…In Africa’s Namib Desert, one of the most hostile environments on the face of the earth, lives a creature known as the sun spider. Its body is furred pale gold, the exact colour of the sand beneath which it burrows in search of its prey, disturbing scarcely a grain in its passage. It emerges from hiding only to snatch its prey, and were you to look directly at it from an inch away, you might never notice its presence. Nature is an efficient process, tending to repeat elegant solutions to the problem of survival in such terrible places. Thus, if—as I posit—particulate life exists upon the Sun, I would not be startled to learn it has adopted a similar form.
Reynolds Dulambre, Alchemical Diaries
My husband Reynolds and I arrived on Helios Station following four years in the Namib, where he had delivered himself of the Diaries, including the controversial Solar Equations, and where I had become adept in the uses of boredom. We were met at the docking arm by the administrator of the Physics Section, Dr Davis Brent, who escorted us to a reception given in Reynolds’ honour, held in one of the pleasure domes that blistered the skin of the station. Even had I been unaware that Brent was one of Reynolds’ chief detractors, I would have known the two of them for adversaries: in manner and physicality, they were total opposites, like cobra and mongoose. Brent was pudgy, of medium stature, with a receding hairline, and dressed in a drab standard-issue jumpsuit. Reynolds—at thirty-seven, only two years younger—might have been ten years his junior. He was tall and lean, with chestnut hair that fell to the shoulders of his cape, and possessed of that craggy nobility of feature one associates with a Shakespearian lead. Both were on their best behaviour, but they could barely manage civility, and so it was quite a relief when we reached the dome and were swept away into a crowd of admiring techs and scientists.
Helios Station orbited the south pole of the Sun, and through the ports I had a view of a docking arm to which several of the boxy ships that journeyed into the coronosphere were moored. Leaving Reynolds to be lionized, I lounged beside one of the ports and gazed toward Earth, pretending I was celebrating Nation Day in Abidjan rather than enduring this gathering of particle-pushers and inductive reasoners, most of whom were gawking at Reynolds, perhaps hoping he would live up to his reputation and perform a drugged collapse or start a fight. I watched him and Brent talking. Brent’s body language was toadying, subservient, like that of a dog trying to curry favour; he would clasp his hands and tip his head to the side when making some point, as if begging his master not to strike him. Reynolds stood motionless, arms folded across his chest.
At one point Brent said, ‘I can’t see what purpose you hope to achieve in beaming protons into coronal holes,’ and Reynolds, in his most supercilious tone, responded by saying that he was merely poking about in the weeds with a long stick.
I was unable to hear the next exchange, but then I did hear Brent say, ‘That may be, but I don’t think you understand the openness of our community. The barriers you’ve erected around your research go against the spirit, the…’
‘All my goddamned life,’ Reynolds cut in, broadcasting in a stagey baritone, ‘I’ve been harassed by little men. Men who’ve carved out some cosy academic niche by footnoting my work and then decrying it. Mousy little bastards like you. And that’s why I maintain my privacy… to keep the mice from nesting in my papers.’
He strode off toward the refreshment table, leaving Brent smiling at everyone, trying to show that he had not been affected by the insult. A slim brunette attached herself to Reynolds, engaging him in conversation. He illustrated his points with florid gestures, leaning over her, looking as if he were about to enfold her in his cape, and not long afterward they made a discreet exit.
Compared to Reynolds’ usual public behaviour, this was a fairly restrained display, but sufficient to make the gathering forget my presence. I sipped a drink, listening to the chatter, feeling no sense of betrayal. I was used to Reynolds’ infidelities, and, indeed, I had come to thrive on them. I was grateful he had found his brunette. Though our marriage was not devoid of the sensual, most of our encounters were ritual in nature, and after four years of isolation in the desert, I needed the emotional sustenance of a lover. Helios would, I believed, provide an ample supply.
Shortly after Reynolds had gone, Brent came over to the port, and to my amazement, he attempted to pick me up. It was one of the most inept seductions to which I have ever been subject. He contrived to touch me time and again as if by accident, and complimented me several times on the largeness of my eyes. I managed to turn the conversation into harmless channels, and he got off into politics, a topic on which he considered himself expert.
‘My essential political philosophy,’ he said, ‘derives from a story by one of the masters of twentieth-century speculative fiction. In the story, a man sends his mind into the future and finds himself in a Utopian setting, a greensward surrounded by white buildings, with handsome men and beautiful women strolling everywhere…’
I cannot recall how long I listened to him, to what soon became apparent as a ludicrous Libertarian fantasy, before bursting into laughter. Brent looked confused by my reaction, but then masked confusion by joining in my laughter. ‘Ah, Carolyn,’ he said. ‘I had you going there, didn’t I? You thought I was serious!’
I took pity on him. He was only a sad little man with an inflated self-opinion; and, too, I had been told that he was in danger of losing his administrative post. I spent the best part of an hour in making him feel important; then, scraping him off, I went in search of a more suitable companion.
My first lover on Helios Station, a young particle physicist named Thom, proved overweening in his affections. The sound of my name seemed to transport him; often he would lift his head and say, ‘Carolyn, Carolyn,’ as if by doing this he might capture my essence. I found him absurd, but I was starved for attention, and though I could not reciprocate in kind, I was delighted in being the object of his single-mindedness. We would meet each day in one of the pleasure domes, dance to drift, and drink paradisiacs—I developed quite a fondness for Amouristes—and then retire to a private chamber, there to make love and watch the sunships return from their fiery journeys. It was Thom’s dream to be assigned someday to a sunship, and he would rhapsodize on the glories attendant upon swooping down through layers of burning gases. His fixation with the scientific adventure eventually caused me to break off the affair. Years of exposure to Reynolds’ work had armoured me against any good opinion of science, and further I did not want to be reminded of my proximity to the Sun: sometimes I imagined I could hear it hissing, roaring, and feel its flames tonguing the metal walls, preparing to do us to a crisp with a single lick.
By detailing my infidelity, I am not trying to characterize my marriage as loveless. I loved Reynolds, though my affections had waned somewhat. And he loved me in his own way. Prior to our wedding, he had announced that he intended our union to be ‘a marriage of souls’. But this was no passionate outcry, rather a statement of scientific intent. He believed in souls, believed they were the absolute expression of a life, a quality that pervaded every particle of matter and gave rise to the lesser expressions of personality and physicality. His search for particulate life upon the Sun was essentially an attempt to isolate and communicate with the anima, and the ‘marriage of souls’ was for him the logical goal of twenty-first-century physics. It occurs to me now that this search may have been his sole means of voicing his deepest emotions, and it was our core problem that I thought he would someday love me in a way that would satisfy me, whereas he felt my satisfaction could be guaranteed by the application of scientific method.
To further define our relationship, I should mention that he once wrote me that the ‘impassive, vaguely oriental beauty’ of my face reminded him of ‘those serene countenances used to depict the solar disc on ancient sailing charts’. Again, this was not the imagery of passion: he considered this likeness a talisman, a lucky charm. He was a magical thinker, perceiving himself as more akin to the alchemists than to his peers, and like the alchemists, he gave credence to the power of similarities. Whenever he made love to me, he was therefore making love to the Sun. To the great detriment of our marriage, every beautiful woman became for him the Sun, and thus a potential tool for use in his rituals. Given his enormous ego, it would have been out of character for him to have been faithful, and had he not utilized sex as a concentrative ritual, I am certain he would have invented another excuse for infidelity. And, I suppose, I would have had to contrive some other justification for my own.
During those first months I was indiscriminate in my choice of lovers, entering into affairs with both techs and a number of Reynolds’ colleagues. Reynolds himself was no more discriminating, and our lives took separate paths. Rarely did I spend a night in our apartment, and I paid no attention whatsoever to Reynolds’ work. But then one afternoon as I lay with my latest lover in the private chamber of a pleasure dome, the door slid open and in walked Reynolds. My lover—a tech whose name eludes me—leaped up and began struggling into his clothes, apologizing all the while. I shouted at Reynolds, railed at him. What right did he have to humiliate me this way? I had never burst in on him and his whores, had I? Imperturbable, he stared at me, and after the tech had scurried out, he continued to stare, letting me exhaust my anger. At last, breathless, I sat glaring at him, still angry, yet also feeling a measure of guilt… not relating to my affair, but to the fact that I had become pregnant as a result of my last encounter with Reynolds. We had tried for years to have a child, and despite knowing how important a child would be to him, I had put off the announcement. I was no longer confident of his capacity for fatherhood.
‘I’m sorry about this.’ He waved at the bed. ‘It was urgent I see you, and I didn’t think.’
The apology was uncharacteristic, and my surprise at it drained away the dregs of anger. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
Contrary emotions played over his face. ‘I’ve got him,’ he said.
I knew what he was referring to: he always personified the object of his search, although before too long he began calling it ‘the Spider’. I was happy for his success, but for some reason it had made me a little afraid, and I was at a loss for words.
‘Do you want to see him?’ He sat beside me. ‘He’s imaged in one of the tanks.’
I nodded.
I was sure he was going to embrace me. I could see in his face the desire to break down the barriers we had erected, and I imagined now his work was done, we would be as close as we had once hoped, that honesty and love would finally have their day. But the moment passed, and his face hardened. He stood and paced the length of the chamber. Then he whirled around, hammered a fist into his palm, and with all the passion he had been unable to direct toward me, he said, ‘I’ve got him!’
I had been watching him for over a week without knowing it: a large low-temperature area shifting about in a coronal hole. It was only by chance that I recognized him; I inadvertently nudged the colour controls of a holo tank, and brought part of the low-temperature area into focus, revealing a many-armed ovoid of constantly changing primary hues, the arms attenuating and vanishing: I have observed some of these arms reach ten thousand miles in length, and I have no idea what limits apply to their size. He consists essentially of an inner complex of ultracold neutrons enclosed by an intense magnetic field. Lately it has occurred to me that certain of the coronal holes may be no more than the attitude of his movements. Aside from these few facts and guesses, he remains a mystery, and I have begun to suspect that no matter how many elements of his nature are disclosed, he will always remain so.
Reynolds Dulambre, Collected Notes
Brent’s face faded in on the screen, his features composed into one of those fawning smiles. ‘Ah, Reynolds,’ he said. ‘Glad I caught you.’
‘I’m busy,’ I snapped, reaching for the off switch.
‘Reynolds!’
His desperate tone caught my attention.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said. ‘A matter of some importance.’
I gave an amused sniff. ‘I doubt that.’
‘Oh, but it is… to both of us.’
An oily note had crept into his voice, and I lost patience. ‘I’m going to switch off, Brent. Do you want to say goodbye, or should I just cut you off in mid-sentence?’
‘I’m warning you, Reynolds!’
‘Warning me? I’m all aflutter, Brent. Are you planning to assault me?’
His face grew flushed. ‘I’m sick of your arrogance!’ he shouted. ‘Who the hell are you to talk down to me? At least I’m productive… you haven’t done any work for weeks!’
I started to ask how he knew that, but then realized he could have monitored my energy usage via the station computers.
‘You think…’ he began, but at that point I did cut him off and turned back to the image of the Spider floating in the holo tank, its arms weaving a slow dance. I had never believed he was more than dreams, vague magical images, the grandfather wizard trapped in flame, in golden light, in the heart of power. I’d hoped, I’d wanted to believe. But I hadn’t been able to accept his reality until I came to Helios, and the dreams grew stronger. Even now I wondered if belief was merely an extension of madness. I have never doubted the efficacy of madness: it is my constant, my reference in chaos.
The first dream had come when I was… what? Eleven, twelve? No older. My father had been chasing me, and I had sought refuge in a cave of golden light, a mist of pulsing, shifting light that contained a voice I could not quite hear: it was too vast to hear. I was merely a word upon its tongue, and there had been other words aligned around me, words I needed to understand or else I would be cast out from the light. The Solar Equations—which seemed to have been visited upon me rather than a product of reason—embodied the shiftings, the mysterious principles I had sensed in the golden light, hinted at the arcane processes, the potential for union and dissolution that I had apprehended in every dream. Each time I looked at them, I felt tremors in my flesh, my spirit, as if signalling the onset of a profound change, and…
The beeper sounded again, doubtless another call from Brent, and I ignored it. I turned to the readout from the particle traps monitored by the station computers. When I had discovered that the proton bursts being emitted from the Spider’s coronal hole were patterned—coded, I’m tempted to say—I had been elated, especially considering that a study of these bursts inspired me to create several addenda to the Equations. They had still been fragmentary, however, and I’d had the notion that I would have to get closer to the Spider in order to complete them… perhaps join one of the flights into the coronosphere. My next reaction had been fear. I had realized it was possible the Spider’s control was such that these bursts were living artefacts, structural components that maintained a tenuous connection with the rest of his body. If so, then the computers, the entire station, might be under his scrutiny… if not his control. Efforts to prove the truth of this had been inconclusive, but this inconclusiveness was in itself an affirmative answer: the computers were not capable of evasion, and it had been obvious that evasiveness was at work here.
The beeper broke off, and I began to ask myself questions. I had been labouring under the assumption that the Spider had in some way summoned me, but now an alternate scenario presented itself. Could I have stirred him to life? I had beamed protons into the coronal holes, hadn’t I? Could I have educated some dumb thing… or perhaps brought him to life? Were all my dreams a delusionary system of unparalleled complexity and influence, or was I merely a madman who happened to be right?
These considerations might have seemed irrelevant to my colleagues, but when I related them to my urge to approach the Spider more closely, they took on extreme personal importance. How could I trust such an urge? I stared at the Spider, at its arms waving in their thousand-mile-long dance, their slow changes in configuration redolent of Kali’s dance, of myths even more obscure. There were no remedies left for my fear. I had stopped work, drugged myself to prevent dreams, and yet I could do nothing to remove my chief concern: that the Spider would use its control over the computers (if, indeed, it did control them) to manipulate me.
I turned off the holo tank and headed out into the corridor, thinking I would have a few drinks. I hadn’t gone fifty feet when Brent accosted me; I brushed past him, but he fell into step beside me. He exuded a false heartiness that was even more grating than his usual obsequiousness.
‘Production,’ he said. That’s our keynote here, Reynolds.’
I glowered at him.
‘We can’t afford to have dead wood lying around,’ he went on. ‘Now if you’re having a problem, perhaps you need a fresh eye. I’d be glad to take a look…’
I gave him a push, sending him wobbling, but it didn’t dent his mood.
‘Even the best of us run up against stone walls,’ he said. ‘And in your case, well, how long has it been since your last major work. Eight years? Ten? You can only ride the wind of your youthful successes for so…’
My anxiety flared into rage. I drove my fist into his stomach, and he dropped, gasping like a fish out of water. I was about to kick him, when I was grabbed from behind by the black-clad arms of a security guard. Two more guards intervened as I wrenched free, cursing at Brent. One of the guards helped Brent up and asked what should be done with me.
‘Let him go,’ he said, rubbing his gut. The man’s not responsible.’
I lunged at him, but was shoved back. ‘Bastard!’ I shouted. ‘You smarmy little shit, I swear I’ll kill you if…’
A guard gave me another above.
‘Please, Reynolds,’ Brent said in a placating tone. ‘Don’t worry… I’ll make sure you receive due credit.’
I had no idea what he meant, and was too angry to wonder at it. I launched more insults as the guards escorted him away.
No longer in the mood for a public place, I returned to the apartment and sat scribbling meaningless notes, gazing at an image of the Spider that played across one entire wall, I was so distracted that I didn’t notice Carolyn had entered until she was standing close beside me. The Spider’s colours flickered across her, making her into an incandescent silhouette.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, sitting on the floor.
‘Nothing.’ I tossed my notepad side.
‘Something’s wrong.’
‘Not at all… I’m just tired.’
She regarded me expressionlessly. ‘It’s the Spider, isn’t it?’
I told her that, Yes, the work was giving me trouble, but it wasn’t serious. I’m not sure if I wanted her as much as it seemed I did, or if I was using sex to ward off more questions. Whatever the case, I lowered myself beside her, kissed her, touched her breasts, and soon we were in that heated secret place where—I thought—not even the Spider’s eyes could pry. I told her I loved her in that rushed breathless way that is less an intimate disclosure than a form of gasping, of shaping breath to accommodate movement. That was the only way I have ever been able to tell her the best of my feeling, and it was because I was shamed by this that we did not make love more often.
Afterward I could see she wanted to say something important: it was working in her face. But I didn’t want to hear it, to be trapped into some new level of intimacy. I turned from her, marshalling words that would signal my need for privacy, and my eyes fell on the wall where the image of the Spider still danced… danced in a way I had never before witnessed. His colours were shifting through a spectrum of reds and violets, and his arms writhed in a rhythm that brought to mind the rhythms of sex, the slow beginning, the furious rush to completion, as if he had been watching us and was now mimicking the act.
Carolyn spoke my name, but I was transfixed by the sight and could not answer. She drew in a sharp breath, and seconds later I heard her cross the room and make her exit. The Spider ceased his dance, lapsing into one of his normal patterns. I scrambled up, went to the controls and flicked the display switch to off. But the image did not fade. Instead, the Spider’s colours grew brighter, washing from fiery red to gold and at last to a white so brilliant, I had to shield my eyes. I could almost feel his heat on my skin, hear the sibilant kiss of his molten voice. I was certain he was in the room, I knew I was going to burn, to be swallowed in that singeing heat, and I cried out for Carolyn, not wanting to leave unsaid all those things I had withheld from her. Then my fear reached such proportions that I collapsed and sank into a dream, not a nightmare as one might expect, but a dream of an immense city, where I experienced a multitude of adventures and met with a serene fate.
…To understand Dulambre, his relationship with his father must be examined closely. Alex Dulambre was a musician and poet, regarded to be one of the progenitors of drift: a popular dance form involving the use of improvised lyrics. He was flamboyant, handsome, amoral, and these qualities, allied with a talent for seduction, led him on a twenty-five-year fling through the boudoirs of the powerful, from the corporate towers of Abidjan to the Gardens of Novo Sibersk, and lastly to a beach on Mozambique, where at the age of forty-four he died horribly, a victim of a neural poison that purportedly had been designed for him by the noted chemist Virginia Holland. It was Virginia who was reputed to be Reynolds’ mother, but no tests were ever conducted to substantiate the rumour. All we know for certain is that one morning Alex received a crate containing an artificial womb and the embryo of his son. An attached folder provided proof of his paternity and a note stating that the mother wanted no keepsake to remind her of an error in judgement.
Alex felt no responsibility for the child, but liked having a relative to add to his coterie. Thus it was that Reynolds spent his first fourteen years globe-trotting, sleeping on floors, breakfasting off the remains of the previous night’s party, and generally being ignored, if not rejected. As a defence against both this rejection and his father’s charisma, Reynolds learned to mimic Alex’s flamboyance and developed similar verbal skills. By the age of eleven he was performing regularly with his father’s band, creating a popular sequence of drifts that detailed the feats of an all-powerful wizard and the trials of those who warred against him. Alex took pride in these performances; he saw himself as less father than elder brother, and he insisted on teaching Reynolds a brother’s portion of the world. To this end he had one of his lovers seduce the boy on his twelfth birthday, and from then on Reynolds also mimicked his father’s omnivorous sexuality. They did, indeed, seem brothers, and to watch Alex drape an arm over the boy’s shoulders, the casual observer might have supposed them to be even closer. But there was no strong bond between them, only a history of abuse. This is not to say that Reynolds was unaffected by his father’s death, an event to which he was witness. The sight of Alex’s agony left him severely traumatized and with a fear of death bordering on the morbid. When we consider this fear in alliance with his difficulty in expressing love—a legacy of his father’s rejections—we have gone far in comprehending both his marital problems and his obsession with immortality, with immortality in any form, even that of a child…
Russell E. Barrett, The Last Alchemist
Six months after the implantation of Reynolds’ daughter in an artificial womb, I ran into Davis Brent at a pleasure dome where I had taken to spending my afternoons, enjoying the music, writing a memoir of my days with Reynolds, but refraining from infidelity. The child and my concern for Reynolds’ mental state had acted to make me conservative: there were important decisions to be made, disturbing events afoot, and I wanted no distractions.
This particular dome was quite small, its walls Maxfield Parrish holographs—alabaster columns and scrolled archways that opened onto rugged mountains drenched in the colours of a pastel sunset; the patrons sat at marble tables, their drab jumpsuits at odds with the decadence of the decor. Sitting there, writing, I felt like some sad and damaged lady of a forgotten age, brought to the sorry pass of autobiography by a disappointment at love.
Without announcing himself, Brent dropped onto the bench opposite me and stared. A smile nicked the corners of his mouth. I waited for him to speak, and finally asked what he wanted.
‘Merely to offer my congratulations,’ he said.
‘On what occasion?’ I asked.
‘The occasion of your daughter.’
The implantation had been done under a seal of privacy, and I was outraged that he had discovered my secret.
Before I could speak, he favoured me with an unctuous smile and said, ‘As administrator, little that goes on here escapes me.’ From the pocket of his jumpsuit he pulled a leather case of the sort used to carry holographs. ‘I have a daughter myself, a lovely child. I sent her back to Earth some months back.’ He opened the case, studied the contents, and continued, his words freighted with an odd tension. ‘I had the computer do a portrait of how she’ll look in a few years. Care to see it?’
I took the case and was struck numb. The girl depicted was seven or eight, and was the spitting image of myself at her age.
‘I never should have sent her back,’ said Brent. ‘It appears the womb has been misshipped, and I may not be able to find her. Even the records have been misplaced. And the tech who performed the implantation, he returned on the ship with the womb and has dropped out of sight.’
I came to my feet, but he grabbed my arm and sat me back down. ‘Check on it if you wish,’ he said. ‘But it’s the truth. If you want to help find her, you’d be best served by listening.’
‘Where is she?’ A sick chill spread through me, and my heart felt as if it were not beating but trembling.
‘Who knows? Sao Paolo, Paris. Perhaps one of the Urban Reserves.’
‘Please,’ I said, a catch in my voice. ‘Bring her back.’
‘If we work together, I’m certain we can find her.’
‘What do you want, what could you possibly want from me?’
He smiled again. ‘To begin with, I want copies of your husband’s deep files. I need to know what he’s working on.’
I had no compunction against telling him; all my concern was for the child. ‘He’s been investigating the possibility of life on the Sun.’
The answer dismayed him. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘It’s true, he’s found it!’
He gaped at me.
‘He calls it the Sun Spider. It’s huge… and made of some kind of plasma.’
Brent smacked his forehead as if to punish himself for an oversight. ‘Of course! That section in the Diaries.’ He shook his head in wonderment. ‘All that metaphysical gabble about particulate life… I can’t believe that has any basis in fact.’
‘I’ll help you,’ I said. ‘But please bring her back!’
He reached across the table and caressed my cheek. I stiffened but did not draw away. ‘The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Carolyn. Take my word, it’s all under control.’
Under control.
Now it seems to me that he was right, and that the controlling agency was no man or creature, but a coincidence of possibility and wish such as may have been responsible for the spark that first set fire to the stars.
Over the next two weeks I met several times with Brent, on each occasion delivering various of Reynolds’ files; only one remained to be secured, and I assured Brent I would soon have it. How I hated him! And yet we were complicitors. Each time we met in his lab, a place of bare metal walls and computer banks, we would discuss means of distracting Reynolds in order to perform my thefts, and during one occasion I asked why he had chosen Reynolds’ work to pirate, since he had never been an admirer.
‘Oh, but I am an admirer,’ he said. ‘Naturally I despise his personal style, the passing off of drugs and satyrism as scientific method. But I’ve never doubted his genius. Why, I was the one who approved his residency grant.’
Disbelief must have showed on my face, for he went on to say, ‘It’s true. Many of the board were inclined to reject him, thinking he was no longer capable of important work. But when I saw the Solar Equations, I knew he was still a force to reckon with. Have you looked at them?’
‘I don’t understand the mathematics.’
‘Fragmentary as they are, they’re astounding, elegant. There’s something almost mystical about their structure. You get the idea there’s no need to study them, that if you keep staring at them they’ll crawl into your brain to work some change.’ He made a church-and-steeple of his fingers. ‘I hoped he’d finish them here but… well, maybe that last file.’
We went back to planning Reynolds’ distraction. He rarely left the apartment any more, and Brent and I decided that the time to act would be during his birthday party the next week. He would doubtless be heavily drugged, and I would be able to slip into the back room and access his computer. The discussion concluded, Brent stepped to the door that led to his apartment, keyed it open and invited me for a drink. I declined, but he insisted and I preceded him inside.
The apartment was decorated in appallingly bad taste. His furniture was of a translucent material that glowed a sickly bluish-green, providing the only illumination. Matted under glass on one wall was a twentieth-century poster of a poem entitled ‘Desiderata’, whose verses were the height of mawkish romanticism. The other walls were hung with what appeared to be ancient tapestries, but which on close inspection proved to be pornographic counterfeits, depicting subjects such as women mating with stags. Considering these appointments, I found hypocritical Brent’s condemnation of Reynolds’ private life. He poured wine from a decanter and made banal small talk, touching me now and then as he had during our first meeting. I forced an occasional smile, and at last, thinking I had humoured him long enough, I told him I had to leave.
‘Oh, no,’ he said, encircling my waist with an arm. ‘We’re not through.’
I pried his arm loose: he was not very strong.
‘Very well.’ He touched a wall control, and a door to the corridor slid open. ‘Go.’
The harsh white light shining through the door transformed him into a shadowy figure and made his pronouncement seem a threat.
‘Go on.’ He drained his wine. ‘I’ve got no hold on you.’
God, he thought he was clever! And he was… more clever than I, perhaps more so than Reynolds. And though he was to learn that cleverness has its limits, particularly when confronted by the genius of fate, it was sufficient to the moment.
‘I’ll stay,’ I said.
…In the dance of the Spider, in his patterned changes in colour, the rhythmic waving of his fiery arms, was a kind of language, the language that the Equations sought to clarify, the language of my dreams. I sat for hours watching him; I recorded several sequences on pocket holographs and carried them about in hopes that this propinquity would illuminate the missing portions of the Equations. I made some progress, but I had concluded that a journey sunwards was the sort of propinquity I needed—I doubted I had the courage to achieve it. However, legislating against my lack of courage was the beauty I had begun to perceive in the Spider’s dance, the hypnotic grace: like that of a Balinese dancer, possessing a similar allure. I came to believe that those movements were signalling all knowledge, infinite possibility. My dreams began to be figured with creatures that I would have previously considered impossible—dragons, imps, men with glowing hands or whose entire forms were glowing, all a ghostly, grainy white; now these creatures came to seem not only possible but likely inhabitants of a world that was coming more and more into focus, a world to which I was greatly attracted. Sometimes I would lie in bed all day, hoping for more dreams of that world, of the wizard who controlled it. It may be that I was using the dreams to escape confronting a difficult and frightening choice. But in truth I have lately doubted that it is even mine to make.
Reynolds Dulambre, Collected Notes
I remember little of the party, mostly dazed glimpses of breasts and thighs, sweaty bodies, lidded eyes. I remember the drift, which was performed by a group of techs. They played Alex’s music as an hommage, and I was taken back to my years with the old bastard-maker, to memories of beatings, of walking in on him and his lovers, of listening to him pontificate. And, of course, I recalled that night in Mozambique when I watched him claw at his eyes, his face. Spitting missiles of blood, unable to scream, having bitten off his tongue. Sobered, I got to my feet and staggered into the bedroom, where it was less crowded, but still too crowded for my mood. I grabbed a robe, belted it on and keyed my study door.
As I entered, Carolyn leaped up from my computer. On the screen was displayed what looked to be a page from my deep files. She tried to switch off the screen, but I caught her arm and checked the page: I had not been mistaken. ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted, yanking her away from the computer.
‘I was just curious.’ She tried to jerk free.
Then I spotted the microcube barnacled to the computer: she had been recording. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, forcing her to look at it. ‘What’s that? Who the hell are you working for?’
She began to cry, but I wasn’t moved. We had betrayed each other a thousand times, but never to this degree.
‘Damn you!’ I slapped her. ‘Who is it?’
She poured out the story of Brent’s plan, his demands on her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sobbing. ‘I’m sorry.’
I felt so much then, I couldn’t characterize it as fear or anger or any specific emotion. In my mind’s eye I saw the child, that scrap of my soul, disappearing down some earthly sewer. I threw off my robe, stepped into a jumpsuit.
‘Where are you going?’ Carolyn asked, wiping away tears.
I zipped up the jumpsuit.
‘Don’t!’ Carolyn tried to haul me back from the door. ‘You don’t understand!’
I shoved her down, locked the door behind me, and went storming out through the party and into the corridor. Rage flooded me. I needed to hurt Brent. My reason was so obscured that when I reached his apartment, I saw nothing suspicious in the fact that the door was open… though I later realized he must have had a spy at the party to warn him of anything untoward. Inside, Brent was lounging in one of those ridiculous glowing chairs, a self-satisfied look on his face, and it was that look more than anything, more than the faint scraping at my rear, that alerted me to danger. I spun around to see a security guard bringing his laser to bear on me. I dived at him, feeling a discharge of heat next to my ear, and we went down together. He tried to gouge my eyes, but I twisted away, latched both hands in his hair and smashed his head against the wall. The third time his head impacted, it made a softer sound than it had the previous two, and I could feel the skull shifting beneath the skin like pieces of broken tile in a sack. I rolled off the guard, horrified, yet no less enraged. And when I saw that Brent’s chair was empty, when I heard him shouting in the corridor, even though I knew his shouts would bring more guards, my anger grew so great that I cared nothing for myself, I only wanted him dead.
By the time I emerged from the apartment, he was sprinting around a curve in the corridor. My laser scored the metal wall behind him the instant before he went out of sight. I ran after him. Several of the doorways along the corridor slid open, heads popped out, and on seeing me, ducked back in. I rounded the curve, spotted Brent, and fired again… too high by inches. Before I could correct my aim, half a dozen guards boiled out of a side corridor and dragged him into cover. Their beams drew smouldering lines in the metal by my hip, at my feet, and I retreated, firing as I did, pounding on the doors, thinking that I would barricade myself in one of the rooms and try to debunk Brent’s lies, to reveal his deceit over the intercom. But none of the doors opened, their occupants having apparently been frightened by my weapon.
Two guards poked their heads around the curve, fired, and one of the beams came so near that it torched the fabric of my jumpsuit at the knee. I beat out the flames and ran full tilt. Shouts behind me, beams of ruby light skewering the air above my head. Ahead, I made out a red door that led to a docking arm, and having no choice, I keyed it open and raced along the narrow passageway. The first three moorings were empty, but the fourth had a blue light glowing beside the entrance hatch, signalling the presence of a ship. I slipped inside, latched it, and moved along the tunnel into the airlock; I bolted that shut, then went quickly along the mesh-walled catwalk toward the control room, toward the radio. I was on the point of entering the room, when I felt a shudder go all through the ship and knew it had cast loose, that it was headed sunward.
Panicked, I burst into the control room. The chairs fronting the instrument panel were empty, the panel itself aflicker with lights; the ship was being run by computer. I sat at the board, trying to override, but no tactic had any effect. Then Brent’s voice came over the speakers. ‘You’ve bought yourself a little time, Reynolds,’ he said. ‘That’s all. When the ship returns, we’ll have you.’
I laughed.
It had been my hope that he had initiated the ship’s flight, but his comments made clear that I was now headed toward the confrontation I had for so long sought to avoid, brought to this pass by a computer under the control of the creature for whom I had searched my entire life, a creature of fire and dreams, the stuff of souls. I knew I would not survive it. But though I had always dreaded the thought of death, now that death was hard upon me, I was possessed of a strange confidence and calm… calm enough to send this transmission, to explore the confines of this my coffin, even to read the manuals that explain its operation. I had never attempted to understand the workings of the sunships, and I was interested to read of the principles that underlie each flight. As the ship approaches the Sun, it will monitor the magnetic field direction and determine if the Archimedean spiral of the solar wind is oriented outward.
If all is as it should be, the ship will continue to descend and eventually will skip off the open-diverging magnetic field of a coronal hole. It will be travelling at such a tremendous speed, its actions will be rather like those of a charged particle caught in a magnetic field, and as the field opens out, it will be flung upward, back toward Helios… that is, it will be flung up and out if a creature who survives by stripping particles of their charge does not inhabit the coronal hole in question. But there is little chance of that.
I wonder how it will feel to have my charge stripped. I would not care to suffer the agonies of my father.
The closer I come to the Sun, the more calm I become. My mortal imperfections seem to be flaking away. I feel clean and minimal, and I have the notion that I will soon be even simpler, the essential splinter of a man. I have so little desire left that only one further thing occurs to me to say.
Carolyn, I…
…A man walking in a field of golden grass under a bright sky, walking steadfastly, though with no apparent destination, for the grasslands spread to the horizon, and his thoughts are crystal-clear, and his heart, too, is clear, for his past has become an element of his present, and his future—visible as a sweep of golden grass carpeting the distant hills, beyond which lies a city sparkling like a glint of possibility—is as fluent and clear as his thought, and he knows his future will be shaped by his walking, by his thought and the power in his hands, especially by that power, and of all this he wishes now to speak to a woman whose love he denied, whose flesh had the purity of the clear bright sky and the golden grasses, who was always the heart of his life even in the country of lies, and here in the heartland of the country of truth is truly loved at last…
The Resolute Lover, part of The White Dragon Cycle
After Reynolds had stolen the sunship—this, I was informed, had been the case—Brent confined me to my apartment and accused me of conspiring with Reynolds to kill him. I learned of Reynolds’ death from the security guard who brought me supper that first night; he told me that a prominence (I pictured it to be a fiery fishing lure) had flung itself out from the Sun and incinerated the ship. I wept uncontrollably. Even after the computers began to translate the coded particle bursts emanating from the Spider’s coronal hole, even when these proved to be the completed Solar Equations, embodied not only in mathematics but in forms comprehensible to a layman, still I wept. I was too overwhelmed by grief to realize what they might portend.
I was able to view the translations on Reynolds’ computer, and when the stories of the White Dragon Cycle came into view, I understood that whoever or whatever had produced them had something in particular to say to me. It was The Resolute Lover, the first of the cycle, with its numerous references to a wronged beautiful woman, that convinced me of this. I read the story over and over, and in so doing I recalled Brent’s description of the feelings he had had while studying the Equations. I felt in the focus of some magical, lens, I felt a shimmering in my flesh, confusion in my thoughts… not a confusion of motive but of thoughts running in new patterns, colliding with each other like atoms bred by a runaway reactor. I lost track of time, I lived in a sweep of golden grasses, in an exotic city where the concepts of unity and the divisible were not opposed, where villains and heroes and beasts enacted ritual passions, where love was the ordering pulse of existence.
One day Brent paid me a visit. He was plumped with self-importance, with triumph. But though I hated him, emotion seemed incidental to my goal—a goal his visit helped to solidify—and I reacted to him mildly, watching as he moved about the room, watching me and smiling.
‘You’re calmer than I expected,’ he said.
I had no words for him, only calm. In my head the Resolute Lover gazed into a crystal of Knowledge, awaiting the advent of Power. I believe that I, too, smiled.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Things don’t always work out as we plan. But I’m pleased with the result. The Spider will be Reynolds’ great victory… no way around that. Still, I’ve managed to land the role of Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, the rationalist who guided the madman on his course.’
My smile was a razor, a knife, a flame.
‘Quite sufficient,’ he went on, ‘to secure my post… and perhaps even my immortality.’
I spoke to him in an inaudible voice that said Death.
His manner grew more agitated; he twitched about the room, touching things. ‘What will I do with you?’ he said. ‘I’d hate to send you to your judgement. Our nights together… well, suffice it to say I would be most happy if you’d stay with me. What do you think? Shall I testify on your behalf, or would you prefer a term on the Urban Reserves?’
Brent, Brent, Brent. His name was a kind of choice.
‘Perhaps you’d like time to consider?’ he said.
I wished my breath was poison.
He edged toward the door. ‘When you reach a decision, just tell the guard outside. You’ve two months ‘til the next ship. I’m betting you’ll choose survival.’
My eyes sent him a black kiss.
‘Really, Carolyn,’ he said. ‘You were never a faithful wife. Don’t you think this pose of mourning somewhat out of character?’
Then he was gone, and I returned to my reading.
Love.
What part did it play in my desire for vengeance, my furious calm? Sorrow may have had more a part, but love was certainly a factor. Love as practised by the Resolute Lover. This story communicated this rigorous emotion, and my heartsickness translated it to vengeful form. My sense of unreality, of tremulous being, increased day by day, and I barely touched my meals.
I am not sure when the Equations embodied by the story began to take hold, when the seeded knowledge became power. I believe it was nearly two weeks after Brent’s visit. But though I felt my potential, my strength, I did not act immediately. In truth, I was not certain I could act or that action was to be my course. I was mad in the same way Reynolds had been: a madness of self-absorption, a concentration of such intensity that nothing less intense had the least relevance.
One night I left off reading, went into my bedroom and put on a sheer robe, then wrapped myself in a cowled cloak. I had no idea why I was doing this. The seductive rhythms of the story were coiling through my head and preventing thought. I walked into the front room and stood facing the door. Violent tremors shook my body. I felt frail, insubstantial, yet at the same time possessed of fantastic power: I knew that nothing could resist me… not steel or flesh or fire. Inspired by this confidence, I reached out my right hand to the door. The hand was glowing a pale white, its form flickering, the fingers lengthening and attenuating, appearing to ripple as in a graceful dance. I did not wonder at this. Everything was as it should be. And when my hand slid into the door, into the metal, neither did I consider that remarkable. I could feel the mechanisms of the lock, I—or rather my ghostly fingers—seemed to know the exact function of every metal bit, and after a moment the door hissed open.
The guard peered in, startled, and I hid the hand behind me. I backed away, letting the halves of my cloak fall apart. He stared, glanced left and right in the corridor, and entered. ‘How’d you do the lock?’ he asked.
I said nothing.
He keyed the door, testing it, and slid it shut, leaving the two of us alone in the room. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Must have been a computer foul-up.’
I came close beside him, my head tipped back as if to receive a kiss, and he smiled, he held me around the waist. His lips mashed against mine, and my right hand, seeming almost to be acting on its own, slipped into his side and touched something that beat wildly for a few seconds, and then spasmed. He pushed me away, clutching his chest, his face purpling, and fell to the floor. Emotionless, I stepped over him and went out into the corridor, walking at an unhurried pace, hiding my hand beneath the cloak.
On reaching Brent’s apartment, I pressed the bell, and a moment later the door opened and he peered forth, looking sleepy and surprised. ‘Carolyn!’ he said. ‘How did you get out?’
‘I told the guard I planned to stay with you,’ I said, and as I had done with the guard, I parted the halves of my cloak.
His eyes dropped to my breasts. ‘Come in,’ he said, his voice burred.
Once inside, I shed the cloak, concealing my hand behind me. I was so full of hate, my mind was heavy and blank like a stone. Brent poured some wine, but I refused the glass. My voice sounded dead, and he shot me a searching look and asked if I felt well. ‘I’m fine,’ I told him.
He set down the wine and came toward me, but I moved away.
‘First,’ I said, ‘I want to know about my daughter.’
That brought him up short. ‘You have no daughter,’ he said after a pause. ‘It was all a hoax.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I swear it’s true,’ he said. ‘When you went for an exam, I had the tech inform you of a pregnancy. But you weren’t pregnant. And when you came for the implantation procedure, he anaesthetized you and simply stood by until you woke up.’
It would have been in character, I realized, for him to have done this. Yet he also might have been clever enough to make up the story, and thus keep a hold on me, one he could inform me of should I prove recalcitrant.
‘But you can have a child,’ he said, sidling toward me. ‘Our child, Carolyn. I’d like that, I’d like it very much.’ He seemed to be having some difficulty in getting the next words out, but finally they came: ‘I love you.’
What twisted shape, I wondered, did love take in his brain?
‘Do you?’ I said.
‘I know it must be hard to believe,’ he said. ‘You can’t possibly understand the pressure I’ve been under, the demands that forced my actions. But I swear to you, Carolyn, I’ve always cared for you. I knew how oppressed you were by Reynolds. Don’t you see? To an extent I was acting on your behalf. I wanted to free you.’
He said all this in a whining tone, edging close, so close I could smell his bitter breath. He put a hand on my breast, lifted it… Perhaps he did love me in his way, for it seemed a treasuring touch. But mine was not. I laid my palely glowing hand on the back of his neck. He screamed, went rigid, and oh, how that scream made me feel! It was like music, his pain. He stumbled backward, toppled over one of the luminous chairs, and lay writhing, clawing his neck.
‘Where is she?’ I asked, kneeling beside him.
Spittle leaked between his gritted teeth. ‘I’ll… find her, bring her… oh!’
I saw I could never trust him. Desperate, he would say anything. He might bring me someone else’s child. I touched his stomach, penetrating the flesh to the first joint of my fingers, then wiggling them. Again he screamed. Blood mapped the front of his jumpsuit.
‘Where is she?’ I no longer was thinking about the child: she was lost, and I was only tormenting him.
His speech was incoherent, he tried to hump away. I showed him my hand, how it glowed, and his eyes bugged.
‘Do you still love me?’ I asked, touching his groin, hooking my fingers and pulling at some fibre.
Agony bubbled in his throat, and he curled up around, his pain, clutching himself.
I could not stop touching him. I orchestrated his screams, producing short ones, long ones, ones that held a strained hoarse chord. My hatred was a distant emotion. I felt no fury, no glee. I was merely a craftsman, working to prolong his death. Pink films occluded the whites of his eyes, his teeth were stained to crimson, and at last he lay still.
I sat beside him for what seemed a long time. Then I donned my cloak and walked back to my apartment. After making sure no one was in the corridor, I dragged the dead guard out of the front room and propped him against the corridor wall. I reset the lock, stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind me. I felt nothing. I took up The Resolute Lover, but even my interest in it had waned. I gazed at the walls, growing thoughtless, remembering only that I had been somewhere, done some violence; I was perplexed by my glowing hand. But soon I fell asleep, and when I was waked by the guards unlocking the door, I found that the hand had returned to normal.
‘Did you hear anything outside?’ asked one of the guards.
‘No,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
He told me the gory details, about the dead guard and Brent. Like everyone else on Helios Station, he seemed more confounded by these incomprehensible deaths than by the fantastic birth that had preceded them.
The walls of the station have been plated with gold, the corridors are thronged with tourists, with students come to study the disciplines implicit in the Equations, disciplines that go far beyond the miraculous transformation of my hand. Souvenir shops sell holos of the Spider, recordings of The White Dragon Cycle (now used to acclimatize children to the basics of the Equations), and authorized histories of the sad events surrounding the Spider’s emergence. The pleasure domes reverberate with Alex Dulambre’s drifts, and in an auditorium constructed for this purpose, Reynolds’ clone delivers daily lectures on the convoluted circumstances of his death and triumph. The place is half amusement park, half shrine. Yet the greatest memorial to Reynolds’ work is not here; it lies beyond the orbit of Pluto and consists of a vast shifting structure of golden light wherein dwell those students who have mastered the disciplines and overcome the bonds of corporeality. They are engaged, it is said, in an unfathomable work that may have taken its inspiration from Reynolds’ metaphysical flights of fancy, or—and many hold to this opinion—may reflect the Spider’s design, his desire to rid himself of the human nuisance by setting us upon a new evolutionary course. After Brent’s death I thought to join in this work. But my mind was not suited to the disciplines; I had displayed all the mastery of which I was capable in dispensing with Brent.
I have determined to continue the search for my daughter. It may be—as Brent claimed—that she does not exist, but it is all that is left to me, and I have made my resolve accordingly. Still, I have not managed to leave the station, because I am drawn to Reynolds’ clone. Again and again I find myself in the rear of the auditorium, where I watch him pace the dais, declaiming in the most excited manner. I yearn to approach him, to learn how like Reynolds he truly is. I am certain he has spotted me on several occasions, and I wonder what he is thinking, how it would be to speak to him, touch him. Perhaps this is perverse of me, but I cannot help wondering…
Carolyn Dulambre, Days In The Sun
I had been wanting to talk with her since… well, since this peculiar life began. Why? I loved her, for one thing. But there seemed to be a far more compelling reason, one I could not verbalize. I suppressed the urge for a time, not wanting to hurt her; but seeing that she had begun to appear at the lectures, I finally decided to make an approach.
She had taken to frequenting a pleasure dome named Spider’s. Its walls were holographic representations of the Spider, and these were strung together with golden webs that looked molten against the black backdrop, like seams of unearthly fire. In this golden dimness the faces of the patrons glowed like spirits, and the glow seemed to be accentuated by the violence of the music. It was not a place to my taste, nor—I suspect—to hers. Perhaps her patronage was a form of courage, of facing down the creature who had caused her so much pain.
I found her seated in a rear corner, drinking an Amouriste, and when I moved up beside her table, she paid me no mind. No one ever approached her; she was as much a memorial as the station itself, and though she was still a beautiful woman, she was treated like the wife of a saint. Doubtless she thought I was merely pausing by the table, looking for someone. But when I sat opposite her, she glanced up and her jaw dropped.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said.
‘Why should I be afraid?’
‘I thought my presence might… discomfort you.’
She met my eyes unflinchingly. ‘I suppose I thought that, too.’
‘But…?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
A silence built between us.
She wore a robe of golden silk, cut to expose the upper swells of her breasts, and her hair was pulled back from her face, laying bare the smooth, serene lines of her beauty, a beauty that had once fired me, that did so even now.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘For some reason I was drawn to talk to you, I feel I have…’
‘I feel the same.’ She said this with a strong degree of urgency, but then tried to disguise the fact. ‘What shall we talk about?’
‘I’m not sure.’
She tapped a finger on her glass. ‘Why don’t we walk?’
Everyone watched as we left, and several people followed us into the corridor, a circumstance that led me to suggest that we talk in my apartment. She hesitated, then signalled agreement with the briefest of nods. We moved quickly through the crowds, managing to elude our pursuers, and settled into a leisurely pace. Now and again I caught her staring at me, and asked if anything was wrong.
‘Wrong?’ She seemed to be tasting the word, trying it out. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No more than usual.’
I had thought that when I did talk to him I would find he was merely a counterfeit, that he would be nothing like Reynolds, except in the most superficial way. But this was not the case. Walking along that golden corridor, mixing with the revellers who poured between the shops and bars, I felt toward him as I had on the day we had met in the streets of Abidjan: powerfully attracted, vulnerable, and excited. And yet I did perceive a difference in him. Whereas Reynolds’ presence had been commanding and intense, there had been a brittleness to that intensity, a sense that his diamond glitter might easily be fractured. With this Reynolds, however, there was no such inconstancy. His presence—while potent—was smooth, natural, and unflawed.
Everywhere we walked we encountered the fruits of the Equations: matter transmitters; rebirth parlours, where one could experience a transformation of both body and soul; and the omnipresent students, some of them half-gone into a transcorporeal state, cloaked to hide this fact, but their condition evident by their inward-looking eyes. With Reynolds beside me, all this seemed comprehensible, not—as before—a carnival of meaningless improbabilities. I asked what he felt on seeing the results of his work, and he said, ‘I’m really not concerned with it.’
‘What are you concerned with?’
‘With you, Carolyn,’ he said.
The answer both pleased me and made me wary. ‘Surely you must have more pressing concerns,’ I said.
‘Everything I’ve done was for you.’ A puzzled expression crossed his face.
‘Don’t pretend with me!’ I snapped, growing angry. ‘This isn’t a show, this isn’t the auditorium.’
He opened his mouth, but bit back whatever he had been intending to say, and we walked on.
‘Forgive me,’ I said, realizing the confusion that must be his. ‘I…’
‘No need for forgiveness,’ he said. ‘All our failures are behind us now.’
I didn’t know from where these words were coming. They were my words, yet they also seemed spoken from a place deep inside myself, one whose existence had been hidden until now, and it was all I could do to hold them back. We passed into the upper levels of the station, where the permanent staff was quartered, and as we rounded a curve, we nearly ran into a student standing motionless, gazing at the wall: a pale young man with black hair, a thin mouth, and a grey cape. His eyes were dead-looking, and his voice sepulchral. ‘It awaits,’ he said.
They are so lost in self-contemplation, these students, that they are likely to say anything. Some fancy them oracles, but not I: their words struck me as being random, sparks from a frayed wire.
‘What awaits?’ I asked, amused.
‘Life… the city.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And how do I get there?’
‘You…’ He lapsed into an open-mouthed stare.
Carolyn pulled at me, and we set off again. I started to make a joke about the encounter, but seeing her troubled expression, I restrained myself.
When we entered my apartment, she stopped in the centre of the living room, transfixed by the walls. I had set them to display the environment of the beginning of The Resolute Lover, an endless sweep of golden grasses, with a sparkling on the horizon that might have been the winking of some bright tower.
‘Does this bother you?’ I asked, gesturing at the walls.
‘No, they startled me, that’s all.’ She strolled along, peering at the grasses, as if hoping to catch sight of someone. Then she turned, and I spoke again from that deep hidden place; a place that now—responding to the sight of her against those golden fields—was spreading all through me.
‘Carolyn, I love you,’ I said… and this time I knew who it was that spoke. He had removed his cloak, and his body was shimmering, embedded in that pale glow that once had made a weapon of my right hand. I backed away, terrified. Yet even in the midst of fear, it struck me that I was not as terrified as I should have been, that I was not at the point of screaming, of fleeing.
‘It’s me, Carolyn,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, backing further away.
‘I don’t know why you should believe me.’ He looked at his flickering hand. ‘I didn’t understand it myself until now.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked, gauging the distance to the door.
‘You know,’ he said. ‘The Spider… he’s all through the station. In the computer, the labs, even in the tanks from which my cells were grown. He’s brought us together again.’
He tried to touch me, and I darted to the side.
‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said.
‘I’ve seen what a touch can do.’
‘Not my touch, Carolyn.’
I doubted I could make it to the door, but readied myself for a try.
‘Listen to me, Carolyn,’ he said. ‘Everything we wanted in the beginning, all the dreams and fictions of love, they can be ours.’
‘I never wanted that,’ I said. ‘You did! I only wanted normality, not some…’
‘All lovers want the same thing,’ he said. ‘Disillusionment leads them to pretend they want less.’ He stretched out his hands to me. ‘Everything awaits us, everything is prepared. How this came to be, I can’t explain. Except that it makes a funny kind of sense for the ultimate result of science to be an incomprehensible magic.’
I was still afraid, but my fear was dwindling, lulled by the rhythms of his words, and though I perceived him to be death, I also saw clearly that he was Reynolds, Reynolds made whole.
‘This was inevitable,’ he said. ‘We both knew something miraculous could happen… that’s why we stayed together, despite everything. Don’t be afraid. I could never hurt you more than I have.’
‘What’s inevitable?’ I asked. He was too close for me to think of running, and I thought I could delay him, put him off with questions.
‘Can’t you feel it?’ He was so close, now, I could feel his heat. ‘I can’t tell you what it is, Carolyn, only that it is, that it’s life… a new life.’
‘The Spider,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand, I…’
‘No more questions,’ he said, and slipped the robes from my shoulders.
His touch was warmer than natural, making my eyelids droop, but causing no pain. He pulled me down to the floor, and in a moment he was inside me, we were heart to heart, moving together, enveloped in that pale flickering glow, and amidst the pleasure I felt, there was pain, but so little it did not matter…
…and I, too, was afraid, afraid I was not who I thought, that flames and nothingness would obliterate us, but in having her once again, in the consummation of my long wish, my doubts lessened…
…and I could no longer tell whether my eyes were open or closed, because sometimes when I thought them closed, I could see him, his face slack with pleasure, head flung back…
…and when I thought they were open I would have a glimpse of another place wherein she stood beside me, glimpses at first too brief for me to fix them in mind…
…and everything was whirling, changing, my body, my spirit, all in flux, and death—if this was death—was a long decline, a sweep of golden radiance, and behind me I could see the past reduced to a plain and hills carpeted with golden grasses…
…and around me golden towers, shimmering, growing more stable and settling into form moment by moment, and people shrouded in golden mist who were also becoming more real, acquiring scars and rags and fine robes, carrying baskets and sacks…
…and this was no heaven, no peaceful heaven, for as we moved beneath those crumbling towers of yellow stone, I saw soldiers with oddly shaped spears on the battlements, and the crowds around us were made up of hard-bitten men and women wearing belted daggers, and old crones bent double under the weight of sacks of produce, and younger women with the look of ill-usage about them, who leaned from the doors and windows of smoke-darkened houses and cried out their price…
…and the sun overhead seemed to shift, putting forth prominences that rippled and undulated as in a dance, and shone down a ray of light to illuminate the tallest tower, the one we had sought for all these years, the one whose mystery we must unravel…
…and the opaque image of an old man in a yellow robe was floating above the crowd, his pupils appearing to shift, to put forth fiery threads as did the sun, and he was haranguing us, daring us all to penetrate his tower, to negotiate his webs and steal the secrets of time…
…and after wandering all day, we found a room in an inn not half a mile from the wizard’s tower, a mean place with grimy walls and scuttlings in the corners and a straw mattress that crackled when we lay on it. But it was so much more than we’d had in a long, long time, we were delighted, and when night had fallen, with moonlight streaming in and the wizard’s tower visible through a window against the deep blue of the sky, the room seemed palatial. We made love until well past midnight, love as we had never practised it: trusting, unfettered by inhibition. And afterward, still joined, listening to the cries and music of the city, I suddenly remembered my life in that other world, the Spider, Helios Station, everything, and from the tense look on Carolyn’s face, from her next words, I knew that she, too, had remembered.
‘Back at Helios,’ she said, ‘we were making love, lying exactly like this, and…’ She broke off, a worry line creasing her brow. ‘What if this is all a dream, a moment between dying and death?’
‘Why should you think that?’
‘The Spider… I don’t know. I just felt it was true.’
‘It’s more reasonable to assume that everything is a form of transition between the apartment and this room. Besides, why would the Spider want you to die?’
‘Why has he done any of this? We don’t even know what he is… a demon, a god.’
‘Or something of mine,’ I said.
‘Yes, that… or death.’
I stroked her hair, and her eyelids fluttered down.
‘I’m afraid to go to sleep,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I think there’s more to this than death.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because of how we are.’
That’s why I think it is death,’ she said. ‘Because it’s too good to last.’
‘Even if it is death,’ I told her, ‘in this place death might last longer than our old lives.’
Of course I was certain of very little myself, but I managed to soothe her, and soon she was asleep. Out the window, the wizard’s tower—if, indeed, that’s what it was—glowed and rippled, alive with power, menacing in its brilliance. But I was past being afraid. Even in the face of something as unfathomable as a creature who has appropriated the dream of a man who may have dreamed it into existence and fashioned thereof either a life or a death, even in a world of unanswerable questions, when love is certain—love, the only question that is its own answer—everything becomes quite simple, and, in the end, a matter of acceptance.
We live in an old chaos of the sun
Wallace Stevens