“I get around,” I said, overcooking the turn and watching her speed away following the curve of the singer’s voice soaring from note to note. “Been anywhere recently?”
“I been up Iceland,” she said. “They say that mountain is gonna go up soon. Hekla. But it didn’t. I always miss major geological events. Got fed up waiting. Going back later. You?”
“New York,” I lied, wishing it were true.
“Gulf Stream, Jet Stream,” she said with an appreciative smack of her beak. “Good air. What you looking for?”
“Just looking,” I said.
“Very old school,” she replied with droll accents that said she admired the vagueness of my ambition. She turned her wings and exited the air column. Her music faded away.
I turned back over the city and spread my wings wider, wider, opening all their fancy finery to the currents. I filtered the winds looking for Rita; not the winds of Sankhara, but of desire in all its forms.
To pick her out of these patterns was like looking for the Dalmatian dog in the test picture of black and white dots. She looked purely human superficially, but Theo’s partial bodies always resonated faintly in the elevensheet with the fossil trace of billions of suppressed signals.
I drifted along for a while, looking without trying too hard. Engine interference made it difficult at this time of day but I kept going and soon I could feel it like the faintest itch or echo, moving east towards a cab rank in the archaeological preservation district of the centre city, Roma Precinct, where academic and civil servants liked to live close to their offices.
Rita was only just coming out of an expensive private club and she wasn’t alone.
Her male companion was middle-aged, affluent and drunk, an Unevolved and, by his clothing, an academic like Greg, a scientist. I saw that he had an Abacand with a Macrolibrary attachment, which must mean he had specialized information to keep to himself. He wore it on a gold chain, like a Victorian watch. They were the rage on Earth. Rita propped him up stealthily, pretending she was the one under support as they walked to his waiting car. Her boredom was evident in the way she searched the street with restless eyes, not looking for anything—looking for everything.
I floated down to street level in silence, wings become parachute, become gossamer, become nothing at all. The changes were visible in other spectra than the usual human ones and she looked back furtively, her expression uncertain and hopeful of finding a distraction from what was bothering her.
I didn’t want her to know who I was, since her recognition would only draw Theo to the surface in all likelihood, and though he was my target, I knew I could only deal with him indirectly if I was going to have an effect. I wanted her to think me some other Stuffie, like her, with an elevenspace signature too faint and too unimportant to be worth scanning for the telltale differences that would give me away. I gambled on the fact that, until tonight, I had never done anything to voluntarily alter my appearance, to use partials or to operate as anybody not myself. It was a big risk, but the worst it could immediately incur was a fight, and I felt more than happy to handle one of those. To avoid recognition I would have to change: outside and in.
So now was the moment to try a different physical form and see what changes that might wring out of me. The only way to keep track of “primary” me would be to take a complete data snapshot of my entire makeup in this second and even as I considered it I realized why Unity kept Origin, the homeworld planet that was its library. Because of this problem. If I didn’t keep such a record, there was no guarantee I could ever return to the oh-so-very-ideal me of this minute should something go wrong. But there was already no guarantee I could successfully integrate the separated versions lying with Greg and sitting with Hyperion and no guarantee I wouldn’t, in some moment of extreme fear, integrate Francine and lose her completely. The only thing I could rely on was my age-old stubbornness that I would not descend into Unity’s ways. It was less than flimsy.
I did not make a record.
In spite of the fact that the real man I was about to imitate had been my dear friend, who perhaps didn’t deserve such a resurrection as this, and my lover, and my teacher and a great many things more to me, I made myself into a facsimile of Patrick Black; someone to whom a greater resemblance would not be so bad.
Patrick was once tall, tan and blond-handsome in the way of a lot of North American white men of his era. He used to play college football for Notre Dame before he got into rock climbing and shed the weight to get paper-light. I met him halfway into that project, after the operations on his knees had failed, and before he got into extreme isolation adventuring—everyone I fall for generally has extreme in them. Patrick had got tenure at MIT—these were the days of superstring theory, of the war on terror, and my burgeoning ignorance of the consequences of physical theories of matter.
Patrick was long dead, hundreds of years dead, but as I changed I felt that he and I were sharing a private joke. He would have laughed himself silly at my idea that becoming him was an act of prayer. But I was greatly weakened by my rage at Theo, and it seemed to me that wearing his likeness was the same as putting on sacred armour, the only useful kind for the fight I was engaged in.
Rita, well aware of me walking towards her, coaxed her dupe into a taxi that had been idling for them at the kerb and I had to run to catch her up before she shut her door.
I called out in Patrick’s soft Southern tones, “Hey, share a ride? I’m so late already and there are no cabs anywhere.” I’d forgotten how the timbre of his voice sounded and suddenly I missed him acutely.
“We’re . . . he’s not very well,” she said firmly and added, as if to an idiot, “It’s very early.” Her hair swung like a single curtain. Cheekbones, lips, eyes—she was a work of art, even for times like these. Her mouth was painted bloody red and had a naturally uncertain pout that demanded to be kissed. Theo must have been reading a lot of books to build her because she far exceeded any natural capacity he had for estimating human nature. She made a move to slam the door on my hand but I caught it midswing and held it ajar.
“I’m not going far,” I said and got in, thinking of any district very far from here. “Rialto Bridge.” The tears on my face moved her. She offered me a tissue as I sat down opposite them both. I shook my head and wiped my face with my fingers. Her date stared at me with clear contempt but he was already feeling so lucky to be with her that he didn’t care if half of Sankhara shared his taxi, as long as she didn’t leave his side.
“We’re going to the Aelf,” Rita informed me coolly, but gave me an unaccidental nudge with her knee at the same time. It was desperation making her do it—to be away from him, to be close to anyone more potentially sympathetic.
I gave her a tentative half smile of momentary allegiance and gratitude. “Then you go first, I’ll pay the fare.”
“I’ll pay,” the date said, “even if it’s Timbuktu. But can we bloody go somewhere?”
I shut the door and the car slid smoothly towards the Massif.
“Pat,” I said, holding out my hand to her with all of Patrick’s deliberately ironic charm. She looked down but didn’t take it. Her eyes slid up to mine slowly, as she figured out whether or not my upset was infectious, and whether it was going to be a problem. “What’s the matter?”
“Somebody died,” I said. “A friend of mine.” For an instant I thought of the Earth agent, the golden girl and her cracked clockwork heart. “Not today. It was the anniversary.”
The foxes covering her thighs stirred restlessly and one of them mewled a little.
“Goddamned coat freaks me out,” her date said to me, as though he’d heard nothing of our exchange. “All I can think of is pet stores and when they’re going to arrest her for cruelty or if the things are going to shit on my carpets.”
“They’re not real,” she murmured, putting her hand on his knee and letting it slide up a little. She glanced at me as she did this. “It’s only an effect.”
He was
n’t listening to her. “Look at this one here.” He tugged the wide collar of her coat around so I could see and she had to stop herself from openly resisting his clumsy jerk. I gave her a sympathetic look and wondered what Theo could want with this man, though I didn’t care enough to find out. Only Rita interested me. I would have liked to pull the pink quartz heart out of my pocket and put it in her hand, or slide it secretly into her evening bag. I would have liked to know how complicit she was with that act, but I couldn’t afford that petty drama.
Two bead eyes stared out at me from an intelligent, ferocious little face in her coat, and two paws flexed, searching for the partner paws that made up the other side of the clasp. They paddled uselessly for a second, then stopped, frozen with failure. The eyes blinked, then withdrew into the mass of fur beside the low-scoop neckline of her dress.
“Nearly had my fingers off.” Her date let go of the coat at last, chuckling. Rita recoiled against the seat and adjusted the furs with a savage twist of her shoulders.
I smiled insincerely and coughed to clear my throat. “Been anywhere nice?”
“Yes,” Rita said.
“No,” he said. “Expensive slop. But she likes it, so I don’t mind.”
“It’s the easiest way,” I said as though I was agreeing with him.
“To what?” Rita’s face took on an arctic sheen. She inched her leg away from mine.
“The easiest way to keep life running smoothly. Doing what other people want when you don’t want to.” I said it while I was looking in her eyes and saw the pupils shrink to points, then a second later dilate as she decided I was okay.
“Isn’ tha’ the truth,” the date slurred. “Especially when they’re worth keeping.”
“I’m not your possession, Rupert,” she snapped, but without the sting that would have betrayed care.
“No baby,” he said in a weak effort at placation. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Sorry.” I put my hands up showily to ward off their fight, which had the desired effect of irritating her even more, because there was no fight.
She never took her eyes off Patrick’s face, looking from one of my eyes to the other. Patrick’s eyes are blue, with a hazel fleck in the left iris at ten o’clock; if we were together at that hour, no matter where, I always used to kiss him. My sentimental side glanced at the taxi clock now—5:30 A.M., the Engine had been off for an hour, Theo had been gone for nearly eight hours, Greg had been under Translation for about thirty-six hours.
The taxi drew up at the secondary plaza of Aelf 2, bored security guards squatting down on either side of its oak doors, hands on the tall spears planted between their knees, their feathered wings folded close to their sides in the predawn cool, antlers dripping dew into their clay-matted dreadlocks. Rupert got out and held the door for her. Rita didn’t budge.
“Aren’t you coming up?” he said, plaintive and weak.
“I’m going to go to the late shop and get some vials,” she replied. “You go up. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Send the bloody car for them,” he suggested, but without conviction.
“I want to see what there is,” she said, smooth and cool. “Shut the door. It’s cold.”
He obeyed her and she said, “Shiro Maru” to the car’s command panel, a place right out in the western side of the city.
Once we’d taken a corner I changed seats and sat beside her. She turned and kissed me. It was hungry at first, hard and defensive, but then it got gentler, until her coat bit me on the shoulder.
“Ouch!”
The bead eyes blinked and vanished. Her eyes shone and there was nothing in them but pure longing. I kissed her again and this time bit her not too gently on the lower lip. It was already big and it swelled quickly. She drew away and held it in her mouth for a moment, thoughtful, separating from Theo with every passing second, her changes filtering back down to him in ways he wouldn’t be able to control, as Francie’s stubborn innocence, among other things, filtered across to me and I remembered who I was meant to be.
I slid my hands under the shifting flow of fur and found her in the thinnest, tightest Chinese satin dress. Rita took hold of my Pat-face and looked into my eyes. Her hunger for experience was a refined one. She wanted everything, but mostly she wanted genuine intimacy, a bridge between two people that she could use to escape herself, and this couldn’t be got out of many people at short notice, if ever.
Whatever she saw in my gaze she deemed acceptable for that second, for this trip. My original idea, when I started to look for her, had been to exact some blend of vengeance—a seduction that would transform her into my slave and send Theo sky-high with rage. I was ashamed of that idea now. Instead I found myself longing to talk to her about what it was like to be her, Unity but not Unity? I remembered the despair with which she’d addressed me in the Well, and I lost my anger at what she’d done to Greg. Francine’s sweetness was in my kiss, and traces of Angel #5’s healing grace—I was built of ghosts that hour and submitted to their demands willingly.
Streetlights and the single flash of a blue police signal passed over us. They ignored us.
Certain intimacies are only possible with strangers in total silence. We explored all of those, exchanged them like the gifts they were. She understood the stranger-economics of that, like I did.
Later we returned to her Aelf address, after she’d stopped as she said she would, to buy some soft drug or other from a shop on the way. She got out and held on to the door, looking back at me.
“What’s your name?” I asked her, thinking I would like to give her one more gift.
“Rita,” she said hesitantly.
“I like you, Rita.” I surprised myself. It was true.
She turned her lower lip under and sucked it unconsciously for a second, then smiled a little. “I like you, Pat.” Her coat whimpered at the drag of the cold wind.
When I smiled back at her it felt good on my face.
She shut the door, squared her shoulders and lifted her head and walked in to the building. On the way she took one of the vials she’d bought out of the bag and tossed the contents back into her throat with a gunslinger’s practiced action. She dropped the bag and the rest of its contents in front of the closest guard as she passed it by.
I went to Earth: Prague for beer, to Manhattan for the sandwich, to Vienna for cake and chocolate and through Sankha Gateway an hour after leaving, sliding time across the gate surface as though it was oil on a puddle.
I undid Patrick from me in the darkness outside the Palace, afraid of what insanity might attack me if I met myself in his likeness. At the bottom of the staircase I glanced up at the roof. The boat was gone, the river empty.
I addressed my duplicate self beside Hyperion as I arrived in the hall, looking myself in the eye in a truly surreal moment—“Do you remember Star Trek?” Patrick had loved Star Trek, all versions. He was a fanboy with no discrimination when it came to things he liked.
“Yes,” I said from Hyperion’s side as he watched both of me with a quizzical tilt of his head. “Beam me up.”
Assimilating the other me was not like Translating Francine. It was as easy as folding cloth; one, two, it’s a boat, or a hat, or me again.
“You are unfathomable,” Hyperion pronounced, standing and stretching his thin body. “Were you successful?”
I hugged him around his long neck with one arm, the grocery bag hanging from my free hand. “Very.” I put my hand against his bony rib-cage but there was no crossing of energy, no change. Angel’s darshan was not moved by him. “You’re a very integrated individual.”
“It is easy,” he said, resting his huge head on my shoulder. “Never look down. Believe all things. Float on the current like a wild dandelion seed.”
“Don’t let Greg hear you say that.”
“Can you save him?”
I released my hold on him and we separated. “If it’s the last thing I do.”
“I pray it is not.”
/> “That makes three of us.”
Hyperion gave me a shrewd look. “You are joking.”
I shrugged. “Hard to tell, isn’t it?”
In Greg’s cold room, as he slept on, I got up and made a fire, drew the curtains and laid another blanket on him.
Francine was reading Dumas as I came in from the hall. I felt a soft kind of shock on seeing her, the contrast with Rita was very strong. Francine had never looked more vulnerable. Her skin was that incredible translucent perfection that only real youth can show, and it made the purple smudges around her eyes stand out. She jumped up when she saw me and took the bag from my hand. It was such a spontaneous, enthusiastic movement. I fell in love with her all over again.
She tore the packages open, almost without surprise, and then gave me a knowing look. “Hello, massive overcompensation,” she said. “What have you been doing?”
I told her about Rita and she sighed.
“Seducing Theo . . . I suppose it’s poetic.” She snarled, “I hate him. I hate that he was here, then I made you . . .” She wrestled with the words in that way she had that made them seem like a herd of wild horses running amok. This time she got them close to control.
“I made you do it with me then, after that. That was crazy. It wasn’t going to be like that. I was going to put it off forever and make it perfect, until we were equal, until I was good enough. Worth you. You know?” She began tearing the croissant up into tiny pieces.
“I know,” I said, sitting with her. Fifty pages. She was a fast reader. “You’re insane like that. It’s almost worthy of respect in its own right.”
“But don’t stop,” she added, picking up the beer and cracking it open with a flick of her hand, like a bartender’s best trick. “You shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be you.” She took a drink, wiped her mouth on her sleeve and handed me the bottle. “I thought you could make it go. Heal me. I thought I could do that, with you, like a sticking plaster, like the darshan. I didn’t want to ask for that, though. I didn’t want an escape, some stupid cowardly way out. I wanted to face it, you know? I just thought that doing the sex and the Translation would be enough because I only have to look at you to feel better, and I thought that there was some kind of special thing about it, sex, that would make it, you know . . . super complete. And then after, I knew it was exactly the wrong thing, and that I was only passing on what he did, from me to you, like a disease . . . I’m sorry. I’m really . . .” Her voice broke down and she flung her hands down on the blankets as though she couldn’t get them far enough away from her. She tried to say sorry again but the words had run out.
Living Next Door to the God of Love Page 27
