Paradox Resolution

by K. A. Bedford

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, hardly able to speak, remembering only too well.

  “It’s all right. I said I forgive you. And I do. Completely. Must have been hard living with that.”

  He nodded, sniffling, and hating himself.

  “It was,” he said, hardly able to speak. He wiped at his eyes.

  “Yes, and now I remember, too,” she said.

  “I’m—”

  “Yes, I know. It’s all right.” She reached over, and touched his knee. He flinched, as if he’d been shot.

  “How can you be…” he struggled to say, “…so reasonable?”

  “Al, I saw what you did, and I understood. You were in an impossible situation.”

  “That’s not the bloody point,” he said.

  “Bloody Dickhead, what an arsehole!” Molly said, deadpan.

  Shocked, he laughed out loud. Molly laughed with him, and touched him again.

  “His poor wife,” he said.

  “You should talk to her.”

  Nodding, he said he would.

  “I’m sorry I was so awful to you,” Molly said. “At the time, I justified it to myself. You were boring. You were soooooo boring.”

  “Um,” he said, in the awful position of hearing said aloud things he had always suspected she thought, but had never dared ask about.

  Molly went on. “I wanted someone, I don’t know, a bit dashing, exciting somehow. Someone who’d sweep me off my feet, but instead it was just you, plodding old Al, always on tap to paint the laundry or fix the fence. You were always so available. It was easy to mistreat you. It was like you were queuing up for it.”

  “Pardon me for being dull,” he said.

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” The way she said it, as if you’d have to be a fool to still be all upset about such ancient business. Spider nonetheless felt like just such a fool. Too available? Too ready? Queuing up for it? Guilty as charged, he thought.

  Molly was staring out beyond the breakers. The wedding party down on the beach, ceremony concluded, was moving on. The bride and groom, trying to keep control of their hair in the gathering wind, were posing for wedding photos. Spider remembered those photos. He hadn’t looked at them in years.

  There was something he didn’t understand. “You and the Vore. You…” he started to say, then trailed off, thinking about it. “Is it possible,” he began, thinking hard, “that you could find yourself in such extreme pain, such a marginal state of mind, that you could disassociate, that you could leave your body, that you could…”

  “It was something like that. Me and the Vore. Our eyes met across a crowded space-time. We were both disassociated, no longer tied to our own space and time; atemporal, drifting outside the flood of the universe. The past and the future were all mixed up and confused. And we bonded for a brief time, then went our different ways. Later, when I turned up on Stapleton’s ship, it found me again. It was just this side of madness, barely hanging on. And we helped each other again.”

  “You let it into your mind.”

  “Say what you like about me, Al, but I will not stand by while a helpless creature suffers.”

  He thought about Mr. Popeye, how she, as part of the Mollyvore, had spared the little guy. Trashed the house, but the fish was perfectly fine, a mild case of fin rot aside. “That’s how I knew it was you,” he said, and when Molly seemed confused, he explained about Mr. Popeye. “When we examined the house. You spared the fish. Only you would do that.”

  Molly smiled. It seemed to glow with the sunrise. He stared and stared, then looked away, sad, knowing this was the end. This was the last time he would see her. She had not said as much, and he had not asked, but there was a sense of melancholy about it, about her choice of this moment to revisit. The strange thing, he thought, was that he felt all right about it. If this was the end, he could accept that. He was ready to move on, just as Molly had already done. It was startling, to understand that about himself. It made him look at Molly differently. She was someone he’d never really known, let alone understood.

  They sat in silence a while, listening to the wind in the trees. Spider thought and thought, turning everything over like compost in his head. A few things stuck out.

  “So what the hell are they, anyway? The Vores.”

  “Living, conscious singularities.”

  “Shit,” Spider said.

  “Incapable of anything like language.”

  “And this Final Secret of the Cosmos? Is there one?”

  “Dunno. It never came up.”

  “Dickhead said they were burning down the universe, that they were Angels, you see, making way for God to create the universe again, bigger, better, with more of everything He liked. Is that true? Do you know?”

  “Beats me,” she said, smiling, watching the waves, not a care in this world nor any other.

  Spider nodded

  “Right. So what about, er…?”

  She indicated vaguely at her face. “The eyes? My peepers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gave ‘em up when I took on the Vore.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “It was quick.”

  They sat in silence a while longer. Spider listened to the early morning wind in the trees, the calls of the cockatoos, the occasional thump as a falling pinecone hit the roof of a parked car. This was nice, he thought. Peaceful. It was the most substantial conversation he’d had with Molly in, well, he couldn’t say how long. Possibly ever. Certainly the first time he’d spoken with her when everything she said to him didn’t come with that subtext of bitter disappointment. Without that constant scowl, and even without the eyes, she was beautiful. He was going to miss her. “Will I ever see you again?”

  “You want to see me again? Really?” She appeared surprised.

  “Just wondering.”

  Down on the beach, the shadows cut deeper and darker. The sun in the east was above the horizon; someone’s flowers were tumbling across the sand, driven by wind, towards the lapping water.

  “In the course of your long, surprisingly long life, Al, you will see me three more times.”

  He had to sit and process that; there was a lot to unpack. “I live a long time?”

  “Crazy long time, yeah.”

  “I didn’t know.” He wasn’t sure whether to thank her for telling him, or not. “Three more times, eh?”

  “Give or take. Depends.”

  This was maddening, but he didn’t want to blow it. Breathe, Spider. Long life. Three more meetings. “Okay,” he said at last.

  “Good.”

  “What about your art?” He imagined her moving stars around, building nebulae and molding liquid dark matter in her weird, post-mortal hands.

  “I gave it up.”

  “Gave it up? How could you give it up?” He was shaken at the news. Molly no longer an artist? He didn’t know artists could even do that; he thought it was a lifetime thing, like a sentence.

  She said, without a care, “I had to make room in my mind for the Vore. It wasn’t a hard choice.”

  “Shit,” he said, amazed, and strangely disappointed. “Is that why you…” he started to say, thinking about Molly’s destroyed sculptures at her house.

  “They were rubbish,” she said. “Derivative. Lame. I saw, at last, my gaping lack of talent. It was kind of a relief to get rid of them.”

  Spider was astonished. “You miss it?”

  “Nope. Too busy.”

  “Are you, I don’t know, are you happy?”

  “Define happy, Al.”

  He couldn’t. “Three more times, eh?”

  “No, I’m not telling you when. I don’t do appointments.”

  “Right.” He watched the beautiful bride running, barefoot, into
the water to go wading after her lost flowers; he could hear her swearing, those ringing tones carrying all the way up to the pine trees. His earlier-self stood there at the edge of the water, shouting after her to leave the bloody flowers, she was ruining her dress, and she was shouting back at him that it was hers to bloody well ruin. Spider remembered it well.

  When he looked back at the Mollyvore, it was gone. He blinked, his eyes closing for a fraction of a moment, and when he opened them again, he was back in the wreck of the ship, cold and weak, shivering, in a lot of pain, and he could smell blood and burning. It was dark. He was lying on some kind of cot on the floor somewhere. When he touched his face, he discovered his injuries were not as bad as he’d expected. There was a hot tingling feeling in his cheeks, and he realized there were constructor agents at work, rebuilding everything.

  “Hello?” he called out. There was a lot of noise, and the burning smell was bad. There was a fire nearby. So much smoke in the air he found himself coughing as he tried to call out. And it was cold, inexpressibly cold, so cold his hands and feet felt numb. Hull-breach, he thought, and struggled to his feet, thinking that if the hull was compromised and the seals on the doors weren’t completely air-tight, things might be a bit urgent. He got to his feet, hit his head on an overhead pipe he never saw, and swore. It was nothing serious. Someone had covered him with a blanket, so he grabbed it and wrapped it around himself. “Hello? Hey! I’m up! Hello? Anyone?”

  Then, a moving point of light, some distance away, lighting up a nearby passage. Someone was coming. Someone tall. The light approached. “Mr. Webb? I thought I heard you. You’re back with us again?”

  Spider didn’t recognize the male voice. “Yeah, sorry, um. Yeah, I’m fine, I think. Someone gave me something for my—”

  “Yeah,” the voice said, the light coming close. Spider, squinting, saw it was a very tall young man, rugged up with blankets, gloves, wearing a sort-of hat. “I’m Vijay Patel? I think you knew my dad? Iris told me—”

  “You’ve seen Iris?” he said, seizing on the news. “Is she okay?” He remembered something bad had happened to her, that Stapleton had done something to her.

  “Iris, yeah, she’s fine. No worries, Mr. Webb. She’s looking after Phoebe for me while I’m checking on things.”

  Spider nearly lost it, hearing that Iris was all right. For a long moment he couldn’t speak, he was so overcome with happiness. “Thank God, that’s great. Thank God, oh that’s so good to hear. Um, can you take me to her? Is that…?”

  “Of course. That’s where I’m going. I was just making the half-hourly round to check everything, and to stop in and see if you were awake yet. Keeps me busy, off the streets,” he said, and laughed a bit.

  Spider liked him. “You got me this blanket, and the…” He gestured around his face, referring to the constructor-bots. “Bit of a medic, are you?”

  “Something like that, Mr. Webb. Can you move under your own steam, or do I need to get help?”

  “I think I’ll be okay.”

  “Okay. Good. We’d better get moving.”

  “Call me Spider,” he said, and stuck out his hand, and they shook, very quickly.

  They set off. Vijay told him that Iris would be very pleased to hear that he was awake at last. “She’s been talking about you non-stop this whole time,” he said, and Spider caught, in the flickering light, the hint of a smile on Vijay’s face.

  Embarrassed, Spider seized on something he remembered Iris telling him, that Vijay and this Phoebe were a bit of an item, having grown close after many years stuck here in Colditz. “How is Phoebe?”

  “Iris is taking good care of her, given the limited first-aid facilities, sir. Phoebe was caught in an explosion. It was during your wife’s rampage through the ship. She pretty much totaled it. Before, we had a bit of a chance of getting her going again, to some degree, but once Mrs. Webb was finished, before she left, well it’s a miracle anybody was left alive, to tell the truth.” He was leading Spider through access ways, maintenance hatches, and areas where they had to crouch to an uncomfortable degree, and go single-file. Everywhere they went, hardware and machinery blocked the easy ways through, and some doors were sealed shut. Vijay knew his way around the maze, he was full of confidence, and chatted away at Spider as easily as if he’d known him all his life.

  Apparently Spider had been out for four days. Iris had dragged him, one-handed, from Molly’s room to safety, even as the Mollyvore set about her campaign of destruction. Vijay remarked that the Mollyvore actually turned away from one strike, once it saw that Spider and Iris were in the way. The thought of his Molly, as part of the Mollyvore, destroying everything in its path, everything that smacked of a connection to its former confinement and torture, gave him the horrors — nonetheless it had turned away from an attack that would have hurt him. Just like Mr. Popeye, he remembered again.

  Vijay tried to fill Spider in on what had happened during those four days after the Mollyvore had vanished. Section by section the ship fell apart. Vijay, Phoebe, Iris and Spider had been cut off from the area Stapleton and his crew had been working in. “They probably didn’t survive,” he said. There had been hull-breaches and large sections of the vessel had been rendered inaccessible. When Spider asked why he’d been kept so far from where Vijay, Iris and Phoebe were based, Vijay told him there simply wasn’t room. They had to find the best possible place, the safest possible place, for him. Iris had been very insistent on that point, he said. When she wasn’t looking after Phoebe, when the girl was asleep, Iris spent a lot of her time watching over Spider. “Apparently,” Vijay said, “you talk in your sleep. Iris thought you were either talking to or about Molly.”

  Spider felt mortified, thinking of Iris hearing such things, and doubtless not understanding the context.

  Vijay was working his way through engineering, almost as far aft on the ship as one could get. Spider realized they were a long way from the singularity containment section, which was one of the first things the Mollyvore had destroyed: the ship’s time engines ran on power extracted from the gravity waves emitted by two small artificial singularities orbiting one another. Once containment failed, the two singularities, each of infinite density and zero dimension, had dropped out of the ship and started orbiting the Earth’s core, devouring everything they encountered. Vijay estimated that they had no more than a month before the twin singularities consumed the planet’s core, which would lead to the breakup of the whole world.

  “Well, crap,” Spider said, helpless before such unthinkable power.

  “Indeed, yes,” Vijay said. They moved on. “You know,” said Spider, “Your dad sent me here to find you, and Phoebe. To bring you back home.”

  Vijay abruptly stopped and turned to faced Spider. “Dad sent you?”

  “I told him I couldn’t promise anything—”

  “Dad sent you?”

  “Yes, I just—”

  “Sorry, it’s — you’re sure he didn’t send you to get Kali back?”

  Spider remembered Patel telling him that Kali was more important than his own son. It seemed the son was only too aware of where he fit in the scheme of things. “Yes, he sent me to get you.”

  “Really?”

  “Vijay, I’m freezing my bits off here. Can we talk as we go, please? And yes, really.”

  “Sorry, yes of course. Sorry, Mr. Webb. It’s just…” Vijay led Spider out of an access port in the side of the duct and indicated they had to climb a nearby ladder that led up into the freezing darkness. “It’s just hard to believe my dad, of all people—”

  “Giving a shit about you?”

  Vijay pointed his light at him. “Yes, sir, exactly.”

  “Dads can be full of surprises,” Spider said, trying to wrap the blanket around his hands to keep them from the freezing rungs of the ladder.

  “It’s not much far
ther,” Vjay said, with renewed confidence.

  Chapter 22

  Iris, who had heard them coming, was pleased to see Vijay back safe and sound, but when she saw Spider, she just stood there, staring at him, not saying a word, and not needing to. He had just noticed that most of her left forearm was missing, and that the stump was tightly bandaged, when Iris was in his arms, warm but shaking, and they embraced, and Iris surprised him by kissing him, properly, full-on, and at first he simply stood there, more astonished than he could have said, but gradually, as he felt himself warming to the idea, began to join in. At length, Iris pulled away, her eyes huge, shining, a knowing look on her face. Spider went to say something about her arm, but she stopped him, put her remaining hand softly against his mouth, and looked away for a moment. He understood, sort of, too many emotions swirling through him. He said, feeling his whole body waking up as if from an eternity of cold slumber, “Good to see you, too, Iris,” and, though he intended it as a wry comment, something to lighten the mood, he immediately felt like he’d just said the stupidest thing a man could possibly say to a woman, and at the worst possible time. Not sure what to do with his hands and arms, and seeing that Iris might be feeling a little the same way, attempted a hug — and felt her ribs, which chilled him afresh. “Iris…” he said, intending to say something fine and winning and hopeful, but she again placed her hand over his mouth, and held him close, sharing her warmth with him.

  Vijay was tending to the sleeping form of Phoebe, a flimsy young woman whose head was covered in bandages. She lay there, her mouth open, hardly breathing. Iris told Spider she’d been that way since the explosion at the singularity containment facility. Phoebe, in the long years she’d been here in Colditz with Vijay, had become a reasonably competent technician, someone who, with the backing of a proper university, could have been an engineer. Spider felt the impulse to apologize to her, for his ex-wife, and saw that he would have to get past that sort of thinking.