When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition)

by William Barton

  We could have flown the flitter in to the little lake Daddy’d found, but, as he said, walking in along the drytrack made it... nicer.

  I remember the look on his face as he looked down at me. Looked down at his son. “Ah, this is the life.”

  When I walk the drytrack with my son, I’ll have to remember to say that to him, make him smile, make him... dream. Remember, because one day, after I betray his trust, he’ll never look at me the same way ever again.

  Will it be my fault when that happens?

  What choice will I have?

  Somewhere else in the house, my father would be sitting in darkness all alone, thinking his bitter thoughts, waiting for me to come for him and say it’s... all right. It’s all right, Dad. I still love you.

  There was nothing you could have done.

  I can get up right now and...

  His room was empty when I got there, door standing open, door to my mother’s suite closed and silent. Most likely, she’s got him in there now, making him perform.

  When I turned away, my favorite old silvergirl was standing in the dark hallway, looking at me, motionless. Maybe wondering if I wanted her to come play with me? Who knows what silvergirls think?

  I went back to my dark room and lay down in bed again, looking out the window at full-blown Ygg, watching it transit the patch of starry sky, moving with the background stars at Audumla’s rotation rate, waiting for it to set behind the next panel.

  After a while, I fell asleep.

  o0o

  The next day, early in the morning, before anyone else had gotten up, I was breakfasting on the patio, watching Ygg fade as the stemshine blossomed, drinking strong black coffee, eating sweet, dry crumb cake, when Dad came out and stood by the hillside rail, looking out over the landscape. Not saying anything.

  I was... I don’t know. Angry still, I guess. But there really was nothing he could’ve done, and I could see how badly he felt about the whole business. Finally, I said, “It’ll be better this way, Dad. I knew the rest of it, the idea that I could ever be anything other than what they said I was to be... well. It was just a silly dream. Now... once Luddy and I get settled in, you and I can...”

  He turned and looked at me then, and I saw with considerable relief that he could see right through me, understood I was being nice to him, making sure we could go on being what we’d been since before I can remember: friends. Saw his relief and mine, and beyond that a future in which life went on, more or less unchanged. Dr. Goshtasp and his intern, Darrayush. Mr. Fixit and Son, friends to every machine, everywhere.

  And Luddy?

  Hell, a gate’s a gate, and what the fuck else was I going to do with my life?

  Grow up. Be a man. That’s all.

  He made a weak attempt at a smile, and said, “You want to go for a drive?”

  Drive? I shrugged and said, “Sure. Why not?”

  We got in the flitter and took off, to my surprise heading uphill through the heart of Lydia City, away from the bayou country, away from the old lowland habitats, abandoned city, Timeliner Firehall, whatever. Went under the monorail overpass and skirted the Knossian Beltway, following bright stemshine up toward the axial core. Finally, we got to a point where the gravity was too low and the topography too steep for the family flitter, boarding an elevator and going straight up the face of the red ersatz cliffs.

  The elevator was a big one, a sliding glass room the size of Mother’s dining hall, full of passengers, women, men, children, many of them with luggage piled round their feet. Mothersbairn, sure, but a lot of strangers too. What looked like a Timeliner couple from the cut of their clothes, the angular look of their faces. A group of young men in some unfamiliar uniform, red cloth, black boots, green trim, golden badges. A stiff, uncomfortable looking fat man with a robot toolbox standing placidly by his side.

  I looked at my father, studied the conflict in his face. “Dad? Where’re we going?” No sense asking why. He’d answer one if he answered the other.

  He looked at me, eyes guarded, making me wonder about the indecision I so plainly saw. Finally, he said, “I thought we might go on up to the South Axial Port, you know? Watch the, um... goings on.”

  Like we used to do when I was a little boy. I remember those outings plain as day, Dad and I floating in one of the big obdecks, back behind the stemshine mounting bracket, looking toward the industrial complex with all its fancy stevedoring cranes, toward the big, fantastic ring of starship docking platforms. Sometimes, if we were lucky, there’d even be a ship in port.

  He said, “I checked the schedules when I got up. There’s a ship in dock now, Sans Peur, property of Les Citoyennes Occidentales. About ready to undock, heading out for Telemachus Major, then on down the Jet to Proxima.” He looked at me with the oddest shine of fear in his eyes, then swallowed softly. “I thought we could... watch her go.”

  The elevator came to a stop, big doors sliding upon, and all the people struggled to get out, families floundering in unfamiliar low gee, up here at the 0.05 level, others, accustomed, loping away with long, easy strides. I expected up to go up the footstrap escalator to the obdeck, but instead we began following the crowd.

  “Dad?”

  He looked away, avoiding my gaze, then said, “Let’s go down to the boarding ramp. We can...”

  “You can stop lying to me now.”

  He stopped dead, some people behind us, carried forward by inertia, barely avoiding a collision, fumbling with bobbing bits of luggage and swearing at us in a language I’d never heard before, something full of velar gutturals and glottal stops. He sigh, a hard, gusty rasp, “Ah, Orb. I’m not lying, son. I just can’t decide. I...”

  “So where are we really going?”

  One long, hard stare, tainted with an agony of indecision, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim blue markerchit. Held it out to me. Swallowed again. Said, “I keep some of my accounts on the Timeline Segment, instead of down in the Audumlan bankertracks. The whole business is secured behind the firewall at Telemachus Major. Your mother doesn’t know.”

  I looked at the thing in his hand, not knowing what I was supposed to do, but suddenly realizing...

  He said, “I bought you a ticket on Sans Peur.”

  Ticket. Moment of stupid misunderstanding, then a bizarre thrill of hope. “We’re running away?” Running away from home, like Tom and Huck and every other lost boy you ever dreamed of? My head filled with fantasies then, impossible dreams, Goshtasp and Darrayush, faring together among the stars and...

  There was no diminishment of the agony in his dark eyes, now alight with something that looked horribly like impending tears. He said, “By enforceable legal contract, I’m your mother’s chattel, Darius. If I leave... well. There are laws. Laws everywhere.”

  “But...” But I’m her chattel too, not just her son, I...

  He proffered the chit. “You take this, Darius. The ship leaves in three hours. I’ll... go home and lie ‘til you’re safely away.”

  Home. I said, “But... Mother and... well, what about Ludmilla and her mother? I mean...”

  He said, “If you leave, the banns are broken. You’re still free, but another ship won’t come by for months, not ‘til after the wedding.”

  By which time...

  He said, “The Telemachan government will enforce my written contract, but may not agree with her putative progenitive rights over you. I’ve arranged for some people to meet you at Telemachus Major, son. Timeliners. Old friends of mine. They’ll hide you for a while. Help you find a job. Help you... figure out what you want to do.”

  “But... Dad, if you stay here...”

  Agony in his eyes. And full knowledge of what would happen to him when Mother found out what he’d done. He said, “Take it, Darius. Take it for me. Please.”

  I held the chit in my hand, staring at it, thinking about all the things he’d wanted and hadn’t gotten out of his life. Thought about all the things I might want, if I could learn how to want. Th
ought about it for maybe all of a hundred seconds.

  Then I hugged my father, hugged him hard, the way I hadn’t hugged him since I was a little boy. Hugged him and turned away, turned and ran down the great docking tunnel that led to the starship Sans Peur.

  Three. No one who hasn’t lived

  No one who hasn’t lived such a moment for himself can imagine the bizarre exhilaration I felt as I ran down the corridor, ran from Audumla and the Mother’s Children, ran from everything I’d been, through the crowded docking tunnel, through the ticketing gate and on into the bowels of Sans Peur. I could never have imagined it myself, though I dreamed this dream a thousand times, as a woman in bondage dreams the Amazon dream.

  Reality was that fabled bolt from the blue, burning my life clean away.

  Burning it away, though it was a long, long time before it dawned on me what that truly meant.

  The ship itself was immense, more than a kem in diameter, several kems long, a dirigible world. Unlike Audumla, it was a solid rock world, a three-dimensional space of tunnels and warrens and machinery, most of all a world solid with people. People of every sort, all the kinds of people I’d ever heard of, people the like of whom I’d never imagined.

  Naked woman. Fantastically tall, impossibly thin, with huge, burning emerald eyes, pale blue skin, and hair the color of oxygen-rich blood.

  Where could she have come from?

  One day, when I’ve got the time, I’ll sit at a freeze-frame once again and look her up. Maybe I’ll go there myself.

  My stateroom, when I found it, proved to be a hole in the wall, a little plastic door set in a vast panel of such doors, much like a bank of gymnasium lockers where you’d store your street things before taking to the floor. I slid inside and closed the hatch, lay there in point-oh-five gee listening to myself breathe, looking at the little racks where I was supposed to stow my carry-on luggage.

  Orb knows I haven’t got a thing.

  Is that what it means to be free?

  One long, horrid twist of fear inside me, making me feel like I had to go to the bathroom.

  I’m just a boy. I shouldn’t be here alone.

  Then go back, Mother’s Son. Go back, while there’s still time.

  Go back home to Mother and Dad, Rannvi and Lenahr, and all your little friends. Go back to Ludmilla Nellisdottir who loves you so. Go back and fall right through her beckoning gate to that... that...

  I slid quietly from my hole in the wall, crept along the corridors, following the signs until I came to a forward obdeck. Stood by a curving wall of transparent metal. Watched quietly, gripping the rail with white-knuckled hands while teams of spacewalkers uncoupled Sans Peur from Audumla. Felt a soft vibration under my feet as field moduli counterlatched the substance of spacetime. Watched Audumla recede, a smooth stone cylinder turning on its axis, falling away, slowly at first, then faster.

  Audumla. Ygg and its ruddy moons, become specks, then nothing. Nothing but the void and the faraway stars as Sans Peur accelerated on her way to Telemachus Major, four days travel time... twelve billion kems from home. Meaningless number. Meaningless word.

  Another nightmare pang.

  Orb telling me, down deep where it counts, that I have no home.

  When I turned away from the star-spangled darkness, fantastically hollow inside, the obdeck was thronged with people. Some of them looking out at the stars, faces full of, I don’t know, longing, fear, exhilaration, peace, most looking away, at each other, at... whatever.

  Not far from me a group of young men, boys my own age really, were hunkered down by the wall, making a little circle, intent. When I came up and looked, I could see they were shooting craps, a variant involving three eight-sided red dice. After I’d stood and watched for a while, they motioned me into play, speaking languages I didn’t know, obviously more than one language among them.

  So I crouched and played for a long time, offering my chit for wagers, making my rolls, until I was so tired I could hardly see the spots on the dice. Came out a little bit ahead in the game too. Just enough. Not too much. Crept back to my little cubbyhole, where I thought about my new life, my new friends, my new everything, and finally went to sleep, where I dreamed about everything lost.

  o0o

  Four days later, I got one good view of Telemachus Major from space, standing in the obdeck with my new friend Hórhe as Sans Peur swept in from the interstellar deep, decelerating furiously, blue glow of the exhaust baffle wrapping around the hull like sheets of aurora at the poles of Ygg. It was a huge, blue-frosted sphere of a world, almost a thousand kems in diameter, I remembered from the atlas, air contained at its surface, contained and conditioned by a vast eutropic shield absurdly expensive to maintain. Artificial world with artificial mountains, artificial seas, artificial clouds...

  I spied a much smaller world, a little sphere of bright green, apparently in orbit around Telemachus Major, maybe only a hundred kems across, maybe less. I’d learned a little Sinyól from Hórhe these past few days, just as he’d learned a little Norn from me, so I said, “Ke es la verdád?”

  He snickered and said, “What is truth?”

  Um. How many words of a language can you learn in four days, even when it’s obviously related to your own? Not many. I pointed at the little world and said, “The green thing.”

  “Green? La vérde?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Telemachus Minor. Es la párke.”

  While we were talking, trying to talk anyway, Telemachus and its moon swelled in the window, becoming so huge it was impossible to believe it wasn’t a real world, that we weren’t bearing down on manhome Earth itself. How would I know? I’ve never really seen a real world, other than Ygg. What’s it like to come in for a landing on an object eight thousand kems across, with a natural atmosphere deep enough to swallow Audumla?

  But we passed close to the little green worldlet on our way in, and you could see, see with your naked eyes, that it was a world of trees. I had one long moment of memory, remembering my last hunting trip, walking through the abandoned woods of Audumla, imagining myself on Earth. How much easier that dream would be on a place like this.

  o0o

  So we landed, Sans Peur settling down in a vast, oval depression atop a grassy mountain somewhere on Telemachus Major, and I stood frozen by the obdeck rail, looking out at my new world. Grassy mountain slopes, then... horizon line in all directions, and buildings, cityscape everywhere I looked, buildings leaning away from me, leaning giddily, letting me know I was on the outside of a sphere. Overhead, blue sky, fluffy white clouds, clouds floating on the wind.

  How can this not be the doing of Uncreated Time? How can mere men have made such beauty?

  No answer.

  Hórhe poked me in the shoulder, made me look down at his smiling, flat tan face and beady black eyes. He held out his hand to me and said, “I got to go, Murph. Was nice meeting you.”

  I took his warm hand in mine, suddenly fearful. What was it he’d taught me to say? “Asta la vísta, Hórhe.”

  He looked at me, shrugged, and said, “Maybe so, Murph.” Then he let go of my hand, turned and walked away into the crowd, and of course I never did see him again, went walking away, on my own, missing him already, it seemed, in just the same way I missed Styrbjörn and the others.

  All the others.

  They’d filled my time, filled my life, kept me from... whatever it is friends keep you from.

  Maybe just keep you from thinking about the meaning of the words you say.

  Time turned kaleidoscope on me after that. With nothing to retrieve from my room, owning nothing but the casual clothes I’d put on when I came down to breakfast, that and my father’s chit, I walked as slowly as I could down through the bowels of the ship, down to the axial corridor, then forward to the docking port and on out into Telemachan daylight. Stood standing under that blue and white sky, motionless, in the dwindling crowd of travelers, finally became aware of three men standing before me, tall, dark m
en, just like me.

  One of them said, “Mr. Murphy?”

  I started, jerked from a contentless reverie, and looked at them, switching from face to face. “Yes.” More afraid than I ought to be. Too much. Too soon.

  The man said, “We’re friends of your father. My name’s Cyraxidon.” Speaking Norn rather slowly, with a pronounced accent of some kind.

  I said, “I can speak Parthava.”

  A smile. “Usually we don’t. Just at home, in the Firehall, in private. You know any classical languages?”

  “English and Chinese. I’m, uh, not very good with languages.”

  He said, “You’ll do fine, Murphy. English is popular with the big companies. Chinese’ll come in handy as hell if you wind up working for one of the tongs.”

  Tongs. I didn’t have a clue to what he was talking about. I let them lead me away, down into a city made of tall, very old-fashioned buildings, down through something they called a ginza, beyond into something else called a barrio, where the buildings were not so tall and definitely... inelegant.

  Finally led me to something they called a flophouse and put me in a dirty little room, a room without windows, making sure though that I noticed there was a lock on the door, that I knew how to use it. There was an antique freeze-frame in the corner, next to the bed, freeze-frame with a little slot in its base where I’d have to put my chit if I wanted to use it. A little box of a sideroom with a toilet and shower, each with a chitslot as well.

  Then the man who called himself Cyraxidon said, “We’ve... arranged for you to take some tests, Murphy. We’ll help as much as we can, but...” He looked at the others, all their eyes hooded and secret. “Well, you get some rest now. We’ll see you again in a day or two.”

  Then they left, leaving me there all alone.

  A day or two?

  And what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?

  After a while of staring at nothing, I put my chit in the freeze-frame’s slot and watched this old clunker light up. Put my hands through the interface and felt the datatracks begin to stream. Made a connection to HytaspesMurphy.Helgashall.Audumla and...