FSF Magazine, May 2007

by Spilogale Authors

  Noel paused in the pedestrian flow. Garlanded in a backwash of body odor, diesel smoke, and the meaty pungency of garbage, he exulted to be here under hieroglyphic neon, and he turned a gentle countenance on the amazed young woman.

  * * * *

  Telefunken Remix

  Brittle stars wrote a Braille of blind chance across the heavens. Vandals had stoned the park lamps, pulling the constellations closer to a darkness that ranged inviolate among trees stamped like thunderheads against the bright cityscape. “Hold up.” Taima clung to Leon, and they both stopped on the street corner before the pitch-black entry to the park. “Too wild in there at night."

  "It's all right.” Noel's pale raiment floated into blackness. “We need someplace private to talk. You said you wanted to talk. Right?"

  "Yeah.” Leon danced in place, throwing nervous glances, looking for the maniacal baseheads and gang thugs that worked this street at night. “But we don't wanna get rolled."

  "We won't.” Noel lifted the obol, and the dark around it breathed with luck and a faint, amethyst aura. “My scent keeps hostiles at bay. Except for you, Leon. I guess because we're genetically identical. Sorry I had to hurt you."

  "Your scent?” Leon flexed his fist, which still felt numbed. “You know you don't make sense?"

  "I know.” Noel cocked his head minutely. “Come on."

  They sat at a picnic table under clotted stars and murky whey of city lights, and Noel quietly began his story. “In December 1901, a German investment group, Telefunken SenderSysteme Berlin, paid for Guglielmo Marconi to set up a receiver station in Newfoundland. With that equipment, Marconi listened to three short clicks three times—a Morse code signal for S ... S ... S transmitted across the Atlantic without wires. It changed the world, because it proved radio transmissions could travel over the horizon. Not long afterward, a British physicist, Oliver Heaviside, postulated the existence of a layer of ionized air in the upper atmosphere that reflects radio signals—the Heaviside layer, now called the ionosphere."

  Even by star-glimmer, Noel saw them peering at him like he was a head case.

  "That signal reached the nearest galaxy two million years later.” Noel let that compute. “An advanced communication system heard it and knew immediately that this planet had evolved an intelligent species. But by then humanity was long extinct."

  "Extinct?” Incomprehension knotted Leon's stubby eyebrows. “We're still here."

  "He's from the future, Leon.” Taima's expression went placid, sure and nearly prophetic as she fit together the fact of Leon's twin with the jade coin that had so easily purchased all the memories of her soul. “Who are you? Why do you look like Leon?"

  Noel wanted them to understand. In their world run amok, any explanation was better than none, even if they misconstrued it. So, he told them about the Contexture that had designed all the membrane universes, each brane a memory card in a cosmic computer contrived to process in hyperspace a program beyond human comprehension. He labored to explain how each brane unpacked its own circuitry out of fundamental forces and elements to produce microprocessing units: brains capable of complex metacognitive functions. To locate and properly nurture these brains among the branes, the Contexture “listened” for early signals from DNA—barcode pulses of biogenerated photons—but the “listening device” in the Milky Way had malfunctioned, and the Contexture didn't—wouldn't—learn about humans and cetaceans for over two million years, not until S ... S ... S arrived at Andromeda.

  He had begun his account of Heavinside when something like a giant rainbow of cigarette smoke swirled open soundlessly alongside the picnic table. Leon and Taima leaped up shouting.

  "What is that?” Leon scampered backward.

  Taima knew, and she moved toward it, eyes stark, fingers vibrating.

  "Taima—no!” Noel yelled and stumbled getting up from the picnic bench.

  Leon lunged for her, spun her around by her arm and toppled backward. He flopped into the zero portal, face a silent yelp, and vanished with a sizzling pop gentle as a soda can snapping open.

  * * * *

  In the glassy air, nimbus clouds float like pieces of light. Leon rouses to silken quietude and a lavender fragrance of chaparral sage. Thoughts stand in him tranquil as blue flames: Love is my kingdom, mystery the boundary mountains far away—and the longing to cross. But not yet, that secret joy....

  "It's all right.” A scent sweet as sawdust and lonely as an empire of rain sits him up, and he faces a young woman whose Asian eyes, indolent and wise, shine with rapture in a sphinx face of animal magic, tawny, flat-nosed, her Nubian mouth carved for enigma. “Everything is all right now."

  "Who—"

  "I am Ny'a, Noel's templet.” She eases him to his feet, one strong hand under his arm, and stands back, a tall, athletic woman with black-blue hair loosely braided to her waist in saffron ribbons, tunic pleated indigo and pressed mauve against her concupiscent contours. Under a lucent vault of heaven, ponderosas toss sunlight and wind. “Welcome to Heavinside."

  The child in him weeps at the beauty. “How ... I don't understand what...."

  Ny'a's look of tangible concern shushes him. “Your treemerge will explain everything. Give it a day or two."

  "My what?"

  "Didn't Noel tell you about the treemerges?” Confusion frills her words. “He said he'd start with that.” The creases across her brow rinse away as she figures out, “Something happened."

  Leon's legs feel unstrung, and he sits down and gazes off into the sky itself, the well in his heart full of echoes. He's from the future, Leon. “Taima...."

  Ny'a squats in front of him, and the sky in her black eyes lights a shining path straight into his heart. “Tell me what happened."

  He hears himself entranced, as in a heroin bubble, recounting everything, every detail, like a child unsure what's important. When he's done, she stands and meanders off toward the great avenues of trees. He scrambles to scurry after. “You sending me back?"

  "Can't.” Ny'a shrugs. “Sierra Tree isn't a travel agency."

  "Who's Sierra Tree?"

  "Phonetic alphabet.” Her words go soft, spiritless. “Letter S three times—the first radio signal. The Contexture is like that. It builds from what it's given. That's why Modern English in Saille. It's different elsewhere."

  "The computer thing.” Leon puffs to keep up. “Noel says people are like in a computer."

  "When we sleep, we go online and process pieces of whatever program the Contexture is running in hyperspace.” She talks like a sleeper. “It's the Bosom."

  "Bosom—you mean, like breasts?"

  "Sleep is the place of purpose. All else is goalless.” She faces him with taxidermy eyes. “Fun."

  "This Contexture—Sierra Tree....” He hops a buttress root as they enter the treeline. “Can I talk with it?"

  "You already are. Design managers hear and see everything in Saille."

  "I gotta go back!” He starts talking loudly to the trees. “Taima and me ... we're tight. We got plans. I can't leave her like this."

  "Noel will watch after her."

  "And what? You're watching after me?"

  "No. Your treemerge will take care of you."

  "What about you?"

  She continues in her defeated voice, not stopping, not looking at him. “The treemerge—that's home now. It will provide everything you want to know."

  "No, I mean, you.” He jumps ahead and turns to confront those eyes showing damage. “I don't wanna learn from a tree. I wanna learn from you."

  "I'm sorry, Leon.” She shakes her head no, moves on. “There's been a mistake. I can't be with you."

  "A mistake? In this place?” His tone sneers, like a throw-down challenge. “What kind of hamsters are these design managers?"

  Ny'a just keeps walking.

  * * * *

  Night hoisted Orion into the sky. Noel marveled at its fidelity to the image his treemerge had implanted. Two million years of stardrift, a glyph in the
dark....

  "You listening to me?” Taima glared, livid. “Leon is gone!"

  "This is Errth. It's a world of accidents.” Noel lowered an inconsolable twinkle, eyes brimming. “I thought I thought of everything.” He regarded the obol, and it looked really small.

  "Oh, God!” Taima grabbed his arm. “Come on!"

  Noel followed her alarmed gaze. A mongrel gang loomed out of the night, eight wild boys with twisted hair or bald, half naked or clad in remnant leather. They came on with headlong intent, leaning into their stride. He met their burnt, mad dog stares blandly, and they staggered to a stop, stumbling into one another. As if death's racehorse had abruptly reared out of the night behind Noel, they scattered, veering swiftly into the dark.

  Taima watched after them with a jangled stare. “What just happened?"

  "They got a whiff of me.” He returned his attention to the obol. “It's something I ate."

  Weighted with shock and lunacy, she lowered herself onto a picnic bench. The night flowed in.

  Noel heaved a haggard sigh, stood and thumbed the obol into his pocket. “Leon is going to be all right."

  "No, he's not.” Taima twisted at the shoulders to show him a face congested with emphatic sorrow and bitterness. “He's not with me."

  He sat down again. “You're right.” And added in a plummeting whisper, “I'm sorry."

  Taima rocked softly. Noel lifted his gaze to the stars, sullen and mute, and thought of Kragh and his barking laugh. Errth is no place for emotional fools. Errth belonged to El—and if El had any design at all on Errth it had to be teaching people to live profoundly free, independent of all designs—including El. No El.

  "So, what's it like for Leon?” She didn't look at him and sat slack, bottomed out. “Will he be happy where you come from?"

  He smiled up at Orion. “Oh, yes.” Inhaling a deep lungful of Errth's industrial night, he added, “Heavinside is about fulfillment—right to the final secret joy."

  "Yeah?” She slid him a skeptical squint. “So why did you get out?"

  "Compassion. I thought I could help. No one disagreed.” He shrunk around a wounded silence, then added, “Except for Ny'a."

  "Your woman?"

  "And more.” Another hypnotic moment closed on him. “Something beyond gender."

  "Soulmate."

  "Something like that."

  "That was Leon and me. We had plans. Bigger than what beat us down.” Her lips began moving without sound, finally whispered, “Ny'a will take care of him?"

  "No.” That syllable opened an abyss he wasn't ready to peer into, and he touched the obol through the fabric of his pocket. “He won't need Ny'a. Heavinside has a place for him. I'm his clone ... his twin—"

  "I know what a clone is. Like that sheep that was its own mother.” She studied him openly. In the dark, a tendon seemed to flex between her eyes, reason and madness wrestling in her. “You look just like Leon. It's spooky. Is there a clone of me in heaven's side, too?"

  "Maybe. There are a lot of clones.” He met her appraising eyes, let her brave his ill-begotten mirror-likeness of her love and speculated when the misery of her loss would truly kick in. “I am sorry about Leon. I...."

  Vaporous rainbows spun under the trees, and Taima leaped up. “Leon!” Before Noel could stop her, she rushed at that whorl of prismatic gas and collided with a tall, imposing woman who grabbed her arms, twirled and tossed Taima into the zero portal.

  * * * *

  Cirrus clouds weave the blue sky like spider's silk. In a Matisse landscape of gorse slopes and jutting boulders, giant, bristle-bough trees parry the wind. Taima and Leon descend from that timberland holding hands, wading through alpine flowers. “It's not heaven's side, baby.” Leon speaks in a jacked up rush of shared joy. “It's Heavinside, heaven and inside mashed together. It's like Noel said, the Contexture named stuff here to honor our first radio signal, our shout out to the cosmos. Heaviside was one of the scientists who figured out radio, so this world's name plays off that. And it's a clue to what's really going down here, on the inside. You'll see for yourself when you catch some Zs later. That forest back there? That's Morse Woods after Samuel Morse who invented the telegraph. And Sierra Tree—the Morse signal Marconi received? That's the design managers’ tag. The managers keep things running smooth in Heavinside, but they're not really human. They're like pieces of dreams. You'll see."

  "Whoa, baby.” Taima hugs him. “Slow down.” His solidity assures her she isn't dreaming. The air furls with seed confetti and dandelion parasols. “I'm happy to see you, too. I thought I'd lost you."

  He nibbles her earlobe then smiles deeper than she's ever seen him smile. “Sierra Tree stepped up when I pointed out it was their sorry asses messed up. They are not down with messes."

  She touches him with a mischievous grin. “Then how are we supposed to fit in?"

  "We're not screw-ups no more, Taima. That's all in the past—like two million years past. Look around!” Sunlight marches cloud shadows over rhododendron fields and evergreen vales. Cascades weave rainbows and thread rivulets and brooks across pastures of purple asters and through dwarf pine parkland. Crimson and yellow gliders turn and turn in the deep blue on updrafts from the canyons, and silver dhows with solar sails glide upstream. “It's all hang time here, baby. No work. No sickness. No getting old."

  "And babies?"

  Leon turtles his head back in mock dismay. “You still on about that?"

  "Well?"

  "We got to get you a meal.” He steers her with an arm about her shoulders, continuing their pathless descent toward green gorges and ribbon waterfalls. “True story. Been here three days. Learned everything from the food."

  Eyebrows go high. “The food?"

  "Yeah! Look—see those trees?” He pauses and chin-points to remote hilltops crowned with solitary baobabs and banyans, stupendous arbors of stout girth. “They're treemerges, like from jamming tree and emerge, because everything we need emerges from them. One of those treemerges is ours. It was Noel's, but it's designed just for me, because he was my clone. Clones are anamnestics, which means something that's remembered. He was a memory of me, so this treemerge is mine. And it's yours now, too. You know that keychain you made for me with your hair? I gave it to the treemerge. Now it's wise to everything about you. The vitamins you need. The food you like. What makes you laugh. Everything."

  She watches gusts of emerald finches careen through the limpid air. “Sounds scary."

  "Not as scary as the street. There is no street here. The whole world's a tree park. It's designed for the satisfaction of simians.” He slaps his chest ape-like. “That's what we are. You know that?"

  "What if we want to get around, go someplace else?” A dragonfly zips past, bound for sparkling streams and paradisal fords. “I always wanted to see Paris."

  "There is no Paris.” They walk together, rubbing ribs. “But in a world without heartbreak, who needs Paris?"

  * * * *

  Unparalleled Universe

  In the glassy air, nimbus clouds floated like pieces of light. “I'm cold.” Ny'a pressed tighter against Noel. Their first night on Errth, sharing a park bench, they hadn't talked much, already understanding each other. The future was their past. They had eaten of the Tree—he to protect and provide for himself in place of his doppel, she to know the Errth taking him from her. What lay ahead, they carried in memory, every bend and swerve of this tragic worldline that fettered events to the history of their future. They knew what shame hid behind the hands that covered the clock's cryptic face. No understanding, no intelligence could unclasp those hands. Only deeds, mortal acts, might force them open. Then, the worldline would unfurl to a worldsheet, a tapestry of many possible histories.

  Those for whom the future is a memory can't speak of mortal acts intended to deny what cannot not be. The design managers had warned them. Words are actions, neural activity whose light cones not only illuminate the worldsheet but also expand into the worldvolume entangling other w
orldsheets, strange ones that often befoul spoken intent. So, they had cuddled together silently on the park bench until daylight.

  Steel and glass monoliths of the city, in the dark some kind of radiant code, now appeared for what they really were, solid geometry, congruent as a honeycomb. “And I'm hungry."

  Noel eased her off his shoulder and dug into his pocket. “You have your obol."

  She blinked lazily at the polished jade hoarding sunlight between Noel's fingers. “I can use it here?"

  "Why not?"

  As soon as she took it, its resonance cavities, tuned precisely to the quantum antennae of her DNA, replenished her cells with energy drawn from the vacuum current of spacetime. Her chest rose with a gratified inhalation, and those bituminous eyes brightened to wistful clairvoyance. “What about you?"

  "I came here for the mortal dangers.” He nudged her with his elbow. “But I didn't expect I'd have to share them."

  She fixed on him without humor. “You must be hungry."

  "I am."

  "How will you eat?"

  He could tell she already knew. This was the turning point. That was why he had waited till morning to return her obol. He knew that the instant her strength returned she would want action. She had forsaken Heavinside for him. Now, in every direction, danger beckoned. They would live as wolves or not live at all. She needed him, Mister Compassion, to say it aloud. “I will take from the strongman."

  "I'll help you."

  "Never doubted."

  They got up and prowled the park. Turtles approached, mistaking him for Leon, and he swept them aside, scanning for dopeslingers. The treemerge had fed them stories and strategies for this epoch, yet they knew almost nothing about Leon—only what he had confided to Noel outside the Cuban-Chinese restaurant. If Taima had not come after him ... if he had returned directly to Heavinside with the obol and not lingered to explain....

  "Talk to me,” Taima had insisted. In neon shadows, her fevered scowl had slewed toward tears. “We didn't ask for any of this. You found us. And that jade you dropped on Leon screwed with us. Then you show up to take it back and you hurt him. You can't just walk away now."