Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven

by Anthony Bartlett

  10. FIRE IN THE HOLE

  Palmiro caught up with Hona as she entered the boot room. He had to walk quickly to match her stride. “I guess you used all the bullets back there, so there can't be one left for me!”

  She was still carrying the gun, but at the mention of it she threw it away from her.

  “Thank you for that, Hona. You're right, and you and all the others were right to condemn me, but I've got some others things to do and I need to be alive to do them!”

  They were entering Adorno's study and she stopped abruptly to face him. “OK, so now you're really pushing it. Haven't you done enough damage? Shouldn't you just go crawl into a hole somewhere?”

  As Adorno’s mad experiment erupted in fire and all the high science of Heaven was shattered to pieces Palmiro had understood with lucid clarity what he should do. Pascale had told him to go and rescue Finn, and he felt from the depths of his soul this would be his redemption. It would be his life, to bring love in place of all the havoc he had created. Hona's work had been with the shuttles that connected the two Homelands. She was the one who could and should help him return to the world of the TEPs.

  “Please, just listen a moment, Hona. What about the solar panels out there on the hills, the rocket shuttles, the power stations in the north? Do you care about them?”

  “Of course I do. Everything was working just fine before you came along, and I enjoyed keeping it that way.”

  “Hona. I'm guessing you're a fairly recent recruit to Heaven and that explains why you're healthy. The anti-enzyme doesn't affect people who are chronologically young.”

  “You're saying I can’t get your killer virus because I’m young?”

  “That's correct, and in that case you're going to be very important round here. You'll be one of the few with any expertise, and the rest of us are going to need you a lot.”

  She glared suspiciously. “So now you're suddenly become our leader, guiding us all to a brave new world?”

  “No, no, Hona, it's not like that. How many times do I have to say it, things have changed with me! You might think I'm starting another ego trip but I really want a completely different life. Far from leading the people here, I want to go back to the North, to the people of the TEPs.”

  This time Hona truly was surprised. The life of the Northern Homeland was canceled from the thoughts of Immortals. It was practically another planet and even now, after Heaven had collapsed on every side, it was still a million miles away. To want to go back there for the sake of its people suggested Palmiro actually was different.

  “You're kidding me, aren't you?”

  “I'm perfectly serious. Everything started there for me, all my questions, and I feel a responsibility. What's more I think they're in some kind of trouble. It's possible some of the power stations or turbines are offline and that explains the rainstorms here.”

  “Yes, that's possible, even probable. Did you have something to do with that too?”

  “No, no, but there was this guy in the Ice Camp, Guest, the chief guard...it's a long story.”

  “Oh brother, I really was just joking! So you've got another criminal psychopath involving you in his plans?”

  “Something like that: I was his prisoner. But look, the Northern Power Stations were always monitored from here, right? In the normal course of events someone from here would have to go and take a look, wouldn't they?”

  “What's normal anymore? But, yes, that’s the case.”

  “Well, I want to be that person. I need you to give me as much information as you can on the power stations and turbines, and also on the shuttles. Then I need you to let me take a shuttle back north.”

  Hona had no clear idea of what Palmiro intended. She found it extremely hard to forgive or trust him. In the circumstances what he was proposing sounded like some sort of plan and better than nothing. Yet still she was not convinced. “Give me one good reason why I should help you.”

  “Because the business of your colony was to keep things working, wasn't it? And that's why you were angry enough to kill me, because the whole of Heaven stopped working. All I'm asking is to allow me to get some things working again, so I can make it up to you in some way and we can all have a future?”

  As they talked they were standing next to one of the tall manor-house windows looking out onto the garden. Palmiro saw the movement first and Hona followed his distracted glance: a troop of horses and riders were trotting in from the drive, turning onto the central track between the flower beds and coming up toward the pillared entrance.

  Hona said, “What now? Some more people looking to kill you?”

  At first Palmiro had thought the same thing and he was about to make a run for it. Then he saw Jonas at the head of the riders.

  “No, I don't think so. The one at the front, it's Jonas. He's no vigilante. He was Pascale’s lover and knows the whole story.”

  Palmiro and Hona moved together out the door, into the afternoon sun. They waved at the riders who turned and picked their way across the garden toward them. Jonas led the way and dismounted when he got up close. “Good to see you, Palmiro. I've brought some friends to meet you.”

  “I’m glad. I was scared you were all here to lynch me!”

  There was a nervous laugh and Palmiro recognized Charlize. “Oh hi, Charlize. Good that you're here. Seems things are always pretty dramatic when we meet!”

  Charlize gave a non-committal shrug and Jonas said, “Let me introduce the others.”

  Palmiro nodded to each of them with his usual direct glance, but without hostility; then he introduced Hona. “She came here to question me and I'm pretty sure you have questions too. I suggest we all have dinner together and we can talk properly. You can stay here, there are plenty of guest rooms.”

  “That sounds a very welcome proposition after days on the trail. It's also a first for me, to be a guest at Adorno's mansion!”

  It was Colette speaking and she was already dismounting, but Stavros was looking upward, over the west wing. “Is that smoke up there?”

  Palmiro glanced backward awkwardly. “Probably. We just had a fire in the laboratories.”

  “Well, it's not out. It could burn this whole place down!”

  "Uh... it's at the end of a passageway and I didn't think it could spread this far.”

  “It looks like it's generating a lot of heat. You need to check it.”

  Saiorse agreed and asked where the stables were. She said she’d stable the horses with Colette's help, while the rest looked to the fire. In a moment Palmiro was showing Stavros and the others back through the study along to the boot room and the door connecting with the walkway. Starvros pulled it open and directly they felt the wave of heat and saw a thickening pall of smoke clinging along the roof of the passageway, almost all the way up from the turn.

  Stavros asked, “How far from the end is the fire?”

  Palmiro told him and Stavros said they needed sledgehammers, axes, that kind of thing. Palmiro recalled the warehouse down the corridor on the left and Stavros set off at once. Amid the toolboxes and piles of electrical hardware they turned up a sledgehammer, an electrically operated chain-saw, and a crowbar.

  “We have to smash the corridor open to stop the heat and fire reaching the house. We'll start as far down to the turn as we can, to save the workshops.”

  Palmiro, Hona, Jonas and Charlize all fell in easily with Stavros' urgent directions. It seemed natural to follow his lead, saving the fabric of the Heavenly Homeland, despite—or even because of—the total disaster that had been wreaked on the life of Immortals. Neither did Palmiro’s joining in seem out of place. Within minutes Stavros was smashing a hole in the laminated facing on either side. Palmiro and Jonas began levering and twisting the aluminum studs, forcing the gaps wider, while Hona and Charlize used the saw to slice open the boarding of ply.

  It did not take them long to get to the roof, standing on step-ladders from the warehouse and breaking through the board at the top. The smoke and
heat drifted into the sky, but they could also feel and see the flames reaching the mid-section of the covered way as the fire pulled in oxygen. Stavros yelled out they should douse their side of the broken passage with water. Filled with the energy of their battle they dashed back together to the boot-room and located the kitchen. They quickly gathered pots and buckets, running the faucets to fill them and establishing a chain back out to the corridor.

  By now Colette and Saoirse had rejoined them and within half an hour they had fully soaked the smashed portion of the passage. The flames continued to lick around the broken section on the far side and it was clear that the laboratories at the end were now swallowed by the fire. They kept up the supply of water, dousing the other side of the break. After a while they saw the flames along the walkway falter and lose intensity. They continued to keep watch until they were certain the last flames had died and they had beaten the fire. They were soaked, grimy, and tired, but they joked and laughed with each other as they walked back to the house.

  11. MASTERPIECE

  Later that evening they gathered in the magnificent formal dining room of Adorno's mansion. They seated themselves around a long, glowing walnut table, while on the paneled walls to the sides were enormous portraits of royal families, kings and potentates. Directly facing at one end was a famous fresco of a supper table with all the diners side-by-side in a row, the original surface set entire in the wall. At the opposite end there was a carefully lit, half-length portrait of a woman with a subtle, faintly mocking smile. The meal consisted of grilled fish they had netted from a kitchen pond behind the east wing, together with some vegetables from the kitchen garden and savory biscuits from a tin. They had also investigated the wine cellar and brought up an amazing original Chateau Lafitte. Meanwhile Palmiro's explorations established that the house had not been spared the plague. He went searching for Max in his apartment at the far end of the west wing and discovered his almost unrecognizable body in his sitting room. Colette and Saorsie reported seeing another corpse out by the stables and on checking Palmiro confirmed it was Phillipa's.

  The visitors had sought out the guest rooms on the second floor, showered, found fresh tunics, then returned to the kitchen to help prepare the meal. While they were cleaning and cutting the vegetables Hona started to explain the background to the fire. By the time they sat down to eat people had a fairly good idea of the confrontation between herself and Palmiro, including the revelation of Adorno's Hyperbrain and the gruesome discovery of his body. Hona presented Palmiro as naive and used by Adorno, but when asked why Adorno had revealed his project to Palmiro, the explanation still made it sound like a conspiracy. The infection was crucial to Adorno's plan to introduce the Hyperbrain, and Palmiro had fulfilled the plan to the letter. The thought was no longer of Palmiro as the single agent of catastrophe, but definitely a key member of the plot.

  When they took their seats Stavros did not wait but at once set out the charges. “You and Adorno cooked this whole infection up to force Immortals into a new way of thinking. You decided to kill just about everyone to make the rest of us prefer being part of the stars.”

  “Yes, but I never intended to kill everyone, just Sarobindo, and because he himself was always anticipating death...”

  The group dove hungrily into the food and when the wine was poured they took time to savor it, relishing its splendid body and bouquet. After a moment Colette gave a sigh of satisfaction, then she spoke bluntly. “So, yes, you are a self-confessed killer. On what grounds would you expect mercy from this court? "

  Palmiro put his own glass back on the table. He felt all the portraits of the powerful and mighty looking down on him, asking the same loaded question and not expecting there to be mercy. “I accept my responsibility for Sarobindo, and for all the deaths, although I did not will the others consciously. My hope for mercy, therefore, is not from the facts, it must always be from the future. I believe something different and wonderful is now possible, arising from what happened.”

  Stavros almost spat out his wine. “Ha! The end justifies the means, exactly what Adorno believed. How are you any different?”

  “I did not say what happened was a means to an end. I said something arose from it, even if I’m to blame for what happened. It came by itself, out of the disaster, and changed the meaning of everything.”

  “But are you sorry for everything?” Saoirse interjected. “Would you undo it if you could?”

  Palmiro was stuck here. He was forced to play his last, best card. “I can only answer by telling you about Pascale. I do not know how to explain it but I saw her, the morning after she was killed. I did not expect it, but it was wonderful. She was right there, alive and beautiful. She filled me with a completely different feeling. I know people will say ‘hallucination,’ that kind of thing. But I think you'd agree I'm not the hallucinating kind of guy. And the way it made me feel did not go away: it wasn't a freak mental event. It's still with me. I cannot be sorry for that.”

  There was a long silence. The smile on the woman in the portrait at the end of the room twinkled ironically.

  Saoirse spoke first. “I don't think anybody quite knows what to say about your experience. But if, as you say, it gave you a different feeling, I can ask my question again. Are you sorry for what you did? Would you undo it?”

  Again Palmiro paused. He was pushed to the sticking point. “I am sorry for causing the deaths, but not that they happened. I am not sorry about the end of immortality. I am sorry for the killing of Sarobindo and for my part in the infection, but I cannot will to undo it. I am very happy that, from it all, Pascale found another way. I am caught between the two things and I have no other answer.”

  Colette spoke carefully, “You are suggesting Pascale found another kind of immortality? And that must change everything, including your guilt.”

  “Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.”

  Colette continued to speak quite deliberately, in a way that sounded unusual for her. “I think we need to think hard here. Palmiro is claiming the issue is not what he did, but what has become possible. For some philosophers what is possible overrules what is necessary. We cannot ignore that Heaven was born out of violence and death that were considered necessary. First the storms we ourselves caused, and then the Northern Homeland. The frozen north was the dumping ground for all the bad weather and misery needed to make Heaven perfect. We never gave it another thought because we believed there was no human alternative. But now something different and new seems to have happened, at least to this man, and perhaps even to Pascale. So maybe we should allow the possibility of a new way, and a more decent one at that.”

  Saiorse prompted, “We should forgive the past for the sake of a different possible future?”

  “I believe so.”

  “I happen to agree!” Saiorse suddenly gave her vote. “I've been thinking about this place, this mansion. Can't you just see Adorno here, in this villa, with all its noble art, and his arrogant experiments just a score of paces away! Can't you feel him? Heaven was never enough for him, right from the beginning. He brought Heaven into being and he brought it to an end. We were always at his mercy. So how can we blame Palmiro when Adorno was the spiritual architect of it all, and the rest of us, we just followed him along?”

  Suddenly Charlize got to her feet. She was a little flushed and nervous, as if she was taking a difficult step. “I, I want to say something...”

  All eyes turned toward her. “I knew Pascale back in the North and I liked her. I knew you, Palmiro, and I have to say I never liked you. I considered you a trouble-maker, and really that is what you proved to be. I should feel angry with you for what you did, and I do. I was going to live and have fun forever! But I can also see you have changed, and in a good way, so whatever it is that's happened to you, I'm in the best position to see it. Because you say it comes from Pascale I feel I want to hold on to it. And I want to know more about it. So, I agree with Colette and Saoirse, we have to forget the past, and look to th
e future.”

  She sat back down and Colette and Saiorse both gave her warm smiles. Jonas looked at them, then he sprang to his feet holding a glass of wine. “A toast,” he cried. “A toast! To the future which Pascale showed Palmiro and Palmiro has brought to us!” He focused directly on Stavros. “Stavros, what do you say? Can you agree?”

  The women, including Hona, responded, raising their glasses. Stavros was staring moodily at the paintings on the wall. After a moment he pulled his gaze away, back to the company. He nodded slowly, not looking especially at anyone.

  “You all have me disarmed. I, too, was captivated by Pascale. If honoring her memory requires forgiving the past and hoping for the future, then I am bound to do it. Anyway, I don’t have the heart for any more killing.”

  They could not help themselves. Everybody let out a cheer, as if for the first time since all the terrible events had begun they'd heard some genuinely good news. Jonas who was sat next to Palmiro leaned over and hugged him. Palmiro put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands and began to weep, at first trying to suppress the sobs, and then more and more uncontrollably. His shoulders shook and his sobs became harsher, rising up from some hard hidden place. It actually hurt him physically, but much more emotionally as he came to terms with his whole life. So many things had happened, and he had done so much without ever stopping to think what he was doing.

  He'd been brilliant at finding the way everything worked, but he'd never thought seriously about himself, the way he worked. It was intensely painful now, suddenly, to enter that place, to consider himself at this other level where he could see the pettiness and spite behind so much of the glory. How stupid and arrogant he'd always been! How predictable and mean and pathetic! Yet, at the same time, the feeling of finally being accepted by the people around him had brought him to this place. He knew and felt everything really had been forgiven and it was this that forced him so abruptly to come face-to-face with his true self. He continued sobbing while Jonah kept his hand on his shoulder. The others could not help but be moved by his reaction and instinctively waited.