afraid. Afraid of himself. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help it "And if I find that that love extends to him too, that would be no betrayal, Kim. Honestly. Indeed, it would be the most natural thing, don't you think?" He gave an embarra.s.sed laugh. "Do you think Tom and Sampsa have these problems?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Only ..." he paused, then carried the logic of the thing through, "they both have their twins. Ai Yin and Lin Yu are both alive. But if one of them were to die ..."

"Kim?

Her tone startled him. She was staring at him sternly now. 'This isn't like you." He bridled. "No? You forget who I defied to win you" "I don't forget. But he defied my father, too. Remember that, Kim." She sighed. "You must trust yourself, Kim. Literally so. Would you hurt him?"