Текст книги "Alternate Realities (Port Eternity; Wave without a Shore; Voyager in Night)"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

XVIII

Waden Jenks: Your hubris surpasses mine.

Master Law: Philosophy argues that hubris doesn’t exist.

Waden Jenks: But it does. There are offenses against the State.

Master Law: I purpose nothing against the State.

Waden Jenks: No, your ambition is far greater.

He decided on breakfast, to be kind to his abused body, to guard his health, food was a good cure for such moods. Well-being generally restored his confidence. He left for the University dining hall rather than order breakfast up from Residency kitchens, which could take far longer than it was worth, which was why he had given up on breakfasts, when he thought about it. He considered his physical condition, which was approaching excessive attrition; hours of physical labor on small intake and limited sleep. Food at regular hours had to help.

He was, in fact, stripped of resolve, of the energy which had sustained him thus far. He ate a far larger breakfast than he had ever been accustomed to since childhood, full of sugars and washed down with milk; he asked the kitchen to pack him a cold lunch, which he took with him in a paper bag; and he walked at a slow pace toward Jenks Square, letting breakfast settle.

He did, he concluded, feel better for all these measures of self-improvement. He walked along the street noticing his surroundings for the first time in weeks.

And invisibles were there.

He flinched from that realization. The first one he saw was where Second intersected Main, coming from a corner, and perhaps there had been others all along, but afterthis one there were others, farther down the street.

Another difficulty of a brain which could not be shut down. Perception. Hesaw them. And what should he ask of others who had been born in Kierkegaard? Doyou really see them?They were there, that was all. He had not put on the brooch this morning—hubris did not go with his mood—now he was desperately glad that he had not. He no longer felt like challenging anything.

One cloaked, hooded figure had stopped, and he stopped. It was Leona Pace.

He stood there perhaps half the beat of his heart, and flinched, walked on past as he ought. The midnight robes, which blanked both ahnit and invisible human from the view of the sane, veiled a shoulder, a blankness.

Perhaps it was the shock he needed to jar him from his private misery, that sight of a reality fractured, a fine talent lost, the waste, the utter waste of it. He did not look back.

The dome lay before him, the vision which made all other things trivial. Thiswas the thing, this beautiful object, on which he had poured out all his energy for months, which had taken on shape and life and form. To have it finished, to have it be what it was meant to be ... was worth the Leona Paces and the pain of his own body. Was worth everything, to have this in existence, shining in the morning, the sun sheening the stone with the illusion of dawn-color, with the interior now opened and hinting at convolutions within. It glowed with interior light at the moment because they had not yet shut down the inside lights which the night crews used, bright beads gleaming in the perforations.

He walked within, where steps and taps on stone echoed, where voices spoke one to the other, hidden in the huge triple shell and the curtain-walls and bent about by acoustics and the size of the place. Some of the echo effect he had planned; some was serendipitous, but beautiful: the place rang like a bell with voices, purified sounds, refined them as it refined the light and cast it in patterns. It took chaos and made symphony; glare and made beauty.

The center, beyond the devolving curtain-pillars, held the scaffolding, the image, still shrouded in metal webbing.

And he stopped, for crews were gathered there, both crews, and both supervisors, Gytha and Phelps; the apprentices, the workers, everyone ... more coming in until there could be no one of the active workers omitted, past or present.

“Done?” he asked. His own voice echoed unexpectedly in their hush, which was broken only by the human stirring of a quiet crowd. “Is it finished?”

Carl Gytha and Andrew Phelps brought their tablets, the daily and evening ritual, and another brought an armload of computer printout, the maps from which they had worked, all solemnly offered. He signed the tablets, looked about him at all of them, somewhat numb at the realization that for most of them there was nothing now to do.

“ Welldone,” he said, because saying something seemed incumbent on him. “ Welldone.”

There was a murmur of voices, as if this had somehow been what they wanted to hear. He was bewildered by this, more bewildered when apprentices and workers simply stood there ... and finally Gytha and Phelps offered their hands, which he took, one after the other.

“Go,” he said. “I’ve some finishing. I’ll still need a small crew; Gytha, Phelps, you stay to assist. Pick a handful. The rest of you—it’s done.”

He winced at the applause, which multiplied and redoubled like madness in the acoustics of the dome. He nodded in embarrassment, not knowing what else to do, turned matter-of-factly to his platform and his tools, and took off his kit with his lunch and set that down; scrambled up with the agility of practice, and set himself to work.

Confusion persisted. People stayed to talk, and voices and steps echoed everywhere. This failed to distract him, rather calmed him, because it was the life he had planned for the Work, that the interior should live, that there should be people, and voices, and laughter and living things flowing through it.

Eventually the noise changed, from the familiar voices to the strange voices of citizens, but the tone of it was much the same. There was, occasionally, a soft whisper of wonder, the piercing voice of a child trying out the echoes; but the scaffolding wrapped the centermost piece, the heart of it, and his activity fascinated those who stood to watch him work. “Hush,” his remaining assistants would say. “Hush, don’t bother him.” And: “That’s Herrin Law. That’s the Master.” He ignored those voices and the others, much more rapt in the consideration of an angle, the waiting, the aching waiting, for the right moment, as the afternoon sun touched precisely the point of concern, and he had a very small time to make the precise stroke which would capture one of the statue’s changing expressions without destroying all the rest of the delicate planes.

This day and the next and the next he labored, now with abrasive and polish, now smoothing out the tiniest rough spots. It rained, and he worked, until Gytha came and wrapped a warm cloak about him and got him off the platform; and others were there, who had not been there, he thought, in days, wrapped in their own rain gear and bringing raincoats with them. “I thought he might need it,” one said. “He doesn’t take care of himself,” said another, female.

He looked at them askance, huddled within Gytha’s cloak. He was offered warm drink, coddled and surrounded by dozens more who had come, some with blankets and some with warm drink. “Well,” said one, “it’s raining outside; we might as well share the drink and wait.”

And another: “ Lookat it,” in a tone of awe, but he was looking toward the statue, not the storm. “Look at it,” another echoed, and despite the water which dripped in curtains through the apertures, a thousand tiny waterfalls, they moved to see.

Herrin watched them, drank and sat down where it was comfortable, warmed by their presence as much as any physical offering. John Ree was there, and Tib and Katya ... he knew all their names, every one. They were artists and stonemasons and cranemen and runners, all sorts; and there was a strangeness about them as they sat down and shared their drink and their raincoats and sent their voices echoing through the curtain-walls.

It was the sculpture, Herrin thought suddenly. It was that which had taken them in, seized them by the emotions, a reality more powerful than theirs. He shivered, recalling the Others, and Leona Pace, the day they had been trapped into seeing each other, because sane and invisible had had, here, a common focus.

The effect went on. It kept drawing them back. Those who had been inthe Work belonged to it; sane, prideful people began to lose their realities as surely as the invisibles lost their own. The Work did not let them go. He thought that he should warn them. And then he tried to analyze his own impulse in that direction and suspected that.

These people frightened him. Perhaps they frightened each other. He wanted to have things done, and it was all but finished. He had to look elsewhere, to other things, to the rest of his reality. And that was where the rest of them had failed. They could not make the break.

“I think,” he confided to them, and voices fell silent and faces turned to him, “that we can take down the scaffolding tomorrow, all the lights, clean it and sweep it and prepare it ... It’s complete. It’s finished. But—” Their watching faces haunted him. He groped for something less final, hating his weakness. “There’ll be more projects. Others. Those of you who want will always have first priority when I choose crew; maybe here, maybe elsewhere. You’re the best. We can do morethan this.”

“I want on,” said John Ree. Voices tumbled over his, all asking. Me, Master Law, Me.

He nodded. “All who want.” They were shameless as children. As if they were his. They stirred that kind of protective feeling in him, an embarrassment for their sakes where they had no shame. In fact they were comfortable about him, like an old garment; with them he could breathe easier, knowing things were going well without his watching, because they weregood.

“We can get that scaffolding down,” said John Ree, who was discharged and already had his pay.

Herrin nodded. “Everything but mine. There’s still some polishing. That comes down ... maybe in two days.”

There were nods, tacit agreement. The drink passed; the rain splashed down. There were warmer places to sit than where they were and certainly drier, but there was laughter and good humor, people who had known each other for months discussing families and how they had gotten on and what they had done with their bonuses and whose baby was born and who had what at market and how here and there people should meet for lunch or dinner. Herrin listened, both included and excluded, taking interest in the whole bizarre situation.

Then the rain stopped and they went away again, taking their empty bottles and their tarps and wishing him well. Even some complete outsiders from the street who had sheltered here and stood amazed on the fringes of the group had gotten to talking, and bade each other farewell and in some instances invited each other to meet again on the streets as if they knew each other.

And quietly, a lingering echo, the wet tap of footsteps which had been behind the curtain-walls, in the outer shells; Herrin heard them, casually, because there was no reason not to. He looked, and his skin drew, because he saw Others, whose midnight cloaks were wet, who did not depart, but stood there staring.

He cleared his throat, shrugged, turned to the scaffolding and scrambled up again, taking up the polishing, which was tedious work but mindless. He dried the area with a cloth from his pocket, and took up the abrasive again, set to work, ignoring Gytha and Phelps and the others who stirred about disassembling some of the other scaffolding.

He worked until his shoulders ached, and became awake, slowly, of the presence of a shadow at the foot of the scaffold.

He looked down, drawn by a horrid fascination, fighting his own instincts, which knew, as from one night he had known, that something would be there.

The invisible was looking up. It was Leona’s face framed within the midnight hood, her plump freckled face and her brown hair and her stout shape within the cloak. There was longing in her eyes, which looked up at the statue.

“Leona,” he said, very, very softly, and frightened her and himself. “Are you all right, Leona?”

She nodded, almost imperceptibly. There was a vast silence. Perhaps Gytha and Phelps were looking this way. No, they could not. It was like the wearing of the brooch—people would not see it because they dared not see it, because it was not right to see. And if people went on seeing ...

There were solutions for the invisibles if people started seeing them. There was the Solution, which the State had always avoided; and he knew it and surely Leona Pace knew it, and he wished that he couldlook through her.

She turned and walked away. He found himself shivering as if the wetness of the wood on which he was sitting had gotten through the tarp, or the coldness of the stone traveled up his hands into his heart. He thought that perhaps he should go home for the day, rest, drive himself no further. But that was to admit that something had happened. He looked at Gytha and Phelps, when a clatter drew his attention: they were working away, and probably they had notnoticed.

Or they were stronger than he at the moment.

He shivered and steadied his hands enough to begin his polishing again. He felt everything slipping again, everything balanced on a precipice and ready to tumble over the edge. What did the rest of his life promise if this was the beginning: brilliance, leading to madness?

There was a thunder in the sky that for the moment he attributed to the clouds and the rain, but it kept coming, and steadied, and he knew then what it was, that at the port a part of Waden’s reality had come to earth. A part of his own, at some time to come. He had no time for it at the moment, did not want to think about it ... yet. There was a cold spot where that knowledge rested, colder than the stone or the recent rain. He heard the shuttle come down and heard the noise stop. His mind kept running with the image, the prospect of Waden Jenks’s offworld negotiations, the world irrevocably widening, the walls all abolished, and nothing to do but keep staring at the horizons and widening and widening forever.

He pursed his lips and dipped his cloth in the abrasive, concentrated on the curve he was smoothing, finger width by finger width.

Something stirred near him, a step. Suddenly someone reached up near him and took the hammer. Leona, he thought; he did not want to see. There was the impression of midnight cloth in the corner of his eye. Slowly the tool moved off the platform, and there was a crash, metal on stone; he looked, alarmed.

He stared within a blue hood at no human face, and at once his vision blanked and he caught for support against the statue itself. It went away, a shadow in his vision, and he stayed there with his heart beating against his ribs and the impression of what he had almostseen lingered in his vision, wide dark eyes, a dusky color like the cloth, and features ... he did not want to see. Ever.

“Sir?” Carl Gytha asked, coming near the platform. “You all right, sir?”

He nodded, shrugged, put himself to work again.

Simple pilferage. He finished the place he had begun, calmly set himself at the next. It had gone long enough ... he could work late, drive himself just a little longer....

... get finished with this, once for all.

No, he reminded himself. He had tried that and nearly broken himself. “I’m folding up,” he said. “Going back for the day.”

“We’ll stay,” Gytha said, “by turns. Keep things from harm.”

They came to help him down. He accepted the help, dusted himself off and started the walk home, for a decent supper and a little rest.

They had seen, he persuaded himself. Even normal people sawas much as he had seen. They proved that, by offering to stay and protect things. He was not abnormal. Perhaps they had seen Leona Pace, too, and were too self-possessed to admit it. He had never been able to ask anyone. No one was able to ask anyone.

He walked as far as the hedge and through the archway. He stopped then and blinked in surprise at the entourage which had come down Port Street and pulled up in front of the Residency. There were vehicles and troops; men in no-color uniforms ... with weapons. He had never seen the like, not in such numbers. They filled four trucks; a fifth was vacant, with soldiers all over the frontage of the Residency, and some in the doorway; and now came transports with what might be dignitaries. Those were not Kierkegaard vehicles, they had come from offworld. From up there and out there, and something larger than an ordinary shuttle had landed to carry all of that.

His appetite deserted him. He walked across the street, between the trucks, startled as one of the Outsiders swung a gun in his direction.

“Got out of here,” they told him in a strange accent. He gave them a foul look and walked on to the Residency steps, stared in outrage as one of those guarding the door barred his way with an extended arm.

“I live here,” he said. “Get out of my way.”

The soldier looked uncertain at that, and he pushed past in that moment, found more Outsiders in the halls inside. “You,”said a soldier near the desk, but the regular secretary intervened. “He’s Master Herrin Law.”

“Master of what?” the offworlder asked.

Herrin turned a second foul look on him and the man declined further questions. “I want this lot clear of my room,” he told the secretary.

“Sir,” the secretary said meekly, caught between.

“I’ll have supper in my room. Send the order.”

“The First Citizen asked, if you should come in before midnight, sir, he’s in his office, sir.”

Herrin said nothing, paused for a third look at the offworlder, young and unrecommended by his manner, which would have had him eaten alive at University: from bluster he had gone to a perceptible flinching. “Not quality material,” Herrin judged acidly, and walked off.

He was trembling in every muscle. Outraged.

Outsiders. Invisibles no less than Leona Pace. They were here, in the Residency, and Waden Jenks invited them in. He headed for the stairs, walked up the five flights of stairs and into a whole array of guards.

“Out of my way,” he said, and walked through with the assumption they would not dare. One seized his arm and he glared at that man until the hand dropped.

“Excuse me, sir. Presence up here has to be cleared.”

“You’re incompetent and ignorant. Clear it.”

“If you’ll tell me who you are, sir.”

“Get the First Citizen out here. Now.”

The hand left his arm. The man backed off, blinked and backed a few paces to Waden’s door, knocked on it. “Sir. Sir.”

The door opened; Herrin walked toward it and soldiers shifted in panic. A rifle barrel slammed into his arm. He kept going nonetheless, through the door before they stopped him. Waden was there, risen from his chair among others.

“Let him go,” Waden said at once, and Herrin stalked in, shedding the soldiers like so many parasites. “What is this?” Herrin asked.

“Herrin Law,” Waden said, gesturing to the others. “Colonel Martin Olsen, Military Mission.”

Herrin failed to follow the hand, stared at Waden instead. “The halls are cluttered. Something struck me—I call your attention to the matter.”

“Citizen Law,” one of the Outsiders said, offering a hand. Herrin looked past the lot of them, smiled coldly, seeing Keye standing, in Student’s Black, by the wall of the ell the room made.

“Keye, how pleasant to see you. I meant to come and call. Waden explained things. I owe you profound apologies for my desertion. You distressed me; I admit it freely. I’ve mended my ways, you see, moved into the Residency. Are you living here or just sleeping over?”

Keye’s mouth quirked into a familiar smile. “Does it concern you?”

“Herrin.”

He looked at Waden, read behind the slow smile which was less amused than Keye’s.

“First Citizen,” said the intrusive voice. “Would you explain?”

Waden ignored it too. “Point taken, Artist. But there is a certain reality operative here that Ichoose. I’ll remind you of that.”

“Construe it for me. I’ll decide if I want to participate.”

“Bear with me. Master Herrin Law, let me present Colonel Martin Olsen, with that understanding.”

The hand was offered a second time. Herrin looked the stout gray-haired man up and down, finally reached and scarcely touched the offered fingers. The hand withdrew.

“Not an auspicious color,” he commented of the midnight clothing.

“I agree,” said Waden. “Herrin, don’t be argumentative in this. A personal favor.”

“There seems to have been a misunderstanding,” said the colonel. “If there was some difficulty, we extend an apology.”

“Second mistake,” Herrin said, passing a glance past him on the way to Keye. “Are you going to wait for this or will you join me for dinner?”

“I have a commitment,” she said. “Another time.”

“I trust so,” he said. “Waden, I reserve judgment on your Reality. What do you purpose for them?”

“Easier if you sit and join this.”

“Another time.” He glanced down and brushed marble dust and abrasive from his black-clad thigh. “I’m hungry; I find no prospect here.”

“First Citizen,” said the invisible voice, carefully modulated.

“He’s a University Master,” Waden said. “Colonel, I suggest you withdraw that escort of yours to the suggested perimeter immediately, and trust us for your security; the scope of this incident is wider than may appear to you.”

“Go,” the colonel said. Waved his hand. There was a hesitation. “Out.”His forces began to melt away.

“I’m going to supper,” Herrin said.

“Citizen Law,” said the colonel. “We’re anxious to have an understanding.”

Herrin turned and walked to the door. “Keye, Waden,” he paused to say, “good evening.”

“Herrin,” Waden warned him. “They will be confined to the port area.”

“That is the appropriate place.”

“There will be no intrusion.”

“Good evening.”

“Good evening, Herrin.” Waden walked forward, set a hand on his shoulder, and pulled him into a gentle embrace with a pat on the arm, then let him go again. It was odd, without particular emotion, neither passionate nor personal; it was for the invisible, and Herrin suffered it with some humor, patted Waden’s arm as well, exchanged a wryly amused look at Keye, and left, into a hall now deserted.

But he was disturbed at the prospect of Outsiders, and his heart was still beating quite rapidly. It was begun, Waden’s work, Waden’s art. He felt a residue of anger, and at the same time tried to reason it away ... for whatever was begun in there, whatever—and at the moment he had no wish to divert himself with speculations—it meant a new policy and program which would widen more than Waden’s reality: it was his own which was being expanded. Things which hehad set in motion were simply coming into play and, he reasoned, perhaps it was as well, with his own Work almost finished, that another phase should begin unfolding. He was melancholy with a sense of anticlimax, that somehow he had expected more elation in his own accomplishment than he felt at the moment.

Keye occurred to him, a recollection of her quiet regard in that room, her understated presence ... her silences, which warned him that whatever was underway, Keye never announced her programs, that she perhaps deluded herself of power, and might do things without warning.

What have I said to her?he wondered, but he had always been reticent. In his heart he had always known that Keye was apt to undertake such a maneuver. He had never spilled information to her which he did not ultimately destine for Waden’s ears.

But he might have given her silent communications.

And she had deserted him at the moment when his own accomplishment was highest. She had never come to admire his work, not that he ever knew. She had watched it until the closing of the dome sealed it, but she had never seen the heart of it.

Had not, he supposed, wanted that influence upon her. Not yet. Perhaps she would never come; would always evade it. That evidenced a certain fear of his strength and talent. He decided so, more satisfied when he put it in that perspective. And Waden avoided it; in another kind of fear, he thought, fear of disappointment, perhaps–or the enjoyment of anticipation. He knew Waden, knew well enough Waden’s unwillingness to be led; of course Waden was going to feign nonchalance at the last moment, was going to occupy himself with whatever he could and ignore him as long as he could.

He felt more and more confident. He smiled to himself as he walked down the stairs to his own apartment, a stairway now clear of strangers and invisibles.

That night he stood at the window to look out on the city and there was a darkness where before lights had shone over the dome. He missed the glow, and yet the darkness itself was a sign of completion. Generations to come might want to light the Square by night; but for his part, it belonged in the sun, which gave it essence. He turned his face from the window and paced, restless, his thoughts more toward the port than, this night, toward Jenks Square.

He took the brooch which had lain on the table, from beside the tray which the servants would take away, but no one had pilfered the brooch and he had not, in fact, expected that it would vanish. He ran his fingers over it, traced the smooth spirals of the design and the silky surface of the blue stones. Invisible, like the makers, like the mind which had shaped it and the hands which had handled it until his took it up.

And he went to the closet and clipped it to the collar of the Black he would wear tomorrow. The humor of it pleased him; he had had enough of invisible absurdities, because still the memory of that Outsider hand which had dared check him rankled. His arm felt bruised. So he chose his own absurdities. Let Waden comment. He dusted himself and stripped off his still dusty garments and tossed them into the corner, his old and own habits; the Residency had made him too meticulous, as Keye had wished to make him, observant of her amenities.

So let the servants pick it up if they liked. Servants washedthe clothes. They could find them wherever they were dropped and he had no present desire to be agreeable to anyone. He began to weary of the Residency, this stifling place where Waden’s guests came and went.

He thought of returning to the University. He thought even of Law’s Valley and a visit to Camus Province, recalled that he had thought of summoning his family here for his great day, that on which the Work would be finished, but that ...that indicated a desire for something, which he denied, and the mere thought of the logistics involved was tedium. He desired nothing; needednothing. He found himself charged with a surfeit of energy, facing physical work on the morrow, but with nothing for his mind to do. He could not face bed, or sleep, and thought of Keye again, with vexation. He paced and thought even of dressing again and going out and walking the streets to burn off the energy.

He should have stayed in that conference. Waden’s invisible might have been interesting. And if he had stayed, there would have been trouble, because he was in a mood for encounter, for debate, for anything to occupy his mind, and Waden and Keye withoutthe visitor would have been the company he would have chosen. But he had sensed in Waden a protective attitude toward the intruder: Waden’s Art ... he did well, he decided, to have walked out, and not to have been there in his present state of energy.

He paced, and ended up at the table again, staring at the rest of the wine which had come with dinner, and reminding himself that he had decided not to take that route to sleep; that he was headed away from that very visible precipice. It damaged him. So did lying awake and rising early, and doing physical and mental labor on two hours’ sleep a night.

With resentment, he uncapped the bottle, poured the glass full, set bottle and glass by the bedside.

He began to think where he was going next, what project he might have in mind; but the one he was finishing was still too vivid for him, refused to leave his thoughts and yet refused further elaborations. It became a pit out of which he could not climb, offering no broader perspectives, affording him no view of where he was going next.

The vision would come, he reckoned, lying abed and sipping at the wine and staring at the wall opposite, with the dark window at his left and nothing out there to dream about. It wouldcome. As yet it did not.