by Wil McCarthy
“My God!” Bruno exclaimed, and if he weren’t secured and awkwardly tilted in his leather couch, he’d have leaped to his feet to grasp Muddy’s hand and pump it. “How brilliant! What a tidy solution that is. And quick! Why, it took you hardly any time at all.”
“Careful, sir,” Muddy warned. “You endanger your modesty. To claim me as part of yourself, then praise my brilliance? It’s mightily suspicious.” His voice was partly sour, partly sarcastic, partly amused and wry. But he seemed to appreciate the compliment just the same. He relaxed visibly, his frame filling out a little as his muscles slumped and his chest expanded.
“Oh, piffle,” Bruno answered, in much the same tone. But he took the hint, and declined to praise himself further. “How long until we can open the door?”
“Another minute.”
Deliah’s voice broke through again. “Holy Philadelphia! My station! My beautiful station, what are you doing to the hull of my beautiful station?”
She, too, sounded amused. What a jolly band of jokers they were up here, ten thousand million kilometers above the sun. Bruno supposed it was a reasonable defense mechanism, given the chaos below and the impossibility of their intervention there, at this particular moment. He thought of Tonga, the cliffs of Fua’amotu washed away, and felt guilty for his humor.
“I see the door,” Deliah said in a bleaker, more serious tone. “It’s about halfway in. No signs of air leakage yet. For an impromptu solution, this seems to be working rather well.”
“You know,” Muddy said, “technically we could do the same thing to our own hull: pull the iron aside bit by bit as a temporary measure, and make a wellstone door anywhere we like. Not even a door, a semipermeable membrane. I suppose fighting your way against the air-pressure gradient might be difficult, but we could compensate by … Well, hmm.”
“It hardly matters,” Deliah said. “Your real hatch is almost through. Just stay clear of that cladding! You do realize I’d never approve this as a safe operating procedure. You could so easily kill us all right now …
“All right, another two centimeters and it looks like the hatch will open. And … it’s … there. Can you go a little further inward, just to be safe? Good. Can you see this? It looks perfectly clear from where I’m standing. Can you open the door?”
“Indeed,” Bruno said.
But it was Muddy who was closest, and so he was the one who unstrapped himself, slid down the now-diagonal floor, and threw the latches. There was a huffing noise as the equalization valves kicked in. Bruno’s ears popped; the pressure was lower on Deliah’s side.
The door swung open, and a platinum-haired woman in a grease-smeared yellow pantsuit burst through. With hardly a glance, she threw her arms around Muddy and kissed him soundly on the cheek. “My hero!”
Muddy squawked and tried to pull away. “I’m Muddy, madam. Your hero is over there. Please, please, you’re hurting me.”
“You’re both my heroes,” she insisted breathlessly, and launched herself uphill at Bruno who, to tell the truth, reacted much as Muddy had. They were neither one of them too comfortable with displays of gratitude. Some heroes.
chapter nineteen
in which the lawbreaking accelerates
Deliah’s face betrayed more curiosity than concern. “I don’t understand, Bruno. Why did you change your name? What exactly did Marlon do?”
Muddy tensed at the question but, to his credit, did his best to answer politely. “That’s a more personal inquiry than you suspect, madam. Pray you never discover the answer.”
Bruno, who’d been ignoring the two so he could feed calculations into a pair of hypercomputers, looked up now and saw the need to intervene. “Ah. Deliah, you’ve hit upon a … delicate subject. Muddy has, until quite recently, been accumulating what we’ll politely call ‘deep psychological injuries.’ All things considered I’d say he’s coping rather well, but it’s unwise—not to mention unkind—to press him. Once he’s seen proper medical attention, he may feel more inclined to share his story, but for the moment even I don’t know it. And perhaps we should take him at his word, that there are things we really don’t want to know.”
Muddy, not surprisingly, burst out crying at this.
Deliah blushed. Her folding chair—now a slim couch of padded white leather secured beside the fax machine—creaked a little as she moved within her restraints. “I’m … sorry, uh, Muddy. I had no idea your troubles were so … That is to say … Urgh. When I first saw you, I thought you looked, um, festive, and so I …”
“Festive. Festive!” Muddy fingered the several gray tufts of hair sprouting from his wrinkled, mottled scalp, then touched his upturned nose, which was somewhat redder and wider than Bruno’s own. His cheeks were ruddier, too. Muddy wasn’t restrained at all; he sat upon his couch, and through his tears an awkward chuckle escaped, and an unhappy smile, and he even managed a little bow in this sickening environment of Sabadell-Andorra under full sunward acceleration.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, no, the lady is most perceptive. Indeed, among … other activities … I was employed exactly as you surmise. You may say the word—I grant you my leave.”
“Here now,” Bruno tried. What he wanted to say was that Muddy might prove useful in the hours ahead, and his delicate-but-functional emotional state should not be tweaked or tampered with. But that sounded so cold, so calculating. If Muddy were Bruno himself, then fine; he could do whatever he pleased. People made copies for purposes both monumental and banal, and reconverged them with equal aplomb. Some even destroyed the copies after certain rough uses, with no reconvergence, no exchange of mental notes, or else they designed sacrificial copies that willingly destroyed themselves. That was a bitter pill for any enlightened society to swallow, but indeed, under Queendom law Bruno would be well within his rights to command Muddy’s erasure as “spoilage.”
For that matter, the Queendom itself could make such a ruling, and poor Muddy would have no recourse. This could hardly be called justice—indeed, such scenarios had inspired some of the century’s most wrenching songs and dramas. And yet, the government must hold these powers, or all its planets would be stuffed pole to pole with cranky, unwanted faxes. If that wasn’t a form of criminal trespass, then what was? A hundred million of the same compulsive, neurotic narcissist? No thank you!
But still, he found reason to doubt. From the look on her face, it seemed clear that Deliah knew exactly what Muddy was talking about, while Bruno himself had no idea. This was hardly the rapport one expected between duplicates, or even brothers.
“Say the word,” Muddy repeated.
Deliah struggled with it for a few seconds before finally giving in. “Jester.”
Still weeping, Muddy bowed again, then carefully slid off his couch until his feet were on the deck. “Jester. Indeed. I am festive, a plaything, a joke between friends. Shall I defy my nature, and gallivant about the solar system with this foul hero?” He jerked an elbow in Bruno’s direction. “Or shall I drug myself insensible, and spare you both my company? The latter, I think. This place is filled with pain.”
As he spoke, he tiptoed gingerly over the supine form of Hugo, still strapped to the floor and apparently content there. He advanced on Deliah, or rather on the fax orifice beside her, and she pulled away as much as her restraints allowed, her face betraying a familiar mix of guilt and mortification.
Ignoring her, Muddy extended a hand to the fax, which anticipated his request and spat a pill into his waiting palm, along with a glass of something that definitely wasn’t water. He popped the drug into his mouth and gulped it immediately, then winced in pain and downed, in two big gulps, the amber fluid in the glass. His sobbing renewed as he put the glass back in the fax again. Then, head down, he trudged back to his couch, settled down on it, and strapped himself in.
“Apologies, Laureate-Director,” he said to Deliah, through his tears. “It isn’t you. I’d no doubt embarrass myself no matter what you did or said. I’m intende
d to embarrass a certain de Towaji, but I’ve disowned him. Let him find his own humiliations.”
Then he closed his eyes and feigned sleep, and soon enough the heavy rise and fall of his chest was no act.
“I’m so very sorry,” Deliah said, to no one specific.
Bruno was gruff. “Blame your friend Marlon. If you doubt the malice of his intentions, there’s your proof right there. That any human being should be so mistreated …”
“Marlon’s not like that, Bruno. He really isn’t.”
“He is,” Bruno insisted. “Unless someone a thousand times more evil has constructed Muddy to frame him. False memories, false Iscog trace … I know of exactly two people bright enough and patient enough to pull off that trick, and one of them is Marlon.”
“Who is the other?”
Bruno’s face grew warm. “Oh, all right then; possibly several others could do it. If we’re to live forever, no doubt any number of surprises and infamies will assail us. People can accomplish anything, given sufficient time. This isn’t the last sick fantasy we’ll see played out in our lifetimes.”
“No,” she mused, “I suppose it isn’t. But Marlon?”
“Occam’s Razor would convict him; his guilt is the simplest explanation. And Deliah, I’m sorry to inform you that he keeps copies of you in his dungeons as well. I have Muddy’s word on it, at any rate.”
That clearly knocked her back. Perhaps he could have broached the matter more delicately. Ah, that worlds-renowned de Towaji charm.
The two of them were silent a long time.
Finally, Deliah said, “I had a personal relationship with Marlon at one time. He was upset about the way it broke off, and I suppose in some sense I don’t blame him. But I couldn’t help it; I really couldn’t. Love is the bane of the immortal, I’ve always said. Are we cheating God by living forever? If so, he gets us back with nagging doubts, and silly dreams of silly perfection. It must have been easier in the days when marriage meant a decade or two of hard work and squalor, then a simple, horrible death. All choices would be permanent in that time, and thus simple. You want to grow old and die alone? No? Then grab a hand and hold it tight! Today, the question is a lot harder to answer, because we know someplace there’s a perfect mate, or at least an optimal one, whom we have only to find and meet. Perfect love! So the thought of spending eternity with anything less becomes appalling. But are we supposed to meet everyone? Shake every hand, kiss every mouth, listen to every bit of passionate nonsense until we’re completely, viscerally sure? What a stupid, lonely quest that is.”
“Finding such love can be as bad, I fear,” Bruno said morosely. His chin was resting on his hand. “Perfect love, yes: it bends and compels you, it crowds out every other passion. Love is sublime, truly, a precious gift. But also, alas, one of God’s little pranks. It’s naive of you to confuse love and happiness, as if they were somehow the same thing. In fact love, once found, is more akin to gravity: too strong, too close, and it will crush you. Unless you’re careful, always.”
She twirled, absently, one of her platinum-colored braids. “There are so many theories about why you and Tamra split up.”
“Theories, humph.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. “It couldn’t be simpler: we fought too much. We did come from opposite sides of the Earth, after all. The antipodes, as she used to say. Love does nothing about the friction of misunderstanding; if anything, it exacerbates the problem. And thirty years really is a long time to spend with one person. Back then it seemed like a lifetime, but of course that was a foolish perception. We were young, and the lives ahead of us so long.”
“I didn’t know you fought,” Deliah said, surprised. “You always looked so happy together.”
“Didn’t we?” Bruno agreed. “But there was just so much baggage there. My family wasn’t wealthy—a restaurateur and a small-time politician—but at University, after the earthquake, I started to have some money. Far more than any teenage orphan should have, really, and by the time I was thirty, even before Tamra’s lawyers got behind me, it had mushroomed beyond all sense. My reaction was predictable: an excess of excess. Drugs, women, miniature planets … It was just a phase, but I was still in it when she summoned me to court. She was so vulnerable—I mean, her parents had just died, one right after the other, and like me she’d been thrust into a very public role which small-town life had never groomed her for. I was older, and I’d been through all that, and she turned to me in, just, absolute desperation. I suppose I took advantage.”
Seeing Deliah’s querying look, he sighed and expanded, “It was two or three years before she had the courage to demand my fidelity. I found it difficult to refuse a beautiful woman, and they were all so beautiful, so drawn to that complex of youth and wealth and power … I had no charm, no guile, no ‘sizzle,’ as we used to say back then. But I had brains and money, as well as Tamra herself: I was that forbidden morsel from the Queen’s private garden. But none of those ladies were ever worth the pain they caused. It makes me physically ill to think of it now.”
“But you’re the one who left,” Deliah said, looking as if she was struggling to comprehend. Bruno, who’d been summarily classified and pigeonholed and speculated about for as long as he cared to remember, was flattered that anyone would actually struggle to comprehend him.
“You’re a good friend,” he said, nodding. “I’ve never talked about this. It feels good to get it off my chest. Yes, I was the one who left. By then I’d been faithful and accommodating for two decades, but my work had been suffering for it. And I drank too much. I always drank too much.”
“Alcohol?”
“Indeed. Crude, I know, and I always expected the media to expose me for it. But like the womanizing, it was something they just didn’t want to find out about. I never understood that. I never understood much of anything back then, and the arc de fin was beckoning, and I had this whole planet to retreat to. So I left, yes. Some would call it an escape; some would say I ran from my problems instead of solving them, but that too is naive. In solitude, I found the clarity I needed. My work flourished, my vices fell away like childhood. I’m a better person today; I truly am. Or a bigger fool, perhaps, but that’s nearly as good.”
“But we miss you, Bruno. Everyone misses you. There’s never been another Philander, not really.”
“Oh, pish. I was always an embarrassment. Like that time on Maxwell Montes, when I threw up at the banquet table. Drinking again, after all those years. Throwing money around, insulting the hostess … What a wretched night!”
“That was embarrassing,” Deliah admitted, cracking a doleful half smile. “You had toilet paper on your shoe, also. And that silly hat of yours was in fashion for all of about three months. But we followed you up that mountain, Bruno. All of us did.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You were there?”
“Yeah, that was right after my laureacy. I took over the Ministry of Grapples only a few years afterward, from this really pleasant man who wound up doing cryoastronomy in Russia. Talk about your happy demotions! But, I mean, yes, I was there. And you were brilliant, you really were. You probably are a terrible manager, but you’re also the sort who makes footsteps other people want to follow in, constantly—it’s your default state.”
Bruno had nothing to say to that.
She pressed. “Bruno, is hiding away on your private planet really the best thing you could be doing? I don’t personally need an arc de fin—I’m not sure anyone does. And, seriously, we do miss you.”
“The planet’s gone,” he told her. “Destroyed. Used up.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps it served its purpose.”
“Tamra misses you,” she added thoughtfully.
“We have forever,” he said, and shrugged again. But that felt shallow, unjust. “I miss her, too. I wish I’d been better for her.”
Deliah stared at him for several seconds, her eyes growing sad.
“We all make mistakes. Ma
rlon was one of mine, I guess. But I think you’re wrong about him, Bruno. I … God, I’d like to think I’m not that stupid.”
Bruno should have offered some words of comfort for that, some reassurance. He wanted to reassure her, this good friend he hadn’t really known he had. But what could he say? That it was all right? That she’d failed to recognize the monster because she had no monster in herself? He couldn’t bring himself to say that; the lapse was inexcusable. Not only on her part, but on his, on everyone’s.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to answer, Deliah turned away.
“I’m sorry,” he offered. It was the best he could do.
In times of distress, Bruno retreated into his work. This day was no exception. And he could use the work, too, because in retrospect there were all kinds of things wrong with the ertial shield and the design of the Sabadell-Andorra, and for clarity’s sake he wanted to know exactly where he and Muddy had gone wrong. It wasn’t a vain undertaking—a detailed understanding of the ship’s flaws might well save their lives in the coming hours.
“I’m very happy to be rescued,” Deliah said after a while. Her tone was more serious now, and Bruno turned to face her. “From the … depths of my heart I thank you for that. But I was this close.” She held up two fingers, pinching the air between them. “Death and I were on speaking terms. He’d taken three good people right in front of me, and afterward I had a lot of time to contemplate, and not much else to do. People don’t have that experience anymore, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it as recreation or any such thing. But still it’s a very purifying thing, to finally look at your life from the outside. And to be reborn afterwards!
“Maybe it’s like your decades of solitude, only more compressed, and more urgent. I don’t think I can go back to being the same person I was. Or I could, maybe, but what a waste it would be! Of hard-won insight. This whole Laureate-Director thing has been very interesting—I’ve learned a lot about so many different things—but am I supposed to do it forever? Or until someone better comes along and replaces me, I guess, but even that … I’m more person than that. Every person is so much more than the paths they’ve taken, those few particular paths we choose on the spur of the moment, with no information. So much of it is mistakes.
