The Paratwa (#3 in the Parawta Saga)

by Christopher Hinz

  "I wish that it did not have to be this way."

  He left the bedroom quickly, too upset to reply. He knew what she was trying to say. He could not bear to hear her succeed in expressing it.

  He was never going to see her again. When she awoke, she would be gone. When she awoke, she would be Sappho.

  O}o{O

  Gillian led their exploration but it was not by choice that he performed in the role of guide. Susan insisted upon walking a full pace behind him, at the outer limit of her peripheral vision, like a cognizant shadow, cloaked in its own trepidation, waiting and watching, unwilling to lead and too terrified to follow.

  He understood and sympathized, knowing how hard this must be for her. But he moved on.

  They had last seen Timmy ... how long ago? Hours? Days? He had truly lost track of time. Gillian's possessions consisted of shirt, pants, boots, and his Cohe; the spacesuit and its accoutrements had disappeared, along with the thruster rifle. Susan, likewise, had only the clothing on her back and the matched set of flash daggers rigged in flakjak pockets.

  They had been exploring the vessel's seemingly endless compartments and chambers, ostensibly searching for a way back to Gillian's shuttle. There was no reason to assume that they would find their way out without Timmy's help. And although they had come to the conclusion that their “host” must be monitoring their progress, there remained no reason to expect his assistance.

  A section of wall obediently cross-split as they approached, flaps peeling back to create a new portal. Gillian admired the efficiency of this place—this thing called the cell of Os/Ka/Loq. The vessel contained nothing so specific as a permanent entryway. Doors existed where and when you wanted them.

  He crossed a threshold into yet another new chamber, more virgin territory, hearing Susan's footsteps behind him, hearing a soft mushy sound as the flaps automatically resealed, and he knew without looking that within seconds, all signs of the doorway would vanish.

  It was a process that brooked admiration.

  This new area was the largest one they had yet entered: a cavernous chamber some fifty feet in width and height and, like other areas of the vessel, illuminated by erratic patches of luminescent blue ceiling. The length of the chamber was impossible to gauge. Stalagmites sprouted from the floor, but here, there existed a literal forest of them, hundreds perhaps, of all shapes and sizes, in a plethora of colors distinctly dominated by shades of blue and green. A few of the upthrust masses extended all the way to the ceiling.

  Some of the stalagmites had simply grown into the domed covering, forming nonsymmetrical columns; others, having aspired to such heights, apparently lacked the chemistries to attain full melding. Like rootstock unable to penetrate inhospitable ground, those stalagmites had split at their ends, forming tendrils cascading in all directions—their denial transferred into lesser achievements.

  He recalled seeing something similar, centuries ago, on Earth: ancient campus buildings splotched and streaked with dark green organic masses. Ivy, it had been called. But here, even the sections of ceiling not covered by groping tendrils appeared somehow alive, like vibrant tapestries, gently dancing under the tutelage of invisible winds.

  Susan muttered, “I was in a profarming colony once, on an assignment from La Gloria de la Ciencia. They were experimenting with new strains of wheat, and there were some sort of genetic malformations inside a certain test rotator. The inside of the rotator was filled with stalks, bending and twisting in every possible direction. The stuff was so dense that it was strangling itself. But it just couldn't stop growing."

  "Like here,” murmured Gillian, sensing his monarch again stirring, pushing and pulling against the boundaries of consciousness, seeking full freedom of movement, a permanent way out of his prison of dual singularity.

  Fulfill me, urged Empedocles. At this very moment, you are trapped within a process that you cannot even dimly comprehend. You are a victim of forces beyond your understanding. Fulfill me. Make me whole, and I will dream a better dream. My consciousness will take us beyond this place.

  Gillian shook his head. I'm not ready yet.

  "There was nothing they could do,” droned Susan. “The genetic malformations inside the rotator were impossible to restructure. They had to dump the entire mass. I was working as a progress inspector. It was my duty to complete a full report and dispatch my findings immediately to my division head. Within La Gloria de la Ciencia, obverse funneling was the name of the game—the preferred method for the dissemination of data. But there were always complications—"

  "Stop,” ordered Gillian, stepping quickly to the left, moving around the massive trunk of a deep-blue stalagmite streaked with ribbons of flaming yellow.

  Susan ignored him. “La Gloria de La Ciencia's methodology for establishing informational parameters was also very sophisticated. There were no bureaucratic roadblocks built into the structure of the organization that might dam the data flow—hinder the stream of information—"

  "Stop it,” Gillian growled, louder this time. He circumnavigated the massive trunk of the stalagmite, came full circle to face her. She froze, glared at him in anger.

  "The data flow must never be dammed, not within a network idealistically dedicated to assimilation of lost technological knowledge—"

  Gillian lunged forward, grabbed her shoulders, shook her.

  "Stop it! You're speaking gibberish!"

  "I can't help it!” she cried, wrenching herself from his grip. “Don't you understand? I'm scared, Gillian. I'm scared about what's going to happen!"

  "I know. But you have to get it under control."

  * * *

  For Susan, it was worse than the terror Timmy had subjected her to out on the Ontario beach, worse than knowing that his barb knife had pierced the flesh over her stomach and that he might release the tiny blade to cut through her body. No, this terror flowed from deeper roots, gaining its strength from a place beyond the mortal fears of suffering pain, of risking death. Since that first moment with Gillian, when she had been swept outside herself to witness Susan Quint from the perspective of another, her conceptual framework devastated by the intellectually transcendent force of the vision...

  Their words and thoughts flowing back and forth with incredible speed and clarity, a rush of excitement, a coalescence—like intelligent monosynchronous tranceivers barring all extraneous frequencies, achieving total wavelock, delimiting communication until only the mocking perfection of a single overlapping sine wave remained...

  The sensory turmoil of becoming, for that impossible instant, another creature. Twenty-six years of self-conceptualization—however repressed and emotionally twisted—swept away in a moment. Twenty-six years of learning who she was, relegated to the recycling core...

  And afterward, knowing that she had been a victim of her own expanding tempest of feelings and thoughts, churning with Gillian's feelings and thoughts...

  It was too much. She did not think she could again step out onto that unrailed balcony, lean over the edge, fall into that chasm that would remake her life into something greater and lesser than what she was. She did not think she could become a Paratwa.

  * * *

  Gillian again tried to explain, tried to provide a cloak of rationality to offset her terror. “There are great disturbances associated with the whelm. The forced interlace—the dialectic of tways into monarch, monarch into tways—is a simultaneity of expansion/compression that is so inherently powerful that it generates the most primal fears. But you must try to contain those fears, or adjust to them somehow. You must come to terms with your future."

  "I can't. There must be another way."

  His words grew bitter. “The whelm is the only way that the interlace can still be manifested."

  Susan heard the sadness in his voice, the echoes of feeling that suggested: Once there had been another way.

  And she knew that if she were to prevent the whelm from reoccurring, she would have to make sure that their thoughts and emot
ions never again flowed together.

  But that regimen did not take into account her desperate desire to become entwined with Gillian—a physiological and psychological need to be with him forever.

  A scream of pure frustration escaped her. “I don't know what to do!"

  Gillian understood. “I know that you're concentrating on aspects of your old life—your former job as a La Gloria de La Ciencia progress inspector—in the hopes that keeping your memories alive will prevent a repeat or the coalescence. But if you keep yourself occupied by thoughts and feelings that have never really been of much importance to you...” He trailed off with a shrug. “You might indeed prevent the whelm, but you'll also make yourself even crazier."

  She knew he spoke the truth.

  He reached out, pulled, her toward him, cradled her head against his chest, ran his fingers through her silken hair.

  Even the simple pressure of his touch triggered spasms that shook her to the core, threatening to induce that contradiction called the whelm. But at a certain level, she did not care. It felt good to be soothed.

  Beware! warned Empedocles. Things are not as they appear. Both of you are caught within a vortex—transformational energies that could easily swirl you to oblivion. Remember always—I am the way out. Remember!

  Gillian ignored his monarch, continued stroking her. “I know what it's like to be this afraid, to not know what to do. I know that you want to remain intact.” He hesitated. “But I honestly don't think that it's possible. You can't avoid this thing. You have to let it happen."

  She hugged him desperately. And suddenly he was pulling away from her, violently.

  "What's wrong—?"

  Black light streamed from his hand, whipped above Susan's shoulder. Behind her, something hissed in agony.

  She whirled, flash daggers gliding from her pockets in one fluid motion, cartoon images thrusting forward, into the blocky reptilian face that bore down upon them from above.

  Shafts of blood spurted from the snake's gargantuan mouth, spraying her from head to toe. She leaped sideways, out of the path of the descending head. It crashed to the ground at her feet.

  High overhead, still slithering down the trunk of the stalagmite, was the rest of the creature's body—a twenty-foot length of brilliantly colored lizard, its stump oozing viscera, yet still vibrantly alive, twisting to and fro, perhaps seeking reunification with its departed head which had been cleanly severed by the slashing black light of Gillian's Cohe.

  "Behind you!” she yelled.

  The second snake launched itself from the heights of a soaring gray stalagmite. Gillian's position was too awkward for an effective counterattack. He had no choice but to dive from the path of the flying reptile.

  Susan leaped in the opposite direction. The snake abandoned Gillian as a target, whipped toward her. It froze, drew back its head, hissed.

  A third snake, on the ground, came slithering out of the stalagmite forest. It, too, suddenly stopped and raised its head to focus lifeless eyes upon Susan. A chill went through her.

  "What now?” she whispered, keeping the flash daggers pointed at the coiled snakes. The blocky heads were poised less than ten feet in front of her, easily within striking distance.

  "Don't move,” ordered Gillian, getting to his feet again, carefully moving to the snakes’ left flanks.

  The creatures lunged at Susan. Gillian's wand thrashed the air. With one downward slice, the curving whip of black energy decapitated both of them.

  The two heads crashed to the deck at Susan's feet. Like the first slain creature, the bodies of the pair kept whipping back and forth, refusing to surrender unto death. She deftly sidestepped the churning necks until, finally, their movement slowed and they assumed postures of acceptance. There was a moment of calm...

  ...And then more noise emanated from the forest. Susan turned, saw a ratlike creature the size of a small horse scampering out from behind a stalagmite. On the rat's back rode a tall naked black man with two heads sprouting from one long neck. All four of the twinhead's eyes were pinched tightly shut.

  Gillian again moved closer to Susan. “I know these creatures,” he murmured. “The snakes, the two coming toward us now—they were all being kept in some sort of stasis aboard this vessel."

  "For what purpose?” she whispered.

  Deep within, Gillian sensed joyous feelings passing through his monarch, great satisfaction and relief, as if long-raging fires finally had been quenched.

  Now I understand, murmured Empedocles. This nonexperiential amalgam is providing what was lost. I do not need to dream. But you must. It is the only way to restore the deepest connections.

  "Connections?” wondered Gillian.

  "Con-nec-tions,” mimicked the left mouth of twinhead, as if pronouncing an English word for the first time.

  Twinhead smacked his rat mount atop its head. The creature scrambled forward. Susan gasped. The stirrups holding the bizarre creature to his ride were actually a double set of four-fingered hands, emerging from the rat's belly to clench twinhead's bare ankles.

  Twinhead's eyes remained closed. The ratlike creature halted less than two yards away from them.

  The right mouth of twinhead asked: “Who is you? Is you one or is you two?"

  Gillian just stared, not knowing how to answer.

  The mouth asked, “Why you kill the snakes?"

  "They attacked us,” Gillian replied slowly. “What ... are you?"

  "What you think I is?"

  "I ... don't know."

  "How about I is an unconscious creation from the depths of your own mind? How about I is not really here?"

  Susan drew a deep breath. “This is just too bizarre. This is not happening."

  "Not hap-pen-ning,” mimicked twinhead's left mouth.

  Gillian shook his head, confused. “What is happening?"

  Empedocles's thoughts streamed across awareness. Feel your body! Feel it!

  Gillian tried. He could not. There was nothing there to feel.

  He remembered. Fifty-six years ago. Facing Reemul. That sensation of total disunity, a complete loss of body-image, all physical sensation vanishing, his entire being reduced to a mental construct, cut off from all sensory experience.

  The same thing's happening to me now!

  "Not to you alone!” cried Susan, with sudden comprehension. “It's happening to both of us!"

  Twinhead's eyelids popped open. Susan screamed.

  Four empty sockets, devoid of all mass. Eyes that did not really exist...

  Twinhead, his rat-beast mount, and the dead snakes disappeared. The stalagmite forest melted into the contours of the small chamber where Gillian and Susan had made love.

  Final alignments occurred. Dual awarenesses soared together into the thundering epiphany of the whelm. Empedocles awoke, leaped from both sides of the bed, two sets of feet landing on the floor at the same instant.

  We were dreaming, thought Gillian.

  So real, countered Susan. As if we were awake. But we never left this chamber.

  We dreamed together. That's what was needed for him to finally awaken. That was the missing element.

  Awe touched Susan. As we slept, our imaginations interlaced. And he emerged from our dreams. And now we've become dreams of his.

  No. The Ash Ock do not dream. They do not possess a true subconscious. What we have become is amalgams incorporated into the entirety of his being. Most often, he will not even notice that we exist. Generally, we are as invisible to his perception as a blood corpuscle might be to the mind of a human. Even though the corpuscle might float freely throughout the body, the holism of consciousness would rarely take notice of it as a distinct entity.

  Gaia of the body, thought Susan.

  A sense of déjà vu struck Gillian as he considered the entire process from his internalized vantage point. I remember, now; this is what it feels like to be the tway of an Ash Ock when the monarch is whole. He felt oddly amused by the forgotten familiarity of the experi
ence.

  Susan sensed his amusement as a warm tingling at the back of her neck ... or as what she conceived of as being the back of her neck. In truth, she realized, she possessed no such thing as a neck. Her body was no longer hers. It belonged to the monarch. She was only an amalgam with memories of the body.

  Gillian went on, intrigued by his own percipience. These feelings—they are forgotten by the tways each and every time the monarch arises. The individualized tway does not remember what it feels like to be reduced to this state. Each coming together is a rediscovery of what was forgotten from the last time. If one could remember, then the tway might very well resist any future monarchial attempts to become whole.

  Wonderful, replied Susan. What you're saying is that we're currently trapped within a pretty miserable state of existence, one that's not worth repeating.

  Gillian felt her sarcasm come at him like a dark storm cloud bristling with nodes of fury.

  How long do you think we'll be confined? she asked. How long until we're reawakened ... as individual tways?

  He had no answer.

  "It's happened!” cried Timmy, his bloated body filling the doorway, his shapeless gray robes quivering with excitement.

  Empedocles studied the outburst, calmly observed the emotions spilling from Timmy's mouth, like side sprays of water from an undisciplined spigot.

  "You've returned! Arrhythmia of the whelm has been reversed!"

  "I have come back,” announced Empedocles, speaking through his Gillian-tway. He stretched his arms out, relished his restored freedom of movement. Strange new muscle groups—characteristics of the Susan-tway—demanded acclimation. He took in great gulps of air, utilizing the Paratwa method of slightly out-of-sync dual breathing to pump oxygen through his two halves.

  Timmy licked his lips. “It feels good, yes?"

  "It feels."

  "Kascht moniken keenish," uttered Timmy. "Kascht mulafwas—belj moniken—"

  "Save your words,” said Empedocles. “They cannot control me."