The Memory of Whiteness

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “Thank God they were socialists,” Margaret said. “There’s no one else so sensible.”

  “It wasn’t them,” Dent said quietly. “It was Johannes.”

  Margaret laughed. “I don’t know. I’d like to see him try doing that program with you edgefolk.” But she hadn’t forgotten that passage with the cellos and the single oboe, and she acknowledged the truth of Dent’s words with a big grin. “We could have been in serious trouble,” she said, wiping her brow.

  inclusion: corrective interjection

  Blue and indigo clashed before him, and walking backstage was difficult; so much to run into that was not real at all. The concert had left him in a particularly light state, as if he alone in all Port Iapetus was exempt from the singularity’s pull, so that if he did not hold onto things—light stands, railings, Anton’s shoulder, the wall—he might step up and float away. Hold steady, Johannes. Already he could not remember what he had played. “Did you get this one on tape?” he asked Delia. “Delia is over there, Johannes.” Marie-Jeanne? Of course. So much taller. “Delia, did you tape this one?” “Of course we did, Johannes, it was lovely. Was that part of the Ten Forms?” “I don’t know. I’ll have to listen to it.” “We tape everything of yours, you know.” “I suppose I did. Have it scored for me as well, then, will you?” “Of course.”

  A couple of hours later his sight and sense of balance were almost entirely returned. He wanted to go look at the Fairfax House. They had only a few more days on Iapetus, and he was curious. Raven-wing hair across the hall in the next room; must be Margaret. He crossed to her. “Margaret, you’re from Iapetus, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I need your help. I want to go out and visit one of the old mansions. The Fairfax House.”

  Margaret lifted an eyebrow, nodded. “I know the museum’s superintendant, she’s another old school friend of mine. We can get the key codes from her.”

  “Good. And ask her if the house records are intact.”

  “I will. When do you want to go?”

  “Now…?”

  Finally she smiled, and he realized that he was a little afraid of Margaret. “All right. I’ll have to finish up here and make some calls, but then we’ll go. If I can get Anna Villanova on the phone. Go get some rest in the dressing room, and I’ll call you if I get her.”

  “Thanks.”

  And a couple of hours after that they were at the edge of the city, where Margaret rented a track car at the surface transport station. Her friend Anna Villanova arrived to give them keys and directions, and they were off—into the car and out of the city, sliding on a single track that wound over the frosty broken surface of Iapetus. “Do you know the way?” Johannes asked uncertainly, peering ahead at the big patch of ground lit by their headlight.

  “Yes,” Margaret said. “It’s simple.”

  Margaret was so good at things, he thought. What would have become of them even up to this point, without her? And from here on—

  “I liked what you played tonight,” she said, all in a rush as if the sentence had been pent up inside her. “Was it part of your big piece?”

  Johannes settled back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Not really part of it. More an extension of one small section, I guess. I can’t really remember.”

  “Too bad. I liked it better than your earlier concerts.”

  “Yes? Interesting. But the Ten Forms isn’t finished yet, so I hope you’ll keep listening. What I did tonight—well, you know, I’m glad you liked it. But anyone can do lullabies. I want to do something more than hypnotize people.”

  She looked at him curiously. “What do you want to do?”

  He was in the mood to speak plainly. “I want to show people the real. I want people to hear the true nature of reality just as clearly as the sound of their own name.”

  Margaret had a little wry smile that appeared rarely. “There’s a certain difficulty there, if you ask me. When it comes to the true nature of reality, it seems to me that we’re too much like the chimpanzees on Titan, who look up into the smog and imagine they see the whole universe.…”

  “Perhaps.” There was another track branching off from theirs. “Is that the way?”

  “No. We have a long way to go on this one, first. We’re crossing the Disraeli Plain here, a big one.”

  “So this is your world,” Johannes said.

  “Yes.” A funny laugh. “To the extent I have a world.”

  “But you grew up here.”

  “Yes. I grew up in Port, actually. But the track craft are cheap to rent, and all the mansions and spas are public property, now. And I did a fair amount of trekking as well, crossing Delta Chasma and some tremendous wilderness plateaus. You get out on the dark side of the moon and Saturn is so big and bright you can hardly believe it.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  She shrugged. “I was curious. At first I stayed in the Saturn system, on the Ring stations, but all the cities are modeled on Titan’s socialism, and I was still curious. So I went out. Then I got into management, and started traveling full time. I haven’t really stopped since then.”

  “That’s one way to satisfy curiosity.”

  She laughed. “Oh it was satisfied long ago, believe me. And I think I prefer Iapetus in a lot of ways. This is a special place, made in a special moment of history. As soon as the spheres became available the revolutionaries on Titan seized the chance—Saturn was at 280 and Jupiter was near 90, so it was good timing—and they overthrew the landowners. That was early in the Accelerando, so that their socialism was fairly conservative, but now that I’ve lived on the anarchic terras, I wonder if that isn’t to the good. Certainly I was happy here.”

  “You like things orderly,” Johannes said.

  “Perhaps. I like to know what’s what.”

  They lapsed into silence and Johannes observed the chiascuro expanse of the plain. When the track curved the headlight beam caught tall contorted boulders, with frost patterns on them resembling animal faces, figures, runes, signposts pointing across the waste. Perhaps they had been carved. One looked like the Orchestra turned to stone, and he almost said something, but the beam left it and in the starry light it looked like any other lump.

  After a while: “Here’s our turn.” He had been dozing, dreaming of leopards high on a hill. Margaret was flicking the switches that would put them on this new track. They clicked through the intersection and veered left. Far across the frosty plain there was a gleam of reddish light, from what appeared to be a faceted outcropping. “Is that it?” he asked.

  “That’s Laurenti House.”

  “Strange architecture. It looks like one of the strings of sugar crystals that children make. Colored sugar crystals.”

  “You should have seen them when they were occupied. They were lit from within so that all the facets glowed; you could see them for kilometers, and they lit up all the surrounding plain so that the frost was the color of the nearest House.” She laughed. “The rich. Here they were building completely self-sufficient palaces, while the shipbuilding facilities were still tin cans. No wonder they were disenfranchised.”

  Johannes stared at the dim structure. “It’s odd to think of such extravagance before Holywelkin. And now they’re just curios.”

  “You can rent them for parties.” Margaret pointed ahead. “There’s the Fairfax.”

  As they approached the mansion Johannes saw that it was big—ten or twelve stories tall, a collection of cubes melted into each other in a vaguely crystalline way; no doors or windows were visible; each facet was an unmarked plane of blue glassy material.

  “No windows?”

  “There are, but you can’t tell from outside.” Margaret turned the craft up the tracks that led directly to the mansion. The craft slid directly up to a blank wall. Looking closer Johannes saw small knobs in it, but because the wall was blue his resolution was poor. With a jolt track craft and mansion locked together.

  “Will there be air inside?�
�

  “No,” Margaret said. “We’ll have to suit up. Anna told me how to turn on the electricity, though, so you’ll be able to check the house records.”

  They got into the thin daysuits, and Margaret pushed buttons on the control panel of the craft. Doors slid open in both craft and building, and the craft’s air escaped with a tiny tug at them. They entered the Fairfax House, and Margaret crouched by a box near the door. Lights came on.

  The room they had entered, Johannes thought, was about three rooms tall. The walls were painted a pale blue, and it made him dizzy to look at them. A three-tiered chandelier descended from the faraway blue ceiling, breaking the light into a thousand hanging prisms. Johannes followed Margaret into a hall shaped like a pack of cards placed on end. “They seem to have liked tall ceilings.”

  “They were rich,” Margaret said. “Let’s see—I got directions from Anna—records chamber on the sixth floor. Go down the main hall to the ballroom and take the staircase up.” They proceeded down the tall hallway, and came to a circular room that appeared to have no ceiling; an upright cylinder. Lit only by the undissipated light from behind, it was a patchwork of blues. Margaret found the lights and turned them on. More chandeliers. Five or six balconies stood out in rings from the circular wall, and spiraling up through the balconies was a wide, gradual staircase. “It’s like being inside Archimedes’ screw,” Margaret said. She led Johannes up the stairs. Disoriented by the proportions and the ubiquitous blue light, by the silence and the stillness, Johannes took her hand and followed her step by step. Near the top they stopped to inspect one balcony; a small alcove in the wall was filled with round windows, which bent inward like lenses.

  “Lindsay windows,” Margaret said. “Look.”

  Through one they saw the Earth, a big blue and white ball, the cloud patterns perfectly visible, the end of South America pointing up like a horn. “How did they do that?”

  “Ask Lindsay.”

  They continued up the stairs. The blue silence made Johannes nervous. On the sixth floor Margaret led the way to a small room containing a medium-sized holo projector. One wall was filled by the control console. Margaret switched on the light, checked the power. “Everything’s ready to go.”

  Johannes inspected the console. “So this bank has holos of all the human activity that ever happened in this House, in every room?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But why?”

  “It was the thing to do. Every House had such a system. It made them holo stars, I guess. Immortal.”

  “Immortal little figurines of light.”

  “Yes. But it’s a common mistake, don’t you think? To try for immortality by leaving something of you behind?”

  “Oh yes,” Johannes said absently, poking about at the console. “Very common. Now … Holywelkin was an acquaintance of the Fairfax of his time, and he visited here in 3008. So how do I find holos of him?”

  Margaret laughed. “We’ll just have to look. There’s no index. But for Holywelkin we can look in the best guest rooms, and run through the year 3008 at high speed. That’s the only way.”

  She typed in instructions, and the holo flicked on with a quick snap of red light, followed by the image of a room, wall-less and without ceiling. It was about half as tall as Johannes, so that the rich walnut furniture and thick Persian rugs looked like the accessories of a doll house. Doll people stood hand-high, with faces as clear as thumbprints. Margaret turned a dial and the figurines sped about the room like bars of light, like fairies visible in the first four dimensions. Margaret slowed the figures when new ones appeared, and soon they identified Fairfax and his family, introducing guest after guest to the room. Guests put belongings in a closet outside the holo; visited a bathroom also outside the image; dressed, undressed, looked in mirrors, groomed, slept, made love … Visitor after visitor made the space his or her lair, then left it.

  And then the visitor was Holywelkin. Short and stout, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered, in a black coat, with a wide, pug-nosed face: a Holywelkin doll, looking as familiar to Johannes as any face he knew.

  “That’s him,” Johannes said hoarsely. “Take it back a bit.”

  “That’s Holywelkin?”

  “Sure. Don’t you recognize him?”

  “Well, he’s so … small.” They laughed. “I’ve only seen holos of him a few times, as I can recall.”

  “Hard to imagine,” Johannes said. “There, start it here. I had a holo of him in my home for years and years.”

  “That would explain it.”

  “Yes. He—” Johannes hesitated, looked up at Margaret, looked back at the frozen figurines in the shimmery doll room. “He talked to me once. We had an argument.”

  “Ah,” Margaret said carefully, inspecting him. “Well … you’ll recognize his voice, then.”

  They laughed again. Margaret slowed the holo to real time and turned up the sound. Holywelkin and Fairfax walked about the room and Holywelkin unpacked his bag, and their voices faded and grew as they moved. “Two microphones,” Johannes said, “one by the bed, the other over the door.” It was odd to have normal human voices paired with the figurines, who should have squeaked like mice.

  “The reception will be tomorrow evening,” Fairfax said. His coat was the green of peacock feathers. “I’m sure everyone will be interested to hear about your travels.”

  “I’m not going to want to talk about my travels,” Holywelkin said in a scratchy, tired voice. Johannes trembled; it was almost the voice he had heard in the control booth during his withdrawal, seven years before. He leaned over until his face was at the very upper edge of the cube, stared at the figure as hard as he could. Tiny translucent face, twisted with distress of some kind.…

  “Why not?” asked Fairfax loudly. “Arthur, you are the first outsider ever to visit Icarus! How could you not tell us about it?”

  “With silence,” Holywelkin said. “No, Simon,” he said, forestalling an objection. “You want to know why I cannot speak of it, I know. It is because I … because something happened out there.” He sat on the bed. “I can’t talk about it.” Voice hoarse.

  Over the cube Margaret and Johannes stared at each other.

  Fairfax sat beside him. “I’m sorry, Arthur. I misunderstood. So this cult—this religion, the grey ones—they are—dangerous, somehow?”

  Holywelkin shook his head, tiny face wrinkled with unhappiness. “I can’t talk about it.”

  “I see. Well.” A long pause. “Perhaps we should make something up, to satisfy people’s curiosity at the reception?”

  A long silence, while Holywelkin got up and paced the room. “Yes. I think that would be best.”

  The image of Fairfax watched his guest for a time. “What was it, Arthur?”

  “I,” Holywelkin said, and waved an arm. “They know things.”

  A long silence.

  Fairfax stood, took Holywelkin by the arm. “Tell me about it later, Arthur. I can see you haven’t come to terms with it yet.”

  Holywelkin shook his head violently. “True. Very true.”

  “Let’s get your stuff put away.”

  They unpacked Holywelkin’s bag. Margaret speeded them up, and tracked Holywelkin from room to room, stopping to check every conversation. Holywelkin ate, talked small talk with the Fairfax family, played with the children, slept. Margaret moved on to the reception the following night. In the holos of the ballroom people were no taller than thumbnails, and there were a few dozen of them scurrying around the room; the holo resembled a box of colorful insects. The soundtrack was filled with music and the tumbling beach sound of party conversation. Even Johannes’s intensely trained hearing could not distinguish Holywelkin’s voice from the others’. Holywelkin was the center of several groups, and he appeared to talk, but he never smiled.

  More small talk, eating, sleeping; then back in the guest room, packing his things, with Simon Fairfax. “He’s about to leave,” Margaret said. Johannes nodded, leaned over the cube o
nce again.

  “They did teach me,” Holywelkin said, answering a question.

  “Stop and run that back,” Johannes said. “What happened to the earlier part of the conversation?”

  “It must have happened in the hall outside,” Margaret said. “No cameras in the halls.”

  Johannes clicked his tongue. “I’ll bet that’s where everything important in this mansion happened. Okay, let it go.”

  “They did teach me,” Holywelkin said. “But I’m not sure I understand what they taught me. I’ve got to go do some work on it back home on my own. Need my programs and a lab.”

  “So they taught you mathematics?” Fairfax cried. “I can’t believe it. There’s no one alive who could teach you anything of math, I would have thought.”

  “Yes, well, this has to do with singularity physics. A sort of logic of the micro-universe. I’ve been working on a model for the motion of the particles discovered in the Great Synchrotron, and these Greys … well … it’s not so simple. And besides I don’t know how to describe what it was outside the mathematics involved, anyway. I don’t know what it means in other terms, you understand?” Fairfax shook his head. “But I have … fears.”

  Fairfax said, “Will you phone me later, when you’ve worked this out?”

  Holywelkin nodded. “Or I’ll write it down. But these Greys … there’s more to them than anyone suspects.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “I’m not sure. No one else knows the details of my trip.”

  “I won’t tell anyone even the little I know, then. Now, is your baggage together?” They began to pack.

  Soon they were joined by the Fairfax children, and they left the room. Holywelkin left the mansion by the track craft door.

  Margaret shrugged, turned the holo off. “So that was Holywelkin’s visit.”

  Johannes nodded. He thought, the Greys watch me as I play Holywelkin’s Orchestra. And the Greys were a part of the coming to the world of Holywelkin’s mathematics.…

  “Did all that tell you anything?” Margaret said, breaking a long silence.

  “I need to know more about the Greys,” Johannes said.