“May I help?” Nola asked.
“Oh, no, I like to cook. It relaxes me.” Yasmin reached toward the dispenser, pulled some carrots from it, and went back to chopping, wielding her blade forcefully. Yasmin wore no Bond; she had said that no one in the settlement did. Nola, eyes stinging from the onions, looked away from Yasmin’s chubby Bondless wrist.
“I’m sorry,” Yasmin said suddenly. Her cleaver clattered against the block. “You came here to see Mischa.” Before Nola could protest, the other woman had taken her arm gently and drawn her back through the large room to the front door. The door opened. “See that house over there?” Yasmin pointed. “That one, the one that looks like a yurt. That’s his house. He’s probably there now. Go ahead, I won’t have anything ready for a while.”
Nola hesitated, then walked outside. The scent of Yasmin’s lilac trees was thick; Earth was a place of strong odors. She had followed Mikhail Vilny to this lush, disturbing place, and she was no longer sure that she wanted to see him. She turned her head. The village was surrounded by a low stone wall; its rusty iron gate was unlocked, as if the people here had nothing to fear. A turret of stone stood near the center of the settlement.
Nola lingered at the edge of the dirt road, then began to walk toward Mikhail’s house. It stood away from the curving road, about one hundred meters from Yasmin’s home. Its curved sides were made of wood; the thatched roof perched on the house like a pointed hat. A path through the weedy lawn led past a rose garden to the door. She gazed at the budding bushes and remembered the roses he had grown on Luna, white and fat, with stems almost as tall as trees, blooms open to the artificial light. There had been no thorns in those rosebushes. She reached out for a pink bud, then withdrew her hand.
She climbed the two front steps, knocked, and waited. The door opened and she saw him.
Mikhail was the same. His reddish-brown hair was longer, his face a little rounder. His blue eyes stared straight at her; he was one of the few men from Earth whom she knew who was as tall as she.
“Nola.” He smiled when he said it. He was happy to see her. Her relief made her unable to speak for a moment.
“Mikhail.” She did not know what else to say. She kept her hands behind her back, pressed against the bottom of her spine.
“Did you come here just to see me?”
“Yes. You don’t think—” She paused, and looked down at her feet. “I went to see your friend Lise Trang first. She told me you were here. I asked her to come with me, but she wouldn’t.”
“She was angry. People tell a lot of lies.”
Nola looked up. “She was also frightened. She never leaves her house. She wouldn’t let me stay there. She had a creature watching me while I was with her, an android that looked like an elf. She called it a kobold.”
Mikhail’s smile faded. “I’ve seen them. Implants tell them what to do. They’re one of the new toys the biologists are making for us. You won’t find them here.”
“Lise told me this was a death cult.” Nola spoke rapidly. “She said a man named Giancarlo Lawrence was the leader. She must be mistaken: You can’t have joined such a thing.”
Mikhail stepped back. “Please come in.”
Nola entered the house, looking around nervously at the large, darkened room. It was bare except for mats thrown on the floor, as if Mikhail were a nomad camping here. She settled herself on a mat while Mikhail pressed a button on the wall. The curtains opened; sunlight brightened the room. A bed near the wall hung from the ceiling, attached by ropes. Near it, surrounded by flat stones, a pool shimmered. Mikhail settled on a mat near her. He looked as though he was at peace; she had not expected that.
“Did you come here just to see me?” he asked again. “Or were you coming here anyway?”
“To see you, of course.”
“Perhaps that’s what you tell yourself. You once thought your life seemed empty.”
She shook her head. “That was a bad moment, a mood. Maybe your earthly ideas contaminated me.” She tried to smile.
“Are you still angry with me, Nola?”
“No.” She gazed into his eyes as she spoke. “I wanted to tell you face-to-face that I wasn’t.”
“I couldn’t have stayed. Luna isn’t for me; this is my home. I kept thinking of how hard it would be to return if I stayed away too long.”
“I understand.” The wire web supporting her body reminded her of his argument. “And I can’t stay here. It isn’t just the gravity, it’s everything else.”
“You didn’t come here just to see me.”
“But I did.”
“I don’t think so. You didn’t have to come to Earth for that. You’re looking for something else.”
“But I’m not.”
“I think you are.”
If she listened long enough, she would believe him. “Lise said this was a death cult.”
Mikhail chuckled. “She doesn’t understand. There’s no death here, only life. We have no weapons, not even many tranquilizing rods. You saw the gate—it’s not even locked, and the wall is just a boundary, not a barrier. We don’t seek death, but we don’t fear it either.”
Nola watched his face. This settlement, she thought, was only another of those groups so common here now. There were many of these cults, and not all were dangerous; most were simply foolish, at least to her way of thinking. People here seemed unable to take the world as it was. They sought to construct edifices of ideas, as if that would somehow yield a truth, and, in so doing, they lost what was already present in the world. They could look at a storm and impart some meaning to it, a purpose. Nola, riding above Earth, would see only a pattern of clouds, the product of meeting masses of air, a calm and steady eye at the center of whirling wisps.
Then why was it that Mikhail, with his new ideas, smiled, and she, with her empiricism, frowned and knew despair? When it was time to sleep, she slept, and quickly, because she knew that if she lay awake, the terrors would come, the feelings of pointlessness about a series of endless, meaningless actions, the growing conviction that life was indeed too short and that she would die after all. Mikhail was her excuse; something else had brought her here.
She tried to shake the feeling. She had come to see Mikhail. He was all right. She had nothing else to do and might as well stay here for a while.
“Are you going to stay?” he asked, echoing her thoughts.
“For a while. I was told I needed a rest. It’s difficult to argue the matter with an antagonist attached to your brain.” She gestured at her forehead, at the implant under her scalp. “Yasmin Hallal met me at the gate when I arrived. She told me I could stay with her. She has a floater in one bedroom, so I should be comfortable.”
She waited for Mikhail to invite her to stay with him, but he did not. As he rose to show her to the door, she knew at last that she had lost him.
Yasmin had invited a friend for supper. They ate at the table. Behind Yasmin, unhung abstract paintings leaned against one of the large windows.
Yasmin’s friend was a yellow-haired woman named Hilde. Hilde, like Yasmin, smiled a lot and looked pretty when she did. Without the smile, her round, plain, coarse-featured face with its large brown eyes was placid and bovine until reanimated by another smile.
“We don’t get many visitors from up there, as a rule,” Hilde said as she poured some wine.
“Actually, I’m from Luna, but I spend much of my time in upper Earthspace. I doubt I’ll be here long.”
“Well, you might want to stay.” Hilde picked at her food while Yasmin devoured hers. “Some visitors do. It’s very peaceful here.”
Nola concentrated on her food. Yasmin had served her too much. Hilde was eating very slowly, as if trying to make the dinner last as long as possible; Yasmin was already helping herself to seconds.
Hilde said, “Sometimes I think I’m ready to depart.” Her low nasal voice rose a bit. “And then I lose the feeling, and I’m caught again.”
Yasmin nodded. “I’m not read
y. When it comes, it comes.” She ran a hand through her short black hair. “Suicide wouldn’t be right.” Nola lifted her head, startled. “I’m just grateful the fear is no longer with me.”
“The fear?” Nola said.
Yasmin turned toward her. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” She hooked her stubby fingers around her wineglass. “Maybe it isn’t the same for you, you’re probably used to danger.”
Nola shrugged. “It depends. People on the moon accept some danger, and so do those on Mars, but the ones on Asgard and the Floating Bridge of Heaven and the Egg think it’s more dangerous here. They have jokes about it. They talk of earthquakes and storms and floods and wonder why all of us don’t live in space, in controlled environments with plenty of shielding.”
“I had the fear,” Yasmin said, staring past Nola. “With me, it started earlier than with most. At first, I simply made sure that I always wore a lifesuit and never went to isolated places. But soon I didn’t travel at all.” She paused to sip some wine. “Oh, I still saw some friends and went to parties, but that meant there were always a few strangers around. I began to wonder about them. Perhaps one of them was a fanatic, just waiting for a moment to strike.”
Nola turned a bit. Hilde, who must have heard the story before, was staring at her, as if waiting to see how Nola would react.
“I was living in Jeddah then,” Yasmin went on. “Once in a while, a rumor would start about unchanged people who lived in the desert, who had resumed the life of the Bedu. The story was that these people believed that by accepting immortality, we had upset the pattern of Allah. Instead of accepting God’s judgment on our lives, we had created Paradise here. The Prophet said, ‘Do not weep for your dead.’ These people went further, so it was told; they rejoiced in death. It was rumored that they sent assassins who would conceal themselves in our cities, mingling with us, choosing the people they would dispatch to the Throne of God.”
Nola kept her face still. “Often, at a party,” Yasmin continued, “someone would tell a gruesome story of bloodied bodies and severed heads, of a man with a scimitar murdering unprotected people.” Nola choked and pushed her plate away. “This kind of thing always seemed to be happening far away, or in a city by the Gulf, and whenever anyone tried to check on it, the story would fade, vanishing like a tent in a sandstorm. There were no computer records of such things, no reports, but the rumors, after a while, would circulate once more.”
Yasmin smiled. “I now think that the stories were simply a way for some to deal with our long lives. We could accept our endless existence while still believing that our judgment would come eventually. The stories weren’t lies. Those who told them believed them because they filled a purpose. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Nola replied, wishing that she did not.
“I believed them. I stopped going to the homes of my friends. I would speak to them only over the holo, and invited only those I knew well to my home. Then I began to worry. What if a friend were really a disguised assassin only waiting for the right moment? What if someone I knew had changed? Soon I was not seeing my friends. I grew afraid even to speak to them on the holo, as if they could step from the screen and crush me. It was as though some ancestral trait had been reawakened, as if I had become one of those veiled women whose worlds were bounded by the walls of their homes, but, unlike those women, I did not even have the consolations of gossip with friends, a family, or an occasional trip to the souk to buy a bauble.”
Nola lifted her wine slowly and sipped. Yasmin lowered her eyelids. “Perhaps I would still be in Jeddah if a friend had not left me a message. ‘Follow me,’ she said, ‘speak to Giancarlo Lawrence.’ I listened to Giancarlo over the holo, but it took all the courage I had to leave my home and come here. By then I was almost ready for death, just to be rid of the fear. It was such a paradox, wanting to die so the fear would leave me, while having that overwhelming fear of death itself. Giancarlo gave me back my life.” She stretched out her arms. “I went through the little death, and my fear was gone.”
Nola leaned forward. “The little death?”
“It’s only a name. You should talk to Giancarlo, Nola. I’m not good at explaining it, I’m afraid.”
Hilde began to speak of her vegetable garden, losing Nola’s attention. She knew all she had to know about this settlement. Giancarlo Lawrence was obviously some crank who had cooked up a theory and talked others into believing it. There were many such theorists; even Luna had a few, though their notions usually did not survive in that barren place and they often left for more fertile soil.
Lawrence was probably one of the harmless ones. Those who wanted a sense of community would sometimes cluster around a charismatic figure. There was lots of time to try on new ideas and see which ones fit. The fact of long life and the possibility of learning as much as one could did not seem to hold the emotional power of a closed system that seemed certain and final.
The world had wanted immortality, and that had been bestowed. What greater gift could there be? Now the biologists made only toys; she thought of Lise Trang’s android elf.
Nola gazed at the darkened window, thinking of Luna’s night and the unchanging rocky landscape of a dead world. She rarely thought of it as dead; it was eternal, a fitting home for people who were deathless. On Earth, nature’s cycle still continued; death still called.
II
The tower drew Nola. She stood at the fork in the road, then turned right. Maple trees lined the road. A breeze stirred the limbs and she felt droplets of water on her face and arms. The road was muddy; dirt clung to her boots.
She reached the tower’s shadow and looked up. At the top of the turret, under the roof, she saw openings, and she thought of archers. It was a watchtower, a place for sentries and guards.
She approached the heavy wooden door, leaned against it, then pushed it with her hands.
“It isn’t locked.”
Nola turned. A slim figure covered by a cape was coming around the side of the turret; a solemn face, framed by a blue hood, watched her. The stranger seemed very young; only a young person would seem so serious, since frivolity was a characteristic of the old.
“I wasn’t going to go inside,” Nola said.
“You can if you like.”
She stepped back. “Maybe I’d better not.”
“I haven’t been inside either.” The stranger’s voice was a high-pitched tenor. “I haven’t been here very long. My name’s Teno.”
“I’m Nola Reann.”
“We don’t see many people from space.”
She felt herself slouching, as if to minimize her height. “You can imagine why. Even with the wire web, it’s difficult. Your body feels heavy and fragile at the same time. The weather is disorienting. And walking around like this on the surface—well, I can never shake the feeling that it’s dangerous, that I’m unprotected.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Teno said. “I lived on Asgard for a while. When I came back to Earth, it seemed inside out, because I was used to looking up and seeing the clouds and, beyond them, the other side of the world. It took a while to get over that.”
Nola turned back toward the door, and when she looked around, Teno was gone. She saw a flash of blue among the trees. She backed away from the turret; the air seemed chillier in its shadow.
She went back down the road, retracing her steps until she stood before a square gray house faced with flat stones. A man in a robe of red silk sat on the patio sipping tea. He waved, motioning for her to join him. She went up to the patio, sat down in a wicker chair, and he handed her a cup.
“I am Jiro Ikiru,” he said.
“Nola Reann.”
He gazed at her sticklike arms. “I’d guess you’re from the moon. You’re too lean for Mars.”
She nodded.
“I thought I saw another hovercraft near Yasmin Hallal’s,” he went on, being courteously indirect.
“It’s mine.” Nola sipped her tea. “I just met her y
esterday, but she asked me to be her guest.”
“Now that it’s summer, more people will return. Many don’t care to brave the rigors of winter. I’m sure you’ll enjoy meeting them.”
“I knew Mikhail Vilny before,” she said. “I met a woman named Hilde last night, and someone called Teno a few minutes ago, by the turret.”
Jiro was silent as he passed her a plate of tiny pastries. Then he leaned back in his chair. “Some people feel a little uncomfortable around Teno.”
“Why?”
“There was a project a few decades back. A biologist produced people who were physically stronger and presumably more rational than we. These beings don’t have certain hormonal reactions, don’t feel our emotions. They’re hermaphroditic as well. Teno is one of them.”
“Now I remember,” Nola said. “I went to the place where their parents were bringing them up. I had an argument with two people there. I told them that they were trying to change human nature before they fully understood what we were. We’re adaptable, we have minds, we have all the time we need to learn.”
“You thought the project was premature?”
“I thought it was wrong.” The emotional force of her objections surprised her once again. The creatures looked like human beings; that seemed the worst travesty of all.
“When Teno came here,” Jiro said, “it upset some people. Even Giancarlo was worried.” He paused. “You see, what we have here is based on faith—our lives are the result of certain convictions which are perhaps hard for anyone to accept who hasn’t spoken to Giancarlo or heard of the higher state. I don’t know if Teno can feel this faith or grasp it. But Giancarlo realized it’s not his place to decide these matters or to bar anyone from the truth. So Teno remains.”
Nola stirred restlessly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jiro smiled, obviously anxious to explain. “You really should talk to Giancarlo, but I can tell you a bit. The higher state is simply the life after this one. All of us here have seen it —we’ve stepped outside these bodies and experienced it.”
The Golden Space Page 10