Infinity Plus: Quintet
Page 10
I dreamed of Ana. We were making love in the astro-nacelle, our bodies joined at the pelvis and spinning as the stars streaked around the dome. Ana moaned in Hindi as orgasm took her, eyes turned up to show only an ellipse of pearly white. Our occipital computers were tuned to each others' frequency, and our heads resonated with ever-increasing ecstasy. Around our spinning bodies cast-off sweat hung weightless like miniature suns, each droplet catching the light of the genuine suns outside. Then, with a surreal rearrangement of fact common to dreams, the nova blew while I was still with Ana. She burned in my arms, though I remained strangely uninjured. Her flesh shrivelled and her bones exploded, and through our computer link she screamed her hate at me.
The horror pushed me to a shallower level of sleep, though I didn't awake. I tossed and turned fitfully, and then began to dream a second time. Again I was in the astro-nacelle, and again I was making love – but this time not to Ana. I held Lin Chakra to me, distantly aware of this anomalous transposition, and she stared in wonder at the starlight wrapped like streamers around the dome.
It was dark when I awoke. I had slept for almost twenty-four hours. Through the slanting glass roof of the studio, star Radnor B winked at me. I got up feebly and staggered across to the vid-screen. I called Lin Chakra, but she was either out or not answering; the screen remained blank. I paced around for an hour, going through the contents of my dreams. Then I tried to reach her again, and again there was no response. I decided to go to her place, dressed and left the studio.
I walked through the deserted streets of the radioactive sector and rode the upchute to her suite. I called her name as I passed through the large white rooms, but there was no reply. The words I had rehearsed were a jumble in my head as the time approached for me to use them. I think I realized that she would refuse my offer, point out quite simply that she could have bought the experience of starflight herself, if she had thought it might afford her new insights. In the event I had no need to make the offer. I entered her room.
I found Lin on the floor.
Her naked body lay in a pool of her own blood. Choking, I dropped to my knees beside her. She had taken a laser and lacerated her left wrist almost to the point of amputation. She appeared far more beautiful in death than ever she had in life, and I knew that this was because of the expression on her face. I realized then that during all the time I had known her I had never seen her smile.
I cried something incomprehensible, lifted her body into my arms and began to rock, repeating the name, "Ana..." over and over.
~
A few weeks later I met Christianna Santesson at a party.
I had completed a dozen crystals since the first, and they were showing quite well. My last crystal had been an admission of the guilt I felt at consigning my colleagues to death, an expiation that stood in place of my own death. I hoped that soon I would be able to leave the psychologically crippling subject of the John Marston and move on to other things. Perhaps in fifty years I would be able to watch the nova of star Radnor B without the pain of guilt.
I had hired the services of a top medic and he had removed the computer and rebuilt my face. I was still no beauty, but at least people could look at me now without flinching. The scars still showed, physical counterparts of the mental scars that would take much longer to heal.
Christianna Santesson did not recognize me.
As I stood beside her in a group of artists and critics, I could not decide if she was evil or supremely good. My attitude towards her was ambivalent; I passed through phases of wanting to kill her and wanting to thank her for saving my life a second time.
Someone mentioned Lin Chakra.
"Her death was such a tragic loss," Santesson said. "But she will live on in her work. Her final trilogy, Dying, will be out this summer. I had arranged for her to make a definitive statement on the subject, but the piece was stolen soon after her death. As I was saying–"
I left the party early and returned to my studio.
The crystal lay in the centre of the room, sparkling in the starlight and still covered in blood. Lin had even titled it before she killed herself: The Death of Lin Chakra. I knelt before the console and passed a hand across the faceted surface. Agony and pain saturated each crystal, and in total they communicated the awful realization that everything she had ever known was drawing to a close with the inevitable approach of death. Lin had achieved her final artistic goal; she had successfully transferred to crystal her ultimate experience. Soon, as she would have wished, I would give her masterpiece to the world, so that everyone might learn from Lin Chakra's bloody death how fortunate they were to be alive.
Publishing history
"Filming the Making of the Film of the Making of Fitzcarraldo" was first published in Omni, March 1989.
"Flying to Byzantium" was first published in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, May-June 1985, and is included in Lisa Tuttle's collection My Pathology, published by ElectricStory.com.
"Arrhythmia" was first published in Music for Another World: Strange Fiction edited by Mark Harding (2010, Mutation Press).
"Dr Vanchovy's Final Case" was first published in Spectrum SF, #2, April 2000.
"The Girl Who Died for Art and Lived" was first published in Interzone, 1987.
About the authors
Garry Kilworth was born in Yorkshire, but lost his northern accent a long time ago. He now lives in Suffolk with his wife Annette close to a beautiful lake and open countryside. He has been an author now for nearly 40 years and has 80 novels and collections of stories published. Garry's main interests are travelling the globe and photographing wildlife, mostly in the Far East, Australia and Polynesia. Previous to his writing career he was a telegraphist with the RAF for 18 years and then 8 years with an international telecoms company. Garry's On my way to Samarkand: memoirs of a travelling writer was published by infinity plus in December 2012.
Lisa Tuttle was born and raised in Texas and has attended a few conventions there, but would like to make clear that the story included here is in no way autobiographical and all the people and situations herein are entirely imaginary and totally made-up. She now lives in a part of Scotland that looks like the cover of her first novel, Windhaven, co-written with George R.R. Martin. Originally published in 1985, “Flying to Byzantium” is one of the sixteen stories comprising her first e-book collection, My Pathology, readily available from major retailers.
Neil Williamson's short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies in the UK and USA. His work has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award, British Science Fiction Award and World Fantasy Award (with Andrew J Wilson). Neil is a long term inmate of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle. His collection of short fiction, The Ephemera, described by Liz Williams as "a collection that shines with reflection and intelligence", is also available from infinity plus ebooks.
Stephen Palmer first came to the attention of the SF world with his debut novel Memory Seed (Orbit, 1996) and its sequel Glass (Orbit, 1997). Flowercrash (Wildside Press, 2002) followed, completing a loose trilogy with an environmental theme. The afro-punk Muezzinland (Wildside Press, 2003; infinity plus, 2011) followed, then Hallucinating (Wildside Press, 2005; infinity plus, 2011), which merged Stephen's interest in music with his SF. In 2010 another environmentally based epic Urbis Morpheos was published by PS Publishing, and in 2012 infinity plus published the ebook of The Rat and the Serpent. Stephen's short fiction has been published by Spectrum SF, NewCon Press and Wildside Press, Solaris, Unspoken Water, Eibonvale Press and Rocket Science. He lives and works in Shropshire, UK.
Eric Brown has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short fiction and has published forty books and over a hundred stories. His latest books include the novel Guardians of the Phoenix and the children’s book A Monster Ate My Marmite. His work has been translated into sixteen languages and he writes a monthly science fiction review column for the Guardian. He lives in Scotland, with his wife and daughter. His website can b
e found at: www.ericbrownsf.co.uk.