by Tanith Lee
“I think the river provided a pressure outlet,” Silver said.
“He must be safe, then.”
He had to be. As my mother had to be. There wasn’t time to investigate or to worry any further.
The cab spun around the city like a piece of flotsam, catching in jams, getting out of them, for thirty-five minutes before it emerged onto the highway. Then we went slowly for another ten, since, for the few cars trying to get out, hundreds of others were trying to get in. People had come from everywhere, looking for relations and friends in the aftermath, or to sightsee. The local news channel would have carried the news of the quake and excitement, adding the normal useless proviso: Please keep out, which no one, obviously, would attend.
The taxi had a glass-faced clock.
“It’s almost ten to twelve. We’re not going to make it,” I said.
We had come this way a century ago, the road clear save for a purple storm brewing, I with a silver nail through my heart, afraid to speak to him or keep silent.
“Jane, if a man comes over in a VLO and lands the thing, I think you can assume he’ll maybe hang about for a few minutes.”
The cab suddenly detoured on to a side turning.
“Where’s it going?”
“Straight on to route eighty-three, at a guess.”
“How do you know?”
“My city geography program extends several miles beyond the outskirts. Do you realize, in a new city, I’ll be as lost as you will?” A moment later, he said gently to me, “Jane, look.”
I looked out of the window, and far away over the snow-sheeted lines of the land, across the gash of the highway, poised at the topmost mouth of the Canyon, where the flyer air lines glinted like golden cotton, other vertical lines of glitter went up. And in the sky there was a tiny cloud, cool, blue and unmoving. Chez Stratos, that ridiculous house, was still standing, still intact.
Something broke and ebbed away inside me.
“Oh, Silver. After all, I’m so glad.”
“I know.”
A minute more and we plunged down a slope to the ragged ravine that leads into the Fall Side of the Canyon. The cab, not intended to risk its treads, stopped.
It took every coin and bill we had, to pay it the balance. But, in a way, that was ethical.
Soon we were walking down between walls of the frozen earth, he carrying the bags, the guitar, I, the umbrella, to the place where the steps are cut.
The Canyon, which had been created by an ancient quake prior even to the Asteroid, hadn’t been touched by the new one. At the bottom, between the tumbled blocks that give this end its name and close it on three sides, there was a ballroom floor of smooth treeless, rockless snow, hard and bluish as a sort of aluminum. A lovely place for a VLO landing. Secretive, and negotiable only in such a way, or on foot.
The last time on the clock had read as six minutes past noon.
“Have we missed it?” I asked. But I smiled at myself. We would have seen it going over if we had, we had been close enough.
“Oh, I should think so.”
It was very very cold in the Fall. It was like standing in the bowl of a metal spoon. Strange echoes came and whispers went. The growl of the plane, when it arrived, would be deafening.
“He is, of course, late,” I said.
“Five minutes.”
“Eight minutes. What do we do if he doesn’t come?”
“You’ll curse him. I’ll carry you back to the city.”
“You’ll what?”
“Carry you. The whole twenty, thirty miles. Running at eighty miles an hour all the way, if you like. The highway is comparatively flat.”
I laughed, and my laugh rang around the silver spoon.
“If he doesn’t, I dare you to.”
“No dare. It’s easy.”
“And terribly inconspicuous.”
And then I heard the plane.
“Oh, Silver. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s going to work.”
I stared into the sky, but all I saw was its lavender-blue wintryness.
“Can you see the plane, Silver?”
“No,” he said, “I can’t. And the reason for that is, I think, that there isn’t one. The Canyon sides are distorting some other sound.”
“Then what?”
“A car. Yes, listen. Brakes.”
“Why would a car stop here?”
“Clovis?”
“Then something has gone wrong.”
I can only describe the feeling this way: It was as though someone loosened a valve in each of my limbs simultaneously, and some precious vital juice ran out of me. I felt it go with an actual physical ache, sickening and final. My lips were frozen, my tongue was wood, but I managed to make them move. “Silver…The rocks behind us. I can’t get by them, but you can. You can run over them, jump them, and go down the other side. And up the Canyon. I won’t come because, if you carry me, it would have to slow you, make it that much more awkward. Because the surface—isn’t flat. You said, a flat surface.”
He turned and looked at me. His face was attentive, the eyes flattening out, cold gold-red fires.
“It wouldn’t be so easy over rocks, no. Much, much slower.”
“You’ll need to be fast.”
“What is it?”
“It’s—I don’t know. But I know you have to run. Now, Silver.”
“Not without you.”
“They can’t do anything to me.”
“They can do everything to you. You’re no longer coded. If someone wants me, and I’m no longer here.”
It came to me he knew what I meant before even I knew it. He had always known then, better than I, that they—that they—
“I don’t care, Silver. Please, please run away.”
He didn’t move, except he turned to face the way we had come, and I, helpless, powerless, turned to do the same. As we did so, he said, “And anyway, my love, they’d have, I think, some means of stopping me from getting very far.”
They. Five figures were coming down the steps onto the ballroom floor. They all wore fur coats, fur hats. They looked like bears. They were funny.
They came toward us quite slowly. I don’t think it was deliberate. They were cold, and the way was slippery. I didn’t know any of them, and then the snow-light slicked across two panes of glass.
The VLO wasn’t coming. It didn’t exist. Electronic Metals existed. Clovis had betrayed us, after all.
“There’s still time,” I tried to say.
“Not really,” he said. He turned away from them again and stood in front of me so I wouldn’t see them. He blotted them out, as long ago he’d blotted out the harsh light and fear of the world, so I could learn to bear it. “Listen,” he said. “None of this matters. What we’ve had matters—listen to me. I love you. You’re a part of me. I’m a part of you. You can’t ever lose that. I’m with you the rest of your life.”
“No Silver—Silver—”
“Yes. Trust me. It’s true. And I’m not afraid of this. I was only afraid for you. Do you understand?”
I shook my head. He took my hands and held them against his face, and he looked at me, and he smiled at me. And then he glanced back again, and they were very close.
Swohnson was in the lead.
“You’ve been a bit of a silly girl,” he said to me, “creeping off with your friend’s property. It isn’t, ah, legal, you know.”
I don’t think he recognized me, but he disliked me just the same. I’d made him come out in the cold. He always got the rotten jobs—placating the mob and irate callers, shutting the gate, doing the visual interviews and acting dumb, chasing runaway machines and female children across the winter countryside.
I couldn’t say a word that would alter anything, but the words tried to come, and Swohnson showed his t
eeth at me and said, “You’re lucky if no one lodges charges. Not that that’s our business. Our business is this, here. Didn’t you know how dangerous these things can be? They can short out at a second’s, er, notice. A faulty line. Yes, you’ve been bloody lucky.”
I started to plead, and then I stopped. Silver was standing by me, looking at them silently. None of them looked in his eyes.
“Er, yes. Give us the lady’s bags,” said Swohnson. “Um, you take the guitar, will you,” he added to one of the other four bears. “That’s E.M. property.”
Silver put down the bags quietly. Men picked them up. He handed the guitar to the elected man, who said, “Thanks—Oh, shit,” and bit his mouth.
“Yes, they’re convincing,” Swohnson said. “Till they blow a gasket. Now, young lady. We stopped your cab on the road. It’ll take you back to the city.”
“She hasn’t,” Silver said, “got the fare.”
They all started. Swohnson coughed. He swung around on another bear. “Go and put some, ah, cash in the damn cab. Enough for the ride.”
The bear hurried off. They were obedient henchmen. If Silver resisted them, would they be enough to stop him? And then I saw something come out of Swohnson’s pocket, in his gloved paw. He toyed with it, so I could see the buttons.
“Don’t,” Silver said, “do it in front of her.”
Swohnson coughed again. His breath fluffed through the air. The Canyon vibrated.
“Oh, don’t worry. You don’t think we’d carry you to the car when you can walk? Start walking now. Left, right. Left, right.”
Silver walked, and I walked. The men walked with us. No one spoke. We went up the steps and came out in the ravine. When we got to the top, the cab was back, a bear leaning on one side.
“All paid up and primed for the city center,” he said, quite cheerfully. “All right? Mr. Swohnson?”
“Fine.”
Swohnson walked on, and Silver walked, and I tried to and one of the bears caught my arm and prevented me. My bags were lying by the taxi.
“Here’s your cab, now, please.”
“Let me,” I said. “Let me come with you. As far as—the center.”
“Sorry, madam. No.”
“Let me. Please. I won’t do anything.”
Silver was taller than they were. He walked like an actor playing a young king. The cloak flared from his shoulders. His hair blazed through the monochrome white-blueness of the day, as he walked away from me toward the long black car like an ancient hearse.
“You see,” I said to the man, smiling, plucking at his sleeve, “you see I’d much rather.”
He shook me off. Agitated, he said, “It’s only a bit of metal. I know it looks—but it isn’t. Let it go, can’t you. They’re dangerous. It could hurt you. We just take them apart. Melt it down. It’ll be over in another hour. That’s no time, is it. Nothing to fret about.”
I held out my hands to him and he backed away.
Silver moved in a graceful bow to get into the car. The windows were tinted like Swohnson’s spectacles, and I couldn’t see him anymore, not even the fire of his hair, his hair, his hair.
Swohnson got into the car. The others called. The man who had stopped me ran up the road to them, slipping once and almost going down.
“Please,” I said to the empty distance between us.
Their car started. Snow fanned away from it. It moved powerfully. It raced and dwindled.
“Please,” I said.
It was gone.
Automatically, I fumbled to open the taxi door, and one by one I loaded the bags into it, and the umbrella. Then I got in and shut the door.
I sat in the taxi. I wasn’t crying. I was making a little noise, very low, I can’t describe it. I couldn’t seem to stop. I think I may have been trying still to say “Please.” I sat and watched the clock in the taxi.
I didn’t even think of going after them. They had, at least, taught me that.
It’ll be over in another hour.
When you leave me, there’s nothing.
There’s all the world.
It’ll be over, in another hour.
Where the cat had scratched me, my wrist hurt.
I watched the clock. I didn’t visualize any of what they did to him. I didn’t wonder about it. I didn’t feel him die.
“Jack’s lost all his glass. All smashed.”
When the hour was up, I took off my left boot and smashed the glass over the taxi clock, and taking up the largest shard I could find I cut my wrists with it.
* * *
—
Blood is very red. I began to feel warm. Everything grew dark. But in the dark, little bright silver flames were turning and burning….
When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night….
Somewhere there was a great rushing and roaring. The sky was falling. The sky with its Silver stars, his hands, his feet, his limbs, his torso, even his genitals scattered to give light, dismembered like Osiris, Romeo, Dionysos.
The sky fell in the Canyon.
Later, the door of the cab was wrenched open.
“Oh, Jesus,” someone said to me. I heard this someone retching and fighting to control the spasms. But I closed my eyes and slept.
I remember the hospital in little blurred white flashes, like damaged film. I needn’t describe that. Or the pain, which didn’t stay in any part of me, but ran through all over me, so that even to turn was awful. I remember being helped to use the lavatory, moaning with pain. All these pains were physical. Below, beneath, beside them all, a thin grey pain that was not physical ran on and on like a tape. I dreamed sometimes. I was a child, and someone had thrown my black fur bear into a fire. It was coming apart and melting and I screamed with horror. I also dreamed that I was taken to meet my father, the man who had supplied the sperm for me to be born. But whenever I arrived where he was supposed to be, he wasn’t there anymore. These are symbols. I didn’t dream—I didn’t dream of him.
I didn’t come fully conscious until I was in a room I knew, and for a moment couldn’t identify. Then I moved a little, and my foot skidded. The sheets were dark green satin. And then Clovis was sitting on the arm of a chair, looking at me.
Two things. His hair was still long, but dark now, not dark red, de-molecularized. And his face was hollow, which made him look oddly holy.
“I’m sorry about the sheets,” he said. “I forgot. I can change them tomorrow.”
Clovis. I was in Clovis’s spare bed, in Clovis’s apartment. I was with Clovis. Who had betrayed us. My mouth was dry. I said softly, “Hallo, Judas.”
He slowly shook his head, as if he knew fast gestures made me giddy.
“No, Jane. Not me.”
Did I feel anything? Did I want to hurt him, to kill him? No. I didn’t want anything. I didn’t even want to die anymore. It was too much trouble. But I was obliged, having started the conversation, to go on with it.
“You called E.M. You told them where we’d be.”
“I did not.”
“Where you knew we’d be, because you’d promised me the VLO would come.”
“It did come. Who do you think found you? The hapless Gem. He put a tourniquet on you and got you in the plane. He then flew that impossible crate over the city, which is strictly illegal, and landed on the roof of State Imperial Hospital. The place was packed with quake casualties stacked like sardines, but he wouldn’t move off until they took you in as well. I never knew he had it in him. I don’t think he did. He is now on opium-based tranquilizers, which are not going to put the color back in his cheeks. Christ, Jane, what a bloody foul thing to do to yourself.”
“If it came, it came too late. You made sure E.M. would get to us first.”
“
It was late because half the Historica sheds collapsed in the tremor. Gem got the VLO out past security as soon as he could.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to be here.”
“All right. I know you think I’m the villain of this rather sordid plot. I’ll leave you alone. Just stay put until you’re stronger, and then you can go.”
He got up and walked away into the blur that misted the edges of my vision. When the blur had almost swallowed him, he said, “Your mother called. She calls every hour. Do you want her to come over?”
I suddenly began to try to cry. It was very difficult. The tears wouldn’t come. It was like trying to give birth to a stone. When I stopped trying, my heart was thundering, and Clovis was standing over me again.
“Jane—”
“No. I don’t want my mother.” I shut my mouth.
Presently Clovis went out. Then I tried to get out of the bed. The last thing I remember is that I couldn’t.
* * *
—
There were large white sealed and waterproof bandages on my wrists. In another month, I would go back to have the stitches out, and then I could book up for the treatment that would take the scars away. Clovis wrote to tell me this in a note he left lying on the coffee table. He said he would pay for the treatment. Or Demeta would. He’d gone out and left the place to me on the day he thought I was strong enough to get up. He seemed to trust me. He seemed to know I wouldn’t repeat my earlier performance. Why should I? I hadn’t the energy. It takes a lot of determination to die. A lot of conviction. Unless someone helps.
The note also said he’d asked Demeta not to phone, but a couple of times the phone sounded, and I knew it was her. The second time I reached out blindly and switched it on.
“Hallo, Mother,” I said.
“Whoops.” A male voice, laughing. “I may not be enormously butch, but I’ve never been mistaken for anyone’s mother before.”
