by M F Sullivan
“Well,” said the stranger. “Well, would you look at this!”
“I’m sorry…do I know you?” It was becoming the question of Dominia’s lifetime.
“Oh, everybody knows everybody when they come to live here.” With a wave of her hand, the woman led them to the smaller set of stables. “You just don’t remember that, because you haven’t come to stay. Though you’d ought to consider it sometime.”
“She will,” said the nymph. “Eventually, in a long time. She cannot, not until—”
“Oh, of course. That certainly would keep her from settling down in comfort…” Behind the doors of the structure painted merry pinks and blues like no stables Dominia had seen (but akin to the magician’s signpost, she noticed), a humdrum of conversation buzzed; but, as the woman pushed open the doors, a few whispered noises hurried the others to silence, and the hinges swung wide to reveal a perfectly mute, normal collection of horses. More stocky and primitive—older models, say—than the ones to which she’d grown accustomed, and doubtless slower than the mechanical variety favored by animal-rights activists—but horses nonetheless, and fine ones, at that.
“Take whichever two you need. I’ll just have Eric pop into town and pick them up from the hotel tomorrow. Have you eaten?” she asked Dominia, then turned to Gethsemane. “Has she eaten?”
“Not since coming,” the girl answered for the General, which elicited a maternal click of the woman’s tongue.
“Take some fruit on your way out. And why don’t I get you bread—”
Remembering Valentinian’s warning about “fairyland rules,” Dominia tried to politely decline by saying, “Please, don’t trouble yourself,” but the lady had already darted for her house, perfectly comfortable leaving two strangers alone with her horses.
“If everybody here is so friendly,” said the General, “I might be tempted to stay after all.”
“Everyone who visits is tempted; but no one ever does before the time is right. It would not be the same if you had another calling elsewhere.”
Maybe so. Still, she remained tempted, for, yes, everyone was as friendly as the woman whose name Dominia realized she hadn’t gotten while they rode away. As they resumed along the main road, now seated upon a pair of marble mares who knew the route, she found new license to marvel around her. Passing vast fields of colorful crops and pens of docile oxen, she found these no more extraordinary than the animals to which she was accustomed; and it was safe to say the startled bird that just went screeching from the nearby tree was a redheaded woodpecker and not some miniature dragon.
Yet the General sensed an ancient magic about the place—or perhaps projected such qualities upon it, since she had spent so long navigating the Ergosphere with a magician and a mystic. Stunning to think herself upon its other side, walking the surface of a black hole as convincing a planet as any other—yet a kinder, gentler planet than the one she knew. Upon that road, they began to pass friendly person after friendly person, and Dominia was astonished by every smile and wave and doff of a cap. Humans in her world had been so long terrorized that, passing a stranger, one tended to avoid all eye contact and hurry one’s pace in case that stranger was a martyr.
There were no martyrs here, Gethsemane had said. But were there humans here? Were these people human? Was she human while visiting here? She could not rightly say; but she sensed it was somehow improper to describe these people as anything, let alone “human.” From her experience in the Ergosphere, she had retained most poignantly the notion that it was useless to try to name or discern anything. She had asked more questions than she could remember, and their answers did no good. Even the satisfaction of achieving a model compatible with her preferred worldviews (that her Father was no closer to God or Eternity or anything than anybody else, among other aspects) did her no good, per se. It did not teach her how to do anything; it did not tell her why. She could ask forever “what” and “but” and never be satisfied, and not because she was not asking the right questions. There were no right questions to ask. The experience was communicated piecemeal, over—and by—time.
And how loath was the curious General to accept that notion!
Still, it was good to be where one could think on anything, and the world around would remain in physical place. Good to listen to the birds, and not the constant chatter of the men. And pleasant to do so in the company of a beautiful woman, who studied the General from time to time, riding respectfully along her left side. Yet, the blonde curls of that woman—
“Stop, General.” Dominia leapt as Gethsemane stirred her from thought with a hand upon her wrist. “I do not mean to intrude upon your meditations, but I hear their ripples in the Waters and know the shade does, also.”
“Oh,” said Dominia, her tone bitter enough to curl her lip. “Even here?”
“Even on Earth, though in a muted and indirect way. But here, it is clear; the medium by which we move now is not mass, but potentiality, who, fleet-footed, carries information in a wink.”
“And in the Ergosphere?”
“Light,” answered the girl.
“So Valentinian is using light to read my thoughts. Like the red eye that reflects out in a photograph; that’s somehow carrying information from my brain, into the Ergosphere?”
“All mediums of energy are also mediums of thought; it is a matter of the thoughts being communicated in different ways. When thoughts are given sluggish mass in the material world, they must communicate over time and through more obvious means. You must give your thoughts energy of their own, whether by speech or by giving them physical form. But in the Ergosphere and in the Kingdom, those who are sensitive and who know the secrets of the Water can hear much if they listen. And those who are the Water, as is the shade of your wife, cannot help but hear all communications, subtle or otherwise.”
“So you’re saying it can’t help but torment me,” said Dominia, disappointed to feel such an ugly way in such a beautiful place. The girl, her affect as muted as it had been since they’d met, nonetheless looked upon her with a particular gentleness. Taking the General’s hand, she lifted it to her lips and kissed its knuckles.
“In a sense, this is so. But to it, it is not tormenting you. It seeks you, as you seek your wife. If you are to find her, however, you must not be so pained and regretful. I hope to make you less so.”
Flustered into a thudding heart and annoyed by her fluster, the gruff General slipped her hand out of the girl’s and primly took her own horse’s reins. “Thanks for being honest. Can you lay off the thought-reading, please?”
“Certainly, but I will not need to read your mind to know your next set of thoughts.”
“Oh?” asked Dominia, not seconds before her stomach growled. The girl laughed, and the General recognized that the sensation of vague nausea that had been growing since her arrival was not nausea but hunger. Normal hunger: for food, not for flesh. With a muffled, alien cheer, the nymph slipped her hand into the picnic basket packed against the saddle and withdrew a handkerchief full of jerky along with a chunk of dense, soft bread.
“You will be shy about eating, perhaps, but you must not be. You have to eat while you stay here, or else you will starve, just as you would starve on Earth were you a human.”
“These aren’t some creep’s evil thoughts?” This elicited a small smile from the girl, who removed a hunk of soft cheese and a bright ruby apple from the pack.
“As much as any other foodstuff. I must also eat if I wish to stay on land, though I will not starve; I will evaporate. Food keeps us grounded here, you see?”
As if through the thickest of fogs.
“Fog,” Dominia said aloud. “Water Bearers. You serve the Lady. She actually exists, huh?”
“Even after all this time, you have not believed.”
“I’ve been skeptical. Lazarus is a known quantity—and criminal—to m…y people, but the Lady is fictional.”
“To you, and, as you said, to your people. She is real to everyone els
e; even the people here know of the Lady, although She does not walk about this place. Her avatars do, as any other person here. But the Lady is the substance of this place.”
Kind of a weird thought. “So I won’t meet Her here?”
“One of Her avatars,” answered the girl, gaze caught by something glinting in the distance that also drew Dominia’s eye. As if punched in the solar plexus, the General gripped the reins of the horse and observed the distant disk of the glittering City.
“Incredible.” This, from the woman who had seen a thousand towns and decimated half as many. But for those many glorious cities, there were none so radiant as this: circles within circles, twisting spokes like the rays of a sun lapping upon itself, or an egg dividing in the womb, or perhaps a spiral flower. The marble of its buildings glistened in the distance and seemed to breathe with life. A thin cornflower ribbon of river trailed through its center yet didn’t break the pattern of buildings so much as highlight them. With a smile, Gethsemane admired her stunned face, turning away only when the General returned to herself well enough to look over.
“You should see it at night. All the candlelit and gaslit quarters look so soft…and there are a few electric quarters, but they are tucked deeper, so they cannot poison the sky. They see the sky, of course; but the City is built so it spirals within itself forever, and the more unsightly quarters therefore rest within its coils.”
“Sounds like a terrible place to get lost.”
“The best place. If you become lost in the City, it means it has a surprise for you: a gift, or a lesson, or even a friend that you never would have given to yourself.”
Dominia knew only one thing she wanted, so it wasn’t hard to give her something she wouldn’t consider. Yet, she sensed it wasn’t the usual flimflam peddled by “psychics” and snake-oil salesman; perhaps this place was more causal than the Ergosphere, but she sensed it was just as much ruled by synchronicity, or more.
Many people milled along the slope of the final hill between them and this extraordinary fractal, some pausing to wait for friends, some chatting along their way to join the line through the gate that seemed mere formality. There, a chipper guard in silver armor recognized the Bearer—and, after a moment of consideration, Dominia.
“Aha! She came. Thank goodness! The magician’s been on my back about you for a week.”
Oh, her friend! “He’s been here for a week?”
“Well, I don’t know I can rightly say that… He tends to come and go without the gate, so I can’t keep track of him.” This irked the fellow but mildly, and he adjusted his helmet with a hearty laugh. “Not that what he gets up to is any of my business, but, well, it is my job to keep track of folks coming in and out. Just for census purposes, mind.”
Behind them, someone politely coughed, and he appeared to remember there was a line of people extending quite far along the road behind the women; he chuckled. “But look at me, yammering on! Go on, ladies. Good to see you now, Gethsemane.”
“And you, Martin.” With a wave, the girl urged her horse down the populated main street.
There was no place like this—not in all the world. Though she supposed it was the world, if Gethsemane had spoken truth. Her world, and all other worlds. Even Acetia, if it wasn’t fictional—or even if it was. This much was revealed as true when she saw not the Renaissance fair she expected but a dreamlike mishmash of cultures, peoples, and times. That, perhaps, was the most startling thing. Some guy wearing goofy neon shorts and carrying a big black box playing ancient music passed a gentleman whose clothes resembled the pre-martyr era known to humans as “Victorian,” whose style Dominia recognized because Lavinia was obsessed. Yet she spied plenty of sport coats, T-shirts, and many woman wearing pants; there was no shortage of varieties and no telling upon whom or what one might lay eye. And all of that did not begin to touch the buildings! So many facades, of an extraordinary variety of styles that only distinguished themselves as more than generic but beautiful buildings of ultra-white stone when one drew near enough, or viewed them from straight on—as if an effect of light shaped the building’s purpose. Were it not for the horses, Dominia surely would have been bumping into passersby. The nymph smiled at her inattention, and the thoughtful furrow of her brow.
“You are bothered, General?”
“Nothing here is what I expected…not even the clothes. I guess I had a certain…vision. When I saw you, and your outfit.”
“The City has a way of defying that. It is an interesting place! There are many who dress like me—in simpler cloth or silk, not bark. These are native Westerners.”
Born in a black hole? Her mind reeled but the girl hardly paused. “Some are born in the City, but perhaps more are born in the Country without it, as was the queen of this Era. Often, these move here after waiting their whole lives, and they are more excited than anyone to be here, more curious about everything they see. These tend to make friends with their neighbors because they want to know all about them and the times they are from. And then there are many, many in the City who are refugees; all these are the ones in strange clothing.”
“Refugees?”
“They do not belong here originally, but the City has taken them in. Our world, this black hole. It is”—the girl frowned in irresistible thought—“like a storage space. I do not know…”
“Like a hard drive?”
“Yes, General, perhaps; the Engineer would tell you, even while still the Doorman. I do not think we will see him today, though that is for the best… He can be long-winded.”
“I know someone like that,” said Dominia, thinking of her Father. Her lips quirked in a smirk the girl echoed.
As usual, the General’s stream of questions may well have carried on without end all the way to the hotel: but, near the arched entrance of the marketplace—passed beyond the bridge over that sweet, crystal stream—a shout and commotion let up from her blind spot. Jerking her horse to a stop on instant defense, Dominia reached for her gun and hoped it had not been waterlogged into uselessness. No sooner had she turned her good eye to the noise’s source, however, than she recognized the sound of her name on the lips of a certain breathless Jun’yō first mate: and there he was, running up to meet her. The chubby sailor, Tenchi Ichigawa.
Would you get out of town.
VIII
Bumps in the Night
Throughout her long career, Dominia had encountered more than a few people she’d previously victimized. Survivors thereof, at least. Of all these, the survivor of the Jun’yō massacre was by far happiest. “Dominia”—he cried her name while tripping down an aesthetically modern curb and only barely found his feet upon the cobblestones—“oh, wow, Miss Mephitoli! How are you?”
He halted before her, swabbing his forehead while huffing for breath, and bowed a few enthusiastic times she returned in awkward manner from atop the horse. “I didn’t know I’d see you here! Not so soon, anyway. I’m sorry about my cousin. You know what a coward he can be…”
“It’s all right.” Dominia tried to smile. “You can’t control René, and neither can anybody else… Anyway, I never expected to see you here.”
Though confusion darted through the man’s pursing lips, it soon resolved. “Oh, I see! My goodness—what a thing, time!” As he laughed, Dominia turned a look of concern to Gethsemane. While Tenchi had been a rather cheerful, almost dopey fellow, he now seemed to be rather, well…“doped up.” That didn’t concern the nymph.
“You are from the General’s future.” She stroked the neck of her shifting mare while the sailor nodded. “I urge you, hold your tongue.”
“Yes, ma’am! I wouldn’t say anything. Only…ah, I’m so happy to see you, Dominia!”
Not her Tenchi—the Tenchi she’d known—but the Tenchi of the future. A disturbing notion. Oh, she’d gathered the eternal nature of the City from the clothes of its inhabitants, but she hadn’t stopped to think that eternity included all future as well as all past. Which passing faces would be famili
ar in some future visit?
“You are a refugee,” observed the nymph of Tenchi, drawing the General from her thoughts as her companion took up the reins of her impatient mount. While she spoke, she urged the animal forward, and Dominia’s followed. “I was explaining the hotel—about to, at any rate.”
“Oh, you haven’t checked in yet? You’ll love the hotel, Dominia. I’m the courier!”
“You work here?” she asked as the man fell into stride with her good side.
“You have to work someplace if you’re going to stay.” His eyes glowed with the earnest depth of his words. “Contribute to society as a helpful member! I guess on Earth they’d call this place ‘communist,’ huh? But it’s not like that… I mean, it’s true, I just got through delivering Mrs. McLintock’s paycheck, and she’ll just give it back to the—”
“Mrs. McLintock?” The name shocked her so to hear that Dominia practically felt her own pupil shrink. Tenchi didn’t notice.
“Yes: she’s a barker at one of the vegetable stands. A refugee like me…a little different, though.”
The nauseating snap of Carol’s neck, seconds after the quieter one of her daughter’s. Dominia trembled with horror and shame, her fingers tightening around the reins. Horror and shame—yet, hope.
“Mrs. McLintock was a Lazarene?” asked Dominia of Tenchi, whose eyes sprang in the direction of the nymph’s back. “Is her son here, too?”
“Well—that is, I don’t—”
Gethsemane, hiding her annoyance for the babbling sailor, turned to say, “Mrs. McLintock was made a Lazarene in childhood; her son and daughter were not inducted into the philosophy, as she never entirely believed, and her husband did not trust even a martyr such as Lazarus.”
That hope dissolved into nothing; Dominia sat back upon her saddle. “Forced to be here without her children? She can’t want that.”