I arose early the following day and took the bus into the city centre, I whiled away the morning in the cafés and shops along Albany Avenue. When the High Valleys shuttle came in from the west I was standing on the fan-shaped balcony of the city’s premier art gallery not far from the terminus. The gallery had organized a “spontaneous paint”, and a prominent artist was applying somewhat random dabs of colour to a canvas. I almost knocked over a pot of paint in my haste to exit.
The shuttle had only just landed as I arrived, and when the passengers began to debark I scanned them eagerly, but there was no sign of Annia or Jax. Eventually Naree emerged and went over to unlock the hold. I leapt the barrier, ran across to her and tapped her on the shoulder.
She turned, “David! Were you hidden in the hold? I didn’t see you get in at Silver Spring.”
“No, I’m living in Helixport now. Studying at the Institute.”
“Of course. I had forgotten. Are your studies going well?”
“Well enough. Naree, were Jax and Annia aboard?”
“Jax and Annia? No, I haven’t seen them.” She called to a forklift driver to be more gentle with his handling of a butter-fruit crate. “Yes, it’s Newseason’s Day, isn’t it. You always travelled to the city on holidays.” Again she remonstrated with the driver. “No, I’m sorry, David, they didn’t get on at Silver Spring.”
I went directly to the radio booth in the forecourt of the terminus. I had only thirty checks in my pocket, but it would suffice for a five-minute call to Silver Spring. I fed the machine with coins, then punched out the number. The screen flickered briefly, then stabilized; Lenard’s gaunt, ascetic face looked out at me.
“Hello, Lenard,” I said, knowing that he would remember me from the skittering of stones on his roof.
“Good morning, David. How is life at the Institute?”
“It’s fine. Do you know if Annia and Jax made any plans to visit Helixport today? It’s holiday time and we always…” My words trailed away as I saw a flicker of discomfiture across his face.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“I think you should speak to Robert,” he said hastily. “I’ll connect you.”
Before I could reply, the screen went blank and In the ensuing pause apprehension gnawed at me.
It was over a minute before Robert’s face appeared on the screen. He was sitting in his private chamber and he looked grim.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“I have tragic news, David. Annia is dead.”
I stared hard at his brown, withered face.
“Dead?” I said finally, more unnerved by my apparent lack of reaction to his words than by their actual content.
Robert’s voice seemed to come from afar. “She took ill with a fever, only two days after she visited you. She was dead within hours.”
“A fever? What sort of fever?”
“We don’t know. It was a virus of some sort. It left the doctors mystified. We had to commit her to the fires almost immediately to minimize the risk of infection. Fortunately, there have been no further cases.”
It was some time before I responded.
“And no one saw fit to notify me,” I said hollowly.
Robert looked uneasy. “We saw no reason to add to your burdens, knowing that you were soon to take your examinations. It is important to us all here that you do well.”
“Annia was important to me!” I cried. “She was my friend.”
He looked abashed, but said nothing.
“I want to speak to Jax.”
Robert shook his head solemnly. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, David. Jax has disappeared. He was obviously deeply upset by Annia’s death, and the day after she died we found that he had vanished from the commune. Our attempts to locate him have so far been unsuccessful. I am sorry.”
I wanted to punch the screen, to smash his face into a thousand pieces. Instead, I merely reached forward and blanked the connection.
I must have wandered aimlessly through the streets for over an hour. A dust storm was developing, and the wind whipped eddies of fine sand along the gutter. I sat down in the empty forecourt of a café, its windows shuttered against the storm, and contemplated my knuckles. The grit-laden wind made tears well in my eyes, and I shivered. Above my head, a loose shutter tapped rhythmically on a first-storey window, a metronome for the storm.
Some time later something touched me on the shoulder and I turned around. A middle-aged woman stood before me, dressed in an expensive gown which was creased and grimy. In fact, her entire appearance suggested affluence gone sour. Her elaborate hair-do was in disarray beyond the ravages of the storm, and her face seemed drained of all vitality despite the plumpness, of her cheeks. She wore an expression of blank bemusement, like a child lost in some foreign place. Her hand still rested on my shoulder, but lightly, as if she was afraid that I would suddenly break away, or as if she was not sure that I was really there.
“A drink?” she whispered. “Do you have some water?” The wind tugged at the whorls and waves of her hair, drawing them across her face.
I stood up, took her arm and led her down the street to the nearest faucet. She followed like a docile animal.
I pointed to the faucet but she stared at it without comprehension. I retrieved a paper cup from the flotsam pinned to the grille of a drain by the wind and washed it under the tap before filling it with water and handing it to her. She held the cup in both hands and drank in gulps, water dribbling down the front of her dress. When her thirst was finally slaked, she let the half-empty cup drop on to the sidewalk, exploding wetly at her feet. She stared at me for a moment, as if about to speak, then wandered off down the sand-swept street.
Chapter Four
Two days later, the results of the examinations were posted in the main hall. Ninety-eight of the one hundred and twenty preliminary students had been accepted for further study. No marks were given, but it was clear that the order of names suggested the degree of scholastic excellence. My name was fifth on the list; Wendi’s, I noted, was second.
My academic success was the only bright spot in a period of intense personal bleakness. I was informed that arrangements were being made for me to visit Silver Spring, but I declined the offer outright; my anger and my despair were channelled into resentment and recrimination against the elders of the commune. I hated them for not having informed me of Annia’s death and Jax’s disappearance, and I suspected that they were keeping something from me. I grew convinced that the mysterious virus which had caused Annia’s death had been contracted in some way from our encounter with the M’threnni Voice. Annia had been leaning over the woman when she had been in her death throes, and it seemed likely that she had been exposed to some alien organism which was virulent to ordinary humans. Annia’s reaction to the encounter had been more extreme than mine; she had been drained by it. This was readily explainable as the initial reaction of her body defences to the attack of an unknown organism, and it also clarified Lionel’s obsession with secrecy: the authorities knew that the M’threnni and their Voices were potential plague-carriers and were afraid that if this knowledge became widespread there would be a mass panic. I guessed that the commune elders were embroiled in the cover-up and that Jax’s disappearance was in some way connected with the deception. Had they killed him to ensure his silence? No, that was taking my scenario too far. Jax was still alive, I was sure; throughout most of first month I fully expected him to turn up at my door, having somehow made his way to the city, but he never appeared. I shared my speculations on Annia’s death with no one, since I still felt constrained by my oath to Lionel. But I brooded, deeply and blackly.
During this period I became almost maniacally devoted to my studies. The exigencies of day-to-day life no longer mattered to me; I drew relief only from the certainties of the printed page and screen. I took no part in the social life of the Institute, spending my evenings and free days locked in my room, engaged in further study or in “star-gazin
g”. Although my academic performance rose to new heights during this period, my tutors were obviously aware that I was under a considerable strain, and I was finally obliged to visit the student counsellor, a woman named Elise.
Elise was an intense, gruffly spoken woman who took a dynamic interest in my problems from the outset. I spoke little during our first few meetings, but Elise, undaunted, would question me relentlessly and take voluminous notes whenever I made some kind of response, however brief, before launching into an exhaustive series of speculations on the import of my words. As the sessions progressed, I began to feel somewhat abashed at the degree of attention I was receiving. Elise homed in on the meagrest of utterances, leaving me surprised and impressed by the wealth of meaning which she was able to extract from them. Soon I was approaching each session not with a timid hope of impending emotional catharsis, but rather as one would anticipate a chess game against a difficult opponent. I began to make random, elliptical comments designed solely to test her ingenuity; I invented; I embroidered; I made contradictory statements practically in the same breath. Elise responded to this challenge with equal verve, her powers of interpretation and analysis rising to new heights. Before long I was actively relishing each new encounter with her.
Towards the end of our twelfth session, Elise uncoiled herself from her chair (she always sat with her legs crossed and her right instep tucked behind her left ankle) and went over to the fish tank atop her book-case.
“You have not mourned,” she said, and it was as if she was addressing the overfed goldfish which were basking in the bright green water. “You are bottling your sorrows within.”
This was hardly the revelation which her tone would have me believe. She sat down again and leaned across the table, awaiting my response.
“There is no one I wish to share them with,” I said lamely.
“There need not be. You must reveal your sorrows to yourself.” Her wire-frame glasses shone in the light of the desk-lamp like strange and sinister moons.
“Accept your sorrows and you will be free of them,” she said. “I can do no more for you.”
Was this to be her ultimate pronouncement? I could hardly believe it.
“I’ll try,” I said, striving for a tone which suggested resolution.
It seemed the least facile response I could make.
One evening several days later there was a tapping on my door. I recognized the staccato immediately and was loath to answer it. But the knocking was persistent and when I finally opened the door I was surprised to see that Wendi had come, not in aggressive near-nakedness but fully clothed. Since the incident with the lettertape our relationship had been stiffly formal and we had tended to avoid one another. Yet now she stood outside in an attitude of defensive politeness, as if prepared to make peaceful overtures but expecting a rebuff.
“Can I come in?” she asked in a small voice.
“What do you want?”
“Only to talk for a few minutes.”
“I don’t really feel like company just now.”
“A few minutes, that’s all.”
“I’m tired. I was about to take a nap.”
“Please, David.”
I shrugged and let her in.
She sat down on the desk-top, while I seated myself on the contour couch. She crossed her legs and put her hands in her lap, a demure and wholly uncharacteristic posture. She wriggled her feet and her sandals dropped to the floor.
“I came to see how you were,” she said.
“You’ve seen me at classes. I’m all right.”
She shook her head. “You’re a walking corpse. Everybody’s noticed. You haven’t left your room in two months.”
I said nothing.
“How did she die?”
I feigned ignorance. “Who?”
“The girl, Annia.” She pronounced it Ann-e-ah rather than Ann-yah.
I studied my thumbnails. “A virus of some kind.”
“Were you very close?”
“She was my friend. We grew up together.” I looked up at her. “How do you know about Annia? Did Elise send you?”
“No. Honest. I’ve been spending some time with her as part of my course. We go over case-histories but names are never mentioned. I knew you were visiting her, though; I’ve seen you leaving. The other day Elise was discussing a case and it occurred to me—I don’t know how or why—that she was talking about you. So I sneaked a look at her notes. It was all there.”
“Elise set it up. She knew you and I were friends.”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “But does it matter, anyway? I came of my own free will.”
Her face was a picture of ingenuousness. I believed her; Wendi was incapable of guile.
“Yon can’t go on like this, you know,” she said. “Has Elise helped you at all?”
“She’s quite a remarkable woman.”
Wendi smiled at the ambiguity. “She’s a verbal hurricane. Did she jump on your every word?”
“It felt like every letter. Sometimes I had the feeling that if I farted she’d be able to attach a wealth of significance to that, too.”
Wendi laughed. “She does the same with me, even though I’m her student not her patient. She’s fascinated by what she describes as my ‘aggressive, extroverted sexual proclivities’. I told her I was molested by an elder at the age of five and she’s built an elaborate theory on the lie.”
I grinned, imagining the intricate edifice of misguided speculation which Elise could construct on such a basis.
Wendi got down off the desk.
“I made you smile,” she said.
She slipped her sandals on and went over to the door. As she opened it, she turned and said: “I’ll call in again tomorrow. Take care.”
The months passed, and slowly my sorrow at losing Annia and Jax began to wane—helped, no doubt, by my developing relationship with Wendi. My studies, which for a while had simply been a means of diverting my thoughts from my grief, once again became of real interest to me.
Our courses in this first scholarship season were more structured and compartmentalized than in the preliminary session, though our tutors continued to expand our curriculum with the object of providing us with a wide basic background knowledge before we finally began to specialize at the beginning of our second season.
Although I had an aptitude for mathematics and physical sciences, my particular interest was history—not only the history of Gaia, but also that of Earth. At this early stage we were almost exclusively concerned with our own planet (and with conspicuously little reference to the influence of the M’threnni), so I spent much of my free time reading about the tangled web of national and international intrigues which characterized the history of Earth.
As a youth, I had always considered myself the descendant of Earth-born stock without having any real notion of what “Earth-born” meant. I soon discovered that practically all Gaians could trace their ancestry back to two specific nations: the United States of America and the British Federation. Anglo-American research teams had developed the ion-pulse drive which had made interstellar travel possible, and of the original colonists, nine-tenths were of British or American origin. We were the descendants of two nations, not a world.
Our history tutor, Jon, practised the maxim “Show not tell”. He arranged a series of visits to sites of historical interest, the most important of which was the Auriga Centre in Union Plaza. The Auriga had been the starship which had brought the colonists to Gaia. After the ship had been beached on the planet’s surface, it was disassembled and its five hexagonal units rearranged to form three sides of an open square. It functioned now as a living museum, a vital link with the civilizations of Earth.
We filed in through the main entrance in the central unit. Kaufman’s original portrait of the M’threnni hung in the hall. Most of my fellow students were suitably impressed by it, but I could only reflect on its blandness compared with the real thing. But the portrait stirred unhappy me
mories and I was glad when Jon led us off into along room crammed with data-banks and consoles. Stored in the banks was all the knowledge which our ancestors had accumulated over millennia, knowledge which the pioneers had used, allied with M’threnni aid, to construct our society. Without it, the colony might have degenerated into primitivism and would certainly have never attained the degree of technical sophistication to which we were accustomed.
But the Auriga held more than just knowledge; it held life itself. We entered a large, high-ceilinged chamber, filled with row upon row of sealed compartments, labelled in the terse, cryptic languages of the botanists and zoologists. These were the plant and animal gene pools, containing the seeds and embryos of a host of different species, preserved under rigidly controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. Through careful experimentation, the first farmers had eventually discovered which species were capable of thriving in Gaian soil, thus establishing an Earth-based agricultural system without which the colony would have been doomed, for the native flora and fauna of Gaia were sparse.
Adjacent to this was a deceptively similar chamber whose compartments held the most important seeds of all; human reproductive cells. The incubator authorities constantly utilized sperm and ova from this reservoir to sustain a wide genetic diversity in the population of Gaia. Jon explained that of the present population, now approaching a quarter of a million, less than a fifth could claim dual parentage from people who had actually lived on the planet; most were offspring of long-dead folk who had bequeathed their reproductive cells to the gamete bank.
We passed through the ship’s accommodation area, which occupied three complete units. The Auriga had carried a complement of one thousand passengers, and the living quarters reminded me of a large but compact hostel. The sleeping cubicles were arranged, bunk-like, along the walls, and the canteens, with their arrays of long, collapsible tables, had evidently provided the inspiration for the dining-halls of many Gaian communes. Elsewhere, in the recreation zones, there had been a more generous allocation of space: the extensive garden areas were a pleasing contrast to the confines of the sleeping and eating quarters, and there were spacious lounges, a number of gymnasiums and swimming pools, and even a miniature golf-course. The ship had maintained an acceleration of one gravity to the mid-point of its voyage, decelerating thereafter at the same rate so that the gravity on board remained at a constant norm throughout. For the passengers, the voyage to Gaia took just under eight Earth years, or two Gaian cycles, whereas back on Earth, decades passed. Though intellectually I knew that the theory of time-dilation at relativistic velocities was sound, I still found it hard to accept emotionally; somehow, it was not at ail comforting to contemplate the idea that time itself was inconstant.
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