Periphery (16 page)

Forcing herself to think coolly, she sat down and typed in a response, this time short and rationally persuasive. She pressed “Send” and waited.

No answer appeared. Aleph cursed under her breath, then got up to wash and dress. When she had finished, her mind was made up: she would have to talk to Johanson in person.

She strode to the door. It would not budge. She rattled it, threw her shoulder against it, swore at it, but it remained shut. She was a prisoner.

She lay back on her bed, mind racing. Had Johanson intuited her unnatural involvement in the job, and decided she was a security risk? Or was this all a pretense to keep her off balance and under control? She saw deception and manipulation everywhere.

She tried to force herself to memorize the precious fullness of personhood inside her. She wanted to remember it, but knew she would not. It would fade away, as a hundred other personalities had faded, till she had no self even to long for it back.

At last a soft knock sounded on her door. She stared resentfully for several seconds. When at last she peeled off her bed and went to the door, it opened freely in her hand. No guard stood there. She stepped out into the hall. Lounging against the wall was Lazarus, dressed in a black guard’s uniform, a plastic helmet under her arm. She grinned like a naughty child.

“How did you—” Aleph started. In answer, Lazarus held up a cafeteria knife with a magnetic strip pasted on the blade. Aleph looked down at her door lock, where the key card was supposed to fit.

“You’re my prisoner now,” Lazarus said, fitting the helmet over her black curls and snapping down the reflective eyeshade. Her body took on the tense stance of a guard. When she gestured with her fist, the flash of silver in her hand looked like a stun gun.

They marched down the hall together, Lazarus directing the way. When they passed some people, Aleph looked past them with a jaunty defiance. Their eyes followed her, sparing not a glance for the guard at her back.

They turned into a little-used service tunnel, then took a spiral stair down three levels till it ended in a dimly lit hall full of storage crates. Lazarus paused to remove her helmet.

“How did you get free?” Aleph asked.

Lazarus gave a low chuckle. “I still have some friends.”

Past the tangle of crates, they came out onto a balcony overlooking a vast, curving gallery that ran around the outer shell of the satellite. Below them, what should have been floor was paved in glass windows looking out on the dark sky. Above hung a ceiling of plants growing downward. The smell was like a midsummer night, heavy as narcotic.

Lazarus slipped through the balcony railing and lowered herself down till her feet met the windows. She walked out on the glass, looking as if she were treading the sky. She gestured Aleph to follow. “Don’t worry, it won’t break.” Carefully, Aleph lowered herself from the balcony. It was eerie, walking on nothing.

In the windows to their left the huge arc of earth was rising, speeding with the spin of the drum. They walked toward it till it lay below their feet, blue-green seas swirling with clouds. An uneven stretch of brown coastline interrupted the smooth expanse of water.

Lazarus spoke softly. “‘O Earth, how like to Heaven, with what delight could I have walked thee round…’” She turned to Aleph. Her face glowed with a thin sheen of sweat in the earthlight. “I love this place. I can believe I am an angel here, standing in the sky, looking down on Earth with the secret of eternal life in my hands. I think sometimes I could break through this glass and fly down there like Prometheus.”

“Do you know what I see?” Aleph said, looking down past her feet. “Down there, to me, is just a fog of humanity. You can’t breathe without smelling their instincts on the wind.” She knelt to touch the glass. “Out beyond this window is the only place it’s clean, truly clean.”

Before she could rise, Lazarus was kneeling beside her, grasping her shoulders in strong hands, looking deeply into her face. “I was wrong, wasn’t I? You’re the only angel here. You exist in your selfless state of grace, like a bodhisattva in Samadhi. Except we keep thrusting our karma upon you. You are truly free, yet we try to imprison you.” She touched Aleph’s face gently. “What would be heaven for you, Aleph? Being alone? Being free of us all?”

Aleph looked down. The thought of being herself again, as she must, seemed maddeningly vacuous. She wanted to draw out every moment in which she could still be Lazarus.

“My life isn’t what you think,” she said. “It’s like being a screen on which other peoples lives are shown. It’s never knowing who I am or who I will be tomorrow.”

“But you have all the bodies and minds in the world to choose from. You can live a hundred lives, and when you are tired of each one, start another.”

Inside, Aleph could feel Lazarus’ rebelliousness making her angry with her own hurt and helplessness. “But none of them is
me
.”

Lazarus was smiling as if at something immensely sad and immensely true, something only she would ever see. “So what is the solution? Do you want to become human?”

Below them, the other rim of the planet was already wheeling into view, beyond it blackness and stars. Aleph felt as if she knelt on the edge of earth, of all that was familiar. She could feel the abstract emptiness of her self, waiting just beyond the boundaries of Lazarus’ influence.

“I don’t want to be just
any
human,” she said. “I want to be you.”

Lazarus’ heavy eyelids closed for a moment; she breathed out, and Aleph felt the air stir on her cheek. Lazarus put a hand to her pocket and drew out a small box bound in red leather. Her finger pressed a catch and it sprang open. Inside was a hypodermic.

“I can give you my blood,” she said.

Did it matter? Aleph wondered. She was already addicted.

Lazarus laid light fingers on the back of her neck. “Do you want it?”

“Yes.” Aleph rolled up her sleeve.

“Let me have yours as well. Then we will be blood sisters.” Lazarus expertly tied a rubber constrictor around Aleph’s arm, then pierced her vein and drew off blood as dark and pulsing as any human’s. She then tied the band around her own arm, injected the blood, and drew off a second vial of her own. Without pausing, she grasped Aleph’s elbow and plunged the needle in.

There was no sensation, no change. Lazarus was watching her intently. “Now we are neither of us angels,” she said softly. “Now I can ask you to make love to me.”

Aleph’s heart began beating fast, laboring over the alien blood. “Here?” she asked, looking up to the dark balcony above them, the shadows on the ceiling shifting as the earthlight passed.

“Why not? No one is watching. Even if they were…” Lazarus’ head jerked up abruptly, the cords in her neck taut. “Do you hear that, Johanson?” she shouted. “We are going to act human here, in front of all these stars! And you can’t stop us.”

The aftershocks of the sudden shout echoed in the empty room. Lazarus turned back to Aleph, her face blazing with a wild smile. “My God, you look like me,” she said, and then her mouth was on Aleph’s, lips nursing identical lips. Aleph slipped a hand inside Lazarus’ uniform, feeling the wonder of smooth skin, the muscular buttocks, the teasing prickle of hair, and knew it was her own body her fingers explored. Lazarus’ strong lips were on her shoulders, her breast, and she knew that her arousal was Lazarus’ as well. Without a word they stood ritually to undress each other, knowing instinctively every touch and timing. They clasped naked, body to body, upon the glass floor, as the moon rose beneath them.

*

Aleph woke with a headache gnawing at the backs of her eyes. She rolled over and became aware that every inch of her body ached. Her throat was parched. She rose and stumbled into the sanitary alcove. As she drank, her eye fell on the Persian carpet, and she realized she was not in her own room.

The reaction had come over her as she had been lying in Lazarus’ arms, watching the earth speed by beneath them. Nausea and shooting pains had racked her as her body fought back against the invading infection of humanity. She couldn’t have gotten back on her own. Lazarus had helped her through the halls to her room. No, to Lazarus’ room.

“Well, well, well,” said Johanson’s voice. “That was a nice try.”

Disoriented, Aleph looked around. At last she realized the voice came from the terminal. She went into the bedroom and saw Johanson’s face on the screen.

“Go away. It has nothing to do with you,” she said, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Aren’t you going to ask where your lover is?” Johanson said mockingly.

“Where is she?” Aleph asked dully.

“She’s free,” Johanson said. “She went back to Earth on the shuttle this morning. As you will never do, Lazarus.”

The words froze in Aleph’s throat. “What are you talking about?” she said at last. “I’m not Lazarus.”

“Oh, spare me the charade,” Johanson groaned. “I saw through your little plot before you even thought of it. Magic tricks, eh? Trying to switch bodies on me? Pathetic, Lazarus. You forgot there was still a way to distinguish the two of you, no matter how close you got. You have the longevity virus in your blood. She didn’t. A blood test, that’s all it took. Maybe you thought I didn’t know you’d tried the virus on yourself. Well, surprise.”

Aleph’s mind was racing. She thought of the vial of blood Lazarus had drawn from her arm before it was tainted. Lazarus had needed that blood to smuggle herself through Johanson’s net. Magic tricks, indeed. Aleph had seen Lazarus inject it into her own arm; but had there been only one hypodermic?

“Listen, I can tell you how she did it,” Aleph said urgently. “She switched blood vials on you. She has allies to help her, you know. You’ve got to believe me, I’m not Lazarus. I’ll tell you things she couldn’t know. I’ll—”

“Tell the walls,” Johanson said. “You’ll have plenty of time. I’ve given the order to have you transferred upstairs. There’s a box with your name on it, Lazarus, and in a few minutes you’re going to be in it.”

“Stop!” Aleph screamed; but the monitor had gone blank. Terror blinded her. She stood clenching her fists, trying to fight it down. This is Lazarus’ fear, not mine, she told herself. But a mocking voice replied, you
are
Lazarus now. Forever. You are bound by the chains of her blood; you will never be free of her fears.

She caught a glimpse of Lazarus in the mirror and turned to face her. “You dirt!” she shouted. “How could leave me here like this? I trusted you!”

Her head swam; the lights seemed to be dimming. She blinked to get her sight back. But no—the lights actually
had
dimmed. Suddenly the whole wall lit up with an image of Johanson’s face, yellowed teeth grinning at her. She backed away till she hit the edge of the bed and her legs collapsed under her.

“Is that any way to talk to your lover, Lazarus? After what you tried to do to her? You’re the filth, you sodomite. I only wish you had a hundred lives for me to keep you boxed.”

Aleph put her hands over her ears. All she could hear was the thump, thump of the guards coming to take her off to her coffin. Suddenly her eyes fell on the panel in the corner. Lazarus’ suicide trove. She lunged across the room and pried at the panel with her fingernails till it came loose. She seized the pistol, wheeled around, and fired at the opposite wall. The bullet lodged itself in the image of Johanson’s left eye. The projection disappeared.

The room seemed unnaturally quiet. Aleph stood, her ears ringing from the explosion, then slowly turned the gun around to point at her own face. This was what the weapon was for; it was why Lazarus had shown it to her. A last gift of kindness, perhaps. She raised it till the barrel pressed against her forehead.

And then lowered it. She realized, with a little surprise, that Lazarus was incapable of suicide. She was incapable of not hoping, not planning. Not seeking revenge. She faced the mirror.

“I’ll get out of here,” she said to Lazarus. “I swear I’ll be free some day. Not even you can stop me. And when I come looking for you, by God you’ll regret it.”

There were footsteps at her door, then voices. “Watch out, she’s got a gun,” one warned.

Smiling secretively, Aleph laid the gun down on the dresser. As she did, she noticed a book of poetry lying open there, practically under her fingers. Four lines were underscored:

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free;

Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty.

When the door burst open and filled with uniformed muscle, Aleph was waiting calmly. “Well, let’s go,” she said.

*

CIG:
I have never deliberately set out to write about the problem of balancing freedom and love, but it keeps coming up in my stories. There is no pat answer: sometimes my characters achieve both, sometimes they have to sacrifice one or the other. Sometimes, when the characters are as passionate for freedom as for each other, they sacrifice both. I wish I could say I have figured out this question, but it perplexes me as much today as ever.

It was Hoyt’s last day on-planet, and though she was bone-weary from yesterday’s ten-hour shift, she still felt jittery with nerves. High above her the insulating HDPE armored dome surrounded the colony, its underside holographically suggesting a blue sky dotted with small white clouds. The air held a slight chill, signaling that the pre-set climate was sequencing into autumn mode. Somewhere deep below her, Hoyt knew creation computers were busy modulating the requisite battery of artificials in order to make the planetary colony Earthlike, but the details involved too much science for Hoyt to think on long. She had lived in Devulba Dome for twelve years now, and during that entire time she had never been able to forget that she was not on Earth.

Moving her tall, solid frame through the crowds in the free market, she kept a tight grip on the battered backpack draped over her shoulder. She knew that even through her jacket and pants her corded strength was discernible, both in her large hands and her lean face. She really didn’t expect any pickpockets to target her from among the smaller, frailer office-types pushing by her in the Saturday market frenzy. Why try a dip in a miner’s bag when there were keyboard and headset jockeys available for easy pickings? Still, for the unemployed and desperate, even a miner was a potential mark. She kept her eyes moving, considering the people around her, watching them in case they tried something. A stunner in the hands of a renegade was something even a miner couldn’t withstand.