The Paratwa (#3 in the Parawta Saga)

by Christopher Hinz

  Timmy glanced out the window. “We're over some small city in the Carolinas, I imagine. Very soon, we'll be heading out over the Atlantic, then down across Cuba. We'll stay over water as much as possible for the remainder of the flight."

  Susan nodded, not really knowing where those places were. Earth geography was an arcane subject, to say the least.

  "Are you sure we won't be spotted?” Those buildings rushing by below them ... even though this town was obviously abandoned like everything else on the planet, there was always the possibility that E-Tech ground crews might be in the area.

  "Don't worry,” said Timmy, smiling one of his cryptic smiles. “Our flight plan avoids all known E-Tech bases. Should we be visually spotted by any stray work crews, chances are we'll be mistaken for Costeaus. And this shuttle boasts highly sophisticated radar-and-scan-deflection gear. Even if someone locks onto us, they won't be able to track us very far."

  Susan kept staring out the window, thinking about how different this day had turned out to be. They had left the Ontario Cloister early this morning, heading out onto the beach for their so-called daily walk, which was actually nothing more than an excuse for getting out of sight of the encampment so that Susan could be given her latest regimen of training. But this morning they had continued to walk along the dark sand, farther than they had ever gone before. The long low buildings of the cloister had disappeared from sight and even the towering red atmospheric revivifier, one of two that loomed over this protected region of the planet, had eventually vanished behind a tumultuous series of hills.

  Moving inland, they had come to the remains of a small town. Nestled at the foot of a steep rise, inset into a mountain, was an artificial cavern, probably once used for industrial storage.

  Timmy, procuring a key from his backpack, had proceeded to input several sequences into the codelock. Ancient machinery groaned to life, and the thick door slid open. Susan, bursting with curiosity, followed her proctor into the warehouse.

  The shuttle rested serenely in the middle of the huge building. Covered with dust, and enshrouded by layers of cobwebs—eerie testament to one of the few Earth creatures who had managed to survive and adapt to the nuclear/biological Apocalypse—the small craft's airlock opened to Timmy's sequencer.

  "We're leaving the cloister?” she asked.

  "Yes. For good."

  A short wade through strings of cobwebs and then into the airlock, the craft automatically coming to life as they entered its domain. With Timmy in the pilot's seat, the main vertical landing jets had grimaced, then roared to full power, spreading flame and smoke across the floor of the warehouse, dissolving all vision. And then Susan felt the vessel rise, crack through the vaulted ceiling as if it were an eggshell, rise triumphantly over the dead town, ascend into the smogged skies of upper New York State.

  And at that moment, Susan had recalled Timmy's words from several weeks ago, on the fateful day when he had awakened her true consciousness after twenty-six years—a lifetime—of pain-induced slumber.

  A journey beyond your dreams, he had said.

  "Beyond my dreams,” she whispered.

  "What?"

  She turned away from the window to face him again. “Nothing.” She bit down a second time on her molars, deactivated the crescent web. She was getting better and better at reading Timmy's moods. She could tell that there would be no trickery today, no unscrupulous surprises to test her reflexes, to push her body-thought toward its ultimate state. Wherever and whatever that might be.

  He sat down on one of the bunks, stared at her curiously. “You don't seem to ask me as many questions of late. Don't you care where we're going? Don't you want to know what Timmy, great manipulator of your life, has in store for you next? Don't you wonder why I've been training you with flash daggers, the second deadliest hand weapon ever devised?"

  "Second deadliest?"

  "Yes. For those able to discriminate, the Cohe wand is the weapon of choice."

  "Then why not train me with one of those?” She refused to consider that he did not have one. Timmy seemed to have access to everything.

  He shook his head. “Proper utilization of the Cohe must begin at a very young age. You are too old."

  Susan smiled. Being called old at twenty-six, by a man who had been around for about three centuries, was a novel experience.

  "What about the Order of the Birch assassin? Why would Slasher be using daggers instead of a Cohe?"

  "Flexibility of function, perhaps. And it is possible for certain weapons to complement one another, in tandem forming gestalts even more potent than Cohes."

  "Slasher and Shooter—you believe they're a Paratwa, don't you?"

  "Yes. They are aspects of one. I am quite certain."

  She frowned. “But you have nothing to do with the actions of this Paratwa?"

  "No, Susan. And this is not the first time you have asked me that question."

  "Call me suspicious,” she said with a grin. “So it was just coincidence that brought me to Honshu Colony on the day of that massacre."

  "I certainly did not plan it. Whether the assassin arranged for you to be there remains to be seen."

  "I keep thinking about that massacre, about looking into the face of that one tway and knowing that we knew each other. But I still can't figure it out. I still have no idea where I know him from.” She watched Timmy's face carefully, searching for some indication that he might know more about the Order of the Birch killer than he was letting on. But his eyes revealed nothing.

  She let out a bored sigh. “When will we get where we're going?"

  "It will be a few more hours. Do you want me to satisfy your curiosity?"

  "No, I can wait. I like surprises."

  "You surprise me, Susan. Your general lack of curiosity over these past weeks has been nothing short of astounding. I keep expecting you to challenge me, perhaps even attempt to alter the course that I have set for us."

  "How can I alter your course if I don't know where we're going?"

  Timmy chuckled. “That is a strange logic loop."

  "Only if you're on the outside looking in,” she stated confidently.

  "If it pleases you to be kept in the dark, so be it."

  "Pleasure has nothing to do with it."

  Now it was Timmy's turn to frown. “What do you mean?"

  "You're leading me somewhere. To a place, a time...” She hesitated, struggling to contain strange fragments of emotion within the limiting range of words. “One thing I'm certain of: you're leading me toward pain."

  "We all travel toward pain,” he said quietly.

  "When you were a Paratwa—when you were still a complete Ash Ock—did you ever use assassins? Send them out to kill innocent people?"

  "I sent them out to kill."

  "Did it ever bother you?"

  "No."

  She turned away to stare out the window again. “You're going to send me out to kill someday. That's why you've been training me with the daggers."

  "Yes, Susan."

  No. You're lying. Sometimes she could tell when he was being untruthful. There was purpose behind his weapons training, but it had little to do with turning Susan into a skilled assassin. It was something else. Something that defied such an easy description.

  But she knew she was right about the pain. I'm going to suffer.

  Timmy wiggled his fat form up out of the bunk. “It should be obvious that as your training intensifies, my influence over you will wane. When the time comes, I shall merely make suggestions. When the times comes, you will make your own choices."

  "Maybe I'll turn on you?"

  "Perhaps."

  "Maybe I'll kill you."

  His left eye—the real one—squinted at her, as if it were trying to close itself against a wetting of tears.

  "Perhaps you'll kill me,” he said.

  She turned her back to him. “Nothing scares you. Not even death."

  "I have already died, Susan. Don't you understand that ye
t?” A touch of anger sharpened his tone. “When I was whole, when I was the Ash Ock Paratwa, Aristotle, when I was the other, I feared nothing. It was not until my first tway was destroyed, until I entered that pit of agony and loss, that I began to understand the true nature of fear.

  "And then came the long days of misery, the inner torture as my monarch Aristotle sought to coalesce with my surviving tway. Agony, Susan. Agony beyond words.” His voice faded.

  "Finally, my tway could hold out no longer. He gave in, surrendered his distinctiveness, allowed the melding of tway and monarch into one being, one creature, untroubled by the raging storms of disparity. I could go anywhere and do anything, but I could never again be truly alive. Aristotle is gone. His tways are gone. Only Timmy remains."

  He sounded as if he were going to start crying.

  "I'm sorry,” she said.

  For a while, there was silence between them. Susan listened to the gentle roar of the shuttle's main engines, and her thoughts turned back to what her life had been like in the Colonies. She had been a progress inspector for La Gloria de la Ciencia. She had always kept herself very busy. She had traveled from place to place—one cylinder to another, one lover to another. It had all seemed so very important. It had all been so very meaningless.

  No ... not completely meaningless. Aunt Inez, her closest living relative, had been real. Aunt Inez had been a true friend.

  I wonder if she thinks I'm still alive?

  When Timmy spoke again, his voice was hard, controlled. “There is no going back, Susan. What I once was no longer exists. I am dead, Susan. Never forget that."

  A chill went through her. Outside, the shuttle broke from the Carolina shoreline, glided over the serene blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

  "I will never forget,” she promised.

  O}o{O

  FIN WHIRL

  The sign in the shape of a small gazebo rested on silver struts high above the buildings, between a Victorian S&M club and a four-storey pseudo-Germanic beer hall. Behind the sign, in this semideserted alley, a few hundred yards east of the infamous Zell Strip, an eight-foot wide tube rose up into the darkness and vanished into Sirak-Brath's smogged skies. This entrance to Fin Whirl, like most others, was a pneumatic cylinder. Elevators fed people in and out of the actual complex, situated in center-sky, some two miles overhead.

  The sign looked ancient, a ruby-red set of mismatched letters crammed into the perimeter of the lattice work pavilion, the whole mass actually composed of natural fluorescent drip particles, which continuously fell like lava from the sign's outermost ring, puddling on the pavement near the plain steel door between the buildings. Gillian had seen such signs before, on Earth, during the pre-Apocalypse, in places like Rio and New York and Tokyo. Alone among the Colonies of Irrya , Sirak-Brath stood like a sentinel of the past, a dazzling icon of a world that once was.

  "I don't know you.” The door person, a seven-foot-four Japanese wearing the garb of a nineteenth-century American lumberjack, challenged them. He parted his lips in an imitation of a smile, unsheathed a broomhose from his belt, and began sweeping the puddled drip particles back toward an input shaft beside the entrance. The lavalike mass was instantly sucked through a set of pressurized hoses, reformulated into the sign's outer ring. “Can't let you in if I don't know you."

  Buff smiled tightly. “Then allow us to introduce ourselves—"

  "Names don't matter,” interrupted the giant. “Can't go in unless I know you."

  "You could pretend,” suggested Buff, while Gillian drew a wad of cash cards from his money belt.

  The giant shook his head. “I don't know you well enough to accept a bribe."

  Buff snorted. “Well now, you seem to be making things real complicated. You're not going to force us to travel to one of the main entrances, are you? We can get into Fin Whirl from another sector, you know."

  "But you came here,” the giant pointed out.

  Gillian said, “We like privacy. This entrance is a bit more discreet."

  The doorperson shrugged. “I only let special people in this way."

  "We're the most special people you could imagine,” Buff assured him.

  The giant finished sweeping up the mass of drip particles, reattached the broomhose to a hook on his belt. “All right—give me your hands, palms up."

  Gillian shrugged and extended his arms. Buff did the same.

  The giant alternated his attention from hand to hand, running his surprisingly dainty hands across their digits, probing with his fingertips, pressing his thumb firmly into the soft flesh of their palms. Finally he released them and stepped back a pace. He turned to Buff.

  "You're a Costeau."

  She sighed. “Good guess."

  "Not just a guess,” insisted the giant. He turned to Gillian, gazing oddly at him for what seemed to be a long time. Gillian matched his stare.

  "Are you armed?” the giant asked.

  "Yes."

  "Weapons should be left here."

  "I don't think so,” countered Gillian, keeping his tone free of challenge.

  The giant stepped back another pace and folded his massive arms across his chest. He nodded to Buff. “You can go in. Your friend ... him I'm not sure about."

  "We're together,” said Buff.

  Gillian found himself getting angry. “What is it you want?” Disturbing urges ascended; irrational desires to fight this giant, to allow himself to be drawn down into a mode where violence was the only situational response, where physical struggle could be utilized to help control his raging inner world. Full-body flush. Full-body hard-on.

  Buff, reading his agitation, spoke quickly. “Faquod—we're here to see Faquod."

  The giant broke eye contact with Gillian. For a moment, he seemed to hesitate. Then: “All right. Make it two hundred cash cards, and you're both in."

  Gillian withdrew the money from his belt and handed it to the giant, who carefully counted it before moving from their path. The door slid open. They entered the vator and strapped themselves into a pair of acceleration couches.

  "Upside or Downside?” asked the giant.

  Buff signaled thumbs-up. The giant fingered a control, preparing to close the door. But before he pressed the button, he turned to Gillian.

  "Your hands ... be very careful. You have hands that could destroy the fabric of all they touch. They are not natural. They are the hands of chaos."

  The door slammed shut. A jolly mechvoice emoted a five-second countdown, and then Gillian and Buff were squashed into their seats for the few brief—but rigorous—seconds it took for the vator to ascend the two miles to Sirak-Brath's center-sky.

  Gillian ignored the powerful G-forces, the whistling screech of the high-speed transport; his mind swirled with the giant's words. The hands of chaos. Deep inside, he could feel the presence of Empedocles pressing against consciousness, seeking the eruption of the whelm: the forced interlace that would bring them together. He acknowledged a moment of ancient pain.

  Catharine, how I miss you.

  The gentle intertwining, the subtle melding of two consciousnesses into one; never again could the interlace occur naturally. Catharine was gone. Death had sullied the purity of the process. If the whelm came now, it would more closely mimic the destructive conflagration of two tectonic plates grinding together, attempting to occupy the same space at the same time.

  The hands of chaos.

  The vator jerked to a halt. “That was a lotta fun,” snarled Buff, rubbing her chest. “First it's games with a psychic monster, then we get our bodies squashed in a speed vator."

  "You complain a lot these days."

  "Extra yes, I complain a lot! You know, being with you is not exactly easy. You have a funny habit of bringing out the worst in people."

  "I avoided physical conflict with our friend down there."

  Buff grunted, unfastened the acceleration straps, and floated free of the couch. She grabbed a side rail to right herself, then oriented her weightless body
in line with glowing green arrows on the inside of the door. The portal opened and they used the side rails to float/walk out into Fin Whirl, into a maelstrom of shrieking humanity.

  "I got ten-event upside spillseeker champions!” shouted a young man, barely an adolescent, rushing at them. He thrust a packet of bubbling holos toward Gillian's face. “Two hundred bytes for the lot. No transitional. If you got a licensed rep, we can do business without cards!"

  Gillian gazed at the strange holos, which seemed to be constantly melting into one another, reemerging in new and altered abstractions. Each depicted a particular Fin Whirl player, wearing full protection gear: brightly colored shieldware, arm gauntlets, transparent helmets with an array of wires attached to their hip-mounted jetpaks. The holos spoke; male and female players took turns announcing themselves with such names as Murky Sumoza, Blockbuster Giga-Quad, Slim-Trim Three, Jefferson Airplane.

  "No, thanks,” muttered Buff, shoving the young hawker out of their way.

  "This is a collector's set!” he cried, suddenly whining like a little boy. “I gotta sell. I gotta sell!"

  An older man, possibly the youth's father, grabbed the hawker by the back of the neck and yanked him through the open door of the vator.

  Gillian followed Buff through the crowd, surprised that his feet—and everyone else's, for that matter—remained on the floor. Here, in this center-sky, zero-G environment, where the colony's spin rate was effectively canceled out, he should have been falling free. But although they remained essentially weightless, an odd downward pull biased their footsteps toward the deck.

  He recalled Nick mentioning that the Colonies now possessed a technique for inducing, on a small scale, artificial gravitational proclivity, via sophisticated combinations of cohesive energy fields and mass-controlled airjet streams—ultra-high-tech stuff, unknown even in the days of the pre-Apocalypse. The Irryan Colonies had managed to advance some technologies—albeit a very few—beyond the glorious epitome of the late twenty-first century.