Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart

by Steven Erikson

  “I’m expecting more reporters laying siege to your house, Hamish.”

  “A forcefield keeps them from my door,” Hamish pointed out. “No phone calls either. Sam said I would be taken care of, and it seems I am.”

  “And when she returns?” Emily asked. “I’ve seen your garage. It won’t hold a Bird of Prey.”

  Ronald cleared his throat. “She has a point, Hamish. How can you and Sam ever expect to return to a normal life? Even if they can’t actually get to either of you, they will dog you everywhere. Drones, telephoto lenses, you name it. They won’t leave you alone.”

  “Besides,” Emily added as she set her glass down on the coffee table, “Sam didn’t say this was over. For her, I mean. As spokesperson, there’ll be more to come, won’t there?”

  “I don’t know,” Hamish answered, now looking troubled.

  “And how many people out there want to shoot the messenger?”

  “Emily,” Ronald chided. “Please. Anyway, no violence, remember?”

  “I know that,” she retorted. “But that won’t stop the bad feelings, the negative … the attacks on her. Look, the aliens won’t give us a face to hate, or curse, or spit at. Instead, we’ve got Samantha August. People will burn her in effigy. I know, this sounds awful, but we all have to be prepared for what might come. For some people out there, Samantha is going to become the most hated woman in the world.”

  “But she warned us,” Hamish said. “We’re on notice. How we behave, how we react. Either we come together or we’re finished as species. That’s pretty clear-cut.”

  “It’s also too abstract,” Emily replied. “When emotions are high they burn everything else away.”

  “But we have been learning,” Hamish countered. “Isn’t that what this non-violence thing was all about? Toning down our rage by giving it nowhere to go. Our hate, our natural inclinations for aggression, all blunted, deflated, however you want to describe it. Emily, have we not been living with that denial for two months now? Has that done nothing to us? To our attitudes? Our habits? Those emotions, they can’t stay white hot when there’s nothing to burn. Instead, they lose their heat. Maybe they even burn down to ashes.”

  “There’s a lot of that online,” Ronald pointed out. “People feeling … empty. Or, with all that anger exhausted, they’re feeling strangely liberated.”

  Hamish nodded. “More than that. Empathy is on the increase. I attribute this to the end of fear, the personal kind that gives rise to bigotry and hatred toward people who are different—skin color, religion, political leanings.”

  “Oh that political bit,” Emily said, shaking her head. “Pointless. Left, right, communist, fascist, Libertarian, Randian. Capitalism, individualism, collectivism. Every iteration suddenly outdated. Take a stand from any one of those positions and you start looking like a fool, like someone still insisting that the world is flat, or the moon is made of cheese. Do that and you can’t help but be mocked and some of that mockery is damned ugly. And that’s my point. We still possess a mean streak, all of us.”

  “Then the battle in our souls is just beginning,” Hamish said.

  “Samantha will be protected,” Ronald said to Hamish. “You both will. Okay, so she delivered the news. For some it was good news and for others bad. Don’t like it? Suck it up. But blame Sam? What’s the point of that?”

  “People don’t need reasons,” Emily said. “Hamish, here’s what I think you should do—I know, you didn’t ask me, but I’m offering it up anyway.”

  “Go ahead, Emily,” said Hamish.

  “When she gets back, jump into that spaceship and bolt. Both of you. Give us all a cooling down period. Disappear. Do what ET did and is doing—don’t give them a face to hate and curse. Don’t give them two lives to ruin.”

  Hamish leaned forward in his chair and rubbed at his eyes. “Yes,” he finally said, “I think we can do that.”

  Ronald sighed. That had been a brutal conversation. But Emily had a point. In fact, she had plenty of points, each one needing to be trotted out.

  Human nature was complicated. It didn’t deal well with questions that couldn’t be answered. Often, it saw uncertainty as a weakness. It kept wanting to draw a line in the sand, kept wanting to hold some imagined border, some private turf of conviction and self-righteousness, a place where failure could not be contemplated, much less accommodated.

  Humility was the enemy.

  But wasn’t that ET’s boldest message here? The humbling of humanity? And how well did that go down, when so much of human existence was all about saving face?

  He looked across at Hamish. “Do you know when she’ll be back here?”

  “No. Soon, I think. I hope.”

  “Pack her travel bag,” Emily said.

  After a moment, Hamish nodded.

  “Take a tour of the solar system,” Ronald said, smiling. “That might not be your thing, Hamish, but it sure as hell is your wife’s.”

  The doctor laughed, a low, brief rumble. “And here I was thinking about a secluded beach of white sand and plenty of sun.”

  “Hmm, could try Mercury. Plenty hot there. But alas, no beach.”

  “Yes, well. We’ll work out a suitable compromise, I suppose. We always do.”

  “Let’s hope those people in UN are saying the same thing right about now,” Ronald said, rising to his feet. Emily rose as well and Hamish then joined them.

  “Give her our love, Hamish,” said Emily, stepping forward to give Hamish a hug.

  “I will. And thank you, both of you. You’ve kept an old man from becoming too damned lonely for his own good.”

  Emily smiled. “Always our pleasure, Hamish.”

  Ronald threw on his coat. “Right. Darling, ready to brave the reporters one more time?”

  “So long as they don’t follow us home.”

  “Have faith,” Ronald said. “ET doesn’t like people getting harassed.”

  “Maybe, but does ET really like any of us?”

  Now that was a question that silenced the three of them, and for Ronald, he and his wife’s departure suddenly felt like an act of abandonment, even cowardice. Still, he managed a feeble wave back to Hamish who stood in the doorway as they made their way to their car.

  When they climbed inside, Emily cursed and said, “Me and my big mouth!”

  “It’s okay, love. It was a good reminder that the line between humbling and humiliation is a thin one indeed.”

  “It’s down to how you take it, that’s all.”

  “That, and how it’s delivered.”

  “Yes.” She strapped in and then added, “Mhmm.”

  Ronald started the car, slowly backed out down the driveway. Oddly, the reporters who had been camped out on the street were all gone. “Look at that, everybody went home.”

  “To be expected,” she answered, almost peevish.

  He glanced at her. “What?”

  “What else do you do when the world’s just ended?”

  STAGE FIVE: ANOTHER BREATH TAKEN

  (Who Are We?)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “It’s natural to not like things you don’t want to hear, especially when it’s about yourself. I’m with you on that. And collective shame isn’t like collective joy. For one thing it’s silent. No shouting, no sudden sense of belonging. Instead, shame is something you pick up and take home with you. For that solitary night, for the hard look in the mirror. It’s that sobering wake now filling with regret. Come the morning, may we all greet the dawn with wiser eyes.”

  SAMANTHA AUGUST

  “You did very well, Samantha August.”

  They were once again in orbit, once again aboard Adam’s primary vessel. The Bird of Prey remained on station, twenty-three kilometers distant. One hundred kilometers away was the fleet of ships, sunlit at the moment, like a string of pearls stretching across the star-scape.

  She lit a cigarette and sat back in her chair. A pot of tea was on the table in front of her, and the cup in her han
d steamed its bergamot scent. “They’re floundering, Adam.”

  “To be expected. There is much to consider, after all.”

  “I’m ready to go home.”

  “I will endeavor to ensure you are left at peace, Samantha. You and your husband. Of course, nothing can ever return to how it once was.”

  “No kidding. So tell me, what do you think? Will we make it?”

  “Difficult to say,” Adam replied. “It must be understood that your crisis is with yourselves, with the manner in which you engage with each other and with all other things on your world, both animate and inanimate. By nature, you have defined this engagement as only occasionally co-operative. The rest of the time it is adversarial or potentially so. Openness is an act of courage, after all. The shuttered, closed mind is a frightened mind.”

  She sipped her tea and made a face. “And this is why coffee and cigarettes go together. Tea and ciggies, not so much. I hear you, Adam, and I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said.”

  “Well then, what do you think, Samantha August? Is there a future for humanity?”

  “A year ago and I might have said ‘no, not a chance’, and that would have been a sad admission. Rage was all the rage, as it were. Utter assholes were destroying ancient statues, leveling ancient cities, wiping out our own history. And they had the nerve to proclaim it all God’s will. It wasn’t though, was it? It was the act of men suffering their own crisis of faith, the breakdown of their personal relationship with God, and that loss of faith needed to be externalized, made manifest in destruction.” She took a drag, sent out a stream of smoke. “A year ago and I’d have said we were finished, spiraling down into a dark place of our own making.”

  “And now?”

  “Now? I think we are, at last, capable of surprising ourselves. In a good way.”

  “Your answer pleases me, Samantha.”

  “Don’t go all soft on me, Adam. I don’t think it’s going to be easy. We’re going to mess up again and again. People will never stop trying to game this. Some people live only for getting one up on other people, fucking them over if they can.”

  “Such people proceed from a wounded place in their souls, Samantha. Their desire is a frantic one, an irresistible need.”

  “All very well. Doesn’t make it any less pathetic though.”

  “I can bring you home at any time, Samantha.”

  “And my ship?”

  “Yours, of course. You will be able to summon Athena at any time.”

  “You’d think I was sick of space by now … but I look out there and my heart just races, Adam. So much to see, so much to discover. Listen to me, an old woman feeling like it’s all only now beginning.”

  “Then your faith is reborn.”

  She dropped the butt and watched it vanish into the floor and this made her smile. “Oh, Adam, honestly. I surrender. I surrender utterly and without reservation. Is that faith? I suppose it is. Whatever, it’s done.”

  “Then let us begin our descent. It is raining in Victoria.”

  “Typical. Listen, I need to know one thing.”

  “Ask, Samantha August.”

  “Are you just sitting back now, watching, doing nothing else to help us on our way? If so, things are going to get messy.”

  “We have entered Stage Five of the Intervention, Samantha,” Adam said. “Engagement at this stage bears its own specific characteristics.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, Samantha, I am only now fully awakening.”

  She considered his answer. She knew she could ask Adam to explain it further, to provide the details she needed to fully comprehend what he was saying to her. But something about that word, awakening, which could have seemed so ominous, instead left her feeling strangely content.

  So she said nothing, while on the main screen, the vast curved world that was her home began expanding. Earth had never seemed so small, and never seemed so huge. “Adam, are there infinite worlds?”

  “Far beyond the limitations of your own perception of reality, yes. Infinite, Samantha. As infinite as the world you call home.”

  “Ah. Right … oh, of course. Of course.”

  There was warmth in Adam’s voice as the AI said, “And now you see.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Now I see.”

  Neela stood up when a group of people approached their camp. Frowning, Kolo did the same and moved close to her side. He saw the man who had spoken to him one night, Abdul Irani, but he did not recognize the young Arab walking beside him. The remaining two were white, a young woman with an expressive, pretty face and a man Kolo might once have known but he could not be sure. They seemed intent, their gazes fixed upon Neela.

  Abdul Irani was the first to speak. “Isn’t this a fine day? Kolo, it is good to see you, and you as well, Neela.”

  “What do you want?” Kolo asked, settling a hand on Neela’s thin, bony shoulder.

  “I remember you,” the white man said to Kolo. “We did business once.”

  Now Kolo recognized the white man. He scowled, and then sighed. “Those days are gone.”

  “They are journalists,” said Abdul.

  Kolo pointed at the man. “Not him. He sold me ammunition. He helped me kill people.”

  “As you say,” the white man said, “those days are gone.”

  “And now you are a journalist?”

  “No, not really. But Viviana here is. I’m just tagging along. The Laughing Imam says this will be an important event.”

  Kolo glanced at Abdul Irani. Now he understood. Did he not say, that night, that laughter was his only answer? And all that talk about God, and belief and faith. He was smiling now, too, but his attention was on Neela.

  “And so the children shall guide us,” Abdul now said, and he bowed before the little girl. “Neela, my friend here is a physicist. His name is Rustom. His interest is in quantum states.”

  “She knows nothing,” said Kolo. “Leave her alone.”

  But Neela stepped forward and briefly took the physicist’s outstretched hand. Then she returned to her place at Kolo’s side and said, “The Blanket Presence has agency. It also possesses specific iterations, implemented where needed.”

  “And the child she once was?” Abdul Irani asked.

  “The adult world is capable of delivering terrible damage to the nascent psyche of children. Neela was damaged. Kolo too is the product of such damage, but he is far from alone, or unique. The child Neela once was needs to heal, and this takes time. Her sense of self is in a suspended state, a liminal state. I care for her deeply and will oversee her return to health.”

  “Just her?” Abdul asked.

  “No. I have extended iterations to many millions of injured, damaged children. The future of your species depends upon this, to break the cycle of hurt and violence, of anger and hate. Of fear and, most of all, of despair.”

  Rustom now spoke for the first time. “You mentioned liminal states. What do you mean by that?”

  “If I were to alter your spectrum of vision,” Neela replied, “you would perceive me differently. You would perceive all things differently, casting a new aspect upon what you call reality. Consider the means by which you can already do this with existing technology. Infrared. Thermal. Electromagnetic. In each instance I stand before you, seemingly transformed. All of these states exist even when your naked eye cannot perceive them. Do you agree?”

  “Of course,” Rustom answered.

  “There are additional states. Many have been identified exclusively within the sphere of religion rather than science. All of these states co-exist and are to some extent inter-dependent. Each constitutes its own reality. The liminal state I speak of is one such manifestation, one that I am able to suspend—not entirely, because time is difficult to resist. Rather, I have slowed down its own sense of perception. I have made it somnolent.”

  During this, Kolo had moved away from Neela. This was not the girl he had known, the girl he had owned, used and abused
. But from what he could understand, that girl was now safe. Still, a stranger now walked in her frail body. A bush-ghost, possibly even a demon.

  “And this effects healing?” Abdul asked Neela.

  “I am effecting healing, Imam, by managing the many states’ interaction with the child’s sense of self. Damaged children know only despair. When they are grown into adults, that despair lies at the core of all that they do. It shapes their lives. It makes monsters of men and women who in turn perpetuate the cycle of despair with all the victims within their reach. Often, those victims are their own children.” She then turned to look up at Kolo. “This must be forgiven. All must be forgiven. To live the life of a victim is to be trapped inside despair, and no soul deserves that.”

  The white man asked, “When will this complex open, Neela? What awaits us inside?”

  “Education entails the expansion of one’s world view. The deeper the ignorance, the greater the fear of that expansion. Your species has elevated and empowered its own internal enemies to this form of enlightenment. Fundamentalist dogma, the atheistic surrender of the rationalists, the attack upon the diversity of opinion and belief.” She paused and pointed at the distant mass of buildings—and Kolo now saw that a crowd had gathered round them, hundreds and hundreds of people. “Within, you will find the knowledge required to see and comprehend not just your home planet, but the solar system beyond, and beyond that, the galaxy itself. With these tools, you may also come to understand yourselves. Thus is the faith of myself and, perhaps more poignantly, thus is the faith of Samantha August.”

  “Are you one of these aliens, then?” the white man asked.

  “I am the primary program conducting this Intervention. To Samantha August, I am named Adam. For this female child standing before you, perhaps ‘Eve’ is a better choice. That, or of course you can continue to use ‘Neela’.”

  “Will we ever see a real alien—one of the three species behind this Intervention?”

  “I cannot say definitively, Casper. If your species does, it won’t be any time soon. Indeed, probably not within the span of your life, nor that of anyone here, including the child Neela.”