F Paul Wilson - Novel 05

by Mirage (v2. 1)

  Julie gave him a sheepish smile. She'd been misunderstood more than her share of times, people thinking she'd snubbed them when in fact she hadn't even been aware of their preseties.

  "Yeah ... I suppose I can, but—"

  Eathan raised a hand. "You know, I've been giving the scorched appearance of Samantha's memoryscape a lot of thought," he said, "and I was wondering if it might relate symbolically to this Liam O'Donnell fellow she was seeing. I mean, he is a known arsonist, reportedly a firebomb specialist."

  "Oh, dear," Alma said. "Arsonists? Firebombs? I don't think I like the sound of this."

  "Oh, don't worry about O'Donnell," Eathan said. "I've learned that Scotland Yard has a standing warrant for his arrest. He'll be avoiding British soil at all costs—which is one of the reasons I wanted Samantha brought back here."

  Julie felt a flush creep into her cheeks at the memory of the man's lips on her, his tongue, the feel of him inside—

  No, not me—Sam! He was inside Sam. And don't forget it!

  Taking a deep breath, she said, "But if all that's said of him is true and he wanted to get rid of Sam, what would be the reason? And wouldn't his preferred method be fire?"

  Eathan shrugged. "Maybe she knew something about him. Or maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was the people he works for. Maybe he has nothing at all to do with any of it. I don't know. It's just that everything inside there seems to have been burnt to the ground and ..." He rubbed a trembling hand across his eyes and his voice broke as he stared at the floor. "Oh, Lord, I don't think she's ever coming back to us."

  Julie's heart went out to Eathan. He'd always been able to protect Sam, to shield her from the consequences of her recklessness. Now he was helpless and it was eating him alive.

  She took a step toward him, but Alma got there first.

  "There, there, Eathan," she said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  What's this? Julie thought. She hadn't assumed Uncle Eathan was living a monklike existence, but a relationship with Sam's therapist? If true, that was a little surprising.

  "Don't you worry," Alma was saying. "We'll find some way to help Samantha. You've got a brilliant niece working on it, and I'll do anything I can to help. You know that."

  "I do know that," he said, straightening and looking at Alma, then at Julie. "But I fear that it's hopeless."

  "Don't count me out yet," Julie said, trying to imbue her smile with more confidence than she felt. "I've only begun to fight."

  She was impressed by Alma. She seemed to have genuine empathy for Sam. She was a practicing psychiatrist, she knew Sam's psyche, and the different perspective she offered could help.

  Julie glanced at her watch. Almost nine o'clock. That meant it was midafternoon back in New York. She could call Dr. Siegal....

  "And speaking of which, I think it's safe now to make another foray into Sam's memoryscape. Alma, would you like to monitor me?"

  Her eyes lit. "Really? I'd be thrilled."

  ''Good. By the time you two finish polluting the air down here, I should be ready up there."

  4

  When Julie reached Sam's room she told the nurse she could take a break. Then she popped out the videotape of her last session and stared at it. She didn't want Eathan to know this existed, but wanted it available for review should the need arise. She put a small X in a corner of the label, slipped it back "n among the blank cassettes, and pulled out a fresh one.

  She had everything ready—including Dr. S. on-line—by the time Eathan and Alma arrived. They settled before the monitor as Julie donned her headset and glove.

  "Alma, before we start I must get a verbal nondisclosure agreement from you. This equipment is proprietary. Patents are pending. You may tell no one anything about what you're about to see. Do you agree to that?"

  "I understand and I agree," she said. "I'll lock this away the patient-privilege drawer and forget it." '

  Oh, I don't think you'll forget this, Julie thought. Especially if we catch Sam and Liam going at it again.

  She snapped her goggles down, clicked the Enter button and she was on her way.

  Sixteen

  John Kotre: "As a maker of myth, the self leaves its handiwork everywhere in memory. With the passing of time, the good guys in our lives get a little better and the bad guys a little worse. The speeds get faster, the fish get bigger, the Depression tougher."

  —Random notes: Julia Gordon

  You stand amid the darkness and devastation now.

  You stand outside the glowing "studio" and scan the ruined vista. You notice even fewer pockets of light, evidence of lost bits of memory sinking through the seared crust of the 'scape. Signs of life persist, but not enough. Nowhere near enough. The sky remains as dark as ever, and the perpetual pall of smoke still hangs in the air.

  A sense of hopelessness, of utter futility, assails you. You can't make this work. The devastation is too extensive, and worsening. What does it mean? Are those sinking bits of memory lost forever? Or is there a way to revive them? You wish there was a guidebook to this chaos. If this destruction represents a similar process in her mind, then everything that was Sam will be gone forever.

  You're losing her. You've got to find another way.

  And then you notice a dark figure standing near the studio.

  "Hello?" you call, but the figure doesn't move, doesn't respond in any way. Something wrong here.

  You step closer and realize with a shock that it's your father, standing there shrouded in a long black cloak. But he looks different. His face is pale and his hairline seems to have developed a widow's peak.

  "Daddy?"

  Suddenly he smiles and you recoil from the sharp white fangs he reveals. Then he spreads his arms and his cape and, like a scene out of a corny old horror movie, metamorphoses into a bat that squeals and flies in dizzying loops before disappearing into the studio.

  Hesitantly you follow him into the gallery and stop inside the entrance. It's empty. No bat... and no paintings; they're gone.

  You push forward, searching for the large canvas, the one with the slowly emerging painting. That's gone too.

  You feel the first stirrings of panic. As hopeless as it had seemed a moment ago, at least you had the paintings. Now...

  You catch a flash of color in the corner. A mix of yellow and orange. You rush to it.

  Not all the paintings are gone. One of Sam's originals, the lion with the flaming mane, riding the gondola, remains. But it's been moved to the rear of the gallery. Why? Why are all the others except this one gone?

  You touch the fiery mane and jerk back. Hot! But how—?

  And then you see that the mane is truly aflame now. And the fire is spreading, the flames licking at the canvas around the lion's head. Within seconds it eats a hole through and begins spreading in an ever-widening circle of fire. Before you can do anything the fire has consumed the painting, leaving only smoldering embers along the inner margin of the frame.

  Beyond the flame is blackness. Not the gallery wall, not an opening to the outside memoryscape. Simply an opening. A void. A black hole.

  You move closer and peer through this rent in the fabric of Sam's inner reality. Utter blackness lies beyond.

  And it beckons.

  Entranced, you move even closer, but the blinking Window button distracts you. You click it and Dr. S. appears. You know what he's going to say.

  "I'm going in, Dr. Siegal."

  "Now wait a minute, ]ulie. Now Jet's just wait a minute and give this some thought. You don't know what—"

  "I can click EXIT and end the session whenever I want."

  "Yes, but there may be more to it than that. We discussed—"

  You click the Window button and Dr. S. disappears.

  Rude, yes, but you sensed he was going to warn you again about the risks inherent in your personal and genetic links to Sam. You'd have listened politely if you were alone with Sam. But you can't risk alarming Eathan, who's watching the monitor and listening to every
word. If he thinks there's the slightest risk to you, he'll withdraw permission and shut you out of the memoryscape altogether.

  Before Dr. S. can interrupt you again, you dart through the frame—

  And fall.

  No wind in your face, no sense of plunging in gravity's grip, yet you know you're falling because a look behind reveals the glowing rectangle of the picture frame receding above you like the hatch of a plane from which you've leaped.

  You look ahead. At least you think it's ahead. This utter blackness is disorienting. You're losing your sense of up and down. You feel your chair against your back but the vertigo overwhelms you. There's no sense of reality here, only your virtual fall. Hopefully the program will keep you oriented. You might well be panicking now if not for that comforting, ever-ready Exit button on the bar across the top of your visual field.

  And now you see something: a faint, lacy pattern of blue-white light in the Stygian blackness far below. You're falling— skydiving;—toward it. As you near, the pattern reminds you of a silver filigree, but you need another moment or two before you appreciate the scope of what you see. The silver is water, and the openings in the filigree are islands. You are falling toward a vast, moonlit archipelago.

  Finally your descent slows and you find yourself hovering a few feet above the craggy surface of one of the larger islands in the center of the group. You glance up for the source of the light and see a crescent moon, a narrow sliver of milky light but impossibly huge, hanging impossibly close in the clear, starless sky.

  No, not hanging. You can see it falling down the sky, a glowing fingernail clipping from a careless god.

  You lower your perspective and study your surroundings. You realize this is not the peaceful archipelago it appeared to be from on high. Instead, you are surrounded by another vista of unimaginable devastation. But this time the engine of destruction was water instead of fire. A deluge of forty years instead of forty days. These clumps of land around you are not islands—! they're hilltops. The ground beneath your virtual feet could be a peak in the Rockies, or the Appalachians. Or Mount Ararat perhaps, waiting for the Ark to come to rest on one of its crags. This may be a deeper level of Sam's memoryscape, but it is just as wasted as its companion above.

  You land on the largest of the islands and stare at the water. It looked so clean and clear from up there. Now, close up, you see oily rainbows drifting across its moonlit surface. Black water. And nothing ripples that dark surface from below or settles upon it from above. Truly this is a dead sea.

  Dead... does this represent a dead area of her mind, lost forever, or is this only symbolic? But no one is here to give you answers. You're the first explorer in this strange netherworld.

  You turn and freeze.

  Behind you is a giant black nautilus shell, an onyx mass gleaming in the moonlight. How did it get here?

  Never mind. The rules of the outside world mean nothing here. What matters is the light seeping from inside, inviting you in from the wet and cold of this postdiluvian wasteland! You accept.

  Inside, you realize this is another gallery. New paintings decorate the walls. Only one is familiar, and even that is changed: The gondola still plies the Venetian canal in the magically restored canvas from the upper-level gallery, but no flaming lion rides in its bow. And the large work in progress is back as wells You approach it and see that new details have been added: more trees, and a fuller moon, the familiar moon you've seen all your life, not the alien behemoth lumbering across the sky in this place.

  You return to the outside. Motion to the right catches your eye. A dark shape gliding along the water, moving closer...

  A gondola. So strange in this lifeless sea. No lion with flaming mane is passenger in this one. It's simply an empty gondola. It gently floats to the bank before you and crunches softly against the slimy rock. And waits.

  "Okay," you say. "I guess I'm supposed to go for a ride."

  You expect another warning from Dr. S. but his window is quiet.

  So, reminding yourself again that you can exit anytime you wish, you step aboard. It doesn't rock under your weight like a real gondola. Good thing too, since you've never done well on ships or boats of any size.

  As soon as you seat yourself, the craft drifts from shore. You need no Charon to guide you upon this Styx of the soul as your craft carries you along the polluted channels, winding around and between devastated islands of rock that once housed memories.

  It's dead here, deader than the scorched level above. The only light is in the gallery dwindling behind you and the overbearing sliver of moon above. The crescent has fallen closer to the horizon. Soon it will set and you fear the darkness will be absolute. Perhaps you should go back.

  You admit something to yourself: You're scared here.

  And then ahead ... something bobbing upright on the surface, like a softly glowing buoy. As you near you make out details ... and realize it's a giant plastic glow-in-the-dark dashboard Jesus. You pass within a few feet of it, and as the buoy comes abeam, it becomes flesh. Suddenly Jesus is standing on the water, staring at you. He holds up a pierced palm in greeting

  "The blood is the life," he says, then turns and strides away ... across the water.

  "Blood," you whisper. "Dad as a vampire, and now Jesus. Are you still after me for that transfusion, Sam?"

  You scan the horizon and see a larger glow. Yes! A memory node, no doubt, a survivor of the deluge. That, you guess, is the reason for the gondola. To take you to it. So you wait.

  The water moves past the gondola at perhaps three knots, yet you approach the glow at something like fifty. And soon you recognize it.

  Venice. Not the Venice you remember from your trip to the old city three years ago. This is the stylized Venice from Sam's painting. Gone are the strings of lights and crowds of colorful people. Darkness, the great equalizer, has stolen them. You sail the city's black waterways, cruise beneath its empty footbridges, glide past the stuccoed fronts of its narrow houses with their empty black windows.

  Or perhaps not so empty. Who knows what waits and watches behind those panes? But the gondola doesn't stop.

  Ahead you notice something hanging from one of the bridges, something furry, dangling upside down. A monkey? No... as you near you see it's a possum, hanging and watching you with a big, bright Cheshire Cat grin. The same possum from the upper level—the one with the hand? You wait for him to do something but he only grins at you as you pass. Soon he falls behind and the shadows swallow him, but the grin remains.

  And above and beyond him you spy the giant moon crescent scything into the horizon. Thankfully there's some light in this benighted city. You catch glimpses of it seeping between the buildings, glinting off the black mirrors of its dead canals. You sense you are heading for the source. You feel your fear receding.

  But then you hear a noise, a ratcheting sound, soft and rapid. You look up and see a dark-haired boy in ragged clothes sitting on the railing of another of the many bridges, his bare feet dangling over the edge at midspan. He clutches a fishing pole in his hands and works the reel furiously, winding in the taut line from the inky water. You shake your head. As if anyone could fish these polluted waters.

  You watch the still surface as you pass, curious to see what he's caught, but he keeps winding and winding. He must have miles of line out. Endless winding, as you pass under his bridge and the next curve takes you out of sight. Yet still you hear his reel... winding... winding...

  And then you round another bend and forget about him, for the night is suddenly aglow. You recognize the place. It doesn't belong here; this is not the way it really is, but you know the building.

  The Venice Opera House. Teatro la Fenice.

  You're no fan of the opera, but you looked at its facade when you came to Venice. Sam once did sets here for an avant-garde production of... you forget the opera.

  And then you see a familiar figure.

  The lion with the flaming mane sits regally on the quay, waiting. M
usic wafts from inside, the sound of an orchestra tuning up.

  The gondola noses against the bulkhead and stops. You know what you're supposed to do. The lion turns and watches you debark and climb the steps. Will the lion say anything? you wonder. But then it fades away....

  You look at the marquee. It reads OTELLO, but the front doors are shut, apparently locked, since they don't respond to your virtual grasp.

  You move around to the side, to the open stage door. You enter there. And you see Sam:

  She weaves her way through the cramped backstage area. Outside, where the audience sits, it's sumptuous and luxurious.

  La Fenice. The Phoenix, a theater reborn from the ashes of a great fire in 1774. The jewel of Venice. Royalty have enjoyed its blue-and-cream interior for centuries. Mary Shelley wrote home to England about its beauty.

  But here, backstage, it's a madhouse, bedlam.

  Sam loves it.

  And what an opportunity. The youngest-ever art director for a major production at La Fenice. And though her taste runs more to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Sam finds herself drawn to Verdi's thunderous music, the extravagance, the lush color, and the gaudy pomp.

  A young nobleman walks by, bellowing basso vocal exercises. The chunky mezzo who plays Emilia is complaining to the stage manager about something. Mezzos are never happy.

  Nor is the prima donna, Katia Mareau.

  The star, the Desdemona, of this Otello.

  Sam carefully steps over the ropes and flats all in place for the last act of this dress rehearsal. Katia Mareau will be killed, as she will be for the next two weeks while well-heeled patrons arrive by gondola to see Verdi's take on Shakespeare's tragedy.

  Opera. A silly, comic world, yet somehow wonderful. Larger than life; it obliterates life.

  Sam walks up to the door with the carefully calligraphied gilt name—Katia Mareau—then below it, in slightly smaller letters, Desdemona.