A Paradigm of Earth

by Candas Jane Dorsey

  “I’d have to have Blue’s rooms, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to live where John lived.”

  “No one does.” They walked back toward the gate.

  “My name,” he said, “is Roger Terrence McKenzie. A.k.a. Mr. Grey.”

  “Welcome. Do I have to call you Rog now? Or Mac, like the rest do?”

  “I’m like the rest of you: starting again. Maybe I should go by a new name now. Terry should be ambiguous enough to fit in, don’t you think? Though I suspect I will have to bow to the inevitable and let you call me Grey for the rest of our lives.”

  “That will be fun,” she said. He made a face and she laughed at him, her small face looking for a moment like a laughing river otter. “Give over,” he said then. “You’re teasing me.”

  “Yes, Grey, my friend, I always tease you. The world teases you. The Universe is a tease.”

  “I have to go. There is work to do. Wolves to keep from the stoop. I have to deal with the paperwork on John. Set things up for your tête-à-têtes with Andris. Deal with the flood from the outer world.”

  “Before you go … Where did John come from?”

  “We don’t know yet. He’s in fugue now, and can’t tell us. They say he might never recover. He certainly isn’t John Lee. John Lee was a gay Chinese video technician in Vancouver.”

  “Was?”

  “Died, of AIDS they thought, fifteen years ago. He was about twenty-five at the time. Back when people were still dying of it.”

  “Instead of living miserably in quarantine in government health-care hostels,” said Morgan automatically, then: “Fifteen years?”

  “Yeah. Our boy would have been about twenty then—a bit younger. We don’t know what happened, but we know that when Lee died his papers and his equipment were stolen, and his place ransacked, while he was still lying on the bed.”

  “Murdered?”

  “No, the Medical Examiner’s investigator went over everything about six times, just in case. But the scenario was that he died alone, and then his place was looted by his neighbors.”

  “Nice.”

  “Yeah. But this puts a different spin on it.”

  “Yeah, but …”

  “But why?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Getting away from something, or just—the obvious? Apprentice scenario? Or street kid taking advantage of a dying gay man who fell for the kid? Kid resents it, takes the stuff, gets interested? Shows a real hatred of the original Lee. Homophobia is just a kind of xenophobia, after all, same as misogyny. It would fit with what he did here. Let’s just use the technical terminology. Nutcase.”

  “Yeah, we use that technical term in my line of work too. But if he’s really in fugue, not faking it, it’s not accurate, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.” Grey looked down, annoyed with the secret he’d be keeping for the rest of his life. “But he is a mess. If this case ever gets to court after the doctors are done with him, I’d be surprised. But I have to get the paperwork airtight, in case I’m wrong. I wish I could be wrong. I want him to be accountable.”

  “So do I, but maybe not the same way. I want him to understand what he did. Really understand.”

  “Which would have had the effect of actually driving him crazy, if it could happen.”

  “Which seems to be where we started.” Morgan sighed.

  “With a psychopath who wasn’t crazy …”

  “But on whom we wished both feeling and madness.”

  “Well, putting it that way …”

  “Yeah. We live in a strange world, Grey.”

  “Here’s the list of people looking for an exclusive story, a book contract, an interview, an exposé …” The grey man threw an untidy, two-inch-thick file and a cube of memory down on the hearth rug. Beside it he threw another, thinner file in a tiger yellow folder. “And here’s the ones you can’t ignore. The meeting with the Prime Minister. The audience with the King of England and the Spanish Pope, as they call him, which always bothers the hell out of me.”

  “You have such an orderly mind,” Morgan said wryly.

  “He’s from Central America, dammit. It’s not Spain! People are so imprecise. Never mind. The Secretary-General of the UN wants to talk to you about Blue’s sojourn, and about the activities of your brother in Tibet. As an expat Tibetan himself, he has sympathy with the new Dalai Lama’s predicament.”

  “Predicament! Held almost a captive in that house in India. Can’t even travel to the monastery where the old Dalai Lama lived. Poor little kid. He’s so lonely. Robyn says half the people around him can’t even speak Tibetan.”

  “Well, perhaps you can help your brother on this. This guy has made the UN into a world player again by sheer force of will, and he can probably do something useful about something as simple as that situation. He did win the Nobel Peace Prize, after all. Speaking of which, there’s a letter here from them …”

  “No. No.” Morgan pushed her hands out in front of her. “Not me.”

  “No, not you.” She looked at him.

  “Us,” he said, grinning like a cat with cream. “All of us. You, me, Delany, Russ, anyone with significant contact with Blue in this house. Including Aziz, the little twit. I must tell Rahim. He’ll be furious. He’ll think it should have been him.”

  “Are you ever going to let him out?”

  “Oh, sure. I’ve got his cell fully wired for incoming vid now. I’m letting him catch up on developments. But I won’t let him out until his part of the story is old news. I don’t want him catching the media wave and morphing himself into a hero. I’ll wait until his cousin is a hero. The ’fucking dancer faggot’ he hated so much. There is justice, after all, despite Heinlein’s contention.”

  A few minutes later Aziz emerged from the attic studio he now called home. As soon as he opened the door, the light dull pounding they had been hearing all morning intensified. If they could hear it two storeys away, the music must be thunderous close up.

  “He’s going to make himself deaf,” Morgan said. Aziz wandered downstairs and into the kitchen where Morgan and Grey were making sandwiches. As he walked he tugged earplugs out and tucked them into his pocket. Aziz was dressed in Jakob’s workout clothes. He was letting his hair grow.

  At least he’s still combing it, not letting it dread, thought Morgan. There’s a limit … “Hi, kiddo,” she said.

  “Hi,” said Aziz, abstracted, rummaging in the breadbox. “What’s the what’s the?”

  “Oh, nothing much. They’re going to give us all the Nobel Peace Prize.”

  “Cool,” Aziz said, opening the refrigerator door and leaning in. “Do we have any tahini?”

  “He’s already deaf,” said the grey man, grinning.

  “I heard you,” said Aziz. “It’s cool. I get it. Now I’m hungry. How about hummus? There are some pitas here, but there’s nothing to put with them.”

  “Look at the back of the top shelf,” said Morgan. “And here’s a tomato to chop. Goodness forfend that a Nobel laureate-to-be should have nothing to put on a pita.”

  “Look, I said it was cool. What else can I say? I’m busy. I’m working.”

  “See?” said Morgan, turning to Grey. “That’s what it’s really worth.”

  “Yes, yes, I get it too,” he said. “Let’s go back to work. There’s a great deal more in that stack that you have to know.”

  Later that afternoon, over tea:

  “You know,” Morgan said to Grey, “there has always been a part of me that wants to do something … different. Something … worthwhile. A small, stupid version of the Mother Teresa thing, if you like. Not the Christian part. The other part.”

  Grey looked skeptical. “As if what you did with Blue wasn’t worthwhile? What version? Of what part?”

  “I saw a movie of her life when I was about nine, and I only really remember one bit of it. She had just finished assuring a safe home for a bunch of multiply handicapped orphans. She had just calmed one of them from a terrified agitation wi
th her rough, loving touch. And then she was sitting beside his bed and she glanced down and saw that the bedframe was dirty, so she picked up a cloth and began to wash it. I always remembered the simplicity of that moment. It made her a big hero of mine from then on. That’s what I want to do. Go somewhere where there is that mindless need and begin washing things.”

  “Oh, you wanted to make yourself a saint? Oops, you became a secular hero.”

  “No, I said it wasn’t a religious desire. I wanted to be invisible. Non-existent.”

  “In the mystical sense? I don’t believe you. That is the opposite of who you are becoming. You are the probably most ‘existent’ person I know.”

  “Oh, exactly. I’ve completely failed to detach. That’s what will make it so interesting to try. And after all, now that Blue’s gone and I’m living on a pension—”

  “Albeit a tiny government pittance,” he teased.

  “—which my brother has heavily augmented with ill-gotten capitalist gains. Anyway, now I am free. I can do anything now, you see.”

  “I don’t see. You are about to become one of the most visible people in the world. You will be more famous than John Lennon.”

  She laughed, but he shook his head and went on, “You will be completely immersed in an existence that will be defined and constrained by others for a very long time, perhaps your whole life.”

  She scowled at him. He continued relentlessly, “Seventy-one book offers. One hundred and thirty-three vid and virch offers for exclusives.”

  “What are you talking about? We logged more than that.”

  “That’s just for me. People are hungry for meaning. Hungry for—ecstasy if you will. Enlightenment. They will not be interested in helping you with the goal of spiritual non-existence or any other kind.”

  “Oh, bloody hell. That’s so annoying.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “No, I mean it’s annoying that you’re so—right. I can see my next few months looming—each day more insane than the other. Thank heavens the world has a short attention span. And all of this so unnecessary. Watch and listen to the tapes. Figure it out. It’s all so self-evident.”

  “To us maybe. We were here. The world will disagree with you. You will discover that a public figure can do a lot of capricious things, but be invisible isn’t one of them.”

  Morgan looked at him sternly. “You know better than that. There will come a time, much sooner than anyone is likely to admit, when my actual presence will not be necessary to the machine.”

  “Yes, I suspect you may be right.”

  “And when that time comes, I have decided what I am going to do,” said Morgan. “After all this is over.”

  “Is it ever going to be over? Unless you get amnesia.” He squeezed lemon into his tea.

  “You know what I mean. When the first frenzy dies down. As soon as I can, I am going to go around and meet the others.”

  “The others?”

  “Stop that. You sound like a parrot. The others who were with the other aliens. Blue was one of many. They haven’t found all of them, I bet, but I read about the rest after they were all taken back, and maybe—now—I’ll be able to communicate.” She took a long draught out of the mug she was nursing, and savoured it. “Unless Blue really was the only one who became so—well, you know.”

  “Yes, that’s a possibility. For you to do, I mean. We know something about the others. Perhaps Andris and I can arrange for you to know also, and you can go on from there.”

  “That would be lovely, thank you.”

  “You have no idea how lovely—and how rare.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I do. Give me credit for paying attention all this time.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I do. You may as well know now. You are the only one who successfully formed a connection with one of the aliens. Four of them died, it turns out. Others were very ill before they were taken back. What you know will be needed.”

  “But I can’t make it my whole life. There isn’t enough there for that. I will have to move on.”

  “Would you like some company?”

  She looked at the compact, slender, elegant grey man with his small hands. He was looking into the basket made of those hands intertwined, and his eyes were not visible to her.

  “You?”

  “Why not?”

  “Part of your job?”

  “I could pretend so.”

  “Is this a proposition?”

  “We could say so. And wouldn’t be far wrong.” His small, charming, three-cornered smile was directed at his teacup.

  “Yes,” she said. “I would like company. But you’re joking, right?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a little clichéd, don’t you think,” asked Morgan, “you and me ending up together?”

  “And we may not, though I can’t imagine why not,” said Grey. “But who else but the people in this house have any idea what has gone on here?”

  “Your job … ?”

  “I won’t have one by then. Arranging your debriefing and seeing you through these next stormy months will be my last assignment. I’m retiring while I’m ahead. Andris will support me from above, he would support anything I chose to do now, but his years on the job are numbered too. The old guard is being forced out from below. The new era, guys like Kowalski—Blue Suit, you call him, which is about all he is—and the late great Boy Wonder—you have a gift for naming these guys, it seems—and young guys like Ace are in favor of ‘going back to the basics of policing’. None of them remember the injustices of that time—the young ones weren’t alive then—and they find reminders boring. People like Katy and me are being pushed out, if not by conscience, like her, then by the exigencies of power.”

  “You are fun to listen to. Do you know, you often speak in complete sentences?”

  “So do you. Of course, mine are more reasoned and considered …”

  “And mine are more erudite. So, who wins?”

  “You surprise me,” he said. “Have you actually developed an ego?”

  “I’m not sure. Are they catching?”

  “I must introduce you to my daughter Salomé. You would find affinity. She’s the video artist you talked about earlier to Andris. You know her as Hester McKenzie.”

  “John was always talking about her. But you said Salomé.”

  “That’s her other name. She uses her first name professionally. She keeps Salomé for us; I don’t know why, really.”

  “Ask her.”

  He chuckles. “That’s what she said about you. Tell her. Ask her.”

  “She sounds smart.”

  He laughed. “She is.”

  “Why did you call her Salomé? I mean, in the first place.”

  “Because she had unlimited power over us. Parenting does that to some people, makes you heartfelt captives of your children. It did to me. She could have had my head on a platter if she wanted. She still could. I hope she never finds out.”

  “You think she doesn’t know?”

  He glanced at her sideways, eyes narrowed. “She certainly never acts like it.”

  “Oh, don’t give me that cop look,” said Morgan. “When you know you have that kind of power over someone you love, you work very hard to make sure you never even let on, let alone exercise that power. You should know that.”

  “I have never had that sort of power over anyone.”

  “Yeah, right. And I’m not queer.”

  “Except maybe my wife, and she died.”

  “You have it every day in your job.”

  “Oh, that.” He waved a hand aside, dismissively.

  “Yes, that. Absolute power. Life and death. Life and safety.”

  “But that wasn’t over lovers.”

  “I didn’t say lovers. I said over people you love. Can you honestly tell me there wasn’t anyone you loved in this house?”

  To her shock, he colored slightly and his glance flickered away from her.

  “Oh, shit,” she said. “I di
dn’t mean … I meant Blue.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Blue too.”

  She felt for a moment almost disappointed, at the thought that this one too, whom she had respected, might have fallen for the mystique that she, in this recent life as Morgan, not in her past life as merely Constance Shelby, seemed to have created without intending to. “I can’t just be myself any more,” she said irritably.

  “Not in the slightest,” he said, and stood. “Don’t forget, you have done all the things for which we admire you.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Come here,” he said, “and I will prove to you that I don’t hold any illusions about you.”

  “Maybe later,” she said, but she walked hesitantly toward him. He simply put his arm around her and pulled her close to his chest. She could feel his chin rest on the top of her head. She drew her head back and he kissed her softly, his lips tender and closed against hers, so quickly she hardly had time to kiss back before he withdrew and pressed her head against him again. She sighed with the outflow of tension, or perhaps it was the inflow of another layer of peace.

  “You are short,” she said. “How did you ever get into the Mounties?”

  “They changed the height and weight requirements to remove the bias against women and non-Caucasians. And short people. They’re probably changing them back next year. Brand-new back-to-basics cops have to be big.”

  “More tea?” she said.

  “No, thanks,” he said, and she heard his cup click onto the Arborite tabletop before his other arm completed the hug; Morgan returned it. “Who knows?” he continued. “I’m not making any plans. Let’s go around the world first. And perhaps I’d better get to know Delany better.”

  “Good idea,” said Morgan, but she didn’t move for a few moments. Then: “I have to get ready for the news conference.”

  Delany wheeled through the door. “The first of the camera crews is here,” she said, and wheeled over to them.

  After a moment Morgan pulled away from Grey, holding his hand, and, standing between her two lovers, put her hand on Delany’s shoulder. Delany lifted her shoulder and lowered her cheek to press Morgan’s hand for a moment. Morgan smiled at her, and Delany looked the grey man up and down, not quite smiling, but almost. “So it’s going to be you, is it?” she asked softly.