The Collapsium (34 page)

“Here now,” Bruno tried. What he wanted to say was that Muddy might prove useful in the hours ahead, and his delicate-but-functional emotional state should not be tweaked or tampered with. But that sounded so cold, so calculating. If Muddy were Bruno himself, then fine; he could do whatever he pleased. People made copies for purposes both monumental and banal, and reconverged them with equal aplomb. Some even destroyed the copies after certain rough uses, with no reconvergence, no exchange of mental notes, or else they designed sacrificial copies that willingly destroyed themselves.
That
was a bitter pill for any enlightened society to swallow, but indeed, under Queendom law Bruno would be well within his rights to command Muddy’s erasure as “spoilage.”

For that matter, the Queendom itself could make such a ruling, and poor Muddy would have no recourse. This could hardly be called justice—indeed, such scenarios had inspired some of the century’s most wrenching songs and dramas. And yet, the government
must
hold these powers, or all its planets would be stuffed pole to pole with cranky, unwanted faxes. If
that
wasn’t a form of criminal trespass, then what was? A
hundred million of the same compulsive, neurotic narcissist? No thank you!

But still, he found reason to doubt. From the look on her face, it seemed clear that Deliah knew exactly what Muddy was talking about, while Bruno himself had no idea. This was hardly the rapport one expected between duplicates, or even brothers.

“Say the word,” Muddy repeated.

Deliah struggled with it for a few seconds before finally giving in. “Jester.”

Still weeping, Muddy bowed again, then carefully slid off his couch until his feet were on the deck. “Jester. Indeed. I
am
festive, a plaything, a joke between friends. Shall I defy my nature, and gallivant about the solar system with
this
foul hero?” He jerked an elbow in Bruno’s direction. “Or shall I drug myself insensible, and spare you both my company? The latter, I think. This place is filled with pain.”

As he spoke, he tiptoed gingerly over the supine form of Hugo, still strapped to the floor and apparently content there. He advanced on Deliah, or rather on the fax orifice beside her, and she pulled away as much as her restraints allowed, her face betraying a familiar mix of guilt and mortification.

Ignoring her, Muddy extended a hand to the fax, which anticipated his request and spat a pill into his waiting palm, along with a glass of something that definitely wasn’t water. He popped the drug into his mouth and gulped it immediately, then winced in pain and downed, in two big gulps, the amber fluid in the glass. His sobbing renewed as he put the glass back in the fax again. Then, head down, he trudged back to his couch, settled down on it, and strapped himself in.

“Apologies, Laureate-Director,” he said to Deliah, through his tears. “It isn’t you. I’d no doubt embarrass myself no matter what you did or said. I’m
intended
to embarrass a certain de Towaji, but I’ve disowned him. Let him find his own humiliations.”

Then he closed his eyes and feigned sleep, and soon enough the heavy rise and fall of his chest was no act.

“I’m so very sorry,” Deliah said, to no one specific.

Bruno was gruff. “Blame your friend Marlon. If you doubt the malice of his intentions, there’s your proof right there. That any human being should be so mistreated …”

“Marlon’s not like that, Bruno. He really isn’t.”

“He is,” Bruno insisted. “Unless someone a thousand times
more
evil has constructed Muddy to frame him. False memories, false Iscog trace … I know of exactly two people bright enough and patient enough to pull off that trick, and one of them
is
Marlon.”

“Who is the other?”

Bruno’s face grew warm. “Oh, all right then; possibly several others could do it. If we’re to live forever, no doubt any number of surprises and infamies will assail us. People can accomplish anything, given sufficient time. This isn’t the last sick fantasy we’ll see played out in our lifetimes.”

“No,” she mused, “I suppose it isn’t. But
Marlon
?”

“Occam’s Razor would convict him; his guilt is the simplest explanation. And Deliah, I’m sorry to inform you that he keeps copies of
you
in his dungeons as well. I have Muddy’s word on it, at any rate.”

That
clearly knocked her back. Perhaps he could have broached the matter more delicately. Ah, that worlds-renowned de Towaji charm.

The two of them were silent a long time.

Finally, Deliah said, “I had a personal relationship with Marlon at one time. He was upset about the way it broke off, and I suppose in some sense I don’t blame him. But I couldn’t help it; I really couldn’t. Love is the bane of the immortal, I’ve always said. Are we cheating God by living forever? If so, he gets us back with nagging doubts, and silly dreams of silly perfection. It must have been easier in the days when marriage meant a decade or two of hard work and squalor, then a simple, horrible death. All choices would be permanent in that time, and thus simple. You want to grow old and die alone? No? Then grab a hand and hold it tight! Today, the question is a lot harder to answer, because we know
someplace
there’s a perfect
mate, or at least an optimal one, whom we have only to find and meet. Perfect love! So the thought of spending eternity with anything less becomes appalling. But are we supposed to meet everyone? Shake every hand, kiss every mouth, listen to every bit of passionate nonsense until we’re
completely, viscerally sure
? What a stupid, lonely quest that is.”

“Finding such love can be as bad, I fear,” Bruno said morosely. His chin was resting on his hand. “Perfect love, yes: it bends and compels you, it crowds out every other passion. Love is sublime, truly, a precious gift. But also, alas, one of God’s little pranks. It’s naive of you to confuse love and happiness, as if they were somehow the same thing. In fact love, once found, is more akin to gravity: too strong, too close, and it will crush you. Unless you’re careful, always.”

She twirled, absently, one of her platinum-colored braids. “There are so many theories about why you and Tamra split up.”

“Theories, humph.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. “It couldn’t be simpler: we fought too much. We did come from opposite sides of the Earth, after all. The antipodes, as she used to say. Love does nothing about the friction of misunderstanding; if anything, it exacerbates the problem. And thirty years really is a long time to spend with one person. Back then it seemed like a lifetime, but of course that was a foolish perception. We were young, and the lives ahead of us so long.”

“I didn’t know you fought,” Deliah said, surprised. “You always looked so happy together.”

“Didn’t we?” Bruno agreed. “But there was just so much baggage there. My family wasn’t wealthy—a restaurateur and a small-time politician—but at University, after the earthquake, I started to have some money. Far more than any teenage orphan should have, really, and by the time I was thirty, even before Tamra’s lawyers got behind me, it had mushroomed beyond all sense. My reaction was predictable: an excess of excess. Drugs, women, miniature planets … It
was just a phase, but I was still in it when she summoned me to court. She was so vulnerable—I mean,
her
parents had just died, one right after the other, and like me she’d been thrust into a very public role which small-town life had never groomed her for. I was older, and I’d been through all that, and she turned to me in, just, absolute desperation. I suppose I took advantage.”

Seeing Deliah’s querying look, he sighed and expanded, “It was two or three years before she had the courage to demand my fidelity. I found it difficult to refuse a beautiful woman, and they were
all
so beautiful, so drawn to that complex of youth and wealth and power … I had no charm, no guile, no ‘sizzle,’ as we used to say back then. But I had brains and money, as well as Tamra herself: I was that forbidden morsel from the Queen’s private garden. But none of those ladies were ever worth the pain they caused. It makes me physically ill to think of it now.”

“But you’re the one who left,” Deliah said, looking as if she was struggling to comprehend. Bruno, who’d been summarily classified and pigeonholed and speculated about for as long as he cared to remember, was flattered that anyone would actually struggle to comprehend him.

“You’re a good friend,” he said, nodding. “I’ve never talked about this. It feels good to get it off my chest. Yes, I was the one who left. By then I’d been faithful and accommodating for two decades, but my work had been suffering for it. And I drank too much. I always drank too much.”

“Alcohol?”

“Indeed. Crude, I know, and I always expected the media to expose me for it. But like the womanizing, it was something they just didn’t want to find out about. I never understood that. I never understood much of anything back then, and the
arc de fin
was beckoning, and I had this
whole planet
to retreat to. So I left, yes. Some would call it an escape; some would say I ran from my problems instead of solving them, but that too is naive. In solitude, I found the clarity I
needed. My work flourished, my vices fell away like childhood. I’m a better person today; I truly am. Or a bigger fool, perhaps, but that’s nearly as good.”

“But we miss you, Bruno. Everyone misses you. There’s never been another Philander, not really.”

“Oh, pish. I was always an embarrassment. Like that time on Maxwell Montes, when I threw up at the banquet table. Drinking again, after all those years. Throwing money around, insulting the hostess … What a wretched night!”

“That
was
embarrassing,” Deliah admitted, cracking a doleful half smile. “You had toilet paper on your shoe, also. And that silly hat of yours was in fashion for all of about three months. But we followed you up that mountain, Bruno. All of us did.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You were there?”

“Yeah, that was right after my laureacy. I took over the Ministry of Grapples only a few years afterward, from this really pleasant man who wound up doing cryoastronomy in Russia. Talk about your happy demotions! But, I mean, yes, I was there. And you were brilliant, you really were. You probably are a terrible manager, but you’re also the sort who makes footsteps other people want to follow in, constantly—it’s your default state.”

Bruno had nothing to say to that.

She pressed. “Bruno, is hiding away on your private planet really the best thing you could be doing? I don’t personally need an
arc de fin
—I’m not sure anyone does. And, seriously, we do miss you.”

“The planet’s gone,” he told her. “Destroyed. Used up.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps it served its purpose.”

“Tamra misses you,” she added thoughtfully.

“We have forever,” he said, and shrugged again. But that felt shallow, unjust. “I miss her, too. I wish I’d been better for her.”

Deliah stared at him for several seconds, her eyes growing sad.

“We all make mistakes. Marlon was one of mine, I guess. But I think you’re wrong about him, Bruno. I … God, I’d like to think I’m not
that
stupid.”

Bruno should have offered some words of comfort for that, some reassurance. He
wanted
to reassure her, this good friend he hadn’t really known he had. But what could he say? That it was all right? That she’d failed to recognize the monster because she had no monster in herself? He couldn’t bring himself to say that; the lapse was inexcusable. Not only on her part, but on his, on everyone’s.

Seeing that he wasn’t going to answer, Deliah turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he offered. It was the best he could do.

In times of distress, Bruno retreated into his work. This day was no exception. And he could
use
the work, too, because in retrospect there were all kinds of things wrong with the ertial shield and the design of the
Sabadell-Andorra
, and for clarity’s sake he wanted to know exactly where he and Muddy had gone wrong. It wasn’t a vain undertaking—a detailed understanding of the ship’s flaws might well save their lives in the coming hours.

“I’m very happy to be rescued,” Deliah said after a while. Her tone was more serious now, and Bruno turned to face her. “From the … depths of my heart I thank you for that. But I was
this
close.” She held up two fingers, pinching the air between them. “Death and I were on speaking terms. He’d taken three good people right in front of me, and afterward I had a lot of time to contemplate, and not much else to do. People don’t have that experience anymore, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it as recreation or any such thing. But still it’s a very purifying thing, to finally look at your life from the outside. And to be reborn afterwards!

“Maybe it’s like your decades of solitude, only more compressed, and more urgent. I don’t think I can go back to being the same person I was. Or I
could
, maybe, but what a waste it would be! Of hard-won insight. This whole Laureate-Director thing has been very interesting—I’ve learned a lot about so many different things—but am I supposed to do it
forever
? Or
until someone better comes along and replaces me, I guess, but even that … I’m more
person
than that. Every person is so much more than the paths they’ve taken, those few particular paths we choose on the spur of the moment, with no information. So much of it is mistakes.

“I’m not saying this very well. It’s a straightforward thing, though: I want to change, not what I am but what I
do
with what I am. Surely it behooves us, as immortal people, to find the time to start over. Otherwise, we’re just living the same time, over and over again.”

“There is the small matter,” Bruno reminded her, “of rescuing the sun from collapse.” He was suddenly cross, and hadn’t the energy to conceal it.

“Oh,” she said, seeming to come awake. “Yes, there is that.” Then she frowned, not at Bruno but at herself. “Here I’m blithely assuming you’ve figured it all out. You must get so tired of that! To be so relentlessly relied upon, when inside you’re just like everyone else. Smarter, obviously, but there are lots of smart people who don’t get … I don’t know … scapegoated that way. Even myself, who should have known better than to let this all happen.”