The Golden Space

by Pamela Sargent

  She looked down at her feet, barely visible in the glow of the gravitic generator. They were long and thin, covered with a network of blue veins and the silver threads of her web. She was suddenly conscious of how she must appear to people here; pale-skinned, arms and legs little more than bones and epidermis, a hollow belly, tiny breasts, every one of her ribs so clearly outlined that each could be counted. She would seem repellent to many, perhaps intriguing or birdlike to some. Maybe that had been her attraction for Mikhail; she must have seemed a freak. Now he wanted another freak.

  She walked into the chamber, signaled her implant, lifted herself from the floor and floated; in a moment she was calm again, picturing Luna’s clean, barren landscape.

  III

  As Nola descended the staircase, Yasmin bustled below; her pink robe billowed around her, making her dark head appear to be at the center of a flower. The other woman waved a hand at the table near the window as she passed Nola.

  Nola sat down at the table; there were only two cups next to the porcelain coffee pot and plate of rolls. Yasmin returned and put a bowl of oranges next to the rolls, then sat down with her back to the window. The morning fog was a misty curtain beyond the glass.

  “Where’s Teno?” Nola asked carefully.

  “Home.” Yasmin peeled an orange. “By the way, I have important news. That’s why I’m up so early. Giancarlo wants to see you. He called this morning.” She handed part of the orange to Nola.

  “How nice,” Nola replied. “So I’m to be summoned into the great man’s presence at last. Do I attend him at his house? Is there a special title by which I address him?”

  “Of course not. He’ll come here tonight. He’s busy; that’s why he hasn’t come before.”

  “I should think he would be busy. Promoting gullibility is very time-consuming.” She chewed on an orange section while Yasmin poured coffee.

  “I once felt that way. I wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t been desperate. Giancarlo’s used to doubts; you won’t have to be polite.”

  “I’m always polite, in my own way.”

  “Giancarlo has a lot to do. There’s his rescue work.”

  Nola looked up from her coffee. “He’s still on a team?”

  “Of course.”

  “That must be convenient. People who’ve had a close call must make good recruits.”

  “Giancarlo doesn’t force anything on people. If someone’s interested, that’s fine.”

  Nola sipped coffee, finished her orange, and reached for a roll. She already knew what Giancarlo Lawrence wanted; she had seen it in the reverential faces of Yasmin and Jiro and Hilde as they spoke of him. It gratified him to see that look, the adoring eyes, the respectful voices. He had everything else, as did everyone; time and any material possessions he desired, along with youth and health. The only thing left to seek was power. He could not gain it by promising anything in this world, so he promised more in the next, and was rewarded with adoration.

  Nola had never thought much about the people who worked on rescue teams. She had assumed that they were selfless sorts who willingly gave much of their time watching for the distress signals sent by Bonds when people were in trouble, and were ready to travel into areas that could be remote and dangerous. Now she wondered. She saw them rushing to aid a person while filled with a sense of their own virtue and power, presenting themselves as saviors, dispensing life. Giancarlo was a rescuer. He savored the grateful glances. He must have decided that he wanted even more.

  Nola got up. “Excuse me. I’d better get a walk in now. I’ll need to rest this afternoon.”

  “The fog—” Yasmin started to say, but Nola was already hurrying to the door. She stepped into the mist, feeling the moisture on her face and hands. She was lost, without signposts. Yasmin’s house had disappeared when she looked back; the road ahead led into the unknown. She followed the road until the iron gate floated before her, then left it and crossed the grass to the stone wall, seating herself on the damp surface.

  She had heard Yasmin’s tale; she knew that the woman’s present life was better than the closed-off, fearful one she had once led. But it made her angry that Yasmin had lost her fear by allowing herself to be deceived. The fog was lifting slightly; she could now see more of the road.

  An image came to her mind. Part of it was vague; something had happened, and the people here had lost faith in Giancarlo. They gathered in front of the turret, doubt and fear on their faces. They seized Giancarlo and dragged him to the gate, thrusting him through it, expelling him from their midst. She tried to summon up an image of the man, but he remained only a pair of arms and an indistinct voice, pleading. Nola stood at the gate, smiling.

  And then the doubt-filled faces turned to her. Mikhail came forward and took her hand and she smiled still more as she clasped his. She had revealed the deception. They would now have to live as she did.

  Yasmin had brought out hashish, setting the pipes on the glass-topped table next to a bowl of candies. Nola sat in a large, overstuffed chair, her feet on an ottoman. She had hidden her skinniness under a blue velvet caftan. Yasmin fidgeted, plucking at her yellow robe. She had cleaned the area around the table, making it an oasis of order and banishing the dust balls to other parts of the room, but she had forgotten to polish the glass; the top of the table was streaked.

  Nola heard footsteps outside the front door. She stiffened, but did not rise. A shadow stepped through the doorway and into the light.

  She was not sure what she had expected to see in the man; perhaps a large build, a domineering manner, or a magnetic, vivid presence with a loud voice and expansive gestures. This man was thin and small. His dark hair was short; his face was that of a boy. He said, “I’m Giancarlo Lawrence.” He said it as if he were apologizing for it.

  “Nola Reann,” she said. He came to her and she touched his extended hand carefully; too often, people here would grip her hand too tightly, forgetting her fragility, and she would return the clasp with firmness, unmindful of the added strength the web gave her. The greeting would end with sore hands and embarrassment. But Giancarlo touched her hand lightly, then withdrew.

  He bowed to Yasmin; his hands hung awkwardly at his sides. Then he seated himself at one end of the sofa, bumping a leg against the table, and stared at his hands, as if he did not know what to do with them. He did not seem at home in his body. He wore an old blue shirt and wrinkled white cotton slacks; his feet were sandaled. The more she looked at him, the more calculated his appearance seemed; the simple clothes, the boyishness. And a little child shall lead them. Her mouth twisted. He would not only dominate them with odd notions, but would also call on their protective instincts. It had to be deliberate; with regeneration, they were all able to choose how to look. Giancarlo had the unfinished features and the awkwardness of a person near the end of adolescence. She lowered her eyes slightly, and noticed something else.

  She almost laughed. Giancarlo raised an eyebrow as she spoke. “You’re wearing a Bond.”

  He nodded.

  “That doesn’t show much faith in your ideas.”

  “What do you know of my ideas?”

  “Enough. There’s another life. The others don’t wear Bonds, meaning that they don’t worry too much about saying their final farewells. But you do.”

  He smiled. His face was open and ingenuous, and his smile twisted his thin lips. “I don’t wear it for myself,” he replied. “I’m a rescuer—I can be called at any time. Without my Bond, precious moments could be lost.”

  Yasmin lit a pipe. She glanced from Giancarlo to Nola and then back, smiling all the time. Nola refused to smile, frowning as she accepted the pipe from Yasmin.

  “Why have you come here, Nola?” Giancarlo asked.

  “To see my friend Mikhail Vilny.”

  “You’ve seen Mischa, but you’re still here.”

  “I’m curious. And maybe I’m waiting to see if Mikhail comes to his senses. I can always hope that he will.”

  “
Then you feel no need for guidance or help.”

  “No. I don’t think much of cults. Some of them are harmless enough, but some are filled with dangerous, suicidal sorts who’ve decided they’ll take others with them. I don’t particularly care what they do to themselves; I can even admire it at times, since it shows that they have the courage of their convictions, but not when they take someone else along. Maybe we need them to give our lives a little excitement.” She gestured with her pipe. “You seem harmless, but deluded.”

  “I don’t think I’m deluded,” he said calmly. “But I can understand why you might think so. Here we are, with eternal life and youth, able to do whatever we like. If there is something beyond our capabilities now, we have time enough to develop a means for achieving it. We no longer have to tell ourselves metaphysical fairy tales about a greater purpose or a god who loves us or an afterlife where justice is meted out as a consolation for our brief existence and the unfairness of life here. We have our lives, we create our own purpose. What happens to us now is only the result of our own carelessness or ignorance or failure or malevolence. We are free, if we want to be.” He tilted his head. “Have I got it right?”

  Nola felt annoyed. She drew in smoke from her pipe and did not answer.

  “We’re free,” he said softly. “How could we wish for more? We might live a thousand years, two thousand, a million. Theoretically, there’s no limit. If our brains get too cluttered, we can clear them and start over—we’ve even achieved a form of reincarnation. If our sun becomes unstable, we can leave this system and go elsewhere. Perhaps we might even transform the material of our bodies and outlive the death of the universe. Isn’t that so?”

  She had to strain to hear his voice. She wondered if the man always spoke this way, so quietly that one had to concentrate to catch every word. The hashish was burning her throat; she put her pipe down.

  Giancarlo sucked on his pipe, then set it on the table. “Once, human beings looked beyond this life. It was only the prelude to another. But at the same time, they struggled to transform this one. And why not? Why suffer needlessly? Why not make this life better? And what if there were nothing else? Then the suffering and pain would be useless.” His dark eyes glistened; he blinked, as if suppressing tears. “Notions of immateriality are fragile. The material world will always drag one back. The argument ad lapidam is always powerful; you will keep stubbing your toe on the stone. Change the stone— don’t pretend it isn’t there or isn’t important. Move it out of your path, or shatter it, or make a sculpture out of it. Control the world, don’t be a victim of it. We’ve freed ourselves. Haven’t we?”

  “Yes, we have,” Nola said firmly.

  “Then why is there still unhappiness? Why do so many hide, prisoners of their long lives?”

  She shook her head. “It’s obvious. A lot of people just don’t have sense. They’re stupid, or easily bored. They don’t have enough curiosity to learn new things and they begin to see danger where there isn’t any. It’s their own fault. It’s a kind of natural selection, in a way. Some will adapt to long life, and others won’t.”

  Giancarlo leaned forward. “Don’t you wonder if they aren’t being logical, given what most of them believe? These lives are all they have, the material world is all there is. A bit of inconvenience is enough to throw many people into a rage—as if the world is deliberately affronting them.” He smiled. “Here we’ve overcome some of those attitudes. We live simply, so that we don’t have too much of an attachment to material things. We are preparing ourselves for another life.”

  Nola laughed softly, trying to shake off the spell of his voice. “I see. In its own way, it sounds as self-indulgent as anything else. Ever since I arrived, I’ve seen self-satisfaction and smug smiles and people nurturing their so-called truth.”

  “I can understand your feelings,” he said calmly. “But this is only a temporary abode for those who need a place to recover their sense of purpose and to lose their fears. Eventually, they become rescuers and leave, though some feel that they can serve best in other ways. People aren’t truly happy unless they look outside themselves to some greater purpose, and being on a rescue team is important work. Not enough people want to do it.”

  Nola frowned. “How commendable of you. And it doesn’t hurt that such work is useful to you. You have a captive audience. I’ll bet you don’t miss a chance to get your ideas across.”

  Giancarlo did not seem disturbed by her comment. “If someone is interested, I share what I know.”

  “I’m sure you do. But don’t call it knowledge.”

  “How can I help you understand?” He held out his hands, palms up. “I know that there is another life, and that a part of us lives on after death. I have seen God’s promise to us. A part of us survives.”

  “And is this part of us material?” Nola asked. “And if it isn’t, how is it connected to the material world? And if it is itself material, how do you know it survives? How do you know it doesn’t die eventually?”

  “I know. I have been near death myself.”

  “You don’t know anything. You’ve seen hallucinations; you have no proof. You’ve only come up with a new version of a very old idea. Maybe people needed it once, but we don’t need it now. I’m not even sure you believe all that nonsense.”

  Giancarlo lifted his chin. “Would I be here if I didn’t believe it?”

  “Oh, come now. Surely you’re gratified that other people turn to you and honor you, maybe even worship you.” She glanced at Yasmin, who was sliding the bowl of candies toward Giancarlo.

  “Why are you still here, Nola? You say you’re curious, yet you dismiss what I tell you.” He spoke slowly. He was not smiling.

  “Are you going to ask me to leave?” She stared straight at him, searching his face for signs of the charlatan. He stared back. “Why don’t you throw me out? You wouldn’t want to have too many doubts raised. It might get uncomfortable for you.”

  He looked down. “Why should I ask you to leave?” He rested his arms on his legs. “I don’t mind questions. Talk to others. If you want to question what I teach, you’re free to do so. My ideas can withstand doubt, and I’m sure my companions here can, too. Ideas should be tested, after all.” His patient, gentle voice pronounced each word carefully, but quickly, as if he had said the phrases many times before. He rose. “I must go. If you’d like to speak to me again, please feel free to come to my home. I’d enjoy the discussion, I’m sure.”

  She thought: No, you wouldn’t. As he moved toward the door, he halted and looked back at her. “You might find that I have something to offer you, Nola.”

  “I’m content the way I am.”

  “Perhaps.” He left.

  Nola, depressed, began to think of arguments she should have made. “Was I polite enough?” she asked Yasmin.

  “I’m sure he’s heard worse.”

  “Maybe I should have been more severe, then.”

  Yasmin refilled her pipe, lit it, and drew up her feet. “Want some more?”

  “No.” Nola suddenly wanted to get out of the room. Her limbs seemed paralyzed; she was unable to move. Help me, her mind whispered to itself. Giancarlo had hypnotized her; she was sure of it. She stared silently at Yasmin, envying the woman’s complacence.

  “He can help you,” Yasmin said. “You’re unhappy—I can see it. You have a sickness of the soul. Giancarlo can help you.”

  Nola sighed.

  The blond stranger was coming up the road in a red electric cart piled high with knapsacks. He was slouched over the front panel, peering through the windshield. His wavy hair fluttered. He drove up to the fork in the road and stopped, then turned back, halting in front of Jiro’s lawn.

  “Jiro,” Nola said. Jiro turned off his weeder and looked up. The man was getting out of the cart. “Do you know him?”

  Jiro shook his head. The visitor’s long white shirt flapped around his hips as he walked. His perfect face was deeply tanned; his pants, cut off above the knees,
revealed muscular brown legs covered with blond down. He raised a hand.

  “Hello,” Jiro said, holding his weeder as if it were a spear.

  “I’m looking for Giancarlo Lawrence,” the man called out.

  “Take the road to the left. You’ll see a log cabin with a weeping willow in the front.”

  “Thanks.” The stranger turned away.

  “Wait,” Nola said impulsively, following the man to the road. “I’ll show you the way.”

  “That’s very kind of you. Let’s walk. I need to stretch my legs.”

  He left his cart at the side of the road and they walked together silently to the fork. Nola kept to the shade under the nearby trees, worrying about sunburn and regretting her short blue shift. The man strode quickly, his arms swinging at his sides. She glanced at his face. He seemed calm; he did not have the look of desperation or doubt. She wondered why he was here.

  “Does Giancarlo know you?” she asked as they turned left.

  “No.”

  “Does he know you’re coming?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe he won’t be able to see you, then.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?”

  “He might be busy. I was here for quite a while before he deigned to pay me a visit.”

  The man looked at her from the sides of his eyes. “You sound as though you’re a little disappointed in Giancarlo Lawrence.”

  “Oh, not really. I didn’t expect much to begin with, so I can hardly say I’m disappointed. I guess I should warn you. I’m the resident skeptic at the moment.”