Transcendence (52 page)

“
Also lonely and sad.”

“
Afraid and hopeless.”

“
Harsh, anxious, careless, hardened—”

“
We have not been hardened.”

“
In him, for a time.”

“
You mean the scene. Right. Hard is sometimes. The oyster shell must be hard sometimes, at least during its duration in the world outside here, at least before entering.”

“
Hateful, self-pitying.”

“
Withdrawn.”

“
Unimaginative, uncreative, unexcitable, uninquisitive, unintelligent.”

“
Unlikeable, unkind.”

“
But it is not all the dust and sand of emotional demolition; now the pearl.”

Again the sphere that was once a city, a landscape, a sea of islands in the mist; the sphere appears, glowing opalescent, veined with experience, dense with memory and emotion, alive with love and hate and hope and dreams; the pearl packed inside with smaller pearls:

One night with Megan, asleep perfect beside me, her every breath priceless, the room quiet and twilit, dust tracing the paths of aircar headlights as they pass and shine through the window;
I can’t say in words how much I loved her that moment
.

“
But I understand.”

“
Yes, of course.”

At the end of a long day’s sweating in tight-fitting pressure suits, we sit down at the table we had made from a cable spool. Jon Pang and I. We hear then-just-Mister Dorei, later President Dorei, seal the inner airlock door to the pressure vessel. Pang unclasps his helmet and pulls it off, then wipes his stubbly head with gloveless hands, showing me the sweat. The great scientist laborer. He laughs, I laugh. The lighting comes from a single light-emitting gas-tube, leaning against one wall. The walls were antiseptically clean when they left Earth years ago, but now they are stained, and in one place a hand-shaped clump of gear grease stands up like bas-relief, an artifact of passing humanity. Pang has a wonderful smile. He looks at you when you speak, smiles at lame jokes, speaks from his heart whenever the occasion for such talk arises. Mister Dorei removes his own helmet, nods to us, steps through the room to another, where he falls immediately into a snore so loud Pang says it must rattle his teeth. We speak long into the night, well beyond the point where fatigue should put us to sleep, but it is like now.
It is a pearl, you see
.

“
This is a pearl.”

“
They are all pearls.”

“
Even the bad ones?”

“
I think especially the bad ones.”

“
They make you stronger.”

“
The black ones make you appreciate the shiny pearls. I think we are pearls as well as oysters. But when I think, it all falls away. See?”

The inside of the globe is again awash in sheets of mist.

“
But watch, I know how to make it come back right away.”

And there it is, billions of motionless instances of Pehr Jacksons and Liu Mirus, each the mote of a moment, and billions of others intersecting their lives like a great cloud of pearly dust.
But I cannot see beyond the moment of them; they are not part of the pearl
.

“
But for a moment.”

“
A moment’s pearl is perhaps more beautiful than all these,” Pehr says, stretching his hands to include the countless scenes floating around them.

“
Yes, but they are each moments. They are the same, only more numerous.”

He and he, I and I feel the warmth of pure camaraderie, sitting here side by side, overlooking our lives. Now that the emotional crush of hidden memory has faded a bit, the scenes begin to pass like friendly vessels filled with familiar faces, telling familiar stories, some sad, some glorious. The need to escape has passed.
I feel nothing here but the desire to drink this forever. Why did I want to escape? I’ll tell you why: There will be no more pearls added to this wealth if we stay forever. Also, we must spread the word, we must tell the whole of our people about this; there is nothing ever or will be as important. Can you imagine—?

And then something alien and ugly impinges on the serenity and purity of the myriad landscape-city. A body kicks and shakes its limbs and screams and loses its bowels. It is naked, and just then Pehr and Liu realize they, too, are naked. They simply hadn’t noticed until now, when the newcomer’s nudity glares like something as ugly as a dead whale carcass bounding along the sandy bottom of the sea.

“
Eyes!” Pehr shouted. All was darkness again, except for the two of them and the intruder.

“
How did he get here?” Miru asked. He turned away from the seemingly drowning man, rather distant from them, and frowned as he questioned Pehr. He knew Eyes now as if he’d known him as long as Pehr had.

“
I don’t know.” Pehr watched the man kick and scream suddenly not the new man he was a moment ago.
Where have the pearls of wisdom gone? What do I do?

“
What are you doing here
. . .
Lonny,” he asked.

The flailing man continued to scream and cry and kick. Then his screams rose in pitch until the man mutated into a ball, a bundle of skin and hair and cramped scenes that would not separate, mangling themselves as they writhed to separate, a boy with red streaks of blood up and down his arms as an older man,
Daddy, that’s Daddy, what’s Daddy doing with the scalpel? I don’t want the arms, Daddy, why do you cut why do you kiss why do you push the icy-cold steel against the skin; oh it burns it’s so hotcold
—

Salty and copper blood as I and he and they crash against the
No, no! I can’t show you fucking goddamn you; a tall man with a retro top hat, Not retro you see, manycarded assimilator; Oh, yes, what a setup; 3000 BWs complete 3VRD, 100 simultaneous
—

Pluck my strings, in a feedbar a young girl straddling my leg, her crotch so hot and damp on my pantleg;
No dear, no sweetums, I’m the one who asks; smoke fills the air, cough, thank you Daddy, I can’t stop going to you Daddy, but the lungs, the lungs yes they make the air taste like wine, but they hurt in the smoke, they burn in the noontime smog; smoke of hashish—Who’s the retro? I’ll give you retro, but the thick muscles on his arms pulse and the 3VRD tattoos flicker as he swings at the chromed steel barrail he thinks is me; Ha-ha-ha! Here’s a program to make you taste glass for the first time
—

Again a jarring sceneshift, but not shift at all, they overlap and swirl together, mists clogging the actions of the boy who sits in the middle of his living room watching Daddy with a dozen other men on the floor, Daddy taking little parts of their skin they don’t notice the skin gone pinky wet on the bottom pale on top,
Oh Daddy it stinks; Daddy can’t you hear me? can’t you hear me? can’t you hear me?
—

Slam another scene, now his and my and their heads throbbing,
Stop it Lonny, you’re hurting yourself, you’re hurting us; you to relax and flow who you are to us here. Blast! Do you know what he did to me and you? Of course, I saw your whole past, brother Pehr. Of course. Shut up and get the fuck out of my head!

“
See him fall apart,” I say.
Who am I? I am I
.

Eyes is a crackling sphere within the larger sphere of I and I. Eyes is compact, hiding, the landscape of his life crumpled into a ball that cracks and disperses in pain we spectrasense.

The screaming, the pain, oh yes we feel it too.

*Help me,* young Lonny pleads. He is the youngest Eyes—not vindictive. He is suddenly different, you can feel it. I don’t hate him, how can I hate him. I never hated him, only pity. Janus hated him. Is Janus still alive?

*Eyes, what happened to Janus?*

And
crash
, Eyes peels open with the sound of a tree shattering from a lightning bolt.

*I’m so sorry Cap’n Jack; no, she’s still alive sleepwalking to the city, you see? I see. I’m so sorry, so sorry Daddy—*

Another scream. I and I nearly shatter, I can feel myself weaker every moment, what is a moment here? it is eternal, oh god don’t make me feel this eternally.

*See inside me? Why did I follow you, why did I go inside the arcade? Look at me, help me. Help me Cap’n Jack!*

I see his sad boy eyes and it is real, here everything is real, but then the boy shatters and out spew landscape upon landscape, but they’re too tightly bound angry terrified together to see clearly.

*You’ve got to show yourself for me to help you,* I say.

*You can’t see in me. I’m scared. I can’t let anyone see. I’m sorry.* He’s still soft, but rotting-soft. I and I see that.

Another explosion, and the landscapes each rip open, some unseen hand pulling away the bark of Lonny Marshfield—He’s not an oyster; I see he’s not, he’s a rotten tree.
I’m sick inside, yes, help me! Help me!

The bark falls away, baring the core.
Oh, god
, out spill shiny black beetles and grubworms and termites, red ants and maggots and cockroaches, the pulpy mush that was once wood, bored full of holes for insects to travel and eat, eat me away inside,
Yes right, I put you there; it can’t support the rest of the tree, starting to tip; see how it wasn’t always sick? See the sapling within?

A boy again, the sad-eyed one. Walking intheflesh with Mommy and Real-Daddy along the ocean.
We live in Boston, see the glass gleaming skyline? No smog here, no, we keep our city clean!—I listen to my edufeed: We use only electrics in Boston, fellow Citizens! No, stop that, that doesn’t belong here
; Mommy and Daddy and I are walking, beetles creeping scrabbling along underfoot—no, not here; the scene stabilizes.

Mommy and Daddy and I intheflesh on a woodgrain plastic dockway that lines the ocean, smelling of salt and fish and garbage, but that’s not Boston’s garbage; Mommy tall and slender with slack face flat breasts, and Daddy tall and slender with sleek hands kind eyes, always those eyes that looked at me as if they saw something beautiful, even though I am not a pretty boy, see? but Mommy watches me with her tight lips, her eyes sometimes smiling at Daddy; I am eight, yes eight; Daddy’s eyes smiling at me; and thundercrack, ten thousand fragments of sharp steel whistle through the air, the bomb shatters the storefronts that face the ocean and the woodgrain plastic dockway; screams and bellows and laughter, yes even laughter though it is not mine; no, my voice cries
Daddy! Daddy!
Daddy with the crying chest and stomach, crying red tears and Mommy’s eyes large with terror and two hours later with rage;
Boy, why did it have to be him and not you? What will I do with a boy when all I wanted was my Glen?

Daddy smiling even as his chest and stomach wept blood, oh I couldn’t cry because Mommy cried enough for a thousand boys to cry, but inside I know it is my fault, later she tells me so; from then on I know it’s true; see Mommy? See how I play Daddy? Daddy with the beautiful hands that sew up people’s flesh intheflesh when bombs shatter storefronts, only who will sew up the surgeon’s wounds when the surgeon is dead? I am Daddy, see me as Daddy? See me, Mommy, as I make the incision? no you don’t, because I know you are with Grandma, old fart-stinking Grandma on the farm with no feed server, I don’t need you, I don’t need Grandma, I don’t even need Real-Daddy because New-Daddy is here with me, he and the feedrapture man whom I program to be Other-Daddy, and though Other-Daddy hurts me sometimes I deserve it, right Mommy? yes I will be New-Daddy; see how I know where to cut? see Mommy? see how I am punished for not dying? Will you love me now? Why does this disgust you; I thought you wanted Daddy back. Where are you Mommy? Mommy? Daddy!

And the scream rises in pitch until it shatters and the scene dissolves into mist.

“
Let me help you!” I and I cry, I want to save the boy from the man, but he pulls farther away, the boy gone now and only the mask of another, older boy and New-Daddy and Other-Daddy who are not Daddy who is dead; who is dead? I had forgotten all this, oh it was gone but now it is returned, it burns. . . .

“
Oh, god, it hurts.”

“
How do we help him?”

“
You can’t be afraid, Lonny,” I and I say.

And now I can sense it, he is at the critical turning-point, he’s revealed himself beyond the barrier of oyster-shell or tree-bark; yes, tree-bark, since his shell was destroyed in the blast, he never tried to rebuild, or couldn’t; how was he different? This is the turning-point, can’t you feel it? the point when he’s fully aware of his uncoveredness.