Electric Forest (16 page)

She became aware, then, of the other things, as if through the medium of the dress. Somehow, she had not
noted them before, as if their incongruity had made them invisible. Or perhaps she had not wanted to see.

To see the additional dresses lying shredded in an oddly structured almost ornamental trail between the
kitchen and the raised closet. To see a broken vase, splintered against the mahogany stem of the
contrachorda. To see the bolsters
disemboweled
of their golden embroidery birds. One of the pneumatics
had been melodramatically stabbed. Its entrails, too, spilled on the ground.

While she had lain unconscious, Claudio had returned, had taken up his own chosen knife, and loosed his
own frenzy with it. She recalled the night at Sugar Beach when he had searched her hotel room for the micro-recorder--the slashed coverings, the deflated chairs.

She recollected hanging from the window, sixty meters above the beach, in his arms.

He was mad, and she had known it almost from the beginning. But why this thing, this foolhardy daylight
re-crossing of the island, this ecstasy of ripping and rending that seemed to have been inspired by her own
isolated (but also insane?) action with the knife.

Share it with me,
he had said.
My hate for Christophine.

She understood quite suddenly. And, in the second of understanding, the ultimate confirmation came from the night and the holostetic forest.

The soft roar of a car, and the roar dying.
And a little pause.

Down in the garage, where Claudio had left the elevator at his departure, doors opened with an infinitesimal
hum. She might have imagined it.

But not the whisper of the car as it drove forward and

shut itself off. Not the whisper of the elevator as it flew up into the bungalow. Not the crisp tap of
Christophine's first footfall.

Ill

This was the core of the nightmare.

To he, body and face pressed to a transparent dense nothing, staring downward. Severed from reality, yet
hopelessly snared in it. As yet unfound, unknown. But vulnerable, accessible. To be reached in five seconds by the ascending elevator. And nowhere to hide. No method of evasion.

And mesmerized. Transfixed.

Look in the mirror. The mirror image assumes an actuality of its own. It emerges from the mirror. It lives.
Below, in the crystalline tank, the sumptuous fish swam through its world, thinking itself unique.

Magdala panted as she lay on the dense transparent nothing. She gripped at the nothing with her hands. All
over her she was aware of Christophine's lingerie, her
woolen
dress, her shoes. And by her cheek, heavy
silk, grown from her skull, Christophine's hair. And looking through their lids,
Christophine s eyes.

Christophine del Jan, entering the bungalow, had paused. Seen as she was from above, she was

undisclosed, save by stance and gesture. The pause demonstrated that she had noted immediately the

wreckage in the room. Yet somehow the lines of her, as she began to move again, did not suggest fear; not
even surprise.

She walked directly to the kitchen area, stepping lightly and accurately, without fuss, over the torn

garments. The navy blue head was turned. She examined the kitchen, and came out. The bathroom was

next.

Christophine was searching for the intruder.

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... I sent her a stelex. Claudio
.is in Saint Azoro.

Presumably she had gone to trace him, as Claudio had said. Not succeeding, she had come back. And now,
could she tell this was the work of Claudio? Claudio, the only enemy who could break in at the locked door
and leave his claw marks within, disappearing like smoke for he was gone. She had checked the
bathroom. She had checked everywhere, and now stood for a moment, motionless.

Her body gave no sign. She did not glance upward. But she must think of the solarium.

Magdala had not yet seen into her face. The foreshortened frame was threatening, but the face the face
was the last terrible fragment of the nightmare. While Christophine did not raise her head, Magdala could endure. She could pretend, if she wished, that Christophine had the face of someone else.

Christophine began to walk, leisurely, meditatively, toward the elevator shaft. Christophine walked into the cage, out of sight.

Magdala waited for the whisper of the elevator, rising. She could not unglue herself, however, from the
f
l
oor of the solarium. She did not believe the plants could conceal her. They were Christophine's plants.

She lay plastered to the paving, which had already dried itself after the rain, lay like a rug for Christophine
to tread on. If Magdala kept her head pressed to the paving, her eyes tight shut-Christophine might drop
dead before she reached her. Or Indigo might revolve from its orbit. Too late. Christophine remained the
original. Alpha. Omega.

The whisper of the elevator did not come. Instead, Christophine reappeared from the shaft. This time she

carried a traveling bag, which she placed by the raised closet near the bed. With a leisured slovenliness, she began to remove her clothing, letting it fall on to the ground, just as the torn dress, bolsters, vase, had been
allowed to fall.

Naked, a blur of warm whiteness, she opened the bag and
110

drew out a lounge robe of maroon velvon, scattering other items as willfully as her clothes.

Pressing together the edges of the robe, she touched the button panel next to the south wall. The closet did
not sink, but a polarized bubble arose, packed with bottles and goblets. Christophine poured herself a drink.
She tilted her head slightly, stylized, as she drank, but not enough so that Magdala could really see her.

The goblet was like the glassware belonging to Claudio, expensive and fragile, as the broken vase had been.

And with an easy nonchalant swing, Christophine tossed the glass against the southern window-wall, and the glass smashed.

The performance was explicit and effective: Destruction of any sort leaves me unscathed. For I too can
destroy.

The man-made bones in Magdala's spine clicked together as a frantic wincing ran down the whole length of
her.

Still stretched on the solarium paving, she watched Christophine move to the contrachorda, button lift the lids and the section of strings and operate the tuning device.

Far off as bells beneath the earth, the notes of the instrument, birthed, failing, born again.

Soon, Christophine, in her maroon robe, seated herself before the contrachorda and began to play.

Curiously, she played music which Magdala knew. Sadres' "Variations on a Theme by Prokofiev" pierced
up through the ceiling-floor like silver wires and thin crystalline rods. They sewed into the solarium, sewed
in and out of Magdala's ears and womb. The plants seemed to tremble as the fine needles went through and
through them, magically not scoring their leaves. A web of percussion was spun from wall to wall. And
Magdala, the fly caught in the web, rather than paralysis, felt herself impelled to get to her feet.

She arrived at the elevator head, tranced, and pushed the

third button on the panel.

Christophine went on playing, her back to the shaft.

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She expected Claudio. She was spinning the music for Claudio.
Magdala was in the falling elevator.

Five seconds later, she was deposited inside the octagon.

Above, the ceiling was an opaque cobalt lid over the oneway seeing eye of the solarium. Across the wide space, Christophine at the contrachorda, back turned, faceless, playing even now.

Then through the surge and pulse of the music, Christophine spoke.

"Did you reckon on shocking me? I'm not very shockable, my dear. You should know. I checked out the stelex because I like to be thorough, but I never thought I'd find you that way. It had to be something like this childish, with the cunning and inventiveness of a child. I'll admit, I'm intrigued as to how you got
through the security check-posts without a current print and voice-match. Some gadget? Always so
amazing with the gadget. But, yes, you have been rather wonderful. You have everything on the boil. But
really, Claudio, you can't expect to have me on the boil, too.**

And merging upward, shadow upon shadow, from the keyboard, Christophine reversed herself to confront the threshold of the elevator shaft.

Magdala stood, as if vitrified, the onslaught already upon her in the fraction of a second before it occurred, already preparing her, embalming her. Verity was no more frightful than her dread had forecast.

But for Christophine, apparently, no forecast had been accomplished, despite her words.

It was not that she did anything, said anything. In fact, it was as if she came to a standstill inside herself,
and everything lifelike seemed to slide away. She had been changed to some brittle frosted substance. A
breath, and she might shatter, like her glass.

The iridescent blue neon eyes did not blink, because a blink would fracture them, and shards of sapphire
would sprinkle the floor.

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Tin the real one,
Magdala thought, but the thought made her shudder.

Then Christophine drew in her breath. And did not break.

"You're not a holostet, I can see that. You must be the real thing. The genuine article. Where does it say it?
Is it stamped between your breasts? Where does it say:
Claudia Loro built me?

Magdala felt her awareness of identity pass. Everything passed. The world passed. All that was left was
Christophine.

6. In the Forests of the Night

i

"And where is he?"

Magdala did not answer.

Christophine had faultlessly re-assembled herself. Unnecessarily, cogently, she elaborated. "I refer to
Claudio. Where is Claudio?"

"Somewhere on the island."

"You can do better than that."

"I can't." It would not hurt Magdala to betray the hated man, but she could not, for in this too, he had left her in ignorance. Which decreed she must instead frustrate the hated woman,

Hate Christophine. Did Magdala hate her? Magdala became conscious that her face had borrowed the
frigid and ordered rictus of Christophine's while Christophine's gestures were being reflexively
communicated to her own shoulders, fingers, torso.

She could not take her eyes off Christophine. Christophine dominated her vision. Everything. The angle of
the head, the slender muscles flickering in her arms as she moved her hands. The white neck, pollen-dusted
by its

freckles, the hair, the leaf blue irises. To copy was inevitable. It was a mirror. It was herself. Now she
could see it all as it truly was.

"And your actual body," Christophine said casually and appositely, in Magdala's own voice, "where is that?"
It was difficult to believe there was another body. It always had been difficult.

'With Claudio," Magdala said. It did not really trouble her now. It was like being asked where she had put her purse, or her jacket.

"I see. A hostage. He doesn't trust you completely then. Why not?"

Magdala stood in silence, watching Christophine. Watching how the waves of hair lay level on the shoulders of the maroon robe, but shifting, one by one, a sea at night.

"Yes," Christophine said. Her tone was harsh. "It's fascinating, isn't it? One should feel threatened, but somehow one does not. Sublimation, perhaps? Yet no fear. That's odd. Maybe Claudio knew it would be
this way. But this way is more treacherous than any other. So tell me. Why did you agree to it?"

"Agree?" Magdala spoke deliberately,
exactly
as Christophine finished speaking. The voices seemed to
overlap. The same voice, blending.

"Agree to jettison your own identity and take on mine? Astrads?"