The days and nights following were lost in her own personal summertime disconnected from everything else, a private season into which all other purpose collapsed. The timeless aura of Heaven played along, spreading out the infinite moment, telling her every dreaming day, every hour, would and did last forever. She developed the quickest feelings for her fellow Immortal. He was an angel who had come in a moment of terrifying grief and his touch had brought her back to life. She was thrilled with the shape and strength of his forearm, with the solidity of his torso. At the same time he was tender, and good, and she felt completely secure. The terror and emptiness ebbed away from her, piece by piece, and she did not wish to step outside of her little heaven lest they return.
Her new name, which Jonas always used, was of great assistance. It enabled her to think only of this present existence and it always made her happy. As for Poll, he was now Palmiro and he too was entirely new. If she thought about their adventure together, she told herself it was all over and done with. He was here now, in his own place, and he could be happy and safe just as she was. If she remembered Wes and Esh, and her declaration that everything would change, her soul told her they were thousands of miles away, and there was something huge lying across the path between them, something she did not want ever to go near. And when she thought any of these things she would turn to Jonas once more, embrace him and cover him with kisses.
As for her lover, he had never been so blissful. The thought did cross his mind that technically it was impossible for anyone in Heaven to be happier at one time more than another, but he was not about to let it ruin his enjoyment. He knew Pascale trusted him and loved him. There was no one else in Heaven like her. The whole thing about Immortals being a race of beautiful equals, endlessly interchangeable and available, began to strike him as a kind of dogma. Her glance enchanted him, the way it moved over his body and came to rest on his face. He wanted to keep that glance for himself and always. He was endlessly thrilled at the way her hair fell on her shoulder and fringed the line of her collar bone, and he could not see how anyone else but he could ever know its miracle. Through the timeless hours he did not think Heaven was or would be anything but this.
He forgot his tasks in the History Colony, things like recording his observations of the recent Doblepoble, and even of the emergency initiation of Pascale herself. Certainly this would not be counted as dereliction on his part: everybody in Heaven was far too relaxed for that. They would even expect that a sponsor devote quality time to a recent inductee. But for Jonas it was never a matter of giving his partner a quick, disposable honeymoon. It had become so much more real than that.
Cyrus had been introduced to Pascale the day after she arrived in the colony but his attitude was cold and aloof. He was very annoyed at the unscheduled Initiation, how irregular it all was, and especially the way the program had gone forward without him. He even muttered it would have been better to get Security involved right there, a thought which made Jonas shudder. At any rate, there was now no question whether Cyrus would do the formal tour for the inductees: as far as the great historian was concerned they were unworthy interlopers and he would have nothing to do with them.
Jonas decided to do the tour himself, and also not to invite Palmiro. The one individual who could justly be called an interloper would be looked after by Emmanuelle, while he would devote himself exclusively to Pascale. The idea of accompanying her around the splendor of the Forum seemed all together sublime. Everything he had ever experienced there, its smells, its play of light and sound, its thrills and mysteries, all this would be perfected with her: they would be a god and goddess, basking together in the timeless wonders of Heaven.
All the same Jonas delayed. It was as if he were in a dream, lying next to Pascale in his second floor room, getting up only to go downstairs to the kitchen to find items of food and drink and return quickly like a hunter with his prizes. He shared a multi-quarter house with other members of the colony. The wing he was in was also occupied by Vanzetti and Vanzetti’s current partner, Masharu, a regal dark-skinned woman whose interests often took her to the downtown libraries. She and Vanzetti were indulgent to the two lovers and made sure there were plenty of supplies laid in, pastries, cold cuts, salads and fresh pressed juice.
Jonas’ room had French windows with white silk curtains. It led out onto a veranda overlooking a hillside dotted with vineyards and scatterings of scrub oak and mesquite. In the evenings the sun would go down at the far end of the valley and Pascale would go out to look at the light withdrawing from the thickets and velvet night coming in. He would watch her from the doorway as the stages of nightfall became a foil for her own beauty. He'd gaze enchanted, until in the last twilight she would turn back to him and their embraces would renew their passion. For what motive would he possibly want to tear himself away from this idyllic place and its boundless delight?
In the end it was Emmanuelle who awoke him from his dream. Or, rather, she awoke Pascale. The party-loving blonde from the Sports Stars Monitoring Colony arrived one morning on a horse. She rode her chestnut mare wearing a short belted skirt and a loose silk vest, looking every inch a goddess of the hunt. She was beneath the veranda and its open windows, cantering up and down and shouting to the couple who were just finishing breakfast.
“Hey, you up there, are you in? Are you lovebirds receiving visitors?”
Jonas thought he recognized Emmanuelle's voice and he raised his eyebrows in question toward Pascale. She smiled and shrugged. He walked out onto the veranda and looked over the railing. Emmanuelle saw him, wheeled the horse about and came to a leaning stop just below him.
“Jonas! Such a pleasure to see you.” Her face was raised confidently toward him and she spoke in her clear bell-like tones. “How are you coping with your sultry Northerner?”
“We're doing very well, thank you.”
“It sure as heck looks like it! We've seen neither hide nor hair of you for the longest time.”
"Well, the Initiation was a great success. Pascale's really very happy.”
Emmanuelle gazed at him while she held in check the restive mount. “Great, yes, everyone did a great job. But that was a whiles back. I really felt this morning, you know, I should come over and bring everyone up to date...”
“Thanks so much, Emmanuelle, like I said everything's great. But time's such a tricky thing here in Heaven, it can just slip away from you.” Jonas was surprised at his own words. Strictly speaking in Heaven time did not exist and people rarely spoke of it like that.
Emmanuelle made a humorous, mystified face while the horse danced on the spot. Before she could reply Pascale came out of the room and crossed over to the railing. Her hair was mussed and she was looking at Emmanuelle as if she had just then remembered something.
“How's Palmiro?”
“There she is! The bright new Venus in our skies! How you have vanquished our prosaic Jonas!”
Pascale continued to look as if she were remembering something of her own, not paying attention to the words. Emmanuelle saw the continuing question on Pascale's face and followed through affably.
“Ah, yes, Palmiro, another rare bird. We had our little fling, but we weren't left undisturbed the way you sweethearts have been. There were visits from people asking questions, about the flight and other things, and then Adorno came and whisked him away like a hawk from the sky. I can't say I was upset. That boy's mind is always drifting off. Not really the romantic type.” She released the mare's pent up energy, doing a circuit on the stretch of sage grass in front of the house.
When she came back again she said, “One thing we did do is the downtown tour. Palmiro was in the worst mood, but then we bumped into your brother, Pascale. Danny, he seems to hang out there a lot and he's such a nice guy. He's another reason why I came over. He really wants to see you.”
Pascale remembered Danny with a shock. She had almost completely wiped him from her mind. Suddenly she missed him very much. She brushed her hair away from her
face. “I would really like that. Why didn't he come over anyway?”
“Well, why do you think?” And she looked up at the couple provocatively. “Word went round you were having far too much of a good time. He said he was embarrassed!”
“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know...,” Pascale trailed off, uncertain.
“Don't be silly, she's only kidding,” put in Jonas. “Anyway I was thinking to go on the tour very soon. In fact we could do it today if you want. We will very likely find Danny, if that's where he's hanging out.”
Emmanuelle cheered. “Huzzah! That's the spirit. Get back in the swim.” And she took the chestnut in a tight circle below them with a couple of showy curvets thrown in. When she got the horse settled again she continued.
“Now there's one more thing, my pets. The philosophers, they're dying to host a big gig for all the newcomers, with Sarobindo present. Jonas, you know what that means! But they've been delaying and delaying, out of deference to you two. Apparently Hypatia and Friedrich absolutely would not hear of your little island being invaded.”
She did a fake double-take. “Ooops, but I just invaded it, didn’t I? Well, too late to worry! What I do want to say is if you show up downtown you'll also be getting a speedy invitation to their colony. Don't say you weren't warned!”
With that she reared the horse and plunged directly into a gallop, looping across the hillside in front of the house and yelling, “Such fun talking with you guys. Say hello to Danny for me!”
She disappeared down the slope between the trees, her body glued to the chestnut like an elegant craft on a fast-flowing river.
Pascale turned back toward the room, “I think she's right, we should get changed and go downtown.”
5. VENICE
Under a sidewalk awning Danny lay on a recliner idly watching the people of Heaven from the corner of his eye. His chosen spot was a setting to the south of the Sacred Way, a vast esplanade dominated by a full-scale Venetian cathedral and lapped by a lake of turquoise water imitating the famous lagoon. This was his favorite place. On another lounger close to him lay another beauty, black-skinned with a cloudburst of dark ringlets framing a high forehead and lustrous eyes. It was Eboni, his companion from the last Doblepoble and inseparable ever since. After sunup at the Fairy House at the end of that wild night he'd said he wanted to get away from everyone and everything, just for a while, and she said she knew the perfect place.
She led him south from downtown by dirt paths through the parkland, onto a dusty rolling range dotted with sage, bunchgrass and live oak. At length, after almost two hours, they arrived at a large enclosure with nobody in attendance. Inside were more fences and behind them were mighty animals, which Danny had only seen before in holograms. Not a great number, essentially a few examples each of animals known from children's stories and which the Immortals could not bear to be without, elephants, tigers, lions, bison, zebra, camels, giraffes, monkeys, rhinoceroses, bears, leopards, pandas. They were fed synthetic food by automatic dispensers and they sat or stood around in a gentle tranquility suitable for beasts which had been granted immortality too.
Eboni told Danny this place was the specialization of her colony, it was called a zoo. There, on the spot, he fell in love both with these creatures and with her. His mood brightened considerably and when finally they arrived at Eboni's home in the early afternoon she gave him her bed. He collapsed at once into deep and grateful sleep.
After he'd surfaced late the next morning Eboni showed him round, explaining that members of the colony kept the zoo supplied and clean. Another thing they did was to rear dogs. She took him to large kennels down a track from the colony and there he met several dozen of the major breeds of man's best friend. She explained that dogs were the one animal the Immortals agreed to let procreate. This was because original pets brought by pioneers had sometimes run off and were either eaten by coyotes or had joined forces with them. In other cases owners had split up and neither party wanted to keep the animal, in which case unwanted dogs had to be put down.
The attrition in dog numbers meant there was a carefully controlled replacement program. This wasn't the case for cats because from the beginning some strays had headed downtown and the neutering program obviously had not been comprehensive, for they proceeded to infest the temples and palaces there. They and their offspring served to keep the rodents in check so, apart from occasional culls, people were prepared to put up with them. Cats were the one truly independent species in Heaven. When people wanted a feline companion they simply hunted out a recent litter and took the healthiest and prettiest kitten home.
Danny saw his first brood of puppies—a small family of Dalmatians about three weeks old—and he was totally smitten. This was all he wanted, to care for little creatures like these, and of course the marvelous beasts at the zoo. He moved in with Eboni who was also a fanatic for animals, and they were a happy couple from day one. It was shortly after that the news of Cal's unconventional arrival in the Heavenly Homeland reached him. He really wanted to see her but he also felt uncertain and embarrassed. He had found it very hard to come to grips with the whole experience of Doblepoble—the way he'd split up with Charlize that night without hardly knowing it. Then the vague, unsettling stories surrounding the Initiation of Cal and Poll, now Pascale and Palmiro, had further confused him. Cal had at once become the lover of the Immortal called Jonas, and a little later he heard she was with him all the time and was not meeting anyone else. He badly wanted to see her and speak to her. She had always been able to make sense of things for him, just because of who she was. But he was less sure now, so he hung back.
Eboni, hearing him talk wistfully about seeing Pascale, said she knew a great place to bump into people in a neutral setting, the Venice piazza. Sooner or later everyone seemed to show up there. They should get up early, put in a couple of hours at the kennels or the zoo, then trek downtown. Danny readily agreed and they fell into the routine. They would arrive about midday and head to the café next to the cathedral, order Amari and crackers and doze in the sunshine. It was always a pleasant and interesting place to be. Danny grew confident that one day soon Pascale would find her way there.
He lay on his back gazing through the awning at the brilliant sun, idly thinking. He knew with his mind that this was the same sun which shone on the icefields of the north but, lying under it now, he felt it was not the same at all. It wasn't just the warmth. Everything really had changed and he didn't properly understand how. For sure there was the whole Initiation thing, and immortality, and the wonderful sights all around him. But there was even more to it than that, something deeper, something he thought only Pascale could show him. His little sister, Sam, always said he would be chosen as an Immortal. Of course she'd no idea how real all that was, but it had always given him a vague sense of always being someone special. Then there was that guy Palmiro. He truly was special; he seemed to have stuff already figured out back in the TEPs and now it seemed he had found his way to Heaven too. It felt like there really was something going on.
His thoughts drifted here and there, uncertain where to turn. Suddenly there was a movement, a shape that broke the hazy surface of his vision. Was that her? The figure coming across the sun-strewn piazza? She was wearing a simple cotton robe belted at the middle and she was arm-in-arm with a man he vaguely remembered. Yes, for sure, it was her, but her face was quite different from how he'd remembered and for an instant he felt he wanted to hide. She looked so different and he could not put a name to it.
Eboni had followed his glance as he propped himself on an elbow. “Is that her?”
“Yes, and that guy, I kind of remember him, Jonas....”
“Of course it's Jonas. Give them a wave, don't just sit there.”
Following her own advice Eboni leaped up, waving. Without waiting she started across the piazza, beckoning Danny to follow. He got up and began to jog after her, for the first time in his life feeling nervous about meeting his sister. Pascale pulled to a halt and
then she freed herself from Jonas and started running too. She headed straight for Danny, throwing her arms out and flinging them around his neck.
“Danny, how wonderful to see you. I didn't know how much I was missing you until this morning and then I couldn't wait to come find you!” She hugged him and kissed him multiple times.
Eboni and Jonas stood there grinning, looking back and forth from each other to the brother and sister. Danny was overwhelmed, and when Pascale finally let him go all he could manage was, “It's great to see you too, Sis!”
Eboni said, “This has got to be the most anticipated Homelands reunion ever. Danny and I have been hanging here for days and days, waiting to see you, Pascale. Oh, and by the way, the name's Eboni.”
“It's been far too long, and I really am sorry. But it's good finally to get to see you, Danny, and you too, Eboni!” Pascale smiled brightly at both of them.
Eboni again prompted the conversation. “So what sights has Jonas shown you? What's your favorite bit of Heaven so far?”
“Well, we took a ride to the top of a huge tower. That was amazing. What was the tower, Jonas?”
“The Khalifa.”
“Yes, that was it. We went to the viewing deck and it seemed like we were looking down on the whole world. I felt...I don't know what I felt. Definitely scared!” Then, after casting around for a moment, “But you know this place right here is very beautiful, I can see why you and Danny decided to hang out here.”
Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven Page 25