by Demir Barlas
Then Del was gone, and Salt was aware of himself, and Astrid had acquired an injury. Her left ear was missing; had been missing for a long time, he realized. Salt wanted to speak consolation and checked himself.
A few days ago, after all, Salt was parading around naked and unjudged. But his fantastic love for a human woman had already tempered him. The dried blood where an innocent ear had been, the muscles in her clenched jaw, and the sharp scrutiny in even sharper eyes all warned him that he must not reveal himself to be who he was. Salt, who had watched plenty of ancient 4D entertainments and wandered mustang-like over the knowledge of past societies, understood that the woman before him now represented a particular test. Like the maidens of the steppe, she would choose her man, and that choice would not be made on knowledge of the Lotka-Volterra model—nor yet on the basis of any computational or transcomputational quality in man. Salt struggled with the certain knowledge that the woman before him was a paragon of strength. He could not imaginably approach her in this quality. There was nothing in him, nothing Saltish or Salt-like, that could be her complement. What did one do? One kept silent, Salt thought. One did not verbally confirm the testament of one’s body, that is, the pussy-testament. Salt refused to be the archetype of lonely masculine intelligence, unaware of his repulsive qualities. His love had already been productive. He had new antennae now, eager to sense and respond to this woman, and, when otherwise he would have flailed and repulsed, they bid him to be silent.
Astrid looked back at Salt. She found in him no confusion or hostility, no contemplation or fear. No, he was only looking at her. But how was he looking at her? He was in love with her—fantastically, had come through two worlds to find her. He was looking at her as if she would vanish soon. There was his anguish and ecstasy in merely beholding her. There was his sadness at the knowledge that her sight was temporary. There was his despair that he wouldn’t remember her perfectly. There was intense need but also resignation and distance. Astrid, too, didn’t know what to say, or if anything should be said. She was moved by what flowed through the man, by his humanity itself, but not by his attributes.
And they talked in the dream.
“I saw you,” Salt was saying. He was sitting on the grass next to Astrid, facing her, hoping her eyes would engulf him. “I didn’t know who or where you were. My petals opened, and you were the bee that landed. Tell me. Tell me you dreaming on that hillside, in some moment free from survival, of a reedy and conjectural man, a ghost from a vanished world, the heart of the theorem, but oddly and incongruously attractive.”
“I can’t say I was dreaming of this man,” Astrid admitted. She seemed half-present in the world of humor; willing, sometimes, to be pulled into playful currents but ultimately rooted in the seriousness of rock. Salt laughed, and Astrid smiled for the second time (a restrained smile, Salt thought, a stoical and Etruscan smile). This man was, as the ancients might have said, growing on her. His talk was pleasant and controlled; Astrid felt it as music that wanted to be heard. They were poles of the whole, the separated universe, and now they were together, and there were two kinds of silence: The silence before the squall, the intermittence between explosions, and this kind of silence, perfect and attuned silence. They had stopped speaking, but they spoke on in silence. Their waking selves might remember nothing of this union, this mutual vanishing, but forgetting was good. The worlds forgot each other too; it added to their love.
Astrid realized that, by coming here—by following her vision—Salt, this Salt, had chosen death over dreaming, and she felt a momentary sense of responsibility for him that expressed itself as a frown. But Salt, to his credit, was unaware of any corresponding burden or responsibility. He was merely glad to have seen her. He’d wanted nothing more, and presently she smiled again. She thought of her marriage and its extinguished rites. Riku had never courted her. They had drifted together in cross-assortative logic, body drawn to body. Survival was relentless and demanded continually healthy beings, who demanded continually healthy breeding, and the polar winds of lust and duty blew on them. Salt was the first man Astrid had ever seen who stood completely out of breeding’s logic. There was so much wrong with him. He was short and thin. His hair was awkward and unhealthy. His teeth were crooked, his jaw small, and his stomach somewhat protuberant. On top of these deficiencies, he was dying. The flesh that veiled qualities was, in Salt, exposed. Astrid could see through to him. His eyes and smile conveyed that he was happy to have made it this far, to her, and that all fates were equal now. She envied her certainty and passion—the passion of romantic love that freed him, whereas her passion for motherhood and survival imprisoned her in life. This man had gone right out of life. Well, of course: He was always dying and coming back.
The rest of the day passed hazily for the Redcolds who had made it behind the Shield. They had remained together except when Astrid had gone to see Salt, attracted there by the presence of a male Knower and the loss of a loneliness only felt in its absence. After that, she had met the children in the hallway—the children themselves forming a tribal hierarchy with Del at its head, Balder as a sort of guard (as if his sword could do any damage to civilization), and Nya always looking through the windows, lost in the refracted wonder of buildings. Astrid, on seeing Del and Balder, saw herself and Riku; over enough time, surely, her daughter would replicate her mother’s marriage, seeking two poles to hold an unimpassioned world together. She put the thought away as soon as she had it. Her arrival right outside the God Complex coincided with Marlo’s appearance, and Astrid noted with some sadness how much she already loved and trusted this blue woman.
“If I might,” Marlo began, waiting with a smile until Astrid nodded. “You’ll need places to stay.”
“We want to stay together.”
“I’d assumed as much. How about something familiar?”
Before Astrid could answer, she found herself in a yurt. Whatever magic she inhabited now was as real as her trances and her dreams. She touched the felt walls of the structure and peeled back one of the flaps to look beyond, but there wasn’t anything there.
“Where is this?”
“We’re still in Seaboard. This is an overlayered simulation. I’m only showing it to you—I’m not sure how the children would react.”
“Where are they?”
“Right next to you. You don’t see them, and they can’t hear you. My voice is only in your head.”
Astrid looked around the simulation and was comfortable there. Of course she was. Marlo knew she would have been. But the comfort was brief, and, before it evaporated, Astrid had returned to the other, lesser reality. Not much time had passed—maybe none at all, because Marlo had just finished speaking. Her words, as blue as herself, were still in the air. Astrid reached instinctively to Del; her daughter, she perceived, was now a better tether than herself. Del’s fingers was slender and strong now, though Astrid preserved the memory of their comical and ineffective fatness when, as a baby, she had has grasped at straw ribbons that Astrid had dangled in front of her. These were now the fingers pulling her back into the world.
“Just…something ordinary,” Astrid said to Marlo.
“Nothing’s ordinary here,” Marlo said, with palpable sadness.
“Don’t put us in that place. Put us here, can’t you? Close to Salt? We might need him.”
Marlo knew that Astrid was tired of questioning, and so she used her best judgment to prepare a living space for the four Redcolds. Marlo pointed the way to an adjacent door that parted helpfully to reveal a manageable space: Two rooms, adjoined, and each a little bigger than a tent.
“Are these fine?” Marlo asked, and Astrid heard a frown in the voice, a frown of concern. However much the blue goddess administered, however powerful she was, she was deeply eager to provide for the Redcolds. This could be no machine, Astrid reflected. How easy to contrast her with the real Goddess, whose only care was the maintenance of the fragile path of survival! The Goddess, whose whims had once proven so co
nstraining to Astrid, was somehow kin to this other goddess, to whom the whims of humanity were everything. These were the poles of divinity. Having so recently left one of them, and with nothing and no one remaining to bind her to the wilderness, Astrid was glad of Marlo’s company and character.
“That machine there,” Marlo informed Astrid. “is a converter. You stand before it and think, and it dispenses what you want to eat and drink.”
“What magic created you?” Astrid marveled. “Or were you created at all?”
“Oh, I was very much created,” Marlo smiled in response. “You know my creator.”
As Marlo and Astrid talked, the children, led by Del, stood in front of the E-M converter and dutifully thought themselves a meal. They were already adapting to the new world.
“Do you know Her?”
“Your Goddess? What’s your name for Her?”
“Itugen.”
“I know no divinities. I wish I did. I’ve sought them on my own ever since I understood their importance to humans.”
Astrid shrugged wearily. She didn’t want to talk to Marlo or look at her, and no sooner were these thoughts conceived than Marlo vanished. The blue goddess would not intrude herself; she would wait for the human call, patient beyond patience. Astrid went to the converter and found the children eating and drinking. They were sitting on a single cot, ranged in a happy hierarchy: Del, then Balder, then Nya. Having come through much, having survived and lamented the evils of survival, they were and would be close, and Astrid smiled to see them so. She touched Del’s head gently and felt her daughter incline slightly, felt the subtle relaxation that always succeeded a mother’s touch.
Later, when it grew dark, the children repaired to their own cots and fell asleep, but. Astrid lay awake next to Del. She heard a knock—a minor sound, hardly distinct from the soft hum of the dimmed lights and the converter. She rose from the cot and went to the door, which, presently, opened to reveal Salt outside.
“I can’t sleep,” Salt confessed.
Astrid took a step back into the room, allowing Salt to enter. She went to the corner, by the converter, in order to think a hot beverage for herself—ox’s milk, it turned out. Salt looked at it the steaming mug and thought one for himself as well. Thus equipped, they sat down on two of the wicker chairs that Marlo had prepared for the room.
“I can’t either,” Astrid replied.
“I’m supposed to be fixing the House of Dreams.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
“Because I need you to convince me. Would you do that?”
“All right. Do it.”
“That’s not very convincing.”
15 hope and loneliness
“Listen: You can’t sleep, I can’t sleep, I’m meant to save this world I made. Walk with me. I’ll take you through Seaboard.”
Astrid looked back at Del.
“She’s in the safest hands there are,” Salt promised.
He was mindful, in this moment, of the entertainments he had consumed, in which parents (mothers, especially) would blithely forget the existence of their children when the plot called for danger, or when love loomed. The children of that past had been albatrosses and accessories—magnets to zombies, distractions from the hedonism of post-reproductive mating, that kind of thing. Astrid, having come from the state of nature, might have been expected to entrust the survival of her child to the laws of chance and strength, but she had a maternal vigor that Salt had never seen in any entertainments and for which he had no living model.
“But not my hands,” Astrid remonstrated.
“However far we go, Marlo can have you back very quickly. And you can see her still, through this.”
Salt gestured, opening a 4D window directly in front of Astrid. The window was a holographic view of Del, Balder, and Nya.
“Where do you want to take me?”
“To myself,” Salt smiled. “To begin.”
Astrid nodded. In that moment, the background whir intensified, and Astrid felt herself lifted into the air. She looked at Salt, who was already above her. An aperture had opened in the ceiling, and Salt entered it first. Soon, Astrid was in it as well, and the wind rushed through her hair, and she felt more than saw the blurred passage of walls and interiors. She was moving through the city.
And, just like that, Astrid and Salt were floating down through another aperture. They were now in the Hall of Salts. Salt himself said nothing. He merely walked quietly between his avatars and phantoms, and he was so slow that Astrid soon overtook him. She saw that it was him, of course, in all the tubes, in all the Salts.
“Those ones there,” Salt pointed behind the hall of himself and into the approaching hallway to the House of Dreams, “haven’t died, and I can’t die. If the creatures had killed me, another of me would be here now.”
“Where are we going?”
“Past me. Here. This is the House of Dreams. Those are stacks of people. They’re sleeping, but it’s an ordinary sleep. They’ll start to die, soon, if I can’t return them.”
“Return them to what?”
“To their dreams. You have one, don’t you, a favorite dream? Maybe a golden part of the forest where the storms don’t exist and everyone’s happy? Maybe eternity with the Goddess, you and your family and your people? You see it every few years, but you can’t control it. You have to wake up. These, here—these stacked things—don’t have to. They’re in the teeth of pleasure. One of me gave that to them. And me now, I have to decide if I want to give it back.”
“These are all your people?”
“Yes.”
“And they’ll die if you can’t return them to their dreams?”
“Yes.”
“You want them to die.”
“It’s terrible and sad. I know Marlo knows, but I can’t bring myself to tell her. So I told you.”
“We’re Knowers. We’re supposed to lead our people to safety.”
“Not kill them, eh? Or even let them die?”
“Sometimes we hate them. For following or forgetting. For not carrying our burden. For being simple and trusting. And binding us to the world.”
“You said you stopped. You said you’re not a Knower.”
“I’m not.”
“How?”
“I made a decision. I could have gone into that building, or I could have stayed with my people. I went into the building.”
“Why?”
“Because I saw it leading here, somehow. To safety. To a world in which special knowledge wouldn’t be needed for survival.”
“But it is! It’s my special knowledge. And it’s just as unfair and stupid. It comes from somewhere else, like your knowledge did. It isn’t always there. It lets me down, then comes when I have no use for it. I don’t know what it’s for. Tell me, Astrid—tell me what you thought you’d find.”
“I thought there would be life. Not life through a Goddess. Not life through your knowledge or through mine. Just life. But I see it’s all corrupted now. There’s no life in any direction without some terrible compromise. That’s why I’m glad that Riku’s dead. He died meaningfully. There’s no meaning here, and there’s none left out there.”
“I did bring you here to talk me into saving humanity.”
“Why should I be their champion? I want my daughter to live. And the children. I want myself to live, so I can look after them. I want you to live, so you can look after us. These others, you decide.”
“I can’t.”
“No, you have. You don’t want them to live, because they’re nothing to you. Without them, you could die.”
“A long time ago, in my first life, I decided to kill your people. All of them. These people stacked here are my people—why should they be spared? I was glad when I saw those monsters. Finally, I thought, they’ve come to pluck the human weeds. But you were there. You still are. One life, strong and real. And these others aren’t real, and they aren’t alive.”
“The first time I saw the God
dess, she was small. Not small. A little bigger than me, and she was floating. I was dreaming her at the edge of the forest. She was floating. She had red hair and black eyes and skin the color of soil. I bowed to her. She didn’t care. I stood up and looked into her eyes. I thought she’d kill me for my pride. Her hair hadn’t been much longer than mine, but now it was—oh, everything. Longer than the universe. I was caught in it. I was a star, and Del was another, and I realized She was too big to care. Evil and death and goodness and life were on my scale, not Hers. Do you know, I’d forgotten that. I remembered it now, looking at you. We aren’t even speaking the same language, but we are. We’re nothing, but we are. You’re in Her hair, and so am I, and so are they.”
“Interconnection? That’s your argument?”
“I’m not arguing. I don’t care. You can leave them to die or return them to their dreams. I won’t speak for them or against them. You wanted me to say something, so I am.”
“They could have no better champion than you, Astrid Redcold!”
Her name hadn’t been said like that—not in all the mouths of awe and veneration. He savored her name as frost and water in the driest of the riverbeds. Her name smiled on his lips.
“You’ll fix them?”
“I will fix them.”
“And when you’re done, you’ll fix the world. You’ll take away those storms, and I’ll return with Del.”
“Return?”
“There’ll be another you, right, to look after things here?”
“Well, yes. Return?”
“Come with us. Be a Redcold. You said you have a year. Pass it with the living.”
Salt had seen enough 4D entertainments to know that he was intended to kiss Astrid, even though her invitation to him was only humane. He approached her, puckering his lips, but kept his eyes open—looking, in his own mind’s eye, like an extinct deep-sea fish approaching prey. Astrid flinched, then laughed, and Salt laughed too. He was ludicrous and sad and lonely, and her biology had spoken. He was ashamed of himself, and, when he turned away, Marlo’s currents lifted Astrid back into an open tube.