The Golden Space (26 page)

He twisted away and went out the door. Dao was outside. He let Andrew pass.

A tent had been put up at the bottom of the hill, a temporary shelter for Thérèse and the two psychologists who were now with her. They had questioned the girl and interrogated him; they had set up a tent because Joan had been afraid to have the girl in her house. Now they would take Thérèse away. The evil in his world would be smoothed over, explained and rationalized. Thérèse would not be sent to an asteroid; only people who were hopelessly death-loving were sent to one, and even they could change, given enough time. That was what the female psychologist had told him. They had high hopes for Thérèse; she was young enough to heal. They would help her construct a new personality. The mental scars would disappear; the cruelty would be forgotten. Andrew thought of it, and it seemed like death; the Thérèse he knew would no longer exist.

Thérèse came out of the tent as he approached. The brown- skinned woman followed her; the red-haired man was near their hovercraft, putting things away. Thérèse reached for Andrew’s hand and held it for a moment before releasing it. The psychologist lingered near them.

“I want to talk to him alone,” Thérèse said. “Don’t worry, you’ll find out all my secrets soon enough.” The woman withdrew. Thérèse led Andrew inside the tent.

They sat down on an air mattress. The girl looked down at the Bond on her right wrist. “Can’t get this one off so easily,” she muttered. Her mouth twisted. She gestured with her bandaged left hand. “They’re going to fix my hand first,” she went on. “It’ll be just the way it was—no scars.”

He said, “I don’t want you to go.”

“It won’t be so bad. They told me I’d be happier. It’s probably true. They’re nice people.”

Andrew glanced at her. “Ben might clone Silas. That’s what he told Dao. He’s thinking about it. He’s going to go away.”

“It won’t be Silas.”

“I know.”

Thérèse shook back her hair. “I guess I won’t remember much of this. It’ll be like a dream.”

“I don’t want you to forget. I won’t. I promise. I don’t want to forget you, Thérèse. I don’t care. You’re the only friend I have now.”

She frowned. “Make some new friends. Don’t just wait around for someone else to tell you what to do.” She paused. “I could have just aimed at her arm, you know. Then she would have still been alive.”

“She was dying anyway.”

“They could have helped her eventually. She was dying very slowly. I didn’t have to kill Rani, either.” Her eyes were wide; she stared past him. “I didn’t. He was down; he begged me to stop. I kept hitting him with the poker until his skull caved in. I wanted to be sure he wouldn’t come after me. I was glad, too. I was glad he was dead and I was still alive.”

“No,” Andrew said.

“Stop it.” She dug her fingers into his shoulder. “You said you didn’t want to forget me. If you don’t see me the way I am, you’ve forgotten me already. Do you understand?”

He nodded, and she released him. His eyes stung; he blinked. “Listen, Andrew. We’ll be all right. We’ll grow up, and we’ll be alive forever. When everyone lives forever, then sooner or later they have to meet everyone else, don’t they? If we live long enough, we’re bound to see each other again. It’ll be like starting all over.”

He did not reply.

“It’s true, you know it’s true. Stop looking like that.” She jabbed him with her elbow. “Say goodbye, Andrew. I don’t want you hanging around when we leave. I won’t be able to stand it.”

“Goodbye, Thérèse.”

“Goodbye.” She touched his arm. He got up and lifted the tent flap. He wanted to look back at her; instead, he let the flap drop behind him.

He climbed the hill, trying to imagine endless life. Joan and Dao were on the porch, waiting for him. He thought of Silas. You’ll always be afraid, just like them; that was what his friend had said. No, Andrew told himself; not any more. His friend’s face was suddenly before him, vivid; Joan and Dao were only distant, ghostly shapes, trying to face up to forever.

The Loop of Creation

I

Merripen stood on the wall. A cold wind bit at his face, and he bowed his head, pulling his coat more tightly around himself. The wind shrieked. As it died, he leaned against the ledge and his hand touched an invisible shield. He drew back.

Outside the Citadel, snowflakes swirled as they fell, making white patches on the brown earth below, riming the trees of the forest. He felt the wind again; flakes bathed his face and sprinkled his arms with white specks. The shield was down again. He waited. The snow continued to fall, but he no longer felt it; the wall had corrected the shield’s malfunction.

Merripen sighed. Were such problems becoming more common, or did it only seem that way? He could count on the shield’s failure at least once a season. It had failed during the summer. The temperate weather of the Citadel had been replaced by hot, humid air and thundershowers, forcing him to stay inside until the wall had repaired itself; the repairs had taken two days. He wondered if the shield would eventually fail completely, and told himself it would not matter if it did; the wall would remain.

The wall was high; the ground was over fifty meters below him. Four towers stood at each corner of the wall, guarding the buildings inside the square. The wall could not be climbed; there were no handholds or niches in its smooth metal sides, and the entrances were guarded. But someone could fly in if the shield failed. Merripen shivered, even though he was protected from the wind, and found himself looking up at the gray sky.

Something moved below. He stepped closer to the ledge and saw a shadowy figure running through the forest; obscured by a snowy veil, it was barely visible under the bare tree limbs.

The figure stopped at the edge of the forest, waved its arms aimlessly, then hurried toward the wall. It staggered, leaving an uneven trail of footprints behind it on the patches of snow. It was dressed in a long brown coat; a hood hid its face. Merripen watched the runner calmly, knowing it would be stopped at the entrance. Then the hood fell back, and he saw the thick blond hair.

Merripen turned and ran toward the nearest drop. He jumped into the circular tunnel and floated down through the wall past lighted entrances until he reached the bottom. He hurried through the lighted hall.

Two giants stood at the entrance. The dark-haired giant pulled at the heavy brass door, opening it a little. Merripen heard a shout from outside. A gust of wind scattered snowflakes across the gleaming floor, and he felt the cold. The giant picked up the blond man and carried him inside.

The second giant pushed the door shut, then stood with its back to the entrance. Its small eyes, almost hidden under a mop of brown hair, stared expressionlessly at the other giant, who was setting the man gently on the floor.

Merripen waved the dark-haired giant away. “Leif,” he said, taking the man by the arms. Leif swayed, leaning against Merripen for a moment. He was breathing heavily; Merripen struggled to support him.

The blond man suddenly crumpled to the floor, almost pulling Merripen with him. “Let me get help,” Merripen murmured.

Leif shook his head. “Give me a minute—I’ll be all right.” He sprawled on the floor; his cheeks were chapped and red. “I ran. I was running for a while. I had to stay out there last night. I had to leave my lifesuit behind. Without my heater, I would have been frozen.” He drew back his lips, as if trying to smile.

“Where’s your hovercraft?”

“Gone. I had to leave it.”

“Why didn’t your Bond signal for help?”

Leif held out his arms. His hands trembled; he took off his gloves
and began to rub his hands together. “Because I don’t have it on.” Merripen’s right hand darted
reflexively to his left wrist and touched his own Bond. “I took it off.”

“But why?”

“They were tracking me. I had to get rid of it. I stamped on it and
buried it. Then I started running.”

“Who was tracking you?”

Leif grabbed Merripen’s hand and pulled himself up. Then he fell back again; Merripen caught him just before he passed out.

“Get help,” he called to the giants.

Nulla fugae ratio, nulla spes: omnia muta,

omnia sunt deserta, ostentant omnia letum.

Non tamen ante mihi languescent lumina morte,

nec prius a fesso secedent corpore sensus …

No hope, no signs … all doomed; yet death would not dim his eyes nor would his senses leave him. These were the lines of Catullus Merripen now called to mind; the lusty verses had been forgotten.

He sat alone in Peony’s garden, waiting for her to join him. Her flowers were orange; vines of giant trumpet creepers wound around the trellis near Merripen, the blooms as large as his arm. Flame azaleas bordered the garden, and miniature orioles, tame and timid, pecked at the seeds Peony had scattered while watching Merripen warily with their beady eyes.

A small, flat screen rested on his lap. Idly, he searched his records, and words appeared on the screen.

Any viable modification must preserve human

versatility, human flexibility, the capacity to adapt

both physically and mentally to changes in environment.

Excessive specialization through biological experimentation

on the human form will always be a dead end.

Merripen frowned. Had he actually written those words? Then he had betrayed them, many times over. He thought of the giants who guarded the Citadel, beings with feeble minds and rudimentary emotions, controlled by implants. Yet the genetic material used in their creation had been human. At least the giants had been created with an end in mind, however limited; the same could not be said for other projects.

Merripen searched through more writings, glancing at the words as they fluttered across the screen. The paper on which he had written them had long since crumbled away, yet the words lived on. It seemed to him that the man who had written them was also gone, and that only his ghost remained.

Why do so many seek death? Too many of us still wish

to die, and even the most unoriginal death cult can still

find adherents. It is as if the mechanisms for death were

inherent. But why do some seek death while others are

content to live? Natural selection—

Some words had been crossed out. He went to another page.

What traits do long-lived human beings need? What

qualities would enable us to best lead our lives? Perhaps

by creating beings who do not share certain traits with us

or who have other characteristics, we can discover what it

is we need. From these different kinds of beings, new

values can emerge, ones which we might share if we

altered ourselves somatically.

In a margin, scrawled by hand, he saw another comment: “Naturalistic
fallacy?”

He turned off his screen and set it under his chair. His words lived on in the cybernetic mind of the Citadel, still able to haunt him. The cybermind kept what it wanted, as if sensing that it would one day be the only guardian of the past left. Leif had been chased back here by those who hated the Citadel and all it stood for. Many biologists lived outside the centers now, and had turned against their own work. With that betrayal, the biologists had lost what power they had. Now the world was fragmented. In isolated enclaves, unchanging immortals lived, and waited for the Citadels to die. Most of the houses near Merripen’s had been abandoned. There would be more defections.

Peony Willis swept into the garden, greeted Merripen, and motioned with one hand. A kobold with golden hair carried a glass of wine to him, then withdrew.

Merripen sipped his wine while Peony seated herself. Two young men appeared, dressed only in orange loincloths. They leaped over the grass, performing backflips and handsprings while Merripen tried not to look bored. One of the men danced near him and smiled, but Merripen ignored him. The pair had been bred by Peony for gymnastics and dance and flirting; Merripen, in his sexual encounters, still preferred at least the illusion of free will.

Peony waved the young men away; they bowed and left. She adjusted her orange robe and frowned at Merripen, who was wearing a red shirt. She lifted her chin and lowered her eyelids, making slender crescents of her black eyes.

“I spoke to Leif Arnesson,” she said. “You asked him to go outside for you, and he went, and he found nothing, and the people he saw turned on him and chased him back here. Are you satisfied?”

He did not answer.

“You won’t find your children, Merripen. That’s what you call them, isn’t it?”

“But I spoke to Teno. I was told that they were coming back here, that they …” He paused.

“And how long ago was that? Before the wall was built. Even the cyberminds can’t find them, because they speak only to the minds of other Citadels.”