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

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

XX

Student: How does a person fit death into his reality, sir?

Master Law: Whose?

Student: How do you fit your own death into yours, sir?

Master Law: One has nothing to do with another.

Student: You deny the reality of death?

Master Law: (After reflection.) With all my reality.

It was a pleasant day, Waden in high spirits and prone to argue. “I find myself too tired for fine discussion,” Herrin confessed.

“You’ve grown thin,” Waden said. They sat at a table in Waden’s rooms in the Residency, with exquisite tableware, Waden’s ordinary set... “ Eatsomething, Herrin; you’ll waste away.”

“By my standards I have.” Herrin leaned back, drinking tea and comfortable with a full belly. “A supper last night, a lunch today ... gluttony. I plan to increase my tolerance.”

“You have to,” said Keye, third in their threesome at table. “I know your habits, Herrin, and they’re abominable.”

He grinned pleasantly and briefly. “I fear the Residency is responsible. I find myself reluctant to bestir the whole array of kitchens and servants. It’s easier in the University to go downstairs and trouble cook for sandwiches. I’ll be leaving for awhile.”

Waden shrugged. “Wherever you’re comfortable?”

“You’ll have new projects,” said Keye.

He shrugged.

“What do you propose?” Waden asked.

He smiled. “I’ll know when I find it.”

“Ah, then you don’t know.”

“I suspect that I know but that it hasn’t surfaced. Allow me my methods.”

“You ... have no interest in exterior events?”

“What, yours?”

“Exterior events.”

“ Arethere any?”

“Rhetorical question?”

“No. Inform me. What’s happening with your Outsiders? Anything of interest?”

Waden shrugged and toyed with the handle of his cup, lips pursed. He looked up suddenly. “The station module is due to arrive. Past that point it begins to grow, a station, widening of the port. ...”

“Irrevocably.”

“ Myart, Herrin. Trust that I know what I’m doing.”

Herrin smiled tautly.

“Ah,” said Waden Jenks. “I see the thought passing. You say nothing; ergo you have very much to say. It’s only on trivialities that you debate motivation. You think—using that creation out in the Square, to have some great part in me.”

“I do. I’m very self-interested.”

Waden smiled. “I’ll never carry your argument for you. Only be sure I know what it is, even unspoken.”

“I’d expect nothing less. So why should I bother? Mine’s a nonverbal art form.”

“Beware him,” Keye said, chin on hand and smiling over her empty plate.

“Which of us?” asked Waden.

“Both of you.”

“And you?” asked Herrin.

“I’m always wary,” she said.

That had the feel of the old, the hungry days. Herrin laughed, set down his cup. “Surely,” he said, “Waden, your appointments are waiting; and I’m due a rest. I’m going to walk off this excellent meal. And rest.”

He tried. He left the upper hall of the Residency and walked downstairs, thought about going to his room and attempting a nap. He was tired enough to be very much tempted, but he also knew that the moment his head touched the pillow, he would begin thinking about what was in the Square or about something equally preoccupying, and he would lie awake miserable.

He walked outside, and onto the streets, and onto Main ... alone this time. He stopped and looked at the crowd which still clustered about the dome, almost lost his taste for going there at all, ever. It gave him a sense of loss, that what had been his private possession now belonged to everyone and he could never get to it in private again.

The crew was dispersed ... or if they were not, at least they would work together no more until he could conceive of some new idea.

But the Work had its power. It drew at him inexorably, and he strayed slowly in that unwanted direction.

“Master Law,” they whispered where he passed. There was no anonymity.

“It’s beautiful,” some boy ventured to say to him, a breathless whisper in passing on the street, in fleeing his presence: a University Master did not converse with townsfolk, for their sakes, for their realities’ sake—because theirs were so vulnerable; but someone interrupted that silence to offer opinion. The boy was not the last. There were others who called it beautiful; and some who said nothing, but just came close to him. “My father worked on it,” said a freckled girl, as if that was supposed to mean something.

“Wait,” he said, but she was embarrassed and ran away, and he never knew whose daughter it was.

He walked inside, and even now there were a great many people in the dome, in the outer rings. He walked into the sunlit inner chamber, where people gathered before the image.

It was the Dionysian face. A patch of sun fallen on the other side and at another angle had turned it into somber laughter, dark laughter, that expression of Waden’s when he was genuinely amused.

It went on living; it possessed the chamber with a feeling which was, to one who knew Waden in that mood, not comfortable. Herrin deserted his own creation, and kept walking, shivering past shadows which had come to watch the watchers, invisibles.

Leona?he thought, turning back to see, but he could not be certain, and he kept walking, slowly, out of the dome and out of the Square, farther down Main.

People here recognized him too. The novelty of that passed and he tried simply to think in peace, disturbed and distressed that even the refuge of the streets was threatened.

On one level, he thought, he should be troubled that he could not stay there; on another, he knew why ... that he was ready to shed that idea, to be done with it, and the persistence of it frightened him. It was Waden Jenks ... it waspowerful, and had to be dealt with, and now that he had created this phenomenon, he could not allow it to begin to warp him, and his art. Having created he had to be rid of it, erase it, get it out of his thoughts so that his mind could work.

But Waden, set in motion, was not a force easily canceled.

And what Waden did threatened him, because it came at him through his own art, and gave him no peace.

Perhaps it was the intrusion of Outsiders in Freedom which made it harder to settle himself again; an intrusion argued that events were at hand which might offer subject ... and that bothered him, the thought that no matter what he began, something might then occur which would offer more tempting inspiration: wait, wait,a small voice counseled him. Observe.

But while he waited his mind was going to have nothing to work on, and that vacancy was acute misery; an adrenalin charge with nowhere to spend it, an ache that was physical. He could not sleep again with that vacancy in his intentions; could not; could not walk about perceiving things with his senses raw as an open wound, taking in everything about him, keeping him in the state he was in.

His course took him to the end of Main, where it became highway, and led to the Camus river. From that point he could see the river itself, which led inland and inward, back to the things he had been. He walked to the edge of it, where the highway verged it along a weed-grown bank, and the gravel thrown by wheels had made it unlovely ... the scars of too much and too careless use; it could be better, but no one cared. He sat down there and tossed gravel in and watched the disturbance in the swift-flowing surface.

In one direction it became the Sunrise Sea, and led to the other continent of Hesse; and men were going there. Humanity on Freedom was spreading and discovering itself, and he had duty there.

In the other it was safety, Camus township, and Law’s Valley.

I’d like to see them, he thought of his family, and then put it down to simple curiosity, one of those instinctual things which had outlived the usefulness it served.

He had outgrown them. It was like the crowds back there at the dome. Approbation was pleasant but it diverted. Probably they would applaud him back in Camus Township, but they would no more understand him than they ever had. It was not simply that there was no going home to what had been: there had never been anything there in the first place but his own desire for a little triumph, to be able to explain what he had done to those who had been there at his beginnings.

He laughed at himself and flung an entire handful of gravel, breaking up the surface into a cluster of pockmarks. He created the thing he wished existed, and it did, and he could look back on it—reckoning that his family did, at distance, perceive what he was, and that was the best they could do. They were, after all, no better than any others, and no less hazard: like Waden Jenks. Like Keye. He found pleasure in the crew because the crew adored him; they in fact adored the importance they gained through him. If they were really anything, truly able to rival him, they would suck him in and drink him down as readily as Waden Jenks would, given the chance.

Power was the thing. He had Waden worried; and in fact—in fact, he told himself—Waden ought to be worried about him, and about Keye, who was now feeding her own reality into Waden’s ear. He comforted himself with the thought that of all humans alive who were not about to be taken in, Waden Jenks would not be—would in no wise let Keye have her way with him.

Creative ethics was Keye’s field; indeed creative ethics, and Keye was busy at it. She chose Waden either because, being political herself, she comprehended him best and rejected Art, or because she knew Herrin Law and saw she was getting nowhere with him.

Keye’s art had to have political power to function—as Keye saw it. Hesaw an ethic in his art which Keye had never seen.

Therefore he was greater. And sure of it.

A second handful of gravel, which startled a fish and disturbed the reality of a very small life. He smiled at the conceit. The fish knew as much of Herrin Law as most did, and it was better off that way.

He stripped some of the weeds and plaited them; his fingers were sore from the abrasive and from the work, but he could do it as dexterously as he had on the grassy hillside overlooking his home.

His own bed would be a comfort, porridge cooking when he got up, the scrape of wooden chairs on wooden floor and the smells of everyone and everything he knew woven together and harmonious like the braid of grass.

Herrin,his mother would say, time to get up. Did you hear?his father would say. He can go on and sleep;that would be Perrin. I get his bowl.

He smiled, laughed a breath and stared into the water.

Trucks passed in one direction and the other, never slowed, but roared past on their own business; it was not the day for either bus, which wandered opposite directions of a loop somewhere in the outermost reaches of the Camus valley, linking village to village and all with Kierkegaard.

The river came from the high valleys, from places he had known. It was, even with the truck traffic, a pleasant place to sit.

It was the cold that moved him finally, the shift of wind which accompanied a line of clouds marching on the city, which ruffled the water and bent the weeds and persuaded him it was time to walk back. The sun was sinking. He thought of the dome, where the disquieting image would have settled toward peace. He wanted to see it, but he was drained, and it was cold, and he wanted only to go unrecognized and to stay private in his thoughts. He had achieved at least a measure of tranquility, and found he ached in his bones and that his feet and backside were cold.

He angled off toward the east, avoiding the straight of Main and Jenks Square. It happened to be the direction of the port, and his palate remembered meat pies. There, in the gathering twilight, existed a place where he could walk unremarked. All the way to the port’s south gateway he thought of the pies and the strange and peaceful market.

But there was a silence when he had gotten to the wire fence and the open south gate. It was almost dark; he stood there bewildered, staring at the closed booths and wondering if he had lost track of things. He walked where there had been the smell of things good to eat and the busy commerce of invisibles ... and there was nothing. There were occasional invisibles, robed forms which melded with the shadows and the booths and the dark, between the shops and the fence, but it was all dead; the few shapes which moved here were like insects over the corpse of the life which had existed here.

The port itself ... lived. He looked out where a machine sat in the port, stranger than any he had ever seen, a gray monster attempting nonchalance on the soil of Freedom, where lights glared and motors whined. It was gulping down supply drums; and those drums were about to be lifted off Freedom, to something which, if he looked up, would not be visible, the size and the nature of which he did not clearly picture to himself, although he had seen pictures of ships.

Waden’s. All of this belonged to Waden, and indirectly, therefore, to him, and yet he had never imagined it, or had, in the sense that he had conceived at least of the possibility in comprehending Waden Jenks, in that statue in Jenks Square. Like the sculpture in the Square, it took on independent life, surprising him, disquieting him.

His mind flinched back to the escort which had come with Waden, the unwelcome visitants who had walked within the dome at Jenks Square. More of them would come. His Work was great, and all those who came to Freedom’s station and to Freedom itself would be drawn to it. He thought of Camden McWilliams and the Pirela weavings, and felt a slight insecurity, the apprehension of a destructive, not a creative, force, which had begun to disturb him even then. He remembered the face and the form which were safely shut in that sketchbook he had not touched after that day, that dark and overlarge figure which had occupied Waden Jenks’s office as that ship occupied the port, radiating things Outside, a figment of Waden Jenks’s private ambitions, which now began to have many faces.

Thatwas what had begun to nag at him, that was the disturbance which had made these strangers unbearable to him ... that unfinished portrait and the whole concept behind it, that ... presence ... in the untouched sketchbook, which was not a part of Freedom’s reality, and was; and was his; and was not. It was in there, imprisoned in the leaves, reminding him of the same thing the machine out there told him—that within the ambition of Waden Jenks, and therefore within his own, was the like of Camden McWilliams and the foreign colonel who wanted him ... what, dead? Was that what became of enemies in the Outside? It was all full of uncertainties, things half-formed.

Thatwas what kept at him. Open the book,it said, that unfinished sketch, wanting him to do something with it, interpret it, bring it the rest of the way into view of all the rest of these people, for Waden and for Keye and for the city, make them see what he saw, make their vision ...

... Outward.

As his kept leading him. Look,look at the potential in this individual; consider the perspective of his being; look at the hazard; and the possibility; look.

Seehim, this invisible, this Outsider,

He wiped his mouth, which had gone dry, stared at the inspiration which was trying, combined with what sat out there in the floodlights, to rear up inside him and claim his undivided attention.

His own reality suddenly discarded the whole project of the expedition to Hesse as irrelevant—an expedition to a place which would be as rude and bare of need for art as Law’s Valley; the prospect stifled him. This, on the other hand, thisargued for seizing an opportunity before Waden Jenks could have it all his way, before Keye could work upon Waden or anyone else. Make them see hisvisions instead....

Camden McWilliams. Waden had betrayed the man to his hunters, had traded that man and that information for what Waden wanted, which was the station Freedom had never had since the colony ship broke up. A second chance. And from that second chance, that station which would bring the military to Freedom—a chance to extend the grasp of Waden Jenks. To take the minds of their leaders, to divert them for his purposes ... all these things.

Camden McWilliams, whatever else he was and whatever potential he had, became the commodity in this trade, which was being made now, for good or for ill for Freedom. That brooding black figure stayed central in his thoughts, the solitary image, dark, like the Outside; unknown, like the Outside.

He started walking toward the University, toward the studio. The port, the street, the stairs passed in a blur of other thoughts, of visions which began like fevered dreams to tumble one over the other. He forgot about supper, remembered it when he was already in the University building, and from one direction there was a soft noise of the Fellows’ Hall, and in the other the stairs, and the studio.

He had no appetite for food now, not with the other hunger.

He took the stairs, the way to the studio which he had visited only infrequently of late. He walked into the studio and turned on the light. Everything was disordered as he had left it, dusty with neglect. He kicked papers this way and that, kicked some old rags aside—they were for wiping his hands from the clay. He remembered where he had left the sketchbook on the table by the bed, sat down on the rumpled sheets—no servants ever gained access here; they had never been permitted. He knew the place and the page, and opened it to that series dark with shading out of which the Outsider face stared. He had caught the expressions, the frowns, the menace, the poses of the powerful body. It was all there; he remembered.

He laid the book down and made the pages stay open, cleared a working surface on the second of the modeling tables—the first one still held models for the dome—and opened the vat by the tableside, scooped out large handfuls of wet clay, flung them onto the surface, lidded the vat and straightened, his hands already at it. He should stop, should change to his working garments—there was already clay on his black clothes—but the vision was there, now. He worked, feverish in his application, blinded by what he saw it should become if he could only get it in time.

It became. He watched it happen and loathed what he was creating, but it went on becoming, a face, features contracted as if it stared into something unapprehended, a force, which itself radiated and got nothing back. There was despair within it; there was—hate. It was citizen Harfeld’s look, and his sister Perrin’s; it was that of Leona Pace, that hunger which never filled itself, which stared at lost things and never-had things and ached and got nothing back.

XXI

Waden Jenks: You’ve taught me something.

Master Law: What, I?

Waden Jenks. That duration itself is worth the risk; and that’s my choice as well, Artist.

He stopped, when his shoulders had stiffened and his arms ached from the extension and his hands hurt from working the clay. He looked at it; he had not the strength to work to completion at one sitting. That would take days and months to do as he had done the other, but the concept wanted out of him, refusing patience, promising months of effort if he lacked the stamina to go on now, in hours, to finish what vision he had. It sat rough and half-born, the essence of it there. He touched the wet clay, brushed at it tentatively and finally surrendered, dropped his hand and folded his arms on the table and rested his head on them and slept where he sat, fitfully, until he gained the strength to walk over and fall into the unmade bed—to waken finally with hands and arms painfully dry and caked thick with clay, to open his eyes and stare across the room at the creature on the table as if it were some new lover that had come into the room last night and stayed for morning. He had feared it was a dream which might fade out of reach; but it was there, and demanded, unfinished as it was, an attention he presently could not give it.

He washed, stiff-muscled and shivering in the unheated studio; dressed, because he had not taken all his clothes away to the Residency, against some time that he would want this place. He paused time and time again to stare at what he had done in the fit of last night, and it no more let him go than before, except that he had spent all his vision and was drained for the time. He knew better than to lay hands on it now, when nothing would come out true, when his hands and his eye would betray him and warp what he remembered. The vision was retreated into the distance and hands alone could not produce it or impatience force it. It was waiting. It would come back and gather force and break out in him again when he had rested. He had only to think about it and wait.

Never—he was sure—never exactly as it had been last night; those impulses, once faded, could not be recovered. He mourned over that, and paused in his intention to go downstairs to breakfast, just to look toward that disturbing face.

He laughed then at his own doubt. It had more in it than the work he had just finished, more of potential. It could be greater than what was in Jenks Square. It could become ... far greater. He suffered another impulse to work on it, which was not an impulse he ought to follow. After breakfast; after rest; then.

People approached the door; classes were starting, he reckoned. It was daybreak; maybe someone was starting early.

The door opened. It was Waden.

“Well,” Herrin said, because Waden’s visits to University were normally limited to the dining hall. Outsiders were with him. Evidently that was going to be a permanent attachment. “ Iwas headed downstairs.”

“You’ve been working.” Waden walked to the table, touched the clay, walked around it. Frowned and touched it again. “That’s what you’re doing next.”

“It’s far from finished.”

“McWilliams. He’s not like that. He’s a narrow, narrow man. You make him a god.”

“I’ve only borrowed his features. It’s not McWilliams; just the shell of him.”

“This is good.”

“Of course it is.”

“Did you have this in mind all along?”

“Started it last night.... Do you have a point, Waden? Come down to breakfast with me.”

“I don’t want you to do any more statues.”

Herrin stood still and looked at him. “Am I to take you seriously?”

“Absolutely.”

“First Citizen, you’re given to bizarre humor, but this—whatever it demonstrates—is not for discussion at breakfast.”

“It has rational explanation, Herrin. I’m sure you even understand it.”

He thought about it. The best thing to do, he thought, was to walk out the door on the spot and give Waden’s absurdity the treatment it deserved; but the doorway was occupied: invisibles stood there, Waden’s escort, large men with foreign weapons. And he did see them and Waden knew that he saw them.

“You were useful,” Waden said, “in creating what you did. Art’s the more valuable while it’s unique. If you go on creating such things, you’ll eventually overshadow it. I’m telling you ... there’ll not be another. You’ve created something unique. Protect it,you said; time is your enemy,you said; and I believe you, Herrin.”

He was cold inside and out. It was very difficult to relax and laugh, but he did so. “I recall what your art is; but do you fancy years of Keye alone? You need me more than ever, First Citizen. Look at your allies and imagine dialogue with them.”

“I know,” Waden said. “I agree with you on all of that. I don’t want to lose you. You’ve accomplished a great deal. You’re a powerful force; you’ve swallowed up Kierkegaard itself; you have people doing strange things and Kierkegaard will never be the same. But, Herrin, you’ve done as much as I want you to do. As much as I wantyou to do. Enjoy everything you have. Bask in your success. Knowthat you’ve warped a great many things about your influence, and that you’ll have your duration. Look, they’ll say for ages to come, lookat the work of Herrin Law; he only made one, and laid down his tools and stopped, because it was a masterwork, and it was perfect. Quit while your reputation is whole. Stop at this apex of your career, and you’ll challenge ages to come with what you’ve done; you’ll have accomplished everything you ever said you wanted. Paint, if it suits you. Painting’s not the same kind of art; your sketches are brilliant. Be rich. Teach others. Continue here as a Master. Do anything in the world you like. You want comfort—have it. You want influence—I’ll give you control of the whole University. Just don’t do another sculpture.”

“At your asking.”

“I ask this,” Waden said quietly, “I pleadwith you—which I have never done with anyone and never shall again.”

“Meaning that you’re threatened; meaning that my art has to give way to yours, and you mean I should admit that.”

“Mine is the more important, Herrin. My art guides and governs, but yours is Dionysian and dangerous. It provokes emotion; it gathers irrational responses about it; it touches and it moves, like energy itself. While your energy serves me I use it, but you’ve done enough. It’s time to stop, Herrin, because if you go further you put yourself in conflict with me. You threaten order. And you threaten other things. I asked you to lend me duration; and now I have to be sure you don’t lend it to anyone else. Like that—” He gestured toward the sculpture. “That, a man hunted by agencies friendly to us—”

“Your reality’s becoming bent indeed if you care in the least what theythink. If you had power you’d tell them what to think. But aren’t you losing your grip on it—that the best you can do is come here and tell me notto create, that your reality can’t withstand me and what I do? Are you that fragile, Waden Jenks? I never thought so until now.”

“You misunderstand. The power is not illusory. It is real, Artist, and it can be used. I’ve told you what I want and don’t want, and the fact that I can tell you is at issue here, do you see that? All you have to do is admit that I can. And think about it. And take the rational course. Leave off making statues. That’s all I ask.”

Herrin shook his head. “Really an excellent piece of your art, Waden. Consummate skill. I amintimidated. But I exist, I do what I do, and it’s not to be changed.”

“I understand. You won’t give in, reckoning this is a bluff, that at any moment I’ll let you know you’ve been taken.” Waden reached to the table beside him, took up dried clay in his fingers and crumbled it. Suddenly he grasped the table edge and upended it.

Herrin exclaimed in shock and grabbed for it; but it fell; the head hit the floor and distorted itself and he grabbed for Waden, seized up a handful of impeccable suit and headed Waden for the wall.

The Outsiders grabbed him from behind, hauled him back while he was still too shocked at the touch itself; and at the destruction; and at Waden Jenks.

“I’m very serious,” Waden said. “Believe me that you won’tgo on working as you please, and I know what it is to you—admit it, admit that after all, you don’t control what happens, and ask me, just ask me for what I’ve offered you, on my terms ... because those are the terms you’ll get. Those are the terms you have to live with. It’s my world. I can make it comfortable for you—or harsh; and all you have to do to save yourself a great deal of grief is to admit that truth, and follow orders, which is all you’ve ever really done. Only now you have to see it and to deal with that fact. Admit it. When you can—you’re quite safe.”

“I’m not about to.” Herrin tried to shake himself loose. It was going to take losing the rest of his composure and still he entertained the suspicion it was all farce. “We’ll talk about this later. Rationally.”

“No. There’s no talk left. I just ask you whether you’re willing to be reasonable in this. That’s all.”

“Oh, well, I agree.”

“You’re lying of course, I know. Humor me, you think, try eventually to move me. No. I’m leaving now, Herrin. I’ve borrowed these troops from the port; they don’t have the reluctance in some regards anyone else in Kierkegaard would have. Others wouldn’t lay a hand on you, but they will. They’ll see to it that you can’t use that talent of yours again. You see, I also deal with the material as well as the mind; and by the material—on the mind. I don’t want him killed—understand me well—I just want it assured he won’t make any more statues. Physically. Herrin, I don’t want it this way.”

“Then you’ve already lost control.”

“It’s not a game, Herrin; not a debate: I’m leaving. And if you ask me and I know you’ve come to my Reality, Herrin, you can get out of this.” Waden walked to the door, waited, looked back. “Herrin?”

He shook his head, suddenly made up his mind and jerked loose, headed for Waden in the intent of getting to him, the head, the center of it; a hand grasped his arm, dragging at him and he spun, elbowed for a belly and rammed his free hand for a throat, but they hauled at his arms again. There was no one in the doorway; the door closed, in fact leaving him with them, and a blow slammed into his midsection in the instant he looked.

He threw his whole body into it, rammed his feet into one of them, twisted with manic force and threw one of them over, came down on that one and rammed a freed forearm into his face. A blow dazed him, sent his vision red and black, and he tried to heave himself to his feet, met a body and heaved his weight into it. The body and a table went over, and they went on hitting him, over and over again, until his balance left him and he hit the floor on hip and shoulder. “Don’t kill him,” one reminded the others. “Don’t risk killing him.” One trod on his arm, and a boot came down on his hand, smashed down on it repeatedly. He tried to protect himself, but they had him, rolled him on his face and smashed the other hand. He had not, to his knowledge, made a sound—did then, cried out from the pain and lost all his organization to resist the blows that came at him and the blurred figures which swarmed over him. He curled up when they had let him go. Even that instinctual move came hard, muscles twitching without coordination, some paralyzed. One of them kicked him in the belly and he could not prevent it.