Alternate Realities

by C. J. Cherryh

He found his drink in a brightly draped booth which passed out an assortment of mugs. He appropriated what was destined for another hand, right from under the invisible’s reach, and walked his way, consuming his second pie, tasting cool beer and dazzled by amazements right and left.

  When he had done he set the mug down, reckoning it would be pilfered back along the circuitous route, likely back to the very same booth from which he had taken it. Nothing could get lost in the labyrinthine system. He had lived within it all his life and had never quite seen it so clearly delineated, so vividly exercised ... for even in Law’s Valley things had vanished, to turn up again in market in Camus, and it was not good form to question.

  Kill the invisibles? He wondered. How would civilization survive if not for them? Where would be the humor in that?

  Not to go searching the market for a lost plowshare? Not to have the confidence it would turn up again? No one ever hungered because of it. And a good many times were never missed, or were missed with gratitude, and discovered by another with pleasure, whenever some citizen bought it back again. This was somewhat like the country markets, indeed it was, and the few new-goods warehouses in town were dull by comparison. Only in Camus there had been just the Place, where goods tended to appear, and remain, and perhaps—he had never wondered—there was also this nighttime activity.

  By day, simple citizens; by night, invisibles. The same merchandise.

  A balance, indeed.

  He had quite shed his fear and walked now in utter abandon.

  An ahnit set itself in his path, and from within the hood a glitter of eyes regarded him with such directness that he forgot himself, and stopped, and then had to recover his self-possession and walk around the obstacle, instead of employing that graceful sidestep one used when the obstacle was expected. He was shaken. It was deliberate. It was very near aggression. The thought occurred to him that if a citizen should ever be found dead in Kierkegaard—and it happened—the inquiry did not extend beyond citizens and natural causes.

  He kept going in his chosen path, which took him again to the gate, and to Port Street.

  He looked back. For the first time in his adult life he committed such an indiscretion, and there was an ahnit there.

  A shadow, a robed shadow on the street, beneath the lights by the gate. It had followed.

  He had looked—and never meant to again—but this one time he had looked, simply to prove himself wrong. His apprehension had been correct, and thereafter, alone or in public, whenever beset with the temptation to yield to the urge to look behind him, whenever insecure in his own reality he would remember ... once ... there had been something there. He shivered. He hurried.

  The University doors received him, solid wood, carved, safe and sturdy. They closed behind him and he walked down the corridors toward Fellows’ Hall, hearing the slight boisterousness from it long before he reached it. He sought the familiar, the banal, desperately.

  XIII

  Student: Master Law, is friendship possible?

  Master Law: What is friendship?

  Second Student: We propose it’s a sharing of realities.

  Master Law: Do you also propose to step into the same river in the same instant and in the same place?

  Student: Perhaps ... friendship is equivalency of realities.

  Master Law: How do you establish that equivalency?

  Student: If we were equal.

  Master Law: In all respects?

  Student: In the important ones. In the ones we consider important. Is that possible, sir?

  Master Law: Have you not equally defined rivalry?

  Second Student: If we agreed.

  Master Law: If common reality is your reality, it exists, within that referent. It either of you exists, which is by no means certain.

  He betook himself to bed in the studio, having a cot there for occasions of late work; it was his own familiar clutter and he had had a great many beers. He reckoned that the best cure for his troubles.

  Overwork. He had overstrained himself, and his agitated brain was seeking occupation even when it reasonably had none, simply burning off adrenalin; that was the source of his bizarre fancies.

  But when he sat on his cot and reviewed the sketches he had made in his sketchbook, he stopped on the last one he had done of Waden, knowing that another turn of the page was going to bring the nightmare back again.

  He turned it, because he could not refrain. The image of Camden McWilliams was there, black and broad-shouldered and solid, refuting invisibility. He had sketched an invisible, and brought it home with him. And on his collar was another thing, which he had forgotten, until he saw the outsider again.

  He pulled off the ahnit brooch and it lay chill in his palm. He was numbed by his evening’s drinking. He sat there unsure what he ought to do with the thing, which was ... fine. It was no-color, lapis, nothing very precious, but ... fine. There was no destroying such a thing. It went against all his sensibilities.

  He laid it atop the portrait of Camden McWilliams, who had spat on priceless art, canceling him from his thoughts. He lay down on his cot, with the light on, and stared about him at what had been real and solid and true for so many years, and finally the Reality reasserted itself. He reasserted it, and snugged into the warmth and slept a drunken sleep.

  His head hurt in the morning, as expected; he had a bewildered recollection of himself and his wanderings, and with light pouring in the studio window and peace everywhere the series of encounters seemed entirely surreal and his fear somewhat amusing.

  He shaved, washed, dressed, in spirits as ebullient as an aching head and slight embarrassment would allow.

  Keye, he decided. The fact was that he missed Keye and therefore he indulged himself in such nonsense. If he had had Keye’s apartment to go to he should never have been doing such incredible things—the market, the port market at night, of all things!—and making a spectacle of himself. He had fallen quite seriously. He had let Keye disturb him, that was it; she had gotten to him and he had wobbled from the blow. There was nothing for it but to reestablish himself with her, move back in on his own terms, ignore her attempts to manipulate him. It could only make him stronger. He had to school himself to withstand her undermining effects, and on the contrary to affect her. He was the superior, and anything else was unthinkable.

  He dressed, and clipped the ahnit brooch to his collar, which no citizen of Kierkegaard would dare do, adorning himself with invisible jewelry made by invisibles and Others. It smacked of madness.

  But so did dancing in the main square of Kierkegaard, and he had done that. And laughed there. And as for dread of what others might think, he was too powerful for that. If they thought they saw him wearing something which invisibles had made, then let them say so; it was a dilemma for them, a discomfort for all about him, a challenge. He wanted challenges this morning; he was, perhaps because of the headache, in an aggressive mood, and the humor of it vastly appealed to him.

  He swung out the door of his studio, headed for the square, with a lightness in his step, skipping down the stairs.

  He had met all there was to fear; had bested it; had come out of a bad dream, and headed for his work with enthusiasm.

  XIV

  Waden Jenks: Ah, Herrin, respect me.

  Master Law: Fear me, if I’m your outlet to the world. Your substance flows through my hands.

  Waden Jenks: I’ve told you what I fear. What do you fear, Artist?

  “I’m back,” he announced that evening at Keye’s door. The servant let him in and Keye herself, about to sit down to a solitary supper, betrayed herself with a slight lifting of the brows.

  “Oh. Should I be happy?”

  “Be what you choose. I trust there’s something in the pantry.”

  “See to it,” Keye told the servant, waving her hand, and indicated the other chair. “So you’re back. And how much else do you assume?”

  “Oh, be yourself. I’d never interfere.”

  She dropped th
e smile, sat there looking as if something had gone down the wrong way, and stared at him a moment. He kept smiling, because if she threw him out he would have won, and if she let him stay he would have won.

  He stayed.

  If Keye noticed the brooch she said nothing, nor touched it, nor commented on the rift which had been between them. Keye was either on the retreat or, falsely self-assured, thought that she had won. He did not think the latter. “Have you,” she asked, “moved to the Residency yet?”

  He shrugged. “I’m waiting a moment of convenience. I’ve been too busy lately to consider an interruption.”

  “The work out there is going much faster than I would have believed.”

  “What, do I surprise you?”

  “If you like.”

  “I’m satisfied with it.”

  He wondered for a moment about Keye. Meekness was not her style, but possibly she was lonely, as he was. He admitted that much, having also admitted to himself that he could live in solitude if he chose. And Keye, who was superior to all but him and Waden, had to have come to similar decisions.

  His reality, he concluded, was flexible enough to tolerate Keye. And to laugh at her pretensions.

  XV

  Master Law: How fine shall I dice it?

  Master Lynn: Until you smell the air and know you are political.

  Master Law: I confess to it then; but I’m politically unconsenting. I live in larger scope than Waden Jenks, our arenas are different.

  Master Lynn: Yours embraces his. As you embrace that monument, shells within shells. He won’t laugh when he perceives that Reality.

  He looked out Keye’s window at a night somewhat removed from that night, when the whole apartment was dark and the only light was coming in from the glaring floods outside. The noise went on, the grinding of cranes, the voices of workmen and the voices of apprentices giving orders, the occasional ring of hammer and chisel. The twelfth course was laid. What had been three rings from above, with the thick central pillar and the apparent random placement of additional touch-points to act as supports ... began to show other curves. The inward curve of the dome began to be apparent, and the curve of the pillar which was headed to meet it in three levels. That slamming of pipe ... the scaffolding was going into place, the supports which would hold the developing dome until the last courses could be laid, and their keystones settled. During the next several days, the cranes would work nonstop. The whole shell would be put up; lighting was being arranged interior to the shell as well as exterior. Apprentices with their computer printouts and their cutters would sit at the base of a surface completing their tasks in sculpture, while cranes swung the vast stones into place above them. The major perforations would be made only when the whole structure stood solid. Minor texturing proceeded.

  He put on his clothes, disturbing Keye as little as possible: “Difficulty?” she lifted her bead from the pillow to ask. “Restless,” he said. “Make love?” she murmured politely. “No need,” he said, and Keye snuggled contentedly into the sheets and pillows, having had what she wanted and as happy, he knew well enough, to have the bed to herself thereafter; Keye was an active sleeper. He finished his dressing, padded out and down the hall, down to the foyer and out, into the glare of the floods and the business of the workmen and apprentices.

  “Is it stable?” he asked of the night supervisor, Carl Gytha. “Any difficulty?”

  “None,” Gytha assured him. “The engineers assure us so.”

  He nodded, pleased with himself, looked about him where now the bone-white marble formed the strong bend of an arch against the velvet sky and the staring eyes of the floods. While he watched, another block settled, homed by the seeker-sensor that told the crane operator it was coming down on target. It hovered. The sensor plate became aligned with its mate as it settled. Workmen hastened to strip off the paired sensors, free the fore and aft clamps, scrambling along the scaffolding. Liberated, the crane swung with ponderous grace and dipped its cable after the next block the master apprentice would designate. The clamps settled, embraced, seized, lifted.

  That smoothly.

  Block after block, through the night. The operation had smoothed itself into a precision and a pace which held without falter; shifts worked and rested in alternation, enjoyed food and warm drink, cups which sent curls of steam up into the air. Herrin savored the hot sweet liquid, fruited milk and sugar, which fueled the crews and, keeping them off stronger drink, kept their perception straight and their reflexes instant. They were bright-eyed and enthusiastic, pampered by the project, afforded whatever they reasonably desired while on the project and promised a bonus if it met deadline, and wherever Herrin walked there was a flurry of zeal and an offering of respect.

  “I’m not great, sir,” an older worker said to him, when he inquired the view of the man, who had been rigging scaffolding. “But this thing is real and it’s going to go on standing here and I’ll look at those stones and remember doing them.”

  That was to him a tremendous insight, first into the thinking of the less than brilliant, with whom he had had little association and less conversation; and secondly, into possibilities and levels of the sculpture’s reality which he had himself hardly yet grasped. “Indeed,” he said, sucking in his breath, stirred by the concept of others falling within this design of his making. “Do you know—what is your name?”

  “John Ree, sir,” said the worker, jamming uncertain hands into his pockets as if seeking refuge for them. He was a big man, graying and weathered from work out of doors. “Ree.”

  “John Ree. It occurs to me to make a great bronze plaque when all’s done; to set the name of every hand that worked to rear this sculpture, the apprentices, the stonemasons, the crane operators, the runners, every single one ... out before the north wall.”

  “Would be splendid, sir,” Ree murmured, looking confused, and Herrin laughed, walked away with energy in his step.

  Within the hour, before dawn, the word had traveled. Supervisor Carl Gytha had heard, and asked him. “Everyone,” he confirmed, “every name,” and watched Gytha’s eyes grow round, for Gytha was competent and knew at least a degree of ambition within the University.

  “Yes, sir,” the supervisor said earnestly.

  “Make a list; keep it absolutely accurate. Cross check with Leona Pace.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “To the least. To the sweepers. Everyone.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gytha went off. Herrin smiled after him, marvelously self-content. “Come on,” he heard yelled from the top of the courses, workers exhorting each other. No different than had been ... but was there yet a sudden keenness in the voice?

  He sculpted lives, and intents. Promised John Ree a place in time along with Waden Jenks and Herrin Law. Created ... in John Ree ... a possibility which had never been there in his wildest fancies.

  See, John Ree would say to his son or daughter, to his children’s children, see ... there. There I am.

  I.

  Ambition ... for ten thousand years of that unremarkable worker’s descendants. And what might it not do?

  He felt a sudden lassitude, physical impact of half a night awake, as he considered creative energies expended, looked at the dawning which began to pale the glare of lamps, realized what sleep he had missed. But the brain was awake, seldom so much awake. He paced a time longer, finally knew that he was exhausted, and headed outward, through the developing maze of the shells, out into the pink daylight.

  A row of dark figures stood there, robes flapping in the slight breeze. Eight, nine of them, all in a row vaguely artistic—an arc observing the arc of the dome itself, he realized; invisibles, all of them. Watching. He stopped, unease touching him like the touch of the wind, and on an impulse he turned and walked back through the maze to the other side, the other gateway, to the south.

  There were more invisibles, and more than one row, not appearing to have any symmetry to their standing, but symmetrical all the same, because they were focused
on the dome.

  He refused the sight. He turned and retraced his steps, the way he had started in the first place. Workers called out to each other, still shouting instructions. He swept through the dome, out past the line of watchers, managing this time not to see them, except as shadows.

  He made no particular haste, walking in the dawning up through the street, on which morning walkers were beginning to appear, ordinary citizens. Safe, the thought came to him, and why he should subconsciously reckon hazard he did not know. There had never been any hazard from invisibles. It was fancy, imagination, and he thought that he had purged fear of that.

  He moved to the Residency that morning. It was a matter of packing up a sackful of clothing and personal items from the studio and appearing at the Residency entry desk in the main hall, casting himself on Waden’s recommendation and the staff’s invention. The room turned out to be extravagant, by his standards, with white woodwork and a wide, soft bed. It had a magnificent view of the Port Street walkway, the hedge, the grand expanse of Main beyond, and most important, the dome, the Work.

  He was delighted, grandly pleased, stood smiling into the daylight which was streaming over distant Jenks Square.

  He did not delude himself that Keye would come here. She had an almost superstitious fear of being inside this place. He grimed with amusement. So much for Keye’s fears, and his twilight nightmares and watchers about the square.

  So much for any assumption Keye might now make that she had dissuaded him from this venture into the Residency. He had, he thought, delayed overlong on her account ... or his own comfort. It was, after all, a mere change of address. And Keye’s apartment was still accessible from the Square ... when there was time. He foresaw a time of increasing preoccupation, when he would not indeed have time to have made the shift to the Residency, and he would not have Keye pouring her own opinions into his ear without also doing what he chose on the contrary tack. That Keye should know his independence ... he had no vanity in that regard—in fact whatever she wanted to think was very well, and better if she deceived herself—but he would not be dissuaded by her, or oppose her for its own sake, which was likewise to move at her direction. It was simply a good morning to get around to the move, when he could do so without particular reason one way or the other.