The Heart is a Universe

by Sherry Thomas

  He shook his head. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, just who are the Elders and why They persist in this strange, barbaric tradition.”

  She exhaled. “One of the first things I was told, after I became the Chosen One, was not to think about that. When I turned eight—the age of reason for children on Pax Cara—I was given a more thorough explanation, which boiled down to ‘that way madness lies.’

  “Of course later I became obsessed with the question. The more I doubted the path of the Chosen One, the more I struggled with why the Elders want what They want.” She disentangled her hands from his and pushed her hair behind her ears. “But strangely enough, now that I’ve made my decision, I’ve also stopped tormenting myself about that. Instead I worry that I won’t be considered worthy to step inside the temple. If They look into my heart, what would They see except how much I hated everything and how desperate I was to run away?”

  They would see what he saw now, a woman who had wrestled with her demons—and emerged battered but victorious.

  “You judge yourself too harshly.” He took hold of her hands again. “And you compare yourself to an ideal that has no counterpart in reality. You don’t know how your predecessors felt about their role, whether they hated it more than you, or how many times they ran away. And when you look at me, you see only me standing before the steps of parliament, in seeming bravery. You don’t know that inside I was cursing myself for my foolhardiness. Why had I put myself there? Why did I think I could make any difference? Why didn’t I fall to my knees then and there and beg for my life to spared?”

  She blinked a few times in quick succession, as if she had trouble believing him. “But you did what needed to be done.”

  “Inspired by you.” He reached out and tucked back a strand of her hair that had fallen forward again. “You were serious about living up to the demands that had been placed on you. That changed me. And that changed the lives of many. Don’t give yourself too little credit. I know what I saw in the documentary—and everything I saw was real.”

  He stumbled just before they reached his bedroom. From there, things went downhill at a neck-snapping speed: the collapse had arrived and there was no stopping it.

  The recovery tank wasn’t enough anymore. He was instead placed in the preservation tank, which resembled nothing so much as a large, solid casket. His physicians swarmed around. And it wasn’t until the small hours of the night, shortly before departure, that she managed to have a minute alone with him.

  “I have another secret to tell you,” she spoke to the side of the preservation tank, to the special transmitter that was supposed to send her voice directly into his cranium. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the Pax Cara Event, just me.”

  The preservation tank was not touch-sensitive. Still, she ran her fingers along its cool, marble-like top. Earlier, as she’d paced along the wall, her hands had shaken. But now they were steady again—as steady as they had ever been.

  “Not long after the filming of The Quiet Girl, I began to feel that there was something I needed to do. I had no idea what it was, only that it wasn’t the Task appointed for me. And that it was something important—something crucial.

  “At first I ignored it. Then I told myself it was my head playing games with me. But the feeling that I was turning a blind eye to an essential mission only grew stronger. Until it became a preoccupation. An obsession. Until I felt I had no choice but to run away, to give myself time to figure out what was so important that I was willing to sacrifice my own soul—and five hundred million lives.

  “I didn’t, in the end. When I returned, I expected to be tormented by this other thing that I needed to do. I expected that what had been a thorn at my side would grow to the size of a sword between my ribs. But amazingly enough, that feeling didn’t return at all—or at least it hasn’t yet.”

  And from time to time she almost felt like her old self again, the sunny, purposeful, life-loving young woman she had once been.

  She kissed the top of the preservation tank. “So that’s my secret. Not much of one, but I’ve never had someone to whom I can tell secrets, big or small.”

  Now she had at last found him. She could lose him at any moment, but he was still here—and she was still here.

  She kissed the tank again. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

  7

  Vitalis’s husband survived Bridge travel, but barely. Her only contact with him was a moment with her hand against his arm—his skin cold, the sigil scalding hot—as he was lifted from the stabilization tank into the preservation tank and yet another heavy, opaque lid swung shut in her face.

  She made the decision to bypass the major hospitals on Pax Cara. His entire medical team had traveled with them, as well as all his lifesaving equipment. There was nothing anyone on Pax Cara could do for him that his own doctors couldn’t do better.

  They berthed his private cruiser in one of Pax Cara’s secondary spaceports and took a freeform lander directly to Pavonis Center. Her training mates had departed a while ago—the final weeks leading up to the Pax Cara Event should have been solitary ones for Vitalis. She had no doubt many a traditionalist grumbled about her jaunt off-planet when she was supposed to devote herself to reflection and purification.

  She could only imagine their dismay if they knew that along with her husband had come enough people to keep the training compound in a state of constant bustle.

  In a medical emergency, the most dispensable person was the spouse. She ran ten clicks each day in full infantry gear. Otherwise, when she wasn’t seeing to his staff’s comfort in her role as hostess, she spent her time in the same room as him, in a corner, keeping out of the way.

  His chamberlain was her near constant companion. They took their meals together, read together, and once even watched an episode of Captain Odyssia and the Renegades together.

  “His Highness would envy me—that I’ve enjoyed more time with Your Highness than he had,” said Alchiba one afternoon, as they sat taking tea together.

  Only days ago she would have wondered if that was really the case: if Eleian had all the time in the world to spend with her, would he still find it so easy to overlook her faults? But now she seemed to have recovered a portion of her erstwhile faith in people. She believed Eleian—that he loved her, that to him she was as miraculous as he was to her.

  She glanced at the preservation tank. “Let’s hope that His Highness will soon be in a state to envy someone. Anyone.”

  Even though she had not addressed her words to any deity, Alchiba made an upward gesture with the palm of his hand—the better to lift a prayer to the gods.

  She did too, after a moment.

  They sat silent for a while—the better for a prayer to be heard.

  Then Vitalis said, “I understand that when the time comes, the physicians will try to rouse him from this induced coma. But what if they don’t succeed? Has he left instructions, in case he remains unconscious?”

  “Yes, Your Highness. He has given very clear directions: he will go with you in whatever condition.”

  They would be together until the very end.

  “Does that worry you?” she asked. “It will be a perilous journey, to say the least.”

  “I will worry no matter what,” answered Alchiba. “But now that we have made it this far and he is still alive, I am going to let myself hope.”

  In unison they looked toward the preservation tank. Vitalis turned back to Alchiba. “You know, Master Chamberlain, I will do that too.”

  The day before the Pax Cara Event, Vitalis attended a public farewell.

  The ceremony, held in the capital, was a short and simple. A child, representing all the inhabitants of the planet, read a thank-you note to Vitalis. She, in turn, gave a brief address thanking her people for the honor and privilege they had conferred upon her, and for making her time among them as bright and happy as possible.

  After her speech, she left the stage and made her way on foot to lay a wrea
th at the memorial dedicated to all the Chosen Ones who had gone before her. Hundreds of thousands thronged the grand boulevard. And in the air hung real-time projections of crowds in other cities and settlements, big and small, millions upon millions who had turned out to say goodbye, standing shoulder to shoulder, their hands raised in salute.

  At the memorial she was met by nearly everyone who had been a significant part of her life—friends, former lovers, training mates, and some who had been all three. She laughed in surprise and delight as she embraced the filmmakers who had been responsible for The Quiet Girl. They stood in a tight circle, hand in hand, their foreheads together.

  “You have changed our lives,” they told her.

  “And you mine, more than you can possibly know.”

  As strong as she was, she needed the help of eleven others to lift the gigantic wreath, which had been made from paper butterflies, the same number as all the messages she had received from school children over the years, promising her that they would live in kindness and generosity, because every life on Pax Cara came at a cost.

  Her eyes misted. She did not love the bargain that had been struck with the Elders. But she did love her people. She had felt alienated from them for a long time, but now she wanted only for them to be happy and at peace.

  She returned to her house at sunset, the last sunset she would see in her life. How beautiful it was, and how impossibly brief.

  As soon as she could, she asked for a minute alone with her husband.

  “It’s almost time,” she said, her cheek against the top of the preservation tank. “And in case I forgot to tell you earlier, I’m not angry anymore.

  It had been forever since she’d last had a glimpse of him, but she had never felt so close to anyone, or so at ease with herself.

  Next to the tank, the summer eternity plants grown from the seeds that he had gifted her still bloomed, but they were fading fast. The special varieties that bloomed quickly never bloomed long; the hope in her heart, however, unfurled with ever greater tenacity.

  “I love you,” she told him. “And you’ll live.”

  The day of the Pax Cara Event was set by the elders, but the hour of departure was left to the discretion of the Chosen One. Noon was the most popular choice, followed closely by sunset. Vitalis, however, would begin her final journey at the stroke of midnight.

  No point wasting a single minute.

  The night was clear and full of stars, the breeze cool and fresh, the beach soft and familiar underfoot. Before a camera crew, Vitalis, clad in a tactical suit, shook hands with the dozen or so officials who had come as witnesses and apologized for the inconvenience of the hour.

  At five minutes to midnight, her husband arrived on a stretcher, also clad in a tactical suit. Her hope faltered—under starlight, his face looked like its own death mask. But then she gripped his wrist and felt his pulse, weak and erratic, but there nevertheless.

  The official timekeeper gestured to her: it was time. Vitalis kissed her husband on the forehead, walked to the edge of the water, and placed her hands on the sand. A gentle wave lapped over her fingers, bracingly cool. Almost immediately, behind her, streaks of silver light shot high into the stratosphere.

  That was not the Elders, but one final salute from her people. She could only see the flares from the settlements nearest her, but all over the planet they were going up. She had seen them once before, when she was a little girl—the last time a Chosen One had walked into the sea.

  The day before she was announced as a candidate to be the next savior of Pax Cara.

  The prince’s staff placed him on her back. The surfaces of their suits could range from a texture that was nearly frictionless to one that would allow them to climb up walls. They were both set to the latter, so that the prince would adhere to her without her having to hold him in place.

  He was disconcertingly light, even with the package strapped to his back, which would inflate to a lifepod that would bring him back to shore, after he had undergone the maximum dose of radiation.

  His head rested on her shoulder. His face had been turned aside to avoid accidental suffocation. She reached up a hand and touched his hair.

  Another set of flares shot up, their brilliance drowning out the stars.

  The sea parted.

  8

  Vitalis raised her arm in salute. Everyone, even the prince’s staff, sank to their knees. She nodded at the chamberlain and the head physician, then turned to face her destiny.

  The sea shimmered, a silver-blue glow like starlight. The sand that had been exposed by the parting of the waves shimmered too, a faintly luminous boulevard edged by walls of water.

  “Here we go,” she said softly, to her unconscious lover.

  Unconscious, but alive. And that was good enough.

  The sand was soft beneath her heels, but not so soft as to make walking a chore. The water to either side of her rose: knee height, waist height, shoulder height, higher than her head.

  The tactical suit now covered her head too. She half debated whether to turn on night vision, but decided it against it. The farewell flares were still going up; she saw well enough through her faceplate.

  It was difficult to tell whether the sea was parted all the way to the Elders’s Temple—or just far enough to reach the vanishing point. She looked back. A few hundred feet behind her, the sea had closed and was closing in—but at a rate no faster than she was advancing.

  For a moment she thought she might start to feel claustrophobic. But while the path disappeared shoreward, it grew wider to either side. She had the odd sensation that she was taking a nighttime stroll through ancient ruins, the sky their only roof.

  This part of the world had been selected as the location of the Chosen One’s training ground, and the spot of his/her departure, because of the exceptional gentleness of the seabed. After some time, though, she came to the conclusion that she wasn’t walking on the seabed. Even an exceptionally gentle seabed couldn’t be this smooth, without any bumps or dips whatsoever.

  She scraped her soles against it—a perfectly glassy and polished surface, but with a barely perceptible give. Straying from the center of the path, she put a hand to a wall, which was now more than fifty meters high. That, at least, was only seawater, cool and dense.

  Beyond the wall of water loomed dark, undulating shapes that seemed to stretch all the way to the surface. A kelp forest? Marine parks were popular on Pax Cara, though they were invariably manmade, and depicted the undersea environments of other planets, rather than those of the planet’s own, of which Pax Carans knew very little.

  “I used to think the Elders were the remnants of a more advanced civilization,” she murmured. “But now I wonder if my training mates are right after all: perhaps They are gods. Forgotten, diminished gods, but gods nevertheless.”

  Her husband made no response.

  Her tactical suit had been constructed to enable survival under the most hostile conditions—somehow its designers were under the impression that the Chosen One ought not to die right away, but only after a long, futile struggle. His was the near cousin of a field hospital. The two suits had been synced. At her command, her reading field displayed his current condition.

  “Hmm.”

  She wasn’t a fully qualified physician—most of her training dealt with the treatment of traumatic injuries. But the report was unambiguous: he was in better shape than he had been earlier, before they started.

  Her heart thumped. It might just work then, for him.

  She walked faster. And faster.

  Without getting tired.

  In her training, she had marched a great deal while carrying thirty-five kilos on her back. But he, emaciated as he was, still weighed at least fifty. And she must have been walking for a solid hour by now.

  Perhaps it helped that the seabed and the artificial surface beneath her feet were at an angle. It was always easier going downhill and there was no greater downhill slope on Pax Cara than from sea le
vel to the deepest oceanic trench.

  Ahead the seabed dropped away.

  She stopped.

  The people of Pax Cara had never conducted a systematic exploration of their oceans, but they weren’t completely ignorant. Expeditions had been carried out in the very beginning, before the Elders had made Their presence felt. It was known, for example, that in this part of the world, the continental shelf extended more than five hundred klicks from the shore.

  And she was approaching its edge.

  How had she covered more than five hundred clicks in an hour? Was the artificial surface under her feet something of a walkway, carrying her along at far greater velocity than her normal walking speed?

  Now that walkway became steps almost as steep as a ladder. And she must have been descending for a quarter of an hour before she remembered her original source of wonder: that her husband didn’t feel heavy on her back.

  His weight hadn’t changed—fifty kilos was still solid cargo. But the change she sensed in herself—it was like the difference between a child lifting a boulder and an athlete doing the same. No, an even bigger difference. The difference between a child lifting a boulder and a giant excavating machine doing the same.

  Just so . . . effortless. Everything was effortless.

  The farewell flares had ceased a while ago. There was no moon. And the glimmer of the steps and the seawater walls, while pretty, should have been too weak be of any use, the way one couldn’t use only gold or silver to illuminate a room, no matter how brightly they gleamed under the sun.

  Yet she saw perfectly well. And not only the path, but each ripple of the walls, which were now quite some distance from her.

  Steps turned into a flat, downward boulevard, which turned again into steps, which again turned into a flat, downward boulevard.

  She was running, flat-out sprinting, and loving the sensation: it felt as if she were flying.

  But wait. Was she jostling Eleian too much?