A Paradigm of Earth

by Candas Jane Dorsey

  After Morgan had gone down the long hall, Delany lay back and the tears rolled again down her cheeks. “Oh, you can save my life all right,” she whispered, “but what does it do for you?” And what would Blue do, if she were to allow it? Could it really make a difference now, after thirty-some years of crippling influence? Damn the blue thing for a troublemaker! For an hour she watched the clock, the numbers changing, then put out the light and was almost sleepy.

  “Never mind any of that,” she said of her racing thoughts as she dozed off.

  In her dream she knows how to fly. This is so derivative that even in the dream she laughs at her own conceit. Morgan lies below her as she floats away. Morgan is dreaming blue thoughts; they cloud around her head like fruit flies.

  Delany has not been able to fly like this since she was a child. Now Morgan’s bright restless mind has called her.

  She flies over Blue, and sees that the alien’s eyes are open, watching her.

  “It’s a dream,” she says.

  “Sure,” says the alien. “It’s a dream.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she says.

  “Get out of my head, Blue,” says Morgan’s voice, and Delany discovers she was a thought of Morgan’s, an echo in her dreaming mind. Then Delany’s dream becomes the black sleep that so resembles night but banishes it, and Morgan is able to shake away her unfair knowledge of Delany’s thoughts, and Blue’s dreaming, and sleep herself.

  “She calls me the grey man or our Mr. Grey,” he complained to Salomé.

  “I like it!” She grinned.

  “Hey! Grey? Colorless? The color of bureaucracy? Of old filing cabinets in the basements of government buildings?”

  “Silver hair, grey eyes, and snappy silver-grey suits: same color, different affect. I think it’s a great name for a dapper guy who’s all the same color.”

  “After looking at pictures of Blue all day, ‘all the same color’ means something else. Like the people in the Le Guin book. Grey all over. Low affect. Boring.”

  “Well, daddy-o, you’re not grey all over,” she said, and hugged him.

  “Daddy-o?”

  “We’re studying the fifties in film class. I have to be one step ahead of my students, you know, know all the old slang …”

  “I’m relying on you to tell me when this job turns me grey all over,” he said despondently.

  “Oh, lighten up, Mr. Grey. It’s a compliment. You are distingué . Dig it.”

  “When do you get to the seventies in film? That’s when I started learning the language.”

  “Next semester. Shall I consult you?”

  “I don’t know, I might grey-down your class too much.”

  “Quit brooding. It’s boring.”

  “See? She’s right. I am boring.”

  “Go see her, then,” said Salomé. “Ask her. Talk with her. Show her.” And, done with the topic, she strode out of the room.

  “Out of the mouths of babes and striplings,” he said, and she leaned back around the doorframe to say, “Yeah, lots of people tell me I’m a babe.”

  “Someone’s putting biohazard into the recycling. The garbageroute kid has entered processing charges three months running. Whoever masturbates into condoms, bag ’em properly, will you?” Morgan said irritably one day at supper when all of them happened to be there at once.

  “That lets me out,” said Delany, then laughed when Morgan glared at her.

  “I know who it is,” Morgan said, “I’m just trying to be delicate. The recycling’s been a problem for a while. Not just the biohazard, but extra sorting charges and penalties for mixing non-recyclables and organic matter. Like, dammit, no corn plastic and no pizza flats. Can you guys please get your chops together?”

  “It’s not such a big thing,” said Russ. “It’s just a detail.” He stacked his plate on John’s and handed the stack to John, who took it with a slight air of surprise and walked it in to the sink.

  “It’s just a budget. We aren’t exactly rolling in wealth here. I’ve had to pay three fines for violation.”

  “We’ve got a cushion,” said John from the doorway, rolling his eyes toward the back of the house where the surveillance shed was.

  “We can’t have CSIS pay for our garbage,” said Morgan.

  “Why not?” said Jakob. “They are giving us enough grief as it is. Let them pay for the privilege.”

  “Ever heard of self-sufficiency?” Morgan retorted. “I’m not interested in them being able to control us by what they pay for. Slacking like teenagers is going to get us treated like teenagers.”

  “Besides,” said Delany, “the whole point is to do our best by the environment.”

  “Oh, calm yourself,” said Russ, clearing the plates from in front of Delany and Jakob. “It’s not like life as we know it will come to an end if we commit a garbage crime.”

  He walked out of the room, leaving Morgan glaring after him.

  “I thought life as we know it would come to an end if there were too many garbage crimes,” said Blue innocently. Delany snorted.

  “Oh, never mind!” said Morgan. “What’s so great about life as we know it, anyway?”

  At least John was doing the dishes for a change.

  “Being Presbyterian isn’t good for anyone,” said Russ.

  “Oh, come on,” said Morgan, “you’re not Presbyterian.”

  “Well, it’s not who I am, but it’s who I was raised to be. It’s my heritage. Long after the religion has gone out of it, the guilt and dutifulness remains. Parents, grandparents, aunt … all taking that dutiful assumption of burdens such as myself.”

  “The repeater orphan.”

  “Yeah, constantly using up my Presbyterian Duty Points by needing help. It was instructive.”

  Morgan could imagine the instructiveness of a burden of guilt about something arbitrary and unpreventable. She shuddered. “The kinds of lessons we don’t need to know,” she said.

  Jakob was massaging Russ’s chronically tense shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Jakob said. “How do we know what we need to know? If it is indeed all cosmic curriculum, and we have to keep going around until we get it right, must be something we’re missing … .”

  “What about the stuff we already know?” said Morgan. “Did Russ need to be orphaned twice and then cared for by emotionally bankrupt tyrants?”

  “Maybe there’s a certain amount of repetition, all in the interests of a fully rounded education,” said Russ.

  “Sure,” said Morgan. “But then—”

  “You are saying,” said Blue, “you are saying that there is a course of lessons for each human, to learn what is necessary? A course such as I am attending? But then, how is it that there are so many who skip school?”

  Morgan and Russ laughed, but Jakob said, “It’s a good question. The theory—it’s a theory, Blue, a religious theory, a spiritual theory is perhaps more accurate—is that people’s souls are eternal and that when they are learning, they come back in life after life until they are fully enlightened.”

  “Yeah,” said Morgan, “and then if they make it to enlightenment, they can take a Bodhisattva vow, where they promise to stick around and help others learn until everyone is enlightened.”

  “Old souls,” said Russ. “Like Morgan.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Morgan, “what a nonsense.”

  “What about young souls like me?” said Blue.

  “We do the best we can,” said Jakob, “and fuck up a lot.”

  Blue was acquainted with this idiom, and was not derailed. “But there are so many people stubborn in their failure and ignorance,” Blue said. “I don’t understand.”

  Morgan felt a gigantic bubble of tears swell up and block her throat, her breathing, and finally her vision. Failure and ignorance describes my life, she thought. She turned away.

  “What’s the matter?” said Russ.

  “Nothing,” said Morgan, and indeed, a vast nothingness was rising behind the tears,
a wash of hopeless disregard threatening to envelop her permanently. The desperation of the foolish is boundless, she thought, with the last shred of her anger.

  “What?” she heard Jakob say.

  “She is alive,” Blue replied. “It is dangerous.”

  Morgan walked out of the kitchen, feeling the tears subsiding without being shed, leaving the others in their silence. She felt better in the dim hallway lit only by the sun filtering through the high stained-glass aperture windows in the stairwell. More congruent, alone really as well as existentially. It is coming apart, she thought, and soon I will have to answer all these questions. But please, not today, not today. I have too many things to do. Too many people to take care of.

  Somewhere in her history there must be a stockpile of guilt too. She couldn’t blame it on just one religion—she had such a mixed heritage: was it the Jews, the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Greek Orthodox, the Free Church of Scotland, or the ancestor worshipers who bequeathed her this guilt that she was not measuring up to the demands of the universe? Can’t have been the Unitarians or the Buddhists, she thought, and longed, if she had to have Christians, for some Quakers in her family tree.

  Or was it simple wistfulness that grew in her, this obligation to be perfect?

  Like all her upthrustings of fear so far, it passed, and she was indeed still alive. And had managed not to look at it head-on for another day.

  Morgan dreams of Nancy, who in the dream has come back from the East Coast with a lover, a tall black woman who has taught Nancy to put her hair in dreadlocks. Morgan is combing Nancy’s hair with her hands. Her fingers have to go in below the beads or they snarl in the strands. Morgan whispers, are you lovers?

  Yes, Nancy says.

  Oh, Morgan says, a bit disappointed that Nancy is not available, wants to make love with her even though she knows what chaos that would cause among them.

  You don’t want that, says Nancy (says Morgan to herself via the dream), you just want a little satisfaction.

  Yes, thinks Morgan, dream-Morgan, and why not? Is it too much to ask to be satisfied?

  She woke up thinking: This is an interesting message I have sent myself. Thinking too: is it the first time I have asked for anything? Not sure if it violated the covenant with the void with which she lived, by which she balanced her life; not sure why now she wanted anything, but convinced of the danger of it, still she thought now she would go ahead of her dream into the territory of wanting, and see what came of it. At the pun she laughed in the awake darkness, wondering if Blue was listening to her. Wondering if it was possible. Decided it might as well be possible, if it was by solipsism she must live, and went to sleep smiling and scared and almost happy with herself.

  The next day, Morgan found a note on the dining room table when she went downstairs at ten in the morning. “Going to have an adventure,” said the note. “Don’t worry. I wore my chip. Back in a few days.—Blue”

  Blue’s handwriting was terrible.

  All the money was gone from the household petty cash box and Blue had left an IOU in the box. Holding it in her clenched fist, not knowing whether to cry, laugh, or shout, Morgan telephoned the grey man.

  “Blue is fine,” he said instead of hello.

  “Were you going to tell me? Or just let me have my heart attack here, alone?”

  “We just found out.”

  “Blue says, ‘I’m wearing my chip.’ That implies you have been tracking.”

  “Yes, but Blue’s not far away. Seems to be holding in—what?” This was not to Morgan, but muffled, to someone in his office. “You’re sure? Shit.”

  “What?” Morgan shouted into the telephone.

  “The chip bracelet was left on the windowsill of a restaurant. The outside windowsill. The team thought Blue was there with you for lunch. The feed’s only working intermittently. Someone has squidded it. There are traces of pinkface on the bracelet. Blue’s in disguise, at least.”

  “Such a consolation,” said Morgan. “Find Blue!”

  “That’s in the nature of a redundancy,” the grey man said coldly, and hung up.

  Morgan dreams of loneliness, fear, and anger. She woke unrested, to more worry. Three nights like that, with nothing to which she could hook her dreaming.

  The grey man had a small parcel in his hand and a preoccupied look on his face. “Here,” he thrust it at her unceremoniously. “Happy birthday.”

  “What is it?” said Morgan, and made a face. “I mean, thank you. I forgot it was today.”

  “Open it and see,” said Mr. Grey.

  “I wish Blue were back. I’d feel like celebrating.”

  “If wishes were horses, you’d have one on your lawn,” he said. “Blue is at the end of the street, walking toward the house.”

  “What?”

  “What I said. No, don’t go running, how would you know? Just wait. Meanwhile, open your present.”

  “How can I think of … oh, all right.”

  It was a Hester McKenzie vid, a bootleg by the look of it, for it was labeled by hand in a firm script. Morgan turned it over, and on the back was “to the Morgan guy and the Blue guy—happy birthday” in the same hand.

  “It’s an artist’s proof,” said the grey man. “I know her. I got it for you.”

  “Wow,” said Jakob, standing behind her in the door. “That’s spinal. Worth a lot, too. I didn’t know it was your birthday. We’d have had a party.”

  “It’s rude to eavesdrop,” said Morgan automatically, and grimaced. “Okay, when Blue comes back, you can throw a party for me.”

  “Do you remember your last birthday?” said the grey man.

  “No,” said Morgan. “I don’t.”

  “It was the day after Blue ran away. Technically, it had begun when Blue arrived at your house.”

  “Really? Goodness. No wonder I forgot.”

  “Wow,” said Jakob. “What a birthday present you got last year too! Hey, is Blue going to make a habit of running away on your birthday?” Morgan glared at him.

  Blue was at the gate now, wearing jeans and white silk like Nancy and Aziz affected, and carrying a large woven shoulder bag that Morgan was sure she’d seen in Jakob’s room. Morgan ran to meet her alien. “Blue! Where the hell were you? I was so worried …”

  Blue was in pinkface, but it was a bit tattered—after all, the alien had been away for three nights. Blue looked defiantly at Morgan, then at the grey man a step behind her, at the watchers’ hut, then at the street. Morgan followed Blue’s gaze to see that there were three “ghost-cars” full of watchers. “Morgan went to a dance,” said the alien sullenly. “I wanted to go to a dance too.”

  “We’ll take you to a dance,” said Jakob. “It’s Morgan’s birthday, and we’re having a party.”

  “Don’t make any promises,” said the grey man grimly.

  “Is that a birthday present?” said Blue brightly, looking at the package in Morgan’s hand. “What is it?”

  “Don’t try that innocent act,” said Morgan. “You know darned well that everyone is mad at you. You won’t distract us that way. I suggest you go get cleaned up and meet us in the dining room. You are in big trouble.”

  “I am a grown-up,” said Blue sulkily.

  “Yes,” said Morgan, “and you are one of the most important grown-ups on Earth. You can’t just go where you want without telling anyone. Even I know that, and you know how I feel about personal liberty. I am really, really mad at you. I am not joking. If you don’t get cleaned up, I am going to yell at you. So I’d prefer you went inside before I lose my temper.”

  “I don’t like it when you are mad at me.”

  “Neither do I,” said Morgan.

  “I think you should do what she said,” said the grey man unexpectedly. “It’s her birthday. People aren’t supposed to be this angry on their birthdays. It’s a day to celebrate.”

  “After we talk, we’ll celebrate. I’m glad you’re home, Blue.” Morgan held the storage module and the wrapping paper i
n her hands so tightly her knuckles were livid.

  Blue looked at them all again and then, downcast, walked toward the house. Morgan sighed. “Blue,” she said.

  Blue turned.

  “I really am glad you’re home,” she said, and held out her arms. The alien came eagerly but stiffly into her hug, and she thought she saw a trace of tears in the lapis eyes before Blue pulled away and ran into the house and up the stairs.

  “Phew,” she said.

  “Ain’t parenthood hell?” said Mr. Grey.

  “This isn’t parenthood,” she said. “This is guardianship. Bawling Blue out may have been the second-hardest thing I have done in my life. I have absolutely no right to speak that way to another adult human being.”

  “Happy birthday,” the grey man said. She bared her teeth at him.

  “Are we all happy now?” said Jakob brightly, and Morgan glared at him again. He faded back into the house, and Mr. Grey laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We are pretty sure Blue committed no major crimes on its little sabbatical.” He spoiled it by snickering. It was Sunday. “As far as we know,” he added, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Very funny,” said Morgan, and stalked into the house. At the door she turned. “Thanks,” she said grimly, waving the present at him.

  “You’re welcome,” said the grey man, chuckling in the sunlight. Clearly an escape from tension, she thought, but still annoying. She ran up the dim steps to her room.

  They all gathered around the table in the dining room in postures that ranged from alert to sulky. Blue and John were the sulky ones: John had been prevented by the grey man from filming their meeting.

  “One camera, fixed, that’s all,” he had begged.

  “In your dreams,” said Mr. Grey. “Siddown.”

  Delany wheeled in last. “Sorry I’m late. The elevator was being weird.”

  “Okay,” said Morgan. “Now. Blue. You first.”

  “John said you were tired of me,” said Blue sulkily.