A Paradigm of Earth

by Candas Jane Dorsey

  At some point in the ride Morgan realized that she was happy.

  It was a state she had enjoyed so seldom in the last few years that she was like a bad swimmer come up for breath—she took a great gasp of this air that smelled only of musty spring grasses—and, of course, horse. The man who rode beside her, however, didn’t notice that she had moved up a level. He was riding in a curiously balletic posture, with one gloved hand loosely holding the reins, the other reached backward to the rump of the horse, resting there. She wanted to ask him if it was unconscious, or just a friendly gesture to the horse, or if he was doing something calming, horsey and wise. She didn’t speak.

  Ahead, Blue rode with the same lumpy rhythm as she, but Blue learned faster, and even as Morgan watched she saw the alien looking attentively at the wrangler then adjusting seat somehow. Morgan envied the facility, aware as she was of the sharp impact of buttbones on saddle. Sitting down wouldn’t be easy for Morgan tomorrow.

  Morgan thought that the wealth of Earth humans had to offer Blue was all in this moment. We become concerned with the artifacts we create to last past our deaths, she thought, but we lose these moments. We lose the integration of our souls within with our souls without. This gentle motion through the stands of softly surrounding trees and thickets of bush, this was the cosmic motion.

  What was civilization really but a relentless drive to conquer all this, subjugate it, prove human mastery over the inhuman beautiful supramundane? And when we have despoiled it, what do we have?

  Her optimistic belief in the effect Blue’s visit would have on the world was not based on the apocalyptic model. More the stone in the placid pool. Already everyone who knew Blue had changed, and the process was spreading. Something like it must have been happening with each alien, in at least twelve other places in the world. Soon, she thought, everyone who knew everyone who knew … and so on.

  But she let even those thoughts slip away, impelled by the insight of wind and the inspiration of leaf into a state close to what she expected pure consciousness to be; the state was modified by the stiffness growing in her right leg, the superficial pain whenever she urged the horse to trot, to catch up with the others. Because of that pain, she kept her horse to a walk, amazed—with a city-dweller’s easily-won amazement at mastering a simple physical skill—that she had learned how and did it so easily. She was also amazed to feel she liked the horse, leaned to pat its neck. She had never thought a horse would be likable. Now she knew better. She snorted slightly at herself.

  The rest of the riders had long since passed through a distant gap in the ridge, and even the grey man had not looked back. There were only three of them now in that magic landscape: the rich carpet of grasses and flowers growing on the water flat, the surrounding trees, the glades of willow, the sluggish gleam of silver creek water, the sun through the pattern of cloud, rays in the distant smoky/dusty air. The horses were walking steadily at a rhythm that reminded Morgan of cowboy music; the man beside her was humming to himself or his horse. Blue was ahead, also quiet, also walking the horse.

  The wind blows, the grass grows, the Shadow knows … Morgan laughed out loud and the guide turned a tanned, lined face to her and smiled. She felt the current of humanity run between them—and whether it was sensual, spiritual, tactile, whatever, didn’t matter. They were together in their solitude.

  Ahead, Blue glanced back, the make-up not masking the mobile smile, then looked ahead and pressed the horse into a canter, disappeared into the trees. The flurry of motion only deepened the peace.

  “Are you cold?” said the guide. “You could wear my jacket.”

  “No, thanks,” said Morgan. “I like the way it is.”

  His brown face turned to the trail. Whatever she felt, whatever he felt was not written there. Yet she felt they had said something. They rode on in silence.

  Home from the mountains, they settled into the house again. It was desperately quiet, without Jakob, Russ, and John. “There are ghosts everywhere,” said Blue.

  “Yes,” said Morgan. “After a while, if you live long enough, the whole world is made of ghosts. Layers and memories, shapes that aren’t there any more. I used to be so angry about that. I hated entropy.”

  “And now you are reconciled to it?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Morgan. “But I’m reconciled to something. Being human?”

  “Me too,” said the alien.

  That night, drying the dishes, Blue dropped one of the blown-glass glasses that had been Morgan’s mother’s. It shattered on the floor, and Blue stood amid the shards, visibly shaken.

  “What is it?” said Morgan.

  “I feel so old,” said Blue. “Part of me is very tired. I think, Morgan, I think I am wearing out. I think there is a—statute of limitations, perhaps we could call it—on this body. My hands are aching. Like you said was arthritis. Like the grey man said. Maybe I should have let them test my body.”

  “How long do you have here?” said Morgan. “Can we count on a certain amount of time?”

  “I don’t know,” said Blue.

  That night, they moved together again in their ecstatic journey of discovery. Morgan felt like each touch of Blue’s hand to her, each touch of her lips to Blue, each moment that their minds swirled gently below that event horizon, was a manifestation of the essence of their connection. “This is such an important part of how I love you,” she said. “Embodied. In your self. A body. Like me.”

  “This is not the end,” said Blue. “It is just one answer.”

  “Let us dream while we can,” said Morgan. “Eventually it will be memory and imagination. I want to store it up.”

  “Now that we admit to all this love,” Blue asked, voice that innocent inquiring alien again, light, “pastel Blue” thought Morgan with an inner chuckle, “will you mourn for me with the selfhate that you did for your parents?”

  Morgan shook her head. “No,” she said. “I have learned something about love these last two years. I will not forget it.”

  “Memory will serve us both,” said Blue with satisfaction. “My whole life has been learning you.”

  “Learning Earth,” said Morgan, alarmed.

  “It’s the same thing,” said Blue. “Go to sleep. I want to dream.”

  Their days were a delicate balance of waiting.

  “What will we do for money?” Delany asked. “Your maintenance allowance from the Atrium probably lapses with Blue’s departure, and my disability’s been cut again.”

  They were six today at dinner: the diminished household of three, Katy who was still with them for now, the grey man, and, of all people, Aziz, who’d dropped by with flowers and stayed to help make the rich clam chowder they were eating with toast and cheese.

  “I don’t know,” said Morgan.

  “I have a severance allowance,” said Katy. “I could stay here for a while more and pay rent.”

  “But you want to move on,” said Blue. “You have found that nice apartment.”

  “Yes, but if I can help …”

  “Thanks, K., but I don’t think you need to sacrifice your plans,” said Morgan. “But I do admit it’s been worrying me. There are fewer of us than before.”

  “Nancy wants a place to stay,” said Aziz.

  “But that has its problems,” said Delany.

  “Russ will be out on bail after the preliminary hearing Friday,” said Katy. She looked sideways at the grey man but he said nothing. Delany turned to him.

  “Come on, Mr. Grey, you can’t keep us on the hook forever. Did he squid the home vid as well as the government channel? Will he end up charged as an accessory to murder?”

  “No. The home vid was John all the time,” the grey man said slowly. Delany sighed with relief and Morgan leaned forward. He continued reluctantly, “Russ has an unconscious signature that’s not present on the house squid, and John liked to sign his handiwork with some pretty characteristic flags. Hester McKenzie and Jeffrey Bryant—our experts—have made their depo
sitions to that effect. Russ did the gov vid though. He’s proud of it. So, he’ll be fine until the trial on the sedition charge.”

  “But he’ll be unemployed,” said Morgan. There was a short silence. The grey man laid his napkin beside his plate as if preparing to say something, but before he could, the alien spoke.

  “You could sell your story to the tabloid media,” said Blue. “You know. The videorazzi?”

  They looked at the serene pale face in shock. “Well, is that wrong?” said Blue. “I will be gone.”

  “It’s a point,” said Delany.

  “True,” said Morgan. “They’ll be plaguing us anyway, once they find out. Might as well get something besides aggravation out of it.”

  The grey man cleared his throat. They all looked at him.

  “You were not willing to have CSIS pay your garbage fees but you will take a living from the slag media?” he said sternly. Morgan was about to speak when Blue laughed.

  “That’s funny!” said Blue.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Grey, and smiled. “But in fact, I have already given some thought to this problem. Unstable though the situation may seem, I have made an arrangement that I hope will transcend politics. You won’t have to sell your story to the media—unless of course you want to. There will be a—service pension, shall we say. Commencing on Blue’s absence.”

  “I won’t be dead,” said Blue brightly. “Make sure it isn’t a survivor’s pension, or you will have to wait seven years to claim it.”

  Morgan, Delany, and the grey man chuckled along with the alien, and Katy looked at them in shock. “The things you people find funny are so—’ she said.

  “Funny?” said Delany. For the sake of Katy’s dignity, Morgan managed to stop laughing only a few moments later.

  “Morgan, is that you?” The voice on the telephone was Robyn’s, sounding very far away.

  “Where are you? You sound like you’re at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Not quite. I’m in Tibet, on a land line.”

  “Tibet?”

  “Well, actually, we’ve just crossed the border into India. Twylla and I are helping get the new Dalai Lama out.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Oh, her grandfather is some kind of Buddhist guy. Priest. Whatever. So they needed some people with some money and goodness knows I have some, since that Tumbrel Stones deal.”

  “What on Earth are you talking about?”

  “It was a stock market thing, never mind. I put some of your trust money into it too, though, so you have some money. I’ll tell you all about it later. I just wanted to let you know the wedding is still on. You and Blue still coming?”

  “You sound like you’re wired.”

  “Yes, I told you I’m on a land line. I’m just really happy to be alive, you know? So I thought I’d tell you I was.”

  “I thought you were in Saskatoon.”

  “Well, I’m not. Can I talk to Blue?”

  “Sure.” Bemusedly, she turned the phone over to Blue and walked into Delany’s room. “Robyn has just been in Tibet with the new little Dalai Lama. Tibet. That is so weird.”

  “So, he developed a secret life after all. I knew he couldn’t be your brother and be so—”

  “Boring?”

  “Well, a little staid anyway.”

  “I am totally astonished. Apparently he has also made me some money on some stock exchange deal. Now that’s tainted money!”

  Delany chuckled. “But I’m sure it will come in useful. For little junkets to Tibet, sometime in the future.”

  “You think I’m going to develop itchy feet?”

  Blue appeared in the doorway, grinning widely. “He says it’s my fault he’s there and not in his office. He says that meeting aliens makes you look at the world differently. He says—”

  “I’m sure he does,” said Morgan. “He just wants you at the wedding.”

  “If I’m here,” said Blue. “If not, I already got his present. It’s in my bottom drawer.”

  “When did you have time to shop?”

  “Never mind,” said the satisfied, secretive alien.

  One cool night they built the fire, and sat before it quietly. “I have loved this so much, Blue,” Morgan said. “In case you don’t know.”

  “I know,” said Blue. “Thank you for saying so. I am so used to thinking that you gave me everything. I like it when you remind me that you think I have given to you also.”

  “But that is what is so complete,” she said, thoughtfully. “I didn’t know at the time, but I was getting as much as giving.”

  “‘Is this love?’” Blue quoted gently, and they laughed.

  “A course of loving,” said Morgan. “Not perhaps what the bureaucrats expected.”

  “Your bureaucrats or mine?” Blue said, and Morgan laughed.

  “And a sense of humor to boot. I really do love you, Blue.”

  “I love you too,” said Blue. “May I have some more of that juice, please?”

  Blue reached out a hand with the other blown glass in it: Morgan’s act of faith, after the other day, had been to make sure that was the glass Blue used every time. Morgan poured dark red juice into it from the pitcher on the table. The iridescence of the glass in the firelight, the darkness of the contents, made it look like melted rubies flowing as Blue drank deeply of its cool beauty. Blue settled back in the armchair and carefully set the glass on the flat arm of the chair. Marbl jumped up on Blue’s lap and settled down, purring under the long blue fingers stroking her.

  Delany wheeled in and Morgan poured more juice and handed over the plate of lemon cake.

  “Thanks, love,” said Delany, and they sat in companionable silence, watching the fire.

  “Interesting,” Blue said at last. “I have enjoyed this evening very much, even though we did little but sit and think.”

  “So have I,” said Morgan.

  “Tomorrow maybe we can—”

  There was a pop, as if a fireplace log had released a reservoir of pitch. The cat’s purring stopped. “Can what?” said Morgan, and looked up to see an empty chair. Delany drew in a shocked breath. The glass, pulled by the wind of a silent, subtle implosion of air, slid in from the arm of the chair onto the seat, then rolled off. Miraculously, it didn’t break as it thumped onto the hearthrug.

  Blue and Marbl were gone.

  “Gone? Gone where?” asked Salomé.

  The grey man was silent.

  “Gone back?”

  He nodded. “As suddenly as the arrival. The ships were behind the moon or something. If we ever meet these people, the first thing they’ll have to explain is that lovely Star Trek effect. Better than on vid. And not a trace in the air. The boffins are in ecstasy. How the bloody hell …”

  He was sitting on the edge of his comfortable armchair, unable to lean back in it. He sprang up, began to pace.

  “Dad. Dad! What is it?”

  “I don’t know. Well, I know, but it’s stupid. Envy. Jealousy. Whatever it’s called. Of what they had, of the possibilities. In the end, Blue actually wondered if there was a way Morgan could go too. But clearly there wasn’t. Morgan’s still here.” He was silent for a moment. “But Earth has sent an emissary after all. Besides Blue, I mean.”

  “Blue was the alien. The emissary to us. How can it be an emissary to its own people?”

  “That’s a long story, kiddo, but believe me, Blue’s only choice was to be human.”

  “Just like the rest of us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But what do you mean about another emissary?”

  The grey man looked at his clasped hands, then laughed a little and reversed them, pushing intertwined fingers, palms out, away from himself to hear the joints crackle. Then suddenly, he did laugh, throwing his arms wide, and if it was a bit hysterical, so what, he thought—but Salomé looked worried, though, so he relaxed a little.

  “The cat,” he said. “Blue took the cat.”

  18

  Finale, ben
edicte

  Cast into the void again, Morgan struggled to regain her center. Sick, lonely, tired, and bereaved: she had been here once before. Then, it took years to come back. Now she had had only a few stormy days, but though she could foresee the end of the process, she could not teleport to that glimpsed resolution, had to live through the center of the storm.

  Morgan had slept alone since Blue and Marbl left, her body unused to the absence of the small warmth against her back, the large warmth against her mind. The last few nights of Blue’s body curled against hers had reassured them both against the coming departure, but she had thought she would have something left, even if it was only a small purr against the night. That Marbl could go where she could not go was another in the series of envies, losses, and challenges to accept.

  She thought of Marbl’s small absence to avoid Blue’s large one; eventually the world would come rushing back to fill the emptiness. For the moment, however, she had the task of listening to the empty space, of encircling it with her mind, of deciding, in this infinity of loss and completion, where she would float, how she would remember, what she would accept, and how she would continue to live.

  The difference between now and the beginning, when Occam’s Razor had carved her hollow, was that although the void was as always the void, and she knew it with a deep and abiding and essential knowledge, yet she was empty no more. She had become an entity, a human, an alien, completed by everything she allowed herself to give to Blue. Everything she allowed herself to feel. She knew that the center would be there for her to find when she exhausted her pain with this wild and careless flying through the clouds of her grief.