The Golden Space (30 page)

Karim was sitting by the fireplace. “What a pleasant surprise,” Andrew said, an edge to his voice.

Karim regarded them coldly. In the shadows around the chair, his skin was almost black. His full lips were drawn back, as if he were about to snarl. He said, “You lied to me.”

Merripen moved closer to Andrew. The smaller man scowled at Karim. He was suddenly afraid that Andrew would do something rash. “Whatever do you mean?” Merripen asked.

“You lied to me.”

There seemed no point in denying it. Merripen tried to decide what to do; he disliked such direct confrontations. He put a restraining hand on Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew tried to twist away, but Merripen held on until the other man was still.

He released him, then walked slowly toward Karim. He sat down on the sofa across from him and motioned to Andrew. Andrew sat next to Merripen, perching on the sofa’s edge. “You’re right,” Merripen said. “We lied. You wouldn’t have let us in otherwise. We’ll get our things and go.”

“Please. Not so quickly. I want to know why you came here. You’re from the Citadel, aren’t you? Don’t tell me you aren’t. You haven’t the manner of Rescuers, and you’re not from the south.” Karim’s hands gripped the arms of the chair. “You must think I’m unobservant. There was something about you which jarred my memory, and then there was that man who visited here last winter. I thought: He was from the Citadel, so maybe they’ve sent someone else. I knew I’d seen you somewhere. It took me quite a while to locate the memory. I had to put on the Band and relive half my life, even digging through things I’d forgotten altogether. But I finally found it. Merripen Allen.” Karim smiled in satisfaction. “People so rarely alter their appearance. We cling to the outward signs of an identity which seems stable, but isn’t. You should have thought of that before you came here. I’m quite an archivist, you know. I have several lectures of yours from centuries back. That was how I verified that it was you.”

Merripen’s head hurt. I can’t show him I’m afraid, he thought. “We’re ready to leave,” he said. “We don’t want to disturb anyone here. I’m not here on the Citadel’s business anyway, only my own. They disapprove of what I’m doing. Andrew was the only one who would come with me, and he’s not a biologist, only a visitor who was staying there with a friend. The man who was here before came only as a favor to me.”

“I want to know what you hoped to find here.”

“I came because I had heard that someone here had seen a person I’m trying to find. Seda had said something to my friend that led me to think she’d seen that person a long time ago.” Merripen took a breath, leaned forward, and began to tell Karim of his old project and his doubts.

As he spoke, the faces of his rational and strange children rose before him, all with the same steady, calm gaze. He had been gratified when they had turned to him, seeming to place more importance on his guidance than on that of their parents. He had been with them only long enough to see that even he could not know everything about them, that the minds he had thought would be clear as a stream had their eddies and currents. Even their sexuality had surprised him. He had assumed that they would lack interest in that irrational expression of desire; instead, they seemed to think of it as a rational pleasure. It was more than he had been able to accomplish, even after all this time. He had envied and hated them for it; he had wanted angels. In the end, they had left their parents and him, and had done little except lead the same sort of lives they might have led if they had been ordinary human beings. They had taught him nothing; they had not shown humankind the way to a new sort of life.

As Merripen talked, giving as many details as he could, Karim nodded and said nothing beyond an occasional murmur. By the time he was finished, the other man’s face had lost its ferocity.

“I see,” Karim said, staring past Merripen. “Your friend should have come to me. By the time I had found out who he was, several of the others here were searching for him. They only wanted to send him back with a warning, but he eluded them.”

“I think you can understand why he didn’t go to you.”

“Oh, yes. Our feelings sometimes run high. Can you blame us? So you thought you’d learn something from Seda. That woman has been through so many transformations I wonder that she can remember the day before yesterday. She’s had erasures a dozen times at least. Occasionally something floats up from the sea of her unconscious, but it isn’t always reliable—sometimes it’s an incident someone else related to her. Eventually, she’ll have another erasing and be young and lively for a while until she begins to do the same things over again. In the end, she doesn’t change at all. It’s the same life, endlessly repeated, except that each time her mind ages more quickly and becomes more encrusted. What did she tell your friend?”

Merripen told him.

“You see,” Karim responded, “your friend should have come to me. I remember that visitor. I suspected something, but the creature was gone before I could verify my suspicions.” Merripen bowed his head. “But not before the visitor spoke of going west to meet friends.”

Merripen sat up. “When? When did this happen?”

“Over two hundred years ago; almost three. They might still be there, they might not.”

“I’ve got to find them.”

Karim grinned. “You are an odd fellow, Merripen Allen. You are expending a great deal of effort looking for people who might not even be on the planet, and with only the vaguest of reasons. Aren’t you making the same mistake over again?”

“What mistake?”

“You made them thinking that they would offer you insights into human life. But of course they can’t. Their lives are their own, with their own values. Now you’re looking for answers from them again.”

“You misunderstand,” Merripen objected, not so sure that Karim did. “Pigs can’t fly, and birds can’t learn calculus. Perhaps we’re simply not suited to extended life the way we are. That’s what I thought then. And then I wondered if we could learn something about it.”

“If we’re unsuited as we are,” Karim said, “then why not change ourselves? That seems to follow from what you’ve said.” He was silent for a bit, as if considering the possibility. “But we were very adaptable in the pre-Transition past. Not all of us, of course, only the survivors. Maybe we should simply stick to only minor improvements in the design.”

Merripen had no answer to that. “Maybe I won’t find anything. But I have to try. It was enough to bring me outside the Citadel when I could have stayed inside, safe.” He sighed. “I guess there’s nothing more I can learn here. We’ll be off in the morning, if that’s all right with you.”

“Heading west?”

Merripen nodded.

“There is something you can do for me.”

“And what is that?”

“Allow me to accompany you.”

“And why do you want to do that?” Merripen asked.

“I’ve been here a long time. Perhaps I need a change.”

Merripen did not believe him. He had barely begun his search, and he was losing control of it. “You have no reason to go,” he said slowly. “You already know what you think.”

“Do I? Am I not allowed to have my own questions? I’ve done enough here, and I can always come back later. Besides, you should consider one thing. You might have need of me. I know how to hunt, and I can handle weapons. I’m also not afraid to use them. You’d be safer with me. I’ve lived out here, and you haven’t.”

“If you had wanted to leave,” Andrew said, “you could have left before now.”

“I would have, had you not arrived. But I think it’s safer to travel in a group.” He rose. “Think it over. You may give me your answer tomorrow. I’m prepared to go at any time.”

He left them. Merripen got up and began to walk toward the stairs.

“No,” Andrew said. Merripen turned. “We can’t travel with him. There’s something he’s not telling.”

Merripen turned around. “Do we really have a choice? I suspect that if we don’t go with him, he’ll follow us anyway. It might be safer to bring him along. And he’s right about one thing—he’s used to living out here.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Maybe so. But even you might do better with someone to back you up. I’m not sure I can trust myself.” He thought: I’m not sure I can trust you, either.

He went up the stairs, lingered by his bed for a moment, then peered over the balcony. Andrew was still sitting by the fireplace. “You’d better get some sleep,” Merripen called to him.

“I could go back to the Citadel by myself. You’d still have a companion.”

“I thought you wanted to get away.”

“There are other places I can go.”

Merripen turned away and began to undress. He thought of the Citadel and his house, safe behind the wall and shield. He could have been in Peony’s bed now. It was not too late to go back; Karim had given him an excuse.

He heard Andrew’s footsteps on the stairs. The other man had turned out the light below; Merripen waved a hand, turning on the light between their beds. Andrew passed him silently and shed his clothes, leaving them on the floor. He dimmed the light. The other bed squeaked. Then Andrew said in the darkness, “He can come along, I suppose. You’re right, we have to go with him.”

Merripen stretched out on his own bed, tired but overwrought. He turned over on his side, then got up again and moved toward Andrew. He reached out, tracing the muscles on the other man’s arms.

Andrew drew his hands down to his ribs. “Don’t we owe ourselves more of a flirtation, Merripen?” His back arched as Merripen held him by the waist. “It’s too sudden. We’ll miss half the fun.”

“Maybe we will. But it’ll be too distracting to conduct one on the trip. And I’m tense now; I need to relax.”

“Is that the only reason, your needing to relax?” Andrew’s hands were on his hips.

“No.”

He got in next to Andrew. He felt his breath on his ear. “First yours,” Andrew whispered, “then mine.” Fingers brushed the insides of his thighs. He seemed to feel them at a distance; his mind drifted away, thinking first of the children and then of Seda’s eyes.

“Andrew,” he said as the other man’s mouth surrounded him, and he thought only of the tongue tickling his shaft. His body arched and trembled and he heard a moan. For an instant, timelessness held him; then he was sinking, trapped by the earth, caught again in time. An image of the dead deer filled his mind; he wondered why he was thinking of that now. When Andrew turned him on his side and pressed against his buttocks, he did not resist.

III

Karim had closed up his house and exchanged words with a tall, red-haired woman before leaving. No one else saw him off. As Merripen got into his hovercraft with Andrew, he began to wish he had postponed their departure; he would have liked to see Karim’s laboratory and talk about his work. And then there was Seda. He sighed. It never died away in him; his rejuvenated body kept it alive. He thought of letting himself age, letting it wither, so his mind would have clarity and peace.

Karim led them; his hovercraft preceded them down the hill. Merripen glanced at Andrew. The other man was staring at him blankly. Andrew lifted one eyebrow and one corner of his mouth curved up. The sexual tension was gone; whatever happened between them now would be only repetition. The experience would be stored in Merripen’s mind, eventually to fade and become confused with others like it.

As they emerged from the trees, the dome brightened. The sky was blue and cloudless. Karim was opening his dome. Merripen looked up nervously, then opened his own. He smelled dewy grass and wet ground and, beneath that, the stink of rotting wood. The ridge to their left sloped, becoming a small, treeless hill. They circled around the hill and moved west, the sun at their backs. Karim had talked about danger in the west; perhaps he knew a route around it.

Merripen thought of his lifesuit. He had not put it on because Andrew refused to wear his, and he had not wanted to suit up under the other man’s mocking gaze. Karim scorned the suits, saying that they made one careless. It was probably true. They might guard people from injuries, but not from weapons. He tried to tell himself that he would be safe enough inside the craft, while longing for the extra protection.

They floated over a wide field, the grass swishing as they passed. Andrew was wiping his knife, which Karim had returned to him; then he attached it to his belt.

“Do you really need that, Andrew?”

“Of course.”

“I haven’t seen you doing any carving.”

“I haven’t found the right kind of wood.”

A black cloud rose in the south. Merripen watched as it grew larger, and heard a high, musical note; the cloud separated into small, winged shapes. Andrew began to close the dome; Karim was closing his as well.

“Should we stop?” Merripen asked.

“I don’t think we’d better.” The birds were flying toward them. They swooped down, and Karim’s dome disappeared under the small, feathered creatures. Their dome darkened. Merripen looked up and saw tiny clawed feet and flapping wings. The birds sang sweetly, fluttering their purple feathers.

“They’re Terry’s,” Andrew said, “and harmless. At least they were meant to be, but they’ve multiplied.” The trilling was so loud that Andrew had to shout. “They were tame once. Terry used to wander around with a few on her shoulders and arms.” Had they been in the open, Merripen thought, outside their craft, the birds would have landed on them, caroling their songs while they struggled to brush them away.