Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois

by Gardner R. Dozois

  That night he woke crying from unremembered dreams.

  He slid further downhill.

  The horror and isolation of his situation began to hit home with exaggerated strength. They had been jabbing at him since his first moment on the planet, but now that he had been cut off from his fellow humans, and now that his career was gone, they were hitting him squarely and solidly, and Liraun’s companionship and love were no longer enough to shield him.

  She had been his prop, and now even she had been kicked out from under him.

  He woke screaming every night for a week, not knowing why.

  Then—and this was much worse, this was horrifying—he began to remember his dreams.

  He dreamed often of the Alàntene, long slow-motion nightmares full of blaring, ear-grating, slowed-down sound and dead, inching, almost imperceptible zombie motion, full of horrible sluggish avatars of himself and Liraun, intolerable because the Alàntene was the center of time and all this would go on forever, as it already had.

  He would dream of Treuchlingen, the farms, the smell of mown hay, the mountains, the dusty white town asleep in the sun, the red-tiled roofs, the tall church steeples, the people in the marketplace, the chalk cliffs, the Danube coming through those cliffs at Kelheim—and then the dream would change. Earthquake! The ground smoking and sinking as if struck by a great cloven hoof, the earth opening, tossing, grinding, the neat, tile-roofed towns being kicked to flinders, going up in flames—War! Only minutes from the border, the gleaming silver needles flashing down, nothing left but ash and ghosts and fused puddles of quartz, fused ashen ghosts, quartzite bones—Nova! That burst of clear light stripping the air away, flashboiling the seas, baking the land to slag—The meteor pulverizing the globe; the toppling axis whipping the world away; the moon falling like a pregnant porcelain cow; the seas marching over the land in war; the Ice Age making the planet safe for silence; the fungus whispering over the Earth in a rusty bronze shroud—Any or all of them, night after night. Even in sleep, his reason said that none of those things was likely to be happening, but his gut said, Who knows what’s happening to an Earth lost among the stars?, and it was the gut that ruled the dreams. It had an unreasoning solipsistic bias that made him feel the Earth couldn’t continue to exist without him; now that he was gone from her, his protection would be withdrawn, and all the disasters he had been keeping from Earth by personal force of will would happen, all at once. They did, in his dreams. And he would twist awake to the ugly sound of his own screaming.

  He would dream that he was awake, and he would get up and walk to the foot of the staircase on his way upstairs, and the mirror on the wall there would give him his reflection—distorted, twisted, slimy, skin running with pustules, scabs, horns, claws, demon eyes: a monster.

  He dreamed that Liraun gave birth to a worm that howled.

  He began to drink.

  Farber had never been averse to an occasional drink, but now he started to drink in earnest—moderately heavy at first, then heavily, and then very heavily indeed. It helped; it definitely helped. Deaden the nerves enough, numb the brain sufficiently, and he didn’t worry about bad dreams. He didn’t worry about much of anything. He kept drinking. He began to buy pills from the Enclave black market, rationalizing it magnificently every step of the way, and from then on chased his liquors with downers, and vice versa. He experimented with native brews. With wines and whiskeys fermented from odd alien substances. He found a soapy native root that looked something like a yam, and which, when dissolved in wine, was even better than the pills. It was cheaper too.

  He was blotto most of the time now.

  He was beginning to get fat.

  Thanks to an iron constitution, he was still amazingly healthy, considering what he was inflicting on his body every day. But his hands, he noticed, were just starting to develop a fine tremor.

  How long until he pushed himself beyond the chance of recovery?

  A little more wine.

  At least he was a courtly drunk, he told himself. Although he might get maudlin when he sloshed, he was never abusive or discourteous to Liraun. He never beat her up or bullied her around. He didn’t let himself get mean with her, pulled himself up sharp if he saw it building in himself. Least he could do. Least he owed her. She deserved better that having some drunken fool slap her around when she came home from working to support them. Don’t let that happen! he told himself, feeling like he was shouting into a deep dry well. Liraun still seemed fairly happy, although she must be disappointed in him—she still treated him the same way she always had, comforting him when he’d wake up screaming, cooking for him, ignoring his delicate condition. Putting up with him, poor woman, he told himself. Poor woman.

  A little more wine.

  Somewhere in his head, the first sly, insidious thought of suicide.

  A few days later, Liraun suddenly became withdrawn, nervous, and rather grim. Farber wondered if she hadn’t finally gotten fed up with him, and cut back visibly on the booze for almost three days, in a half-sly, half-sincere effort to placate her. But this was wasted effort on Farber’s part—it wasn’t his drinking that was on her mind.

  Early in the evening on Farber’s third night of semi-abstention, she told him what really was on her mind. It was the beginning of weinunid, she explained, one of the times that came every four years when a wife was allowed by custom to conceive. If Farber wished to “start” children to be born in the current surge, he would have to impregnate her within the next four days. Otherwise he would have to wait four years to the beginning of the next surge, when she could be required by custom to conceive anyway—four years being the maximum time a couple could remain childless. Most couples waited the maximum four years before starting children. But by custom, the decision was Farber’s—he could make her conceive now instead, if he wished.

  All this was explained in a halting, reluctant voice, as the words were being yanked out of her on a string, against her will. The taboo against discussing personal matters—even with your husband, apparently, or was that because he was Terran?—was a powerful one. Most of the time it was satisfied by discussing such things only in the most circuitous and symbolic of speech; when bald words were necessary, as now, it was enough of a strain to make a normally loquacious woman into a tongue-tied stutterer.

  But there was something else wrong, this time. He studied her closely. She was still nervously grim. She was standing stiffly, feet braced. Her eyes were narrowed, a muscle in her jaw was tensed. A few beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. She was still trying, clumsily, to talk about the weinunid.

  So that’s it, he suddenly realized. She wants a child! and she knows if I don’t opt for one now, she’ll have to wait another four years. And of course it would be against custom to try to influence my decision. That’s the reason for this grim waiting silence. She wants a child.

  He stared at her, waiting for the idea to sink in.

  When it did, his first reaction was, Well, why not? She had to have something for herself. God knows, she got little enough out of him these days. If she really wanted it, why not let her have it? He owed her that much, or more, putting up with a sad fool like himself all this time. Besides, maybe it would settle her down some. Settle things down all around. Even him? Well—if he got better they’d have a family, and if he got worse at least the baby would be some comfort to her.

  “Would you like to have a child, Liraun?” he asked her in a careful voice. Her face went blank.

  “My husband,” she said, after a considerable pause, “at the Alàntene, do you recall a group of Elders at the far end of the beach, twizan who spoke instead of dancing or singing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those twizan were enacting the story of the First Woman. And this, in different words, is that story.” She struck a posture, and began in a subtly altered voice: “In the First Days, before the world was wholly made, and before Harmony had yet been established, there was no life on the land. All People who then li
ved dwelt in Elder Sea. Among them were the Ancestors, for at this time the Ancestors were still in the Womb of the Sea, for the world had not yet been born from out of it, and time had not begun. Now the Ancestors went up and down in the Womb of the Sea, and they went to and fro in it, and in their pride they called themselves the Lords of All Things, for they were yet ignorant, and thought that the Womb was already the World-to-Be. And they named the Womb the World-That-Is, and themselves masters of it. This was an offense against Harmony Unborn. So the First High One, perceiving this, sent an Affliction upon the Ancestors from beyond space. So it struck them down, and the manner of the smiting was this: that the Womb of the Sea, the Womb-That-Was-Ocean, became blighted and shriveled, and the Ancestors were every one of them killed, save two. The bones of the dead Ancestors were sunk to the Place of Affliction on the bottom of Elder Sea, but the two who were spared were cast up naked on the land, because the Womb would hold them no more. They were the First Man and First Woman. They stood in barren desert, and nothing moved in all the World though time had begun, because the land could bring forth no life. Seeing this, the First Woman knew what she must do, and she said, ‘I will give of myself, and infuse the World with the life of my blood.’ And so then the First Man took the First Woman’s blood, and with it he made the clear rivers that run over the land, and the pools that lie in the land. And he took the First Woman’s dung, and with it he made the Fertile Earth that covers the land and is the house of life, and with the First Woman’s hair he made all the plants and the trees that are in the World and grow in the Fertile Earth. Then the First Man broke the First Woman’s body into parts, and she cried out in great pain, but he sculpted the parts of her body as clay, and from them he made all the beasts who roam abroad in the World, and all the People who dwell on the Fertile Earth. But the First Woman’s cry of pain shattered and escaped, and the four shards of it became the four winds that wander forever about the World, looking for a surcease of pain that is not in it. And so it has always been the duty of the descendants of the First Woman to replenish the World with their bodies, and to bring forth life out of themselves with pain.”

  Liraun stopped talking.

  That, apparently, was that.

  Farber almost laughed.

  He had triggered her “circuitous and symbolic” circuit again, and away she had gone on it. He had gotten little out of her speech, other than the fact that she considered it her duty to God to bear children. He assumed that meant that the answer to his first question was “yes.”

  Liraun was watching him intently.

  “My wife,” he said with great seriousness, meeting her gaze, “I have decided that this is the time for you to conceive, and to bear your children.”

  Her eyes went opaque.

  “I hear you, my husband,” she said, mechanically. There was a considerable pause, long enough to make him wonder if she had fainted or fallen asleep on her feet with her opaque eyes open. Her expression was unreadable. At last, in a voice that started in a whistling whisper very far away, and slowly rose into audibility, a squeaky voice that quivered with strain as though it was brittle enough to snap in two, a drugged voice like that of someone being tortured, slowly being torn open to emit each word, she said, “My husband—oh my husband, I’m afraid!”

  Farber took her in his arms and held her until he felt some of the tension go out of her body, and it slumped a little in his grip. Then he said: “There’s no need for you to be afraid.” And, very gently: “You’re a woman; this would have come to you eventually no matter how long you waited. You shouldn’t be afraid of it.”

  “I hear you,” Liraun repeated, ritualistically. She pushed herself away from him. “Let me be by myself now, for a small while,” she said wearily. She walked slowly away into another part of the house.

  He didn’t see her again the rest of the evening.

  By bedtime, Liraun seemed to have regained some of her composure.

  She padded in from the upper room, gave him a half-challenging, half-plaintive look as he stood washing at the basin, wordlessly pulled her frock over her head and off in one smooth motion, and then lay down naked on the bed in front of him, inviting him with her eyes, her mouth, her opened knees. She was trembling even before he touched her, and when he lowered himself down on her, skin touching skin all along the length of their bodies, a little muscular twitch went through her, as if they were magnets clicking together.

  Their lovemaking that night was more violent than it had ever been before, a desperate pitched combat with nothing of leisure, or tenderness to it—rather it was a thing of harsh noises, slamming bodies, hard and hurtful hands. She seemed to be trying to rip him apart, and it took all of his considerable strength to prevent her. He was torn and bleeding in a dozen places in the morning, and his sides and buttocks were drummed raw by her knees and heels. She wore the marks of his fingers on her body for a week. Once she did something she’d never done before—she bit him seriously hard in her passion, drawing blood from his shoulder. The next moment she had rolled him completely over, and was riding above him like a succubus, like a mad thing, her head thrown back, the muscles corded all the way up the side of her body to her jaw.

  When he came, he could feel his seed shoot up deep, deep inside her, going home.

  Afterward, she assured him that she had conceived.

  At the end of the month, Liraun went off to the Hall of Science for her tests. There was a great deal more involved than a simple pregnancy test, however, and Farber understood little of it. The testing was interwoven with an elaborate mesh of ritual and symbology that Liraun was reluctant to explain. She had fasted and practiced total abstinence for the past three days, sleeping alone on a hard pallet near the hearth. Indeed, although she continued to cook and clean for him, she refused to touch him, or even come near him, and she spoke almost not at all. Farber kept at her until he had convinced himself that her sullen iron absorption could not be broken, and then he submitted to the situation with as good a grace as he could muster. He spent the evenings trying to catch up on his correspondence, writing letter after letter that he would almost certainly never send. Things are different here, he would write, and then pause, sometimes for hours, staring at the paper, mesmerized by the homogeneity of the banal and the inexpressible.

  Across the room, his wife would be scooping warm ashes from the hearth, adding powdered bone, charcoal dust, a few drops of an unknown viscous liquid from a vial, kneading the mixture into a dark oily paste. She now painted herself with this substance every night—transforming her face into a tragic ashen mask, rubbing it into her scalp until her hair became a dull dead grey, painting gaunt-black starvation shadows under her eyes. She looked then like a grimy, desolate ghost, and, before she went to sleep she would sing a ghostly little song to herself in a shivering, keening voice that seemed to avoid any key familiar to Farber’s ear. On awakening, she would wipe her face clean and start again with different substances. This time her face would become a frightening—almost insectile—mask, done in streaks of dull green and blue and black, with little spots of sullen red. Fierce resignation, righteous rage, religious ecstasy, sexual frenzy—Farber could never decide which of these, if any, the face was intended to represent. She would also paint concentric circles around her nipples, cabalistic swirls on her flat belly, stylized arrows thrusting down her loins into her pubic hair. Her canine teeth would gleam against the dully glistening face paint, suddenly seeming much longer, suddenly—shockingly—becoming fangs. She would remain naked all day, unself-consciously, paying no attention whatsoever to Farber’s periodic attacks of prurience.

  She hadn’t washed in days, and she was beginning to develop a rotting-sweet smell that was not entirely unpleasant.

  Neither was it entirely unpleasant to awaken to intense cold, as Farber did on the morning of the test: a cold more sensed through the sleeping-furs as yet than actually experienced, giving him a shuddery, almost pleasurable intimation of the discomfort to which he wo
uld be subjected when he finally did get up. He drowsed for a while, relishing the warmth he was wrapped in. Then he stuck his head up above the furs. The cold stabbed glassy talons into his cheeks, and shocked him a little more awake.

  Liraun was moving noiselessly about the room. She had opened the wide, low window in the east wall; that explained why it was so cold. Through that window, he could see a maze of low roofs stairstepping away and down, and the fall of heavy new snow that was settling onto them. There was no sky, only the snow—line after steady line of it, coming down with ponderous, unstoppable grace, filling all the air. Silent, furry, soft, like a slow fall of caterpillars. It blotted up sound, and softened Fire Woman’s harsh glare into an even, directionless, undersea light. Occasionally the snow would gust in through the window, swirling and dancing across the polished silverwood floor, spiraling into the air again, vanishing. Some of the flakes struck Liraun, clung, and melted, leaving shiny wet spots on her skin. She ignored them. Naked, she moved to the stone washbasin, broke the scum of ice on the water, and began to wash herself. Her movements were slow and deliberate, and she evinced no discomfort with the cold. Her face—the first time, Farber realized, that he’d seen it bare of paint in days—was serene and contemplative. The water was already beginning to freeze again, and there was a glaze of ice in her hair.

  Farber dozed, wrapped in his cocoon of warmth, and opened his eyes in time to see Liraun leaving the house. She had put on her ferocious daytime face, although this time there were streaks of orange and patches of bright yellow in among the green and blue and black. He wondered sleepily what the brighter colors represented. Hope? A somber hope, then. A fierce, cruel hope, rooted in despair. Liraun’s painted-mask seemed too harsh and hard-edged a thing for such a furry, filtered morning. He called to her, drowsily, but she did not answer. She seemed a completely isolated creature now—mysterious, self-contained, unreachable, gliding through the external world without touching it or being touched by it. Like oil over water, Farber thought. Not mixing at all. He didn’t call to her again. She was above him, in this moment—or beyond him, anyway. He wondered if there was anything he could do that would make her respond to him, if she was aware of his presence at all. He thought not. That made him very sad, although drowsiness blunted the pain into a poignant, drifting wistfulness. She wrapped herself in a grey cloak, and, without looking back at him, went out into the storm. The door closed solidly behind her. He was left alone in a room that was filled with muted white light as a mountain lake is filled with clear icy water, and he sank slowly down through the light, and through the whispering hiss and murmur of the snow, until he bumped against the bottom of the lake, and then he slept.