A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  Percival explained technique to them and hoped the woman could do her

  part. She seemed calm and alert. Percival knew he was not the expert he should be in flying. He was never in that much hurry and had not accumulated much flying experience. He was acting a role, maybe the last good role of his life.

  Percival and the woman maneuvered the Rhyan off the edge of the disk. Percival tried to get footing for the push while the Rhyan slowly tried to fold himself into a more compact shape. “At least you didn’t just eat!” the old man called to the Rhyan. “And if I vomit you’ll be ahead of me!” The Rhyan just groaned in reply. Then Percival pushed him.

  Percival helped the woman launch the old man. Then the woman launched herself with the boy on her back. Her trajectory looked accurate and Percival felt good as he jumped after the Rhyan. The flight was successful, with only one throw-line needing to be used to pull in the old man. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “And now we do it again,” Percival announced, not hinting at how many more times they would need to fly. They reached the medical clinic in the bottom of the Big Ball three hours later, each flight being longer than the previous as they gained confidence. He was surprised none of them had vomited. Percival had once been treated at this small hospital after he was beaten by a protection gang.

  “This is the farthest place I know of that can treat your friend’s injuries. If he wishes treatment at this time. We can’t know if the Fleet will find him here before they heal him. He will be on his own. The rest of us should leave immediately.”

  “Leave me,” the Rhyan said. “It’s as good a place to die as any.”

  “You may have to indenture yourself to pay for the treatment,” Percival warned.

  “It will not be the first time I have done so. Don’t come inside with me. It will only delay you and endanger them.” The Rhyan abruptly hopped away, groaning with the pain he felt.

  “We will come back for you!” the old man called after the Rhyan.

  Percival got his three remaining persons heading in a random direction. He wanted to ask them so many questions. He suspected they also wanted to ask some questions.

  “Where are we going now?” the old man asked.

  “Nowhere. We just keep moving. It will take a few hours for your friend to be treated. We’ll sneak back then and see if he’s ready to leave.”

  “And then what?” the old man inquired.

  Percival shrugged.

  “Who were the soldiers?” the woman asked. “Why were they so bad? What are the consequences if their people catch us?”

  Percival knew he should have warned them sooner of the many dangers to life in the Big Ball. He had made wishful assumptions about their mysterious appearance in the Big Ball. It was the first time he had heard the voice of the One True God, and for an utter skeptic such as himself, it was a life-changing moment. Uneducated in the theology of the One True God, Percival had assumed She would watch over the people She had instructed him to serve. He now knew he was unqualified to make any assumptions about the logic and methods of a god. “The soldiers were junior officers of the Black Fleet. They are the worst of their kind. We call them barbarians, but not to their faces. If they catch us we die. We die badly. They like to cut people into small pieces while they are still alive.”

  “Is there no agency for law and justice here?” the old man asked.

  “None,” Percival replied. “If you still like to fly, we can take a tour around the Big Ball before returning for your friend.”

  “Let’s fly,” the boy said, although he held onto the woman and seemed to mimic her somber mood.

  “Yes,” the woman agreed, “let’s fly.”

  They had to be special people, these strangers to the Big Ball. Percival was afraid to be with them, but the Invisible One, the one of hope and belief and legend, had spoken to him. Many said She was the One True God, hidden from She Who Must Not Be Named. Blessed were those who were called on to do Her bidding. The dark woman was dangerous. She killed the Black Fleet officers with little effort. Was she the First Warrior of the One True God, come to wage war on She Who Must Not Be Named? It was all myth and superstition, a pitiful arsenal of hope for those who hated and feared the Black Fleet. Who was the boy with the amputated leg? How could he fit into any plan by the True God to free Her people? At least he now knew She was real. He could believe! He could hope! Percival was sorry now he never took the ancient legends more seriously, studied their prophecies, learned their meanings. It was too easy to be a cynic. Why was he chosen to help God’s visitors?

  “Where are these barbarians least likely to be?” the old one asked.

  “The junior officers, the ones without a berth, are everywhere, but seldom go to places of old culture, like the opera or a museum.”

  “Would you know of any art museums?”

  “I know of many. What kind of art?”

  “There are a great many art museums?”

  “More than I know about.”

  “Why so many? Do you people love art so much?”

  “Some of us do, but art is treasure and treasure is what the Black Fleet steals. Stealing for the sake of stealing and depriving and causing suffering. It’s beyond my understanding.”

  “How about oil painting? That isn’t such a treasure. Reproduction has become so perfect that the images are virtually free to everyone.”

  “It doesn’t seem to matter. Only the stealing and the murder matter. Did you have a particular artist in mind?”

  “How about de LaGuardia?”

  “Rafael?”

  ” You know of him?”

  “Sure. But first I want to change out of this costume.”

  An hour later Percival brought them to his own neighborhood. He at least wanted to see home one last time. They walked winding grass lanes between fabric houses of brilliant colors. Some homes were mere tents, some were colossal assemblages of flexible planes of hue and texture, bordering on visual befuddlement. Every shape and size between the extremes seemed to exist in merry anarchy, no two exactly alike. These messengers or soldiers of the One True God seemed to appreciate the humble splendor of his neighborhood. He welcomed them into the fabric-partitioned apartment he shared with two other young men, both of whom were fortunately not home. He changed into his normal work clothes. He found an old shirt to give the woman to partially hide the distinctive yellow dress.

  The old one began to feel his age by the time Percival brought them to the park across the street from the museum. He was the oldest person Percival ever saw. Only a rare Fesn might be so old. They rested on a knoll by the lake that gave a perfect view of the museum, and a second view as a reflection in the calm water. It was perhaps the largest museum in the Big Ball, an imposing edifice of curved ivory pillars suspending a swirling globe of verdant translucence. This globe was thought to mimic an external view of the world they lived in. The entrance was at one corner of an intersection of streets and was large enough to fill an entire cubic city block.

  After a brief rest and soft drinks he purchased for them from a park vendor, Percival guided the three visitors to one of the glass ramps that would take them into the animated jade sphere. The old man and the dark woman walked on either side of the boy, each holding one of his hands. Starting up the ramp’s escalator, the old man smiled, scratched his beard, shook his head. “I’m afraid this is what I would call an ego trip.”

  Percival gave him a puzzled look. The somber woman managed a near-smile. “Rafael is a painter,” the boy said, as if that explained the comment.

  “Also a sculptor.” Percival remembered the scope of the artist’s work. He wondered if it was coincidence that the old man requested to see the art of one of the few artists within his own area of knowledge.

  The old one enjoyed the variety of people moving through the carpeted rings of the globular museum. They were generally older and better behaved than most citizens, Percival thought. He asked Percival many questions about them, explainin
g that he had lived too long as a hermit and had forgot how people were “their own canvases of color and experience.” The woman warrior remarked on the continued absence of children, wondering if the Big Ball had something like Mnro Clinics and adhered to the Static Population Ethic. Percival had to explain that there were a great many children but safety concerns kept children away from most of the public places they had seen so far in the Big Ball.

  The old man was astonished to glimpse a Fesn in the crowd. Percival tried to find the alien and bring it to them to meet but it disappeared before he could find it. Both the old man and the woman were intensely disappointed and asked many more questions about the Fesn than Percival had answers.

  “There is another alien race known to us.” Percival thought to add the information just to be absolutely safe. “I have never seen one. If you do see one, do not harm it or even speak to it. The consequences could be lethal to the entire Big Ball.”

  “What kind of beings are they?” the woman inquired. “What do they look like?”

  “You will know when you see one. They are immortal and they are sacred.”

  “Would they appear dark and sparkling and amorphous?” the woman asked.

  Percival was shocked at the description. “That is yet another thing! You have seen a Gatekeeper? I thought they were extinct!”

  “I saw one on Earth. What is a Gatekeeper?”

  “You must know what a gate is?” Percival prompted.

  “They have always been the holy grail of space exploration,” the woman said. “And these creatures guard the gates? You have gates here?”

  “I don’t know. There must be. You had to have come here through a gate. Gatekeepers operated the gates. They had the mathematical ability to compute the addresses. This is all I know of the matter, and I’m not sure it’s accurate. Nobody I know of records history here. Do you still want to see the Rafael Collection?”

  “Is that what they call it?” the old man asked. “What about the great artists of the past who were named Rafael?”

  “Who knows? They might be here, too. I just know what I like. I wish I could be more informative. I’m saving my credits for a data augment, plus installation.” Percival was learning more about these people than he should probably want to learn. They couldn’t be angels if they knew so little. Even the warrior woman seemed surprised to learn about the Fesn and gates.

  “I’ve seen the works of de LaGuardia many times already,” the old one said. “But we may as well walk in that direction. Maybe we will spot another Fesn.”

  “Rafael’s art is always worth seeing again,” Percival said.

  They passed by room after room, gallery after gallery, theater after theater, and glimpsed every conceivable form of art. Percival, guided by a museum information system, followed a path to a gallery where familiar works hung on the walls and stood on pedestals.

  “This must be everything!” The dark woman declared.

  “No, not everything,” the old man said. “I lost two very important works in the fire. My newest, my best.” The old man sounded distraught to Percival. Why did he seem to be speaking as if the art was his?

  “That looks like you,” the boy said to the warrior woman, pointing to one of the paintings of a woman in a yellow dress.

  “That was Rafael’s wife,” she replied to the boy. “Denna. That’s what she looked like before she lost her son.”

  “But it’s the same dress.”

  “You have a good eye,” the old man said. “It’s the very same dress.”

  “What do you mean?” Percival asked the man.

  “This dress.” He pointed to the yellow material not covered by the shirt Percival had given the woman.

  “Oh! Yes, that dress was very popular here for awhile, I’m told. Many years ago, when that series of paintings arrived here, it made women want dresses like that. You still see them from time to time, when the paintings are rediscovered.”

  “No!” the boy said with a child’s impatience, “I mean this is that dress. This is the one he painted. He painted Fidelity in it, too, but that picture got burned up”

  “Who was Fidelity?” Percival asked.

  ” This is her,” the boy said, patting the dark woman’s arm as he stood on one leg beside her.

  “Rafael de LaGuardia painted you?” Percival was beginning to wonder again about the meaning of these strangers. Just when he was beginning to like them, they made these wild claims of identity. How could they have any connection to the One True God? How could they even be trustworthy?

  ” This is Rafael de LaGuardia,” the woman Fidelity said, indicating the old man. “This is his art. I’m wearing the dress his wife wore.”

  The old man bowed his bald head slightly. Percival frowned, not at all convinced, but maintaining his politeness. All of his hopes were crushed. Life would grind on as always in the Big Ball, and his would be much shorter for his current role. But he had heard the voice! He tried to reset his interpretation of the role he was playing. He still wanted to like and to protect these strange people. He racked his brain to recall an image of the artist to compare to the old man, but he was not successful. What proof could he ask of them?

  A commotion at one end of the gallery startled Percival. The woman seemed to look for an escape route, expecting they were already tracked to the museum

  by the Black Fleet. In another few moments it proved a false alarm.

  “If everyone will please form a line along the wall,” an amplified voice said over the quiet voices of the small crowd in the gallery. “We’ve just acquired the first works produced by Rafael de LaGuardia in twenty years! Please be courteous and patient and everyone will get a chance to see these truly remarkable items.”

  Percival’s guests looked at each other in amazement. “Pan copied them,” the old man said. “I don’t know when or how. And someone got the copies from him. How could they possibly come here, and so soon?”

  “What are you talking about?” Percival asked.

  “The museum person may be talking about my portrait of Fidelity and my sketches of her and Samson,” the old man replied. “This is Samson, by the way.”

  Coverings fell from the artworks and a sigh erupted from those close enough to view. Percival led them into line, anxious to see the proof for which he had just wished. The viewers moved slowly toward the wall where a single painting hung next to a glass case. Before they arrived directly in front of the painting, Percival could see what he couldn’t believe. He kept glancing back at the dark woman as he approached the image on canvas. This was too magical to be coincidence! It was a miracle, a sign, even if he lacked the brains and the faith to understand what it meant!

  “I think this is my masterpiece,” the old man said, stopping before the portrait, “even though it isn’t finished. It isn’t finished because the mystery remains unsolved. I think I will never finish it. I’m so happy it survived the fire!”

  Percival became rooted to the spot before the portrait, as those behind them in line waited impatiently for him to move on. Percival took another hard look at the woman as people nudged him from behind. He stumbled toward her and urged her to stand next to the painting. He was sure! Of course it was she! Other art patrons echoed his thoughts with exclamations on the resemblance.

  “The boy!” someone behind them shouted. “It looks like him!”

  Percival almost knocked over the case trying to see the sketches displayed within. The pages of a sketch book were detached and arrayed, showing a sleeping boy with an amputated leg resting in the lap of… her! The dark woman.

  All of the people in the gallery were excited by this miracle of coincidence. Two curators returned to the gallery to investigate the commotion and they, too, saw the dark woman and the boy, and realized their extraordinary resemblance to the figures in the painting and in the pencil sketches.

  Someone running by one of the doorways whistled loudly. Percival was shocked out of his mesmerizing revelations. Everyone knew what s
uch a signal meant. Lives depended upon their rapid reaction to the signal. The forces of She Who Must Not Be Named approached!

  “They’re after us!” Percival said to the curators.

  “You?” a curator asked.

  “This is Rafael de LaGuardia!” Percival declared. “He and these two were brought here by the One True God, who spoke to me today and made me be their guide. Unfortunately, an Unlucky Two of the Black Fleet happened upon us soon after they arrived. The woman in the painting made them die.”

  The room quickly emptied. The two curators led Percival and the visitors through a service door and out of the public areas. They passed by - and through

  many storage and preparation rooms and reached the receiving department in a

  lower part of the spherical museum. The two curators led them to empty freight vehicles waiting at a dock. Magnetic guide rails for the vehicles converged across a small yard into a dark tube.

  “Where do these vehicles go?” the woman asked.

  “They go to other museums or warehouses,” a curator replied.

  “Do they go to the place from which the art is shipped to you?”

  “You don’t want to go there.”

  “Can you see the sky there?”

  “The sky? I don’t know.”

  “Is it at the edge of this place?”

  “Outside of it.”

  “Can you send a vehicle there?”

  “Yes. One of our transports usually waits at the sorting warehouse for the art.”

  “Send us there, please.”

  “It would be very dangerous. Why do you want to go there?”

  “I want to know where we are. The night sky may tell me.”

  “There’s no night here. I’m not even sure there’s a sky to see.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Send us.” The woman in the painting turned to Percival and took his hand. “Thank you, Percival. We appreciate your help.”

  “You don’t want me to go with you?” He was greatly disappointed, even though he was terrified of what they might encounter where they would go. It was all over so quickly, with the Great Questions about the One True God flooding into his awareness, leaving him devastated by ignorance. These were magical people, regardless of their humble mortal appearances. He would be proud of his small part in their mission. He would be humbled to lose their company.