Lethe

by Walter Jon Williams

  Not the same-of course he knew that. Fair Katrin was not a perfect copy of her older sib-she had flaws, clear enough. She had been damaged, somehow. But the flaws could be worked on, the damage repaired. Conquered. There was infinite time. He would see it done.

  Question "And how do your sibs differ, then?" he asked. "Other than obvious differences in condition and profession?"

  She drew her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. Her green eyes were pensive. "Matters of love," she said, "and happiness."

  And further she would not say.

  Davout took Fair Katrin to Tangier for the afternoon and walked with her up on the old palace walls. Below them, white in the sun, the curved mole built by Charles II cleaved the Middle Sea, a thin crescent moon laid upon the perfect shimmering azure. (Home! home!, the waters cried.) The sea breeze lashed her blonde hair across her face, snapped little sonic booms from the sleeves of his shirt.

  "I have sampled some of the Silent One’s downloads," Davout said. "I wished to discover the nature of this artificial tranquility with which he has endowed himself."

  Fair Katrin’s lips twisted in distaste, and her fingers formed a scatologue.

  "It was… interesting," Davout said. "There was a strange, uncomplicated quality of bliss to it. I remember experiencing the download of a master sitting zazen once, and it was an experience of a similar cast."

  "It may have been the exact same sensation." Sourly. "He may have just copied the Zen master’s experience and slotted it into his brain. That’s how most of the vampires do it-award themselves the joy they haven’t earned."

  "That’s a Calvinistic point of view," Davout offered. "That happiness can’t just happen, that it has to be earned."

  She frowned out at the sea. "There is a difference between real experience and artificial or recapitulative experience. If that’s Calvinist, so be it."

  Yes Davout signed. "Call me a Calvinist sympathizer, then. I have been enough places, done enough things, so that it matters to me that I was actually there and not living out some programmed dream of life on other worlds. I’ve experienced my sibs’ downloads-lived significant parts of their lives, moment by moment-but it is not the same as my life, as being me. I am," he said, leaning elbows on the palace wall, "I am myself, I am the sum of everything that happened to me, I stand on this wall, I am watching this sea, I am watching it with you, and no one else has had this experience, nor ever shall, it is ours, it belongs to us…"

  She looked up at him, straw-hair flying over an unreadable expression. "Davout the Conqueror," she said.

  No he signed. "I did not conquer alone."

  She nodded, holding his eyes for a long moment. "Yes," she said. "I know."

  He took Katrin the Fair in his arms and kissed her. There was a moment’s stiff surprise, and then she began to laugh, helpless peals bursting against his lips. He held her for a moment, too surprised to react, and then she broke free. She reeled along the wall, leaning for support against the old stones. Davout followed, babbling, "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-"

  She leaned back against the wall. Words burst half-hysterical from her lips, in between bursts of desperate, unamused laughter. "So that’s what you were after! My God! As if I hadn’t had enough of you all after all these years!"

  "I apologize," Davout said. "Let’s forget this happened. I’ll take you home."

  She looked up at him, the laughter gone, blazing anger in its place. "The Silent One and I would have been all right if it hadn’t been for you-for our sibs!" She flung her words like daggers, her voice breaking with passion. "You lot were the eldest, you’d already parceled out the world between you. You were only interested in psychology because my damned Red sib and your Old one wanted insight into the characters in their histories, and because you and your dark bitch wanted a theory of the psyche to aid you in building communities on other worlds. We only got created because you were too damned lazy to do your own research!"

  Davout stood, stunned. No he signed, "That’s not-"

  "We were third," she cried. "We were born in third place. We got the jobs you wanted least, and while you older sibs were winning fame and glory, we were stuck in work that didn’t suit, that you’d cast off, awarded to us as if we were charity cases-" She stepped closer, and Davout was amazed to find a white-knuckled fist being shaken in his face. "My husband was called The Silent because his sibs had already used up all the words! He was third-rate and knew it! It destroyed him! Now he’s plugging artificial satisfaction into his head because it’s the only way he’ll ever feel it."

  "If you didn’t like your life," Davout said, "you could have changed it. People start over all the time-we’d have helped." He reached toward her. "I can help you to the stars, if that’s what you want."

  She backed away. "The only help we ever needed was to get rid of you!" A mudra, har-de-har-har, echoed the sarcastic laughter on Fair Katrin’s lips. "And now there’s another gap in your life, and you want me to fill it-not this time."

  Never her fingers echoed. Never. The laughter bubbled from her throat again.

  She fled, leaving him alone and dazed on the palace wall, as the booming wind mocked his feeble protests.

  "I am truly sorry," Red Katrin said. She leaned close to him on the porch swing, touched soft lips to his cheek. "Even though she edited her downloads, I could tell she resented us-but I truly did not know how she would react."

  Davout was frantic. He could feel Katrin slipping farther and farther away, as if she were on the edge of a precipice and her handholds were crumbling away beneath her clawed fingers.

  "Is what she said true?" he asked. "Have we been slighting them all these years? Using them, as she claims?"

  "Perhaps she had some justification once," Red Katrin said. "I do not remember anything of the sort when we were young, when I was uploading Fair Katrin almost every day. But now…" Her expression grew severe. "These are mature people, not without resources or intelligence-I can’t help but think that surely after a person is a century old, any problems that remain are her fault."

  As he rocked on the porch swing he could feel a wildness rising in him. My God, he thought, I am going to be alone.

  His brief days of hope were gone. He stared out at the bay-the choppy water was too rough for any but the most dedicated water-skaters-and felt the pain pressing on his brain, like the two thumbs of a practiced sadist digging into the back of his skull.

  "I wonder," he said. "Have you given any further thought to uploading my memories?"

  She looked at him curiously. "It’s scarcely time yet."

  "I feel a need to share… some things."

  "Old Davout has uploaded them. You could speak to him."

  This perfectly intelligent suggestion only made him clench his teeth. He needed sense made of things, he needed things put in order, and that was not the job of his sib. Old Davout would only confirm what he already knew.

  "I’ll talk to him, then," he said.

  And then never did.

  The pain was worst at night. It wasn’t the sleeping alone, or merely Katrin’s absence: it was the knowledge that she would always be absent, that the empty space next to him would be there forever. It was then that the horror fully struck him, and he would lie awake for hours, eyes staring into the terrible void that wrapped him in its dark cloak, while fits of trembling sped through his limbs.

  I will go mad, he sometimes thought. It seemed something he could choose, as if he were a character in an Elizabethan drama who turns to the audience to announce that he will be mad now, and then in the next scene is found gnawing bones dug out of the family sepulcher. Davout could see himself being found outside, running on all fours and barking at the stars.

  And then, as dawn crept across the windowsill, he would look out the window and realize, to his sorrow, that he was not yet mad, that he was condemned to another day of sanity, of pain, and of grief.

  Then, one night, he did go mad. He found himself squatting on the floor i
n his nightshirt, the room a ruin around him: mirrors smashed, furniture broken. Blood was running down his forearms.

  The door leapt off its hinges with a heave of Old Davout’s shoulder. Davout realized, in a vague way, that his sib had been trying to get in for some time. He saw Red Katrin’s silhouette in the door, an aureate halo around her auburn hair in the instant before Old Davout snapped on the light.

  Afterward Katrin pulled the bits of broken mirror out of Davout’s hands, washed and disinfected them, while his sib tried to reconstruct the green room and its antique furniture.

  Davout watched his spatters of blood stain the water, threads of scarlet whirling in coreolis spirals. "I’m sorry," he said. "I think I may be losing my mind."

  "I doubt that." Frowning at a bit of glass in her tweezers.

  "I want to know."

  Something in his voice made her look up. "Yes?"

  He could see his staring reflection in her green eyes. "Read my downloads. Please. I want to know if… I’m reacting normally in all this. If I’m lucid or just…" He fell silent. Do it, he thought. Just do this one thing.

  "I don’t upload other people. Davout can do that. Old Davout, I mean."

  No, Davout thought. His sib would understand all too well what he was up to.

  "But he’s me!" he said. "He’d think I’m normal!"

  "Silent Davout, then. Crazy people are his specialty."

  Davout wanted to make a mudra of scorn, but Red Katrin held his hands captive. Instead he gave a laugh. "He’d want me to take Lethe. Any advice he gave would be… in that direction." He made a fist of one hand, saw drops of blood well up through the cuts. "I need to know if I can stand this," he said. "If-something drastic is required."

  She nodded, looked again at the sharp little spear of glass, put it deliberately on the edge of the porcelain. Her eyes narrowed in thought-Davout felt his heart vault at that look, at the familiar lines forming at the corner of Red Katrin’s right eye, each one known and adored.

  Please do it, he thought desperately.

  "If it’s that important to you," she said, "I will."

  "Thank you," he said.

  He bent his head over her and the basin, raised her hand, and pressed his lips to the flesh beaded with water and streaked with blood.

  It was almost like conducting an affair, all clandestine meetings and whispered arrangements. Red Katrin did not want Old Davout to know she was uploading his sib’s memories-"I would just as soon not deal with his disapproval"-and so she and Davout had to wait until he was gone for a few hours, a trip to record a lecture for Cavor’s series on Ideas and Manners.

  She settled onto the settee in the front room and covered herself with her fringed shawl. Closed her eyes. Let Davout’s memories roll through her.

  He sat in a chair nearby, his mouth dry. Though nearly thirty years had passed since Dark Katrin’s death, he had experienced only a few weeks of that time; and Red Katrin was floating through these memories at speed, tasting here and there, skipping redundancies or moments that seemed inconsequential…

  He tried to guess from her face where in his life she dwelt. The expression of shock and horror near the start was clear enough, the shuttle bursting into flames. After the shock faded, he recognized the discomfort that came with experiencing a strange mind, and flickering across her face came expressions of grief, anger, and here and there amusement; but gradually there was only a growing sadness, and lashes wet with tears. He crossed the room to kneel by her chair and take her hand. Her fingers pressed his in response… she took a breath, rolled her head away… he wanted to weep not for his grief, but for hers.

  The eyes fluttered open. She shook her head. "I had to stop," she said. "I couldn’t take it-" She looked at him, a kind of awe in her wide green eyes. "My God, the sadness! And the need. I had no idea. I’ve never felt such need. I wonder what it is to be needed that way."

  He kissed her hand, her damp cheek. Her arms went around him. He felt a leap of joy, of clarity. The need was hers, now.

  Davout carried her to the bed she shared with his sib, and together they worshipped memories of his Katrin.

  "I will take you there," Davout said. His finger reached into the night sky, counted stars, one, two, three… "The planet’s called Atugan. It’s boiling hot, nothing but rock and desert, sulphur and slag. But we can make it home for ourselves and our children-all the species of children we desire, fish and fowl." A bubble of happiness filled his heart. "Dinosaurs, if you like," he said. "Would you like to be parent to a dinosaur?"

  He felt Katrin leave the shelter of his arm, step toward the moonlit bay. Waves rumbled under the old wooden pier. "I’m not trained for terraforming," she said. "I’d be useless on such a trip."

  "I’m decades behind in my own field," Davout said. "You could learn while I caught up. You’ll have Dark Katrin’s downloads to help. It’s all possible."

  She turned toward him. The lights of the house glowed yellow off her pale face, off her swift fingers as she signed.

  Regret "I have lived with Old Davout for near two centuries," she said.

  His life, for a moment, seemed to skip off its internal track; he felt himself suspended, poised at the top of an arc just before the fall.

  Her eyes brooded up at the house, where Old Davout paced and sipped coffee and pondered his life of Maxwell. The mudras at her fingertips were unreadable in the dark.

  "I will do as I did before," she said. "I cannot go with you, but my other self will."

  Davout felt his life resume. "Yes," he said, because he was in shadow and could not sign. "By all means." He stepped nearer to her. "I would rather it be you," he whispered.

  He saw wry amusement touch the corners of her mouth. "It will be me," she said. She stood on tiptoe, kissed his cheek. "But now I am your sister again, yes?" Her eyes looked level into his. "Be patient. I will arrange it."

  "I will in all things obey you, madam," he said, and felt wild hope singing in his heart.

  Davout was present at her awakening, and her hand was in his as she opened her violet eyes, the eyes of his Dark Katrin. She looked at him in perfect comprehension, lifted a hand to her black hair; and then the eyes turned to the pair standing behind him, to Old Davout and Red Katrin.

  "Young man," Davout said, putting his hand on Davout’s shoulder, "allow me to present you to my wife." And then (wisest of the sibs), he bent over and whispered, a bit pointedly, into Davout’s ear, "I trust you will do the same for me, one day."

  Davout concluded, through his surprise, that the secret of a marriage that lasts two hundred years is knowing when to turn a blind eye.

  "I confess I am somewhat envious," Red Katrin said as she and Old Davout took their leave. "I envy my twin her new life."

  "It’s your life as well," he said. "She is you." But she looked at him soberly, and her fingers formed a mudra he could not read.

  He took her on honeymoon to the Rockies, used some of his seventy-eight years’ back pay to rent a sprawling cabin in a high valley above the headwaters of the Rio Grande, where the wind rolled grandly through the pines, hawks spun lazy high circles on the afternoon thermals, and the brilliant clear light blazed on white starflowers and Indian paintbrush. They went on long walks in the high hills, cooked simply in the cramped kitchen, slept beneath scratchy trade blankets, made love on crisp cotton sheets.

  He arranged an office there, two desks and two chairs, back-to-back. Katrin applied herself to learning biology, ecology, nanotech, and quantum physics-she already had a good grounding, but a specialist’s knowledge was lacking. Davout tutored her, and worked hard at catching up with the latest developments in the field. She-they did not have a name for her yet, though Davout thought of her as "New Katrin"-would review Dark Katrin’s old downloads, concentrating on her work, the way she visualized a problem.

  Once, opening her eyes after an upload, she looked at Davout and shook her head. "It’s strange," she said. "It’s me, I know it’s me, but the way she thinks-
" I don’t understand she signed. "It’s not memories that make us, we’re told, but patterns of thought. We are who we are because we think using certain patterns… but I do not seem to think like her at all."

  "It’s habit," Davout said. "Your habit is to think a different way."

  Possibly she conceded, brows knit.

  Truth "You-Red Katrin-uploaded Dark Katrin before. You had no difficulty in understanding her then."

  "I did not concentrate on the technical aspects of her work, on the way she visualized and solved problems. They were beyond my skill to interpret-I paid more attention to other moments in her life." She lifted her eyes to Davout. "Her moments with you, for instance. Which were very rich, and very intense, and which sometimes made me jealous."

  "No need for jealousy now."

  Perhaps she signed, but her dark eyes were thoughtful, and she turned away.

  He felt Katrin’s silence after that, an absence that seemed to fill the cabin with the invisible, weighty cloud of her somber thought. Katrin spent her time studying by herself or restlessly paging through Dark Katrin’s downloads. At meals and in bed, she was quiet, meditative-perfectly friendly, and, he thought, not unhappy-but keeping her thoughts to herself.

  She is adjusting, he thought. It is not an easy thing for someone two centuries old to change.

  "I have realized," she said ten days later at breakfast, "that my sib-that Red Katrin-is a coward. That I am created-and the other sibs, too-to do what she would not, or dared not." Her violet eyes gazed levelly at Davout. "She wanted to go with you to Atugan, she wanted to feel the power of your desire… but something held her back. So I am created to do the job for her. It is my purpose… to fulfill her purpose."

  "It’s her loss, then," Davout said, though his fingers signed surprise.

  Alas! she signed, and Davout felt a shiver caress his spine. "But I am a coward, too!" Katrin cried. "I am not your brave Dark Katrin, and I cannot become her!"

  "Katrin," he said. "You are the same person-you all are!"

  She shook her head. "I do not think like your Katrin. I do not have her courage. I do not know what liberated her from her fear, but it is something I do not have. And-" She reached across the table to clasp his hand. "I do not have the feelings for you that she possessed. I simply do not. I have tried, I have had that world-eating passion read into my mind, and I compare it with what I feel, and-what I have is as nothing. I wish I felt as she did, I truly do. But if I love anyone, it is Old Davout. And…" She let go his hand, and rose from the table. "I am a coward, and I will take the coward’s way out. I must leave."