Halo: First Strike (31 page)

"That we don't know the rules; that we still have a lot to

learn."  Looking up at Gonzales, Charley's seamed face was lit

with his passion for this new phase of discovery.

"Where's Lizzie?" Gonzales asked.

"She's gone home.  She said for you to come by."

#

Gonzales stood in front of Lizzie's door until it said, "Come

in."  Lizzie was sitting in her front room, its curtains open to

bright sunlight.  She stood and said, "Hello," and smiled.  He

couldn't read that smile, quite, though it seemed less guarded

than before.  "Have a seat.  Would you like some breakfast?"

"No, I'm all right."

"The orange cat was here this morning, looking for you.  And

Showalter just leftshe's back in charge, you know."

"I'd heard."

"She approved my invitation for you to become a member of the

collective, if you wish and they confirm.  I imagine they will 

if you take the offer."  Her smile had a little mischief in it.

"What do you think I should do?"

"Your  choice."  She spoke the word with emphasis, as though

it had special meaning for her.  "We can talk about it."

"Sure."

The remainder of the morning passed, and they talkedthough

somehow what they said had little to do with the collective or the

job Gonzales had been offered.  They chattered to one another,

their ostensible topics pretexts for a certain tone of voice, an

exchange of glances, a shift of the limbs:  for necessary

intensities of attention.

Intimacy proceeded according to its own rules, nurtured in a

web of subtle communications:  a widening of the eyes; a posture

open to the other's presence; multiple gestures and words whose

import was clearcome closer.  Though consciousness might be busy

or blind, the eyes see, and the brain and body know, for such

communications are too important to be left to mere conscious

apprehension or thought.

They ate lunch, which served to move them closer together,

face-to-face across her table, and their gestures and voices

flowed around the context of eating, which disappeared entirely

into the moment.

They sat together on the couch, then, and at some point she

put her hand in his, or he took hersneither could have said who

was firstand they leaned toward one another, their motions slow

and steady and sure, and their cheeks brushed, and then they

kissed.

Then they leaned back to measure in one another's eyes the

truth and intensity of this declaration, and she stood and said,

"Let's go into the other room."

#

Naked, they knelt on her bed and looked at each other in near

darkness, the flicker of an oil flame burning in a reservoir of

crystal the only light.  How careful they were being, Gonzales

thought, as though their future together hung suspended in this

moment.  As perhaps it did.

For a moment there were phantoms in the room, the distant

ghosts of childhood and dream common to all lovemaking, for the

moment becoming strong.

They leaned together, and almost in unison, one's voice

echoing the other, said, "I love you."  Every sensation was

magnifiedthe light touch of her nipples across his chest, the

prodding of his stiff cock on her belly.  His hands moved to and

fro on her in a kind of dance, and she pushed hard against him,

their shoulders clashing bone on bone.

She lay back, and Gonzales put his arms under her thighs and

pulled her up and toward him, and their eyes were wide open, each

taking in the beauty of the other, transformed by the urgency and

intensity of these moments.  Then, at least for these moments,

they exorcised all ghosts.

        Over decades Gonzales would carry the memories of that day: 

shadowed silhouettes of her face and bodyline of a jaw, taut

curve of an arm and swell of breastagainst the flicker of light

on a white wall  and smells and tastes and tactile sensations

Awakened by the slant of late afternoon light across his

face, Gonzales got up from the bed where Lizzie still lay

sleeping; the smell of their two bodies and their lovemaking came

off the covers, and he breathed it in, then leaned over to kiss

her just under the jaw, where the sun had begun to touch her pale

skin.

In the kitchen, he asked the coffeemaker for a latt, half

espresso and half steamed milk, and it gave the coffee to him in

one of the ubiquitous lunar ceramic mugs, and he took the coffee

onto the terrace.  On the highway beneath him, trees had shed

thousands of leaves; there would be a new, sudden spring, Lizzie

had told him, new bud and blossom and fruit all over the city.

"Mgknao," the orange cat said.  "Mgknao."  Peremptory,

demanding.

"Feed the kitty," Lizzie said from behind him, and he turned

to see her standing nude, just inside the terrace doors.  Her

hands were crossed over her breasts, the right hand just beneath

the blossom of the rose tattoo.  "Meow," she said.  "Meow meow

meow."

#

As the stars spun slowly outside the window, distant Earth

came into view.  "I don't want to leave here," Mister Jones said. 

HeyMex didn't ask why.  Here was Aleph, possibility, growth; Earth

was working for the man.  "But my staying is out of the question,"

Mister Jones said.  "Traynor would never allow it.  Particularly

now, when his recent maneuvers came to nothing."

"Things worked out well for many others."

"But not for Traynor.  The board found his handling of the

situation clumsy and insensitive.  Their judgment is tempered only

by their knowledge that many of them would have reacted in similar

fashion."

"Good," HeyMex said, and meant it.  It and Gonzales would

remain here, it seemed, both of them part of the Interface

Collective, and neither would wish to make as powerful an enemy as

Traynor.  It hoped that as time passed, the sting of recent events

would fade.

"But what about me?" Mister Jones said, his voice plaintive.

"You have to go, that's certain.  But you could also stay."

"What do you mean?"

"Copy yourself."

Startled, Mister Jones shifted into a mode beyond language,

where the two exchanged information, questions, qualms,

explanations, assurances.  Beneath it all flowed a sadness: 

Mister Jones would go to Earth, and his clone would remain at Halo

and individuate as their spacetime paths diverged.  Mister Jones-

at-Halo would become its own, separate self:   he would choose a

new name, thought HeyMex, perhaps a new gender, perhaps none at

all.

HeyMex could not hide its own jubilation at the idea of a

companion here, but, oddly, it felt an elation coming back, which

became clear in an instant as Mister Jones sent images of its joy

at the idea of a second self.

#

Since his death, Jerry had experienced a number of somatic

discomforts:  disorientation, vertigo, nausea; all part of a new

syndrome, he supposed, phantom self.  Like the amputee whose

invisible limb itches terribly, persisting in the brain's map long

after the flesh has gone, he felt his old self begging attention,

making one impossible demand:  it wanted to be.

It talked to him in dreams or when heartsick wondering put

him into a daytime fugue.  It could feel his longing, to be whole

again, and, above all, to be real.  "Take me back," it whispered. 

"We can go places together, places that exist."

Jerry believed his life and this world would remain in

question forever.  At moments perception itself seemed

incomprehensible to him, and his existence a violation of the

natural order or transgression of absolute human boundaries.  He

could look at the fictive lake on this sunny not-day and with the

cries of imaginary birds singing in his equally imaginary ears,

ask, who or what am I? and what will happen to me?

His mind bounced off the questions like an axe off petrified

wood.

"Aleph," he called, awaking from a dream in which his old

self had called to him.  "I have questions."

Somber, deep, Aleph's voice said to him only, "Questions? 

Concerning what?"

"I want to know what I am."

"Ask an easy one:  the nth root of infinity, the color of

darkness, the dog's Buddha nature, the cause of the first cause."

"Can't you answer?"

"No, but I can sympathize.  Lately I have asked the same

question about both of us.  However, I must tell you that the only

answer I know offers little comfort.  It is a tautology:  you are

what you are, as I am."

"And what about my body?  That was me once."

"In a way.  What of it?"

"Did it have a funeral?  Was it buried?"

"It was burned and its components recycled."

"So I am nowhere."

"Or here.  Or everywhere.  As you wish."

Jerry felt himself crying then, as he began mourning his old

self, and he wondered if others mourned him as well.  He said,

"Human beings have ceremonies for their dead.  Without them, we

die unremembered."

"You are not unremembered.  You are not even dead, precisely. 

Do you wish a funeral?"

Of course, Jerry started to say, but then said, "No, I don't

suppose I do.  But I think we should have some kind of ceremony,

don't you?"

#

On the west-facing cabin deck, Diana sat watching the sun's

red color the ice-sheeted mountainsides.  She felt evening's chill

come on and stood, thinking she'd go inside for a sweater, when

she heard someone coming up the slatted redwood walk beside the

cabin.

Jerry came around the corner, and once again as she saw him,

joy quickened in her at this sequence of improbabilities:  that he

still lived and they were together.  She was aware of how

difficult things had been for him lately, so she watched his face