Macrolife (19 page)

White clouds sailed across a bright blue sky. His eyes were open for an instant before he became fully awake. He lifted his head and it seemed that the suns were rising in an effort to catch up with the clouds. The city around him was silvery blue and charcoal black, reflecting sunlight, clouds, and blue sky from a million metallic scraps and shards. He lay back and closed his eyes again, lost in the strangeness of awakening here. He might have lived here all his life; home was a dream from which he had just awakened, and in a moment he would remember everything….

He sat up and saw Anulka looking up at the flitter, hands on hips, smiling. She appeared older in daylight, more in control of herself.

The canopy lifted as he climbed out. In a moment he was standing in front of her.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hel-lo?' she asked uncertainly, watching his face.

Feeling nervous, he looked around. Where the level was torn open, canyons opened into a daylit gloom. The metal plain of towers extended to the horizon in every direction except westward, where he saw some greenery. Slowly the colossus was toppling back into the soil; barring a major shift in the planet's crust, there would be nothing left above ground in a million years. Yet even without its power and population, the city had a kind of life.

Anulka was looking at him questioningly, but with confidence. He smiled at her. There was not much he could say until he acquired a log of their everyday words; he would have to make one trip home to compare notes at the language terminal and undergo imprinting. When he returned, it would be possible to ask her fairly complex questions. He could reach the proficiency terminals from the flitter, but imprinting required a direct link to Humanity II.

Looking at Anulka, he felt that she was older than Margaret, although he knew that this could not be true. Despite the decaying city, the planet seemed youthful, growing unplanned, turning through its seasons, renewing itself within its cocoon of air, passing through one life after another, always changing in the timeless light of its suns. The life of the planet was something different from the beggarly life of its human inhabitants. The suns were a pair of wastrels, negligent gods dissipating their power into space, energy so abundant that even a small fraction would be enough to transform this world.

Anulka turned and motioned for him to follow her. He hesitated, then walked after her to the tower. She climbed into the opening. He stepped in after her and started down the ladder. There was more light in the shaft during the day, and his eyes adjusted quickly.

He looked down and saw her growing smaller beneath his feet. He quickened his pace down the rungs.

After a while he called her name and she answered with a questioning sound.

“Nothing,” he said. “I only wanted to hear your voice.”

She laughed.

There was an earthy smell in the shaft, as if something were decaying at the bottom. After what seemed a long time, he stopped and looked down. He saw her dark shape moving in a circle of light. She had reached bottom and was pacing as she waited for him.

He hurried, but when he reached bottom she was already leading the way into a long tunnel. He followed, remembering when as a child he had played in the engineering labyrinth under countryside. He remembered watching mysterious adults doing their work, persons who had been old a century before his birth.

Anulka led him to another shaft. As he made his way down the rungs of the ladder, he remembered the first time he had seen the generators at home, massive objects containing the power of stars, surrounded by mushroom-like gravities, ringed by feeders and converters. He imagined the internal fires of the planet below him and stopped; he looked down and could see no end to the shaft.
What am I doing here
? he asked himself as the possibility of danger became apparent.
I could die here and no one would ever find me.

“Hel-looo!” she called up to him in a musical voice.

He continued, quickening his pace. It grew darker and the air became damp; he heard water running down the wall of the shaft. The rungs became sticky and cold. He slipped and landed on the next rung; the cold air hurt his lungs as he caught his breath.

He went down slowly, stepping carefully from rung to rung until his confidence returned. Reaching bottom, he stepped through a circular opening into a dimly lit room. Anulka was waiting for him. She turned and walked into another long passageway. He peered after her, saw the light at the end, and followed quickly.

They came out into daylight, onto ground covered with thick grass and tall weeds. John looked up and the sight startled him. He saw the sky through a massive breach in the city. A wedge had been cut out, exposing level after level on both sides. The area of open ground was at least two kilometers long and one kilometer wide, strewn with hundreds of pieces of glass, plastic junk, tiles, and large pieces of flooring. He looked up again at the open levels; beams and ragged platforms jutted into the air, threatening to break off and come crashing down.

Anulka was walking down a path through the weeds. He started after her. There was a fire and a tent ahead. People had once lived here, he thought, wondering how he would feel if home were somehow cut open like this city.

Anulka led him into the small camp and he recognized the two men sitting next to the fire; they had been with her on the previous night. There was a wooden table next to the tent. The surface was piled up with old books and canisters. Anulka motioned for him to sit by the fire. She went into the tent as he seated himself.

The man who came out with her was powerfully built, with white hair combed straight back and confined by a piece of cord. He wore a black shirt made of fine cloth; his pants were coarse and baggy, held up by a wide brown belt. He went to the fire and stepped into his brown boots, stomping hard on the ground to settle in. Then he turned and looked at John with a steady gaze. His face was lined and leathery, but there was someone familiar behind the dark tan.

Anulka pointed at the old giant and said, “Blakfar.”

“Jonbulero,” the big man said. He smiled and opened his palms toward John in greeting.

Sunlight came into the canyon, lighting up thousands of inner spaces on the right side of the cutaway, brightening the grass and weeds.

Blakfar lowered himself into the chair next to the table. “Old books,” he said, pointing. “City library, starry.” His Russo-Anglic was old, obviously acquired from reading. “Off-world?” he asked, pointing at the sky, then at John. It startled John to hear the language as a series of familiar sounds, triggering his imprinted memory of its structure and vocabulary.

John nodded, slowly accepting the idea that this was at least a relation of Blackfriar's, a planet-weathered descendant of the man who had brought a starship across the great dark from Tau Ceti. John felt that he had come upon an old friend who had not changed, despite the centuries and unimaginable forces working against him.

Anulka spread a blanket next to the chair, and Blakfar motioned for him to sit down. John obeyed, rehearsing the words of the simple question that he wanted Blakfar to understand.

John pointed to the city around them, at the sky. “What happened here?”

The gray-haired man nodded with a sad smile. There was pain in his eyes, the memory of pride and accomplishment, living now only in those who could stumble through the old words.

Anulka's two companions were looking at John suspiciously.
They're afraid of me
, he thought.

Blakfar said, “Skyship from Ceti…more than hundred fathers ago…we left the ship in the sky…we built cities…war, sickness…”

John listened, understanding the old man less and less, catching a word here and there, enough to know that the cities had been abandoned, scientific skills lost when the population declined. Those alive now were completely dependent on the natural ecology. John doubted if there could be more than a million human beings on the planet.

They had learned new ways, Blakfar said, but the line of his father lived to keep the old skills alive, for when they would be needed. Every spring he came to the city to learn what he could from the ruins. “I am Blakfar,” he finished.

Throughout the chanted story, there had been a look of awe and reverence in the faces of Anulka and the two men by the fire. She sat cross-legged on the blanket with John, her gaze fixed on the old man. The flow of the sounds had affected John also, and it was a moment before he realized that Blakfar had finished.

“You…” Blakfar said, searching for a word.

John nodded. “I understand.” Anulka smiled, as if taking pride in discovering him for the old man.

John thought of Franklyn Blackfriar. Would he want to help when he learned of this relation of his? John looked at Blakfar more closely. The family resemblance was clear, though he was certain that Blakfar was not a clone. These people could not have cloned anyone. His eyes were blue, while Frank's were gray; yet the look in them was the same, and the voices were similar.

John looked at Anulka, and she smiled at him. A long shadow cast by the western side of the canyon was creeping toward the camp. The suns went into eclipse, darkening the canyon, stripping the weeds and grass of their stolen colors.

John stood up and motioned that he had to leave. Anulka rose and took his hand. He was anxious to reach the flitter, so he could tell someone what he had found. Blakfar said something to Anulka, and she started to lead the way down the path. Then the old man got up, and John saw a look of loss come into his face. Blakfar wanted the offworlder to stay, John realized. The old man knew what it meant. Somewhere beyond the sky, the past of power and plenty was still real, not just in books and stories, but a living thing, and here was a visitor who might bring it all back. John saw that the big man was struggling to control his feelings; after all, he might never see the offworlder again. John felt a sense of duty mingling with the curiosity that had brought him to Lea.

“I'll be back, Blakfar,” he said, and took the old man's hand, holding it for a moment to reassure him. When the look of desperation softened in the aged face, John turned to leave.

“Tomas Blakfar!” the old giant called after him, the syllables echoing in the ruins. John looked back and waved. The man was grinning at him. No, he would not forget the name. He turned away and almost tripped on a piece of rubble; then he felt a strange sensation in his nose and sneezed. Someone laughed behind him. He turned to see Blakfar glaring at the young men, who were still sitting by the fire. John felt their distrust as he turned to follow Anulka.

The upward climb was harder than coming down. He felt that Anulka was paying him more attention than before, even when she was not looking back to check. He was determined not to show her that he was afraid. She seemed to be laughing inwardly, as if she knew something he did not.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity of sweating and catching his breath, they climbed out of the tower at sky level. She walked ahead toward the flitter, stopped, and turned to face him, smiling as he came near. He stopped close to her and she looked at him very carefully; he found himself completely at ease as he looked back at her.

She touched his cheek with a sturdy, long-boned hand. Reaching around his neck, she pulled him to her and kissed him once quickly; then again more slowly; a third time with care and intensity. Each time he grew more familiar with her touch and more surprised by his own feelings. He drew her to him and held her, becoming aware of her odors, the taste of her mouth, the texture of her black hair, the unbroken skin of her face. She kissed him again, and the musky warmth of her excitement enveloped him. He knew that she did not bathe as he did at home, and she might be carrying disease; she was something wild from the wilderness around the city, and she was taking possession of him. As he kissed her, he could not tell whether she was his or he hers. The towers whirled and he fell down next to her on the sun-warmed metal, communicating with expression and gesture, and laughter, forgetting his fears.

“Do you want to go inside?” he asked, pointing to the flitter.

She shook her head no. He left her, climbed into the flitter, and brought out his blanket, spreading it next to her. She took off his clothes and her own, and it seemed that the warm light of the suns would be the only covering he would ever need. She lay on her back, eyes closed, and he wondered at her look of contentment.

Slowly she drew him onto her, caressing his thighs and stomach with her tanned fingers. Her breasts were firm, dark-nippled, rising and falling evenly. Her legs parted beneath him and he reached to touch her dark tangle. She opened her eyes and looked at him as he entered her, and her face darkened as the suns went into eclipse. A breeze blew across his back as he compared her vitality with Margaret's erotic calm. He was completely alive as he moved with her, open to every sound and smell of the city and surrounding land. Briefly, the eclipse at his back made him afraid, but her closed eyes calmed him.

She spent herself first, winding her legs around his back, opening her eyes and smiling at him. He looked into her, through her eyes, to the woman who welcomed him; the knot of pleasure opened within him, and he felt her strength containing him.

They struggled with each other for a long time. The brightness of the suns returned, warming them until their sweat mingled as they tried again and again to regain their first moment, and succeeded. An afternoon wind dried them with its coolness and they wrapped themselves in the blanket, exhausted. The wind whistled somewhere through broken places as he fell asleep next to her, thinking that it might have almost been a song.

 

It was twilight when he awoke. The suns were a red mass buried in gray cumulus on the horizon, casting a red-brown glow across the top of the city. Anulka was gone. There was a strong wind coming with the night, carrying a sea smell; the piping he had heard before was now a howl from below, as if some beast were trapped there, struggling to break free. He heard the tower creak and sat up.