Alternate Realities

by C. J. Cherryh

  He found it even more pleasant than he had thought.

  The door opened uninvited. “Welcome,” said Waden’s voice from behind him.

  He turned, raised brows. “Well. It’s splendid hospitality, First Citizen.”

  “It’s nothing too good for you, is it?

  “Of course not.”

  Waden laughed softly. “Breakfast?”

  “Gladly.”

  “You choose strange hours for moving.”

  “Convenient to my schedule.”

  Waden’s eyes traveled over him minutely. “You worked all night? Zeal, Artist,”

  “I enjoy my work.”

  “Doubtless you do.”

  Waden walked to the window, turned, wiped a finger across the brooch he wore on his collar, smiled quizzically. “Bizarre ornament.”

  Herrin smiled, said nothing, which brought a spark of amusement to Waden’s eyes. Herrin laid a hand on Waden’s back, turned him toward the door. “Fellows’ Hall?”

  Waden agreed. They walked together, ate together; Waden went back to his offices and his work; Herrin went back to his, in the studio, at peace with his reality. He gathered up his own cutter for the first time since the project began, selected his tools, went out to the Square on the nervous energy which had fired him since midway through the night.

  The cranes groaned and ground their way about their business. Leona Pace came up with her checklist to see if there was anything that wanted doing; he refused her, waved off a question about the plaque and the proposal of the names to be engraved there.

  “True,” he said simply, and knelt down and began unwrapping his tools, his own, which were the finest available, before the pillar which would be the central sculpture. He was sure now. That had been the reason for the lack of sleep, the anxiety, the energy which had suffused him and dictated so many shiftings and changes and readjustments in recent days.

  He focused himself now on his own phase of the work. The cranes hefted enormous weights which sailed like clouds overhead, any one of which, slipping, could have crushed him to grease, but he refused even the slight concern the possibility suggested.

  He focused the beam, and began, oblivious to all else.

  XVI

  Student: Is there reality outside Freedom?

  Master Law: I imagine that there is.

  He dropped the cutter, finally—saw his hand was wobbling and jerked it away from the stone before disaster could happen. It fell, and he sank down where he was, dropped head into arms and arms onto knees and sat there, aware finally that he was getting wet, that rain was splashing onto his shoulders and beginning to slick all the exposed stonework. He was not cold yet, but he was going to be. His joints felt as if the tendons had all been cut and there was fire in his shoulders and his arms and his legs.

  A plastic wrap fell about his shoulders. Leona Pace was there, her plump freckled face leaning down to look at him sideways. “All right, sir?”

  He drew a breath, massaged his hands, nodded, looked up past Pace to the Shape which had begun in recent days to emerge from the stone, which had begun, with the beam-cutter’s swift incisions, to be Waden Jenks. He sat there, with the rain slicking down his forehead and into his eyes, and stared at what he had done, numb already in the backside and with a grateful numbness creeping into his exposed hands.

  Leona Pace followed his stare, looked down again. “It’s amazing, sir.”

  “I should have rested.” He tried for his feet, wrapping the plastic about him, and Pace made a timid effort to steady him; it gave him equilibrium. Other workers and apprentices had sheltered in the curve of an arch. The lights had come on as the clouds darkened. He turned full about, saw a dry spot under a curve and went to it, thinking Pace was following. But when he looked back she was walking away, her brown hair straggling as usual, her bearing matter-of-fact and lonely-looking.

  He was spent, as from a round of sex. He felt the same melancholia as encounters with Keye tended to give him; he looked reflexively toward the window where Keye might be, and saw nothing because of the curve. The new reality was closing in. Permanent. Strangely he felt no more desire for Keye, for anyone, for anything.

  And as after sex, it would return. He leaned against the stone, watching the sheen of water flow this way and that. It was the first time the work had stopped, the only circumstance which could delay it. He looked up at the sky, which was already showing signs of breaking sunlight. Such storms came and left again with suddenness in this season. The stone would dry within a short time when the rain had stopped.

  The hot-drink cart made the rounds; an hour’s rest became holiday. Laborers tucked up in plastics, drinking the steaming cups which splashed with raindrops, came from their shelters to stand and stare at the central sculpture, and Herrin, his own hands clasped about warm ceramic and his belly warmed by the drink, watched with vast satisfaction.

  Laborers asked questions; apprentices swelled with importance and answered, pointing to the imaginary vault of the roof, the future placement of curtain-columns, and laborers explained to other laborers ... Herrin watched the whole interchange and drank in the excitement which suffused the whole crew.

  Pride. They were proud of what they were doing. They had come here diverse, and something strange had begun to happen to all of them in this shell, contained in this sculpture of his devising.

  And then the Others came.

  They filed in through the gateways and stood about, four at first and then more, midnight-robed. Ten, twelve, fifteen.

  The workers saw them. The excitement which had been palpable before their coming tried to maintain itself, but there was an erosion, a silence, an unease. Men and women tried to maintain equilibrium, realities, choice. Herrin leaned against the stone and looked elsewhere, trying to ignore all of it, but they came from the other side as well.

  “Out!” Leona Pace cried, shocking the almost-silence. Shocking every reality into focus.

  She had seen. Admitted seeing. Her reality had slipped, and Herrin stood transfixed and helpless.

  The same look was on Leona Pace—rigidity, panic. Suddenly she cast off the plastic mantle and left, running.

  He kept staring at the hole where Pace had been when she passed the gateway; and the cold from the rain crept inward. He recovered after a breath, walked out casually among the workers and the invisibles, ignored what they should not see, and quietly dismissed them.

  “The rain may continue,” he said. “Things will have to dry. Secure the area and go home. Come back at your next regular shift.”

  Tools were put away against invisible pilferage; the cranes were shut down and locked; and one by one and several at a time, the workers and the apprentices drifted away.

  “Andrew Phelps.” He hailed the senior apprentice. “You have a responsibility next shift, to be here early, to keep accounts, to direct.”

  “Sir,” the man said, youngish, dark and thin, his eyes still showing distress, which rapidly yielded to surprise. “Yes, sir.”

  So he replaced Leona Pace.

  He had no illusions that she would return. It happened, he reasoned, because of the sculpture; for that moment, humans and Others had had a common focus, had gathered within the same Reality, and Leona Pace had been thrust into the center of it, responsible.

  Had broken under the weight of it. Would not be back, either on the site or at the University or indeed, among sane citizens. No one would see her, just as they did not see other invisibles. Survival was for the strong-minded, and she had not been strong enough.

  He drank himself numb after a moderate dinner at Fellows’ Hall, walked through the slackening rain to the Residency, just barely able to steer himself to his room without faltering.

  He slept and woke at the first light of another day, still lying where he had lain when he fell into bed; he bathed, assumed sober Student’s Black and walked the distance to the Square; he set matter of factly to work and so did everyone else, wounds healed.

  Leon
a Pace did not, of course, return. The cheerfulness of the crew did. Andrew Phelps was an energetic and intelligent supervisor, and that was sufficient. He did not care for the past day, revised time and his Reality and recommenced his carving with full attention to the moment.

  The Shape emerged further under his hands. It was slow now, very slow. Above him, the cranes labored, and he worked in the shadow of scaffolding and stone which had sealed off the sky once and for all.

  XVII

  Apprentice: Which is superior, reason or creativity?

  Master Law: Neither.

  The scaffolding in days after was lowered again to permit work on the detailing of the triple shell, and there was solid stone overhead. There was no more sound from the cranes, which had filled the center of Kierkegaard with their groaning and grinding for what had begun to seem forever; their job was done. The crane operators took their leave, returning now and again as other jobs or simply the course of coming and going through Kierkegaard took them through the dome.

  Most of the workers of other sorts were discharged with their bonuses, only a few kept for the labor of clearing away the dust and the fragments. It was work for the skilled apprentices now.

  For weeks the dome remained dark except for the lights which shone inside it. And then the perforations of the innermost shell revealed the lacery which had been made by apprentices burrowing wormlike between the second and outermost shells, and light began to break upon the interior, flowing moment by moment in teardrops and shafts across the pavings and the curtain-pillars and upon the walls of the shells ... and upon the central pillar, where the stonework became the uplifted countenance of Waden Jenks, which became first calm and then, as the hours passed and the light angles changed, shifted.

  Watchers came. Citizens passed time watching and from time to time invisibles strayed through ... few, and tolerable, a momentary chill, like the passing of a cloud; at times Herrin truly failed to notice, rapt at his work, until the shadow of a robe swept by. It was inconsequential. He paid far more attention to the shadowing of a brow, to the small indentation at the corner of the mouth, to the detailed modeling of illusory hair which swept to join the design itself. He worked and sometimes after work must straighten with caution, as if his bones had assumed permanently the position his muscles had held for hours, ignoring pain, ignoring warmth and cold, until sometimes one of the apprentices had to help him from the position in which he had frozen himself.

  “It’s beautiful,” one said, who was steadying him on his feet, on the platform. Gentle hands, careful of him. “It’s beautiful, sir.”

  He laughed softly, because it was the only word that would came to the man’s tongue; beautiful was only one aspect of it. But he was pleased by the praise. He got down from the platform, which was a man’s height from the ground, was steadied by another apprentice who waited below, with a group of others, and there was a pause among the workers, a small space of silence.

  It struck him that this had been going on, that at times they did pause when he walked through, or when he was in difficulty, or when he began work or when he stopped.

  “What are you doing?” he asked roughly. “Back to work.” His back hurt still; he managed to straighten, and heads turned. He looked back and met the faces of the apprentices who had been helping him, eyes anxious and unflinching from his outburst. He shook off their further assistance and walked on, flexed aching hands and turned to look back at the Work, which was bathed in the play of light from the tri-level perforations of the dome.

  He took in his own breath, held for the moment in contemplation.

  Not finished yet. The central work was not finished. The outer shells were all but complete. Apprentice after apprentice had been sent off. Perhaps, he thought, he should acknowledge those departures, offer some tribute; he realized he was himself the object of a second silence, all the heads which had formerly turned to feign work turned back again.

  “Good,” he said simply, and turned and walked away.

  It took him at least through dinner each night to get the knots out of his muscles. It was not just the hands and back; every joint in his body stiffened, every muscle, from the greater which held his arm steady to the tiny one of a toe which had been balancing him, rigidly, his whole body a brace for his hand which held the cutter, for hour after hour, without interruption. He had given up on lunch; often omitted breakfast because once awake he had not the patience to divert himself to eat; dinner was all there was left, and he had his plate of stew at Fellows’ Hall, and a second and a drink which helped ease his aches and relax his muscles ... not too much any longer. It had occurred to him that such a regime might ultimately affect his coordination and his health; he attempted moderation. He sat in Fellows’ Hall at dinnertime, in Student’s Black well dusted with white marble dust, and swallowed savory food which he did not fully taste because his mind was elsewhere, and drank cold beer which was more relief because of the temperature than because he tasted it. He saw little of where he was, perceived instead the dusting of marble, the cutting of the beam, the image itself, as if it were indelibly impressed on his retinas, persisting even here. He walked back to the Residency and without noticing the desk and the night guard on duty there, walked to his room and stripped off the dusty Black to bathe in hot water, to soak the aches out, to wrap himself in his robe against the chill and look a last time out the window. He gazed on the night-floods and the dome far beyond the tall hedge of Port Street, the lighted dome resting there as the bright heart of Kierkegaard. This he did always before going to bed ... no reason, except that his thoughts went in that direction, and it was more real to him than the room was; more real than the Residency, than any other thing about him. He looked to know, to set his world in order, because it was there, and seeing it made the day worth the pain.

  He looked his fill, and started for the bed, with his eyes and his mind full of the Work, seeing nothing about him, his thoughts occupied wholly with the alteration which he had to make tomorrow, which could only be made when the sun passed a certain mark, and he had to see in advance, and do the cutting then.

  There was a knock at the door.

  It took him a moment, to blink, to accept the intrusion. Waden. No one else ever disturbed him here. He knew no one else in the Residency ... and in fact, no one else in the city ever called on him.

  “Waden?” he invited the caller without even going that way; and the door opened.

  It was, of course. Waden walked in, casual-suited, in the Student’s Black he affected at some hours and on some days. “Sorry. Ill?”

  “Tired.” Herrin sat down in one of the chairs, reached to the convenient table to pour wine from a decanter, two glasses. Waden took his and sat down. “Social call?” Herrin asked, constrained to observe amenities.

  “I haven’t seen you in two weeks.”

  Herrin blinked, sipped, sat holding the glass. “That long?”

  “I see ...” Waden made a loose gesture toward the nighted window. “That. From my office upstairs. I get reports.”

  Games. Herrin refused to ask, to plead for reaction, which Waden would surely like, that being the old game between them. He simply raised his glass and took another slow sip.

  “They talk,” Waden said, “as if you’re really doing something special out there.”

  “I am.”

  Waden smiled, “And on budget. Amazing.”

  “I told you what we’d need.”

  “I could wish for equal efficiency elsewhere ... Am I keeping you from ... someone?”

  “No.” Herrin almost laughed. “I’m afraid I’m quite dull lately. Preoccupied.”

  “Not seeing Keye?”

  He shook his head ‘

  “What, a falling out?”

  “No time.” He had not, in fact, realized that he had not seen Keye in the better part of two months. He had simply postponed events. Waden, Keye, whatever had been important before ... waited. He was amazed, too, to realize that so much time elapsed,
like someone disturbed from a long sleep. “I’m afraid I haven’t been social at all. To try to hold the details in my memory ... you understand ... it shuts out everything else.”

  “Details.”

  “Perhaps you don’t understand. Your art is different, First Citizen.”

  “ ‘Not creative.’ I recall your judgment. I am capable of such concentration; I currently have nothing that demands it; the limits of Freedom do not exercise me.”

  Herrin raised a quizzical brow, drained his glass, added more. “I heard a shuttle land last week.”

  “Two weeks ago,” Waden laughed, and chuckled. “You are enveloped, Artist. Are you really that far from consciousness? A shuttle, a considerable volume of trade, a fair deal of traffic on Port Street, and none of this reached you.”

  “It made no shortage of anything I needed.”

  “You are master of your reality,” Waden mocked him. “And it’s all made of stone.”

  “No,” Herrin said softly, “your reality, First Citizen. You are my obsession.”

  “An interesting fancy.”

  “Should I have noticed?”

  “What, the shuttle?”

  “Should it have been of interest to me?”

  Waden smiled and refilled his own glass. “A man who forgets his personal affairs would hardly think it of interest, no. It was a military landing, Artist. There’s a campaign on. They were interested in Singularity’s itinerary. I’ve opened negotiations with them. I happen to have years of McWilliams’s past records, cargo, statistics on all the pirates. The military is very interested. But that’s very far from you, isn’t it?”

  “What negotiations?” he was genuinely perplexed. Waden had come here for a reason, bursting with something pent up. He drew a deep breath and looked Waden in the eyes. “Let me venture a guess. Your ministers and your departments are beyond their depth and you have no confidence in them. This is no casual call.”