A sentient, talking, telepathic cathedral? It was too much. It was bathos.
But it made him move in under the overhang, the lip of the porch, whatever it was, made him step into the darkness.
He found her there, found her by the darkness lightening around her; the final corner of the narthex, apse or niche ghost-lighting this latest, incredible lagan gift.
She would never be beautiful, if she were even the right word. The eyes were too large, the face too pinched, the ears and nose too small, like something half-made, a maquette, a Y99 Japanese animé figure, a stylized, waxy, roswell mannequin. The naked body too doll-smooth, too androgynous, with not even rudimentary genitalia or breasts that he could tell, yet somehow clearly not meant to be a child.
He knew who she was meant to be.
"You're not Jeanie." He had to say it.
No. It sounded in his mind.
"You're something like her. A bit."
"It was—your thoughts—there." Spoken words this time. The creature enunciated them so carefully, seemed to agonize over each one, fiercely concentrating, being so careful. Could it be, did he imagine it or was there perspiration on the forehead, the sheen of stress or panic? "I know—Jeanie."
"You do!"
The mannequin frowned, desperately confused, clearly alarmed if the twisting of the face were any indication. "It was—there. There. The—anchor?" The final word was a question.
"Ah." Sam felt hope vanish, felt fascination empty out and drain away, then refill from what truly, simply was on this strangest, most magical night.
"Who are you?" he said, gentler, easier now. "What are you?"
"Yours?" Again, it was almost a question. This creature seemed in shock, far more troubled than he was, but a shock almost of rapture as well as panic. At the wonder of being here. Being lost, bereft, but here. Somewhere. Anywhere.
Sam couldn't help himself. He stepped back, did so again and again, moved out of the chamber, out from under the porch. He had to anchor himself too. He looked around at the night, at the rising laganform looming over him, at the spread of coral barricades sweeping away in the vivid dark. No wonder they called them dream hedges. He saw it all now. Others had had these visitations. That's what the official Alien Influence spec groups were really looking for. Motile manifestations. Lifesign. The cathedrals were concentrations for hiding passengers, for delivering them into this world.
What to do? Tell the others? Share this latest, strangest, most important discovery—not the word!—this benefice, this gift? The orbitals were nightsighted, but Sam and this creature, this—Kyrie?—the name was just there—Kyrie!—just was, were in the lagan, with the croisie at full song and the honey-balm strengthening, both caught in the richest rush of spindrift he'd seen in weeks, with the most vivid runs of ghost-light making the hedges all flicky-flashy. Flickers of lagan dance, lagan blush. Semaphores of dream. The tides of this other sea bringing up its bounty.
He made himself go back into that darkness. He had to. It was a chance, a chance for something. He barely understood, but he knew.
"Kyrie?" He named it. Named her. What else could he do?
She was standing out from the chamber wall, just standing there naked and waiting.
"Kyrie?" he said again, then gave her his dressing gown, moved in and draped it about her shoulders. How could he not?
Before he quite knew he was doing so, he was leading her out into the night, holding her, steadying her. She walked stiff-legged, with a strange and stilted gait, new to walking, new to everything, but flesh-warm and trembling under his hands. She was hurting, panicking, desperately trying to do as he did. Sam guided her up the path and into the house. It was all so unreal, yet so natural. It was just what you did, what was needed.
Because it seemed right, because he needed it, Sam put her in Jeanie's room, in Jeanie's bed, in the room and bed Jeanie had used in her final days before hospitalization was necessary and she had gone away forever. He did that and more. Though he balked at it, he couldn't help himself. He left the photos and quik-sims of Jeanie he'd put there when she'd left, made himself do that, hating it, needing it, needing it knowing what this brand-new Kyrie was trying to become.
· · · · ·
She was still there the next morning and, yes, hateful and wonderful both, there did seem more of Jeanie in the drawn, minimalist face. Did he imagine it? Yearn for it too much? Was it the light of day playing up the tiniest hint?
Sam felt like a ghoul, like something cruel and perverse when he brought in more pictures of Jeanie and set them on the sideboard, even put one in the en suite.
It was mainly curiosity, he kept telling himself. But need too, though too dimly considered to be allowed as such. He just had to see.
No one had observed their meeting. Or, rather, no queries came, no AIO agents, no officials quizzing him about an overheard conversation, about a late-night lagan-gift from the cathedral. It seemed that the lagan had masked it; the croisie had damped it down; the honey-balm had blurred the words to nothing—perhaps their intended function all along. Misleading. Deceiving. Hiding the passengers. Working to let this happen privately, secretly. Who could say?
He helped her become human.
· · · · ·
It was hard to work in the hedges in the days that followed, so hard to chat and make small-talk knowing that she was up in the house with the books and the sims, learning his world, learning to be human, eating and drinking mechanically but unassisted now, if without evident pleasure, being imprinted. Becoming. The only word for it.
They saw that he was distracted, took it as an allowable relapse by their MF recluse, the famous Tilby Tiger. Becoming was an appropriate word for Sam too. Though he made himself work at doing and saying the right things, remaining courteous and pleasant, it was like doing the compulsory Life Studies modules all over again, all those mandatory realtime, facetime têtes and citizenship dialogues for getting along. Comfortable handles for the myriad, net-blanded, online, PC global villagers. Words, words and words. Sam hated it but managed.
He had Jeanie back in a way he hadn't expected. Like a flower moving with the sun or a weathervane aligning with the wind, he just found himself responding to what was natural in his life. Kyrie was of this time, this place, this moment, but with something of Jeanie, just as the old song had it. My Lagan Love indeed.
Sam cherished the old words anew, and sang them as he worked in the hedgerows below her window.
· · · · ·
"Where Lagan stream sings lullaby
There blows a lily fair;
The twilight gleam is in her eye,
The night is on her hair.
And, like a love-sick lenanshee,
She hath my heart in thrall;
Nor life I owe, nor liberty,
For Love is lord of all.
· · · · ·
And often when the beetle's horn
Hath lulled the eve to sleep,
I steal unto her shielding lorn
And thro' the dooring peep.
There on the cricket's singing stone
She spares the bog wood fire.
And hums in sad sweet undertone
The song of heart's desire."
· · · · ·
But Sam remained the skeptic too, was determined not to become some one-eyed Love's Fool. Even as he guided Kyrie, added more photos, ran the holos, he tried to fit this visitation into the science of lagan.
It was a cycle, a pendulum swing. One moment he'd be sitting with his alien maquette in her window-shaded room, singleminded, determined, perversely searching for new traces of Jeanie. The next, he was touring the online lagan sites—scanning everything from hard science briefs to the wildest theories, desperately seeking anything that might give a clue.
There was so much material, mostly claims of the "I know someone who knows someone" variety, and Sam was tempted to go the exophilia route and see the World Government muddying up the informational waters, hid
ing the pearls of truth under the detritus.
Finally, inevitably, he went back to his bower-bird friend, brought up the subject during a morning tour of the hedges.
"Howie, official findings aside, you ever hear of anything found alive in the lagan?"
"Apart from the lagan itself? Nothing above the microbial."
"But unofficial."
"Well, the rumors are endless. People keep claiming things; the UN keeps saying it's reckless exophilia. And I tell myself, Sam, if something was found, how could they keep a lid on it? I mean, statistically, there'd be so many visitations, passengers, whatever, word would get out."
"What if people are hiding them?"
Howie shook his head. "Doesn't follow. Someone somewhere would go for the gold and the glory instead, bypass the authorities and go to the media direct. You'd only need one."
Sam didn't press it too closely, didn't say: unless they were loved ones. Returnees. Things of the heart. He kept it casual, made it seem that he was just—what was Howie's saying?—shooting the breeze.
"Ever meet anyone who claims to have seen someone?"
"Sure. Bancroft, but he's always claiming one thing or another about the lagan. Sally Joule's neighbor, Corben, had a stroke, but she won't buy it. Reckons the lagan did it to him because he discovered something."
"Would he mind if I visited?"
"Probably not. I know Corben. He's two counties over, an hour's drive or more. But I go sit with him sometimes. Talk's ninety-eight per cent one-sided these days, but that's okay. And you've got things in common. He wildcatted his field too, just as you've done. I can take you out."
· · · · ·
Ben Corben seemed pleased to see them. At least he tracked their approach from his easy chair on the front porch and gave a lopsided smile when Howie greeted him and introduced Sam. He couldn't speak well anymore, and took ages to answer the same question Sam had put to Howie: had he ever heard of anything found alive in the lagan.
"Sum-thin," Corben managed. "Stor-ees."
And that was it for a time. The live-in nurse served afternoon tea, helped Corben with his teacup and scones.
Which was fine, Sam found. It gave him time to look out over Corben's lapsed domain, let him see what his own bloom would one day become.
Finally Howard brought them back to the question as if it hadn't been asked.
"Ever find anything out there, Corb? Anything alive?" He gestured at what remained of Corben's hedges, stripped and wasted now, the towers and barricades fallen, the basements collapsed in on themselves, just so many spike-fields, kite-frames and screens of wind-torn filigree, rattling and creaking and slowly falling to dust.
"No," Corben said, so so slowly, and his skewed face seemed curiously serene, alive with something known.
"It's important, Ben," Sam said. "It's just—it's really important. I've got hedges now. Never expected it. Never did. But I think something's out there. Calling at night." He didn't want to give too much away. And Howie had gone with it, bless him, hadn't swung about and said: hey, what's this? Good friend.
Corben blinked, looked out across the ruin of his own lagan field, now two years gone, so Howie had said.
Again Sam noticed the peace in the man, what may have been a result of the stroke or even some medication stupor, but seemed for all the world like uncaring serenity, as if he'd seen sufficient wonders and was content, as if—well, as if—
And there it was. Of course. Like Kyrie. Corben was like Kyrie. Slow and careful. Minimalist. Just like Kyrie. Of course.
· · · · ·
It was all so obvious once Sam saw it like that. Back home, he removed the photos, sims and mirrors, left Kyrie to be what she—what "it" had tried to be all along. He saw what he thought to be relief in the maquette's suffering eyes as he removed the last of the distractions, then brought a chair and sat in front of it.
Finish your job, he thought, but didn't speak it. Finish being what you already are.
And Sam found it such a relief to sit there and let it happen. Kyrie had never tried to be Jeanie, had never been a gift from the lagan to ease a broken heart.
Not Kyrie. Cadrey.
Sam saw how he'd been: thinking of Jeanie by day, not thinking of her—blessedly forgetting her—at night when he slept. Escaping in dreams, his only true time of self. Swaying Kyrie this way and that in its Becoming—by day towards Jeanie, by night back towards its intended form all along.
Poor agonized thing. Here from somewhere else, now beautified by Jeanie-thought, now showing the ruin of his own MF tiger mask, coping, copying. Poor ugly, beautiful, languishing thing. Trying all the while.
Then, like looking through doors opened and aligned, he saw the rest. Its message, its purpose. I will be you to free you so you can have your turn. Moving on. Taking it with you.
What a clumsy, awkward method, Sam decided. What a flawed—no! What a natural and fitting way to do it, more like a plant in a garden, some wild and willful, wayward garden, some natural, blundering, questing thing, trying again and again to push through. Stitching it up. Linking the worlds.
What it was, never the issue. Only that it was.
He had to help. Do sittings. Leave photos of his red-demon, tiger-faced self (how the others would smile!), try not to think of Jeanie for now, just for now.
For Kyrie. Oh, the irony. So many times he stood before the mirrors and laughed, recalling that old story of desperate choice: the Lady or the Tiger. Well, now he played both parts—showing the Tiger but being like Jeanie for Kyrie.
Giving of himself. Giving self. Generous. The Ladyand the Tiger.
· · · · ·
Two weeks later, at brightest, deepest midnight, he stood before the notre dame, bathed in the honey-balm and the spindrift, letting the croisie take him, tune him, bring him in. They were all part of it—transition vectors, carrier modes.
Kyrie was in place back in the house, maimed, shaped, pathetic and wonderful both. Sam Cadrey enough. Would seem to have had a stroke when they found him. That would cover the slips, the gaffes and desperate gracelessness. His friends would find, would impose, the bits of Sam Cadrey no time or training could provide. Friendship allowing, they would find him in what was left, never knowing it was all there was.
Sam looked around at his world, at the fullness of it, the last of it, then stepped into the narrow chamber.
The cathedral did what it had to do, blindly or knowing, who could say, but naturally.
Sam felt himself changing, becoming—why, whatever it needed him to be this time, using what was in the worlds. And as he rose, he had the words, unchanged in all that changing. Nor life I know, nor liberty. Had his self, his memories to be enough of self around. For Love is lord of all.
Sam held Jeanie to him, as firm and clear as he could make her, and rose from the troubled seabed to the swelling, different light of someone else's day.
Clownette, by Terry Dowling
I've always had a love-hate relationship with Macklin's. When the place is full, when there are conventions or tour groups booked in, then relatives, friends, and discount regulars like me get offered the Clownette. There's no other choice.
Not that it's a bad room. There are darker, far worse rooms at Macklin's, many with brick-wall views. The Clownette opens onto a back lane, true, but it's on the top floor and there's sky and light. That's the upside. That's by day. At night—well, it changes.
And this time, for maybe the eighteenth, nineteenth time in six years, it was a full house and the Clownette or nothing.
No big deal, never a big deal. But there's always ten, twenty seconds or so when it almost matters a lot. I could trek over to Wright's or the Walden; they have budget plans as well, not that that's any kind of issue with my Hopeton's expense account. But, taking the good with the bad, there's something about the Clownette. Once those ten, twenty seconds are done, you see it as clear as day. You get the sky and the light—at least until nightfall. You get to check out the latest ad
ditions to the décor. You get to see the face, the "Motley," the Macklin Hotel's very own Shroud of Turin right there in the wall.
Dry-staining as art. A platter-sized discoloration that spoils the room, does so crucially for some. And it does look like a clown in a sketchy, man-in-the-moon fashion, with blotchy there-but-never-quite-there features. Paint it over as often as you like, the Motley creeps back, pushing through bit by bit, first as the barest hint of shadow, then as a chain of dusky fractals linking up. And once they connect: hey presto! Peekaboo! Bozo in the wall!
I took the news about the hotel being full with passable grace, expecting one of Gordon's usual quips. "Off to see the Wizard again, I'm afraid, Mr. J." Or "Tell me again, Mr. J., how you always wanted to join a circus as a kid!" Or, perfectly po-faced, as if taking the straight part in our long-standing, front-desk, double act: "So he misses you, Mr. J. You see the kid, he says, you send him right up."
Six years of staying at Macklin's, and to Gordon—and the Motley, to hear Gordon tell it—I'm still the kid!
None of that today. Maybe there were things on his mind. Maybe he'd had bad news. He just gave me a warm-up smile straight out of Hospitality 101 and handed me a new-style magnetic key.
"Made some changes since your last visit, Mr. Jackson," he said.
There it was again, the Mr. Jackson! I'd thought it had been a natural enough slip when he'd said it the first time, some automatic holdover from dealing with too many new guests at once.
Thrown by how correct he was being, I was an extra second or two answering. "Don't tell me it's gone!"
"No, sir. I meant the key. The wall's been painted again since your last visit, but you know how it is."
Sir? Mr. Jackson; now sir!
Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two Page 89
