The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  The cabin represented the bare minimums of civilized life-- automatic kitchen, holovision receiver, domestic computer, and one dead serving robot. Even the bathroom was rustic, not have any vibromassage or holy screen. "Goddess," Joan said to Hill, "I feel I've just fallen back to the Stone Age."

  Hill nodded. "It was like this at the seminary."

  "How did you survive?"

  "It wasn't easy," Hill said.

  After changing into packaged pajamas they found in the closet, there was the problem of who would sleep where; there was only one bed. "You take it," Hill said. "I'll take the floor."

  "Don't be ridiculous, Hill," Joan said. "There is no way that I'm going to allow you to sleep on a cold, hard floor. You haven't slept much in almost two days. In case of trouble, you'll need to be in good shape."

  "The same reasoning applies equally to you," Hill said. "There's only one bed, though."

  "Which we're going to have to share," Joan said.

  "Joan, I'm a celibate priest. I can't sleep with a woman."

  "I said sleep, not fuck."

  "Haven't you ever heard of wet dreams? Put me in next to you for a night and I'm liable to go off like a firecracker."

  "I might enjoy that," Joan said.

  "Don't tempt me wickedly, Joan."

  "I was born into that religion, remember? So you come. Do you stop being a priest?"

  Hill shook his head. "Celibacy isn't a requirement in itself for being a priest since the Church unified. My own vow of celibacy was a personal matter, because of my previous sin. Aside from that, we're not married, and anything I do with you is fornication."

  "Hill, I'm so exhausted I can hardly see straight, so I don't know if what I'm about to say is going to make any sense. But I'm going to try so we can both get some sleep. One. Your celibacy, as far as I can see, was a requirement of your command here on Earth--which you didn't give up: it was just captured by the enemy, and we're escaping behind the lines at the moment. Two. Any God who wouldn't say that--how many years have you been running the church for the Touchables?"

  "Eight years," Hill said.

  "Any God who wouldn't forgive you after that--when you say forgiving is His main hobby--isn't Jolly Good or a champion of any sort of goodness, so far as I'm concerned. Since you say He is by nature Good, I wouldn't worry much about His mercy. Three. You spent half an hour talking about love and the Female Principle in both God and human beings, without once realizing that this is something you've never experienced in corpore. Maybe sex in marriage is the ideal for us--I suspect it is, but I don't know for sure. But I don't think it's a corruption of that good if people love each other in any way possible, just being as careful as possible to be honest--not violate promises, or hurt someone else intentionally. There's always the possibility, in any action, of hurting someone by accident--but that's the price you pay for being human and not omniscient. There's no such thing as risk-free human action, and if God required perfect obedience, He would shout a little louder instead of whispering all the time. Fourth and--I hope--last. You talk about the Tower of Babel, and the truths being taught by each religion. In my view, the Wiccens and the Hindus are closer to the truth than Christianity on this one. To your knowledge, was Jesus ever wrong?"

  "Once," Hill said. "He predicted the end of the world in the lifetime of His Apostles."

  "Once is enough to disprove the rule, Hill. Maybe not everything He taught was ex cathedra either. Now, will you climb in here so we can fuck, then get some sleep?"

  "Joan, will you marry me?"

  "No, Hill. I'm already engaged. But you can have any commitment from me that you want short of that. I'm not dated up for the next sixteen years."

  Hill stood there for a moment shaking, then said, "God forgive me," and climbed into bed next to Joan.

  They put their arms around each other, and kissed. Then Hill said something in Latin.

  "What did you just say?" Joan asked.

  "Grace," Hill said.

  VII.

  6400Å to 7600Å

  Chapter 31

  BOTH JOAN AND HILL were too tired, that first time, for it to be much of an experience. Hill came the instant after he entered Joan, so overwhelmed was he by the warm sensation of being encompassed, and Joan simply held him in her arms until he had fallen asleep, his body racked by sobs. She fell asleep, still holding him, immediately after.

  Joan awoke first, at a little past noon on Sunday. She slipped out from under his arm and head, tried to bring some circulation back into her own left arm, then washed, showered, and ordered the kitchen to make some mocha. When it was ready, she bent over Hill and awoke him with a kiss. Hill opened his eyes lazily. "Good morning," Joan said.

  It seemed to take a moment for Hill to become fully awake, and there was a look of puzzlement on his face while he tried to place where he was and what exactly was going on. When a few seconds later he remembered, he smiled back.

  "How did you sleep?" Joan asked.

  "Like Lazarus," he said.

  "What?"

  Hill laughed easily. "Well, I slept well. I've never slept better in my life."

  "No guilt feelings?"

  He smiled and took a cup of mocha from her. "None. Either I'm so far gone that I've shut my inner ear to God's scolding, or He's so mad at me that He isn't talking to me anymore--or you were right. I think it's the last."

  Joan sat down in lotus on the bed next to him, then picked up her own cup again. "Hill," she said, "my conscience isn't as clear as yours. By coming to you for help, I brought a terrible price down on your head--far more than I thought it would be. I didn't know when I came to you that you were a Touchable, and I should have gone elsewhere as soon as I found out. Because of me, you've lost your mission, your career--everything--and I can't even offer to marry you and make an honest man of you."

  He laughed.

  "I've always tried to pay my own way," she went on, "and I don't like imposing costs on others--especially someone I care about as much as you."

  "How did you figure to 'pay' me when you came to me last week? You weren't planning to seduce me as a payment from the start, were you?"

  Joan shook her head. "I was planning to compose a lasegraphic Mass. That's the reason I asked to attend. It's something I don't know anything about, and I'd have to learn the form before I can start playing with ideas. I can't just work from the inside out, as I usually do."

  "I didn't know that," Hill said. "You've surprised me."

  "You're surprised I needed to do research?"

  "I'm surprised that you were planning to compose a Mass for a religious belief you don't share. You should have told me. I would have said you could come today--not that either of us made it."

  "I was planning it as a surprise," Joan said. "I guess it doesn't matter now."

  "It matters more than ever, Joan. Compose your Mass."

  "It will have to be awfully good to make up for what I've put you through."

  "Look, sweetheart, I'm an expert on guilt--both theoretical and applied--so I'm going to tell you something that I want you never to forget. Nobody--except by force or fraud--ever imposes a cost on someone else without his or her consent. If I didn't want to help you, I could have sent you on your way."

  "You were under a religious obligation," Joan said.

  "Which I chose freely to adopt, Joan. Nobody put a knife to my throat."

  "I should have foreseen this, Hill."

  "Weren't you the one last night who was telling me that there's no such thing as a risk-free human action?"

  "But I might get you killed." She was silent for another moment. "It wouldn't be the first time I've done it, either."

  "Confessions usually begin 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.' Want to take it from there?"

  For the next few minutes, Joan told Hill the story of the Touchable woman who had chosen to be raped and icked rather than turn her over to the Wolf. She told how she had tried to work it through by abstracting the events into he
r first vistata, but that she felt she'd never been entirely successful. She still felt it was her fault.

  Hill sighed. "I've lost track of how many confessions I've heard, but this one takes the prize. I absolve you. Okay?"

  "It's not as easy as that, Hill."

  "Joan, you were five years old."

  "What does my age have to do with it?"

  "My God, do you think you were sprung from the head of Zeus with the wisdom of the ages?"

  "I chose to go with her, Hill, and I knew what I was getting into. If I hadn't, she wouldn't have been icked."

  "One," he said. "Nobody ever knows what might have been. Two. She was using you as a hostage. The only thing that proves she was a good soul was that she repented it in time to save you. But it cost her own life to do it."

  "But that's just the point," Joan said. "She was willing to give her life for me, and I'm not willing to do the same for anyone."

  "Ah, the real issue finally gets out. Are you accusing yourself of selfishness or cowardice?"

  "Both," Joan said.

  "Joan, if you think you're a coward--just because you're capable of fear--then you don't understand what cowardice is. If you're thinking of the sort of thing where a man in battle freezes, or runs away, then it just shows he was the wrong man for the job in the first place--or he was improperly trained. Each of us has things that we can face better than others, and nobody has the right to tell us that what we choose to avoid facing means we're cowardly. The very fact that you're confronting yourself now with this--that you found it necessary to confront it in your art--proves you're not a coward."

  "It doesn't mean that when it comes down to it I'd do any better the next time."

  "Joan, there's a fine line between 'thinking strategically'-- doing battle only when the odds are reasonably on your side--and running away simply because you're scared. Fear is a survival mechanism if we don't let it get the best of us."

  "It already got the best of me, Hill. I've been telling myself for half a year that the reason I went into the service was to stay on the right side of the law so I could save my mother. The real reason was that I was afraid to try evading the draft, be declared Touchable, and maybe get icked--I'd never have risked escape now if Burke wasn't so disgusting."

  "Both reasons are 'real', Joan--and both were equally valid. But let's put cowardice aside, for a moment, and look at selfishness. You came back to Earth--when you didn't have to-- to try to save your mother's life. Greater love hath no woman. And you think you're selfish?"

  "I haven't proved anything, Hill. Risk my life for her, yes. Give it up for her, no."

  "I don't have an answer for you on that, Joan. You said last night that my command had been captured by the enemy, and we were behind enemy lines. What you failed to take into account was that it was my command. If I'd wanted to demonstrate to my parish what faith really is, I would have been conducting Mass for them this morning when they came to arrest me. I could have sent you up here alone. Instead, I tossed the job to my assistant, Father Gregory, to make some excuse for my absence."

  "You're a Touchable, Hill. If they catch you, they kill you."

  "I'm going to die someday anyway, Joan. So are you. So does every one of us--no matter how long medical science lengthens the road in between. So if you're selfish and cowardly, so am I. So were the Apostles, when it came down to going to the cross with Jesus. A few hours ago I had an opportunity to make a really great exit. Instead, I ran off to hide, and to go to bed with you. You want to know something else? I'd do it again, with no regrets."

  "We're some pair of selfish cowards, you and I," Joan said.

  "We are. Both stem from our love of the only life we know from experience--bios. The transition to zoe may be desirable, but it sure isn't smooth. We go out kicking and screaming. But so does a baby when it leaves the womb. Why should being born again be any different?"

  "That doesn't answer the question of giving up your life to save someone you love."

  "Joan, ultimately, none of us can save anyone. There are four possible outcomes, restricting ourselves to the either-or possibility of an afterlife. Case one. Biological life only-- no afterlife. You sacrifice your life to save someone you love. You're dead, neither enjoying nor regretting your action, and the person you saved is left alive--regretting your death, we hope-- until his own eventual death. Case two. You fail to sacrifice your life for the person you love, and he dies--again, no afterlife. You're alive--feeling rotten about your own cowardice and his death--and he's dead and not regretting anything. Eventually, you die too. Case three. A zoe afterlife as well as the bios life we know now. You fail to sacrifice your life to save another, who's now dead. Ultimately, any saving that's to be done will be done by the will of God-- you can't save anybody except yourself, so far as zoe is concerened. So if God likes the person whom you failed to save, he gets into heaven--and maybe you don't. It's up to God's assessment of your ultimate value--which may or may not have anything to do with your other-directedness. Case four. You sacrifice yourself for another, he's alive and you're dead. If God likes you, you're into heaven--but the person you save is left in bios, with more opportunity to rape up his own chances of getting into heaven. Ultimately, you don't have any control. See what I mean? Looked at one way, the most selfish thing you could do--assuming an afterlife--is sacrifice your life to save another as soon as possible; but I tend to think God looks upon players who deliberately put themselves out of the game about as favorably as he looked upon the builders of the Tower of Babel: both are trying to gate-crash. So don't worry about it so much. If I'm right about God and heaven, then He may decide He wants a top-notch lasegrapher even if you're weak on the self-sacrifice question. And if I'm wrong, then when you die you'll be dead and there won't be anyone who can give you any grief about it. This is about as close to a no-lose situation as anything I can think of.

  Joan smiled. "You're out of mocha," she said. "I'll get you a refill." Hill smiled, took both cups and placed them on the floor, then grabbed Joan, pulling her under him. They kissed. "If you don't mind," he said, taking a moment to nibble her left ear, "I'd like a different sort of refill right now."

  Their second time was much, much better.

  The next days were like a honeymoon, with Joan and Hill making love so often, and in so many different ways, that they thought they would be wearing themselves out. But it never happened-- the more energy they expended on each other, the more energy they seemed to have. Joan felt the same rush of endless power that she felt at the console, as if she had stuck her finger into a power outlet. There seemed to be no end to the flow of energy, but it also made her hair--what there was left of it--stand on end.

  For once, Joan was appreciative of her time in the Corps--her sessions with Dr. Blaine in particular--because what she had learned to be used on those she didn't care about could now be directed to someone she did. She didn't feel any less disgusted at having been drafted--she felt anything she wanted to learn could have been obtained with her own selection of teacher with her own price negotiations--but she wasn't going to reject a learning experience regardless of how it had come about.

  With this knowledge that even the worst of trials brought growth came a relaxation to the possibilities of the future--an acceptance of whatever was to come, good or bad.

  For Hill, his time with Joan was being born again ahead of schedule. He realized that there was a price still to be paid for his joy. He knew that he couldn't live--technically or actually--in sin with Joan and expect the Church to allow him to remain a priest. But he accepted his choice with the same calm with which Joan accepted her time in the Corps.

  By their second Sunday together in the retreat, there was a sense that they had been together always. They had begun by guiding each other by show-and-tell. Now the kindergarden was over, and recess was in progress.

  When they made love, their hands and lips, fingernails and teeth, tongues and eyelashes, vagina and penis seemed to find the most ecstatic
spot on the other's body on automatic. They brought each other to ecstasy many, many times, and in between, they lay in each other's arms--sometimes in a joining of bodies that required no motion or effort--and Hill felt that if the joining of two human bodies could be this blissful, then the joining of two spiritual bodies had to be something so great as to be unimaginable. He said so to Joan.

  She laughed. "I don't know about you--or anybody else-- Hill, but I don't know of anything beyond my ability to imagine."

  "Is that right?" he said.

  "Yes. I'll prove it to you."

  "How?"

  "Give me a few minutes to prepare."

  She spent the next fifteen minutes organizing her thoughts-- applying the same tension-and-release formulas she used in her lasegraphic compositions--then announcing to him, "Tactata and Genitata No. 1 by Joan Darris. The first six movements form the tactata, and the last the genitata."

  First movement--hands. Second movement--lips. Third movement--fingernails. Fourth movement--teeth. Fifth movement -- tongue. Sixth movement--eyelashes. Seventh movement-- vagina.

  He was too drained at the end of her forty-five-minute performance to applaud. But when he finally could speak again, he just gasped and said, "You win."

  That Saturday, while they lay in each other's arms after making love for the fourth time that day, Joan wondered aloud to Hill how she could ever bring herself to leave him for Wolfgang, even sixteen years from now. Hill answered her that life existed only in the present moment--that it was only in the present that any choice was possible--and that neither of them had any claim on the future. A parting between them--as between all lovers-- was inevitable, whether through separation by choice or through one of their deaths, so it was best not to think about that parting at all, and just accept the joining as it was. "Besides," Hill said, "maybe sixteen years from now we'll both be so convinced of the rightness of what we're doing that we won't feel the necessity of restricting ourselves to the monogamous sexual pattern. Perhaps you, Jaeger, and I will form a menage a trois, or perhaps we'll find a fourth and play bridge."