I undipped myself from my sleeping harness. The lights came on. The air was clear. Had it been part of the dream? I took a deep breath and almost choked. The air was growing poisonous. No alarms had sounded, though they were programmed to scream at the slightest imbalance in the air mixture. I drifted to a diagnostic board. It blandly told me that everything was fine, that we had five nines of performance on everything. I cursed it as a lying bastard, a snare, and a delusion. I twisted in the air and sent my way down to the main life-system. Panels drifted open at my command. I looked in—and felt sick. The thing was hopelessly fouled. It must have been malfunctioning for weeks. Bacteria and fungus clogged the tubes. Algal growth had obscured much of the light focused and pumped in from the sun. Inherent circuit diagnostics showed that half the circuitry was dead. But the system diagnostics still told me everything was fine. So much for the clever engineers of the desert.
I arrowed my way to Aya’s control station.
“Aya!” Panic tinged my voice, though I tried to sound calmly competent. “Our life-system is malfunctioning. Soon it will cease to operate altogether.”
“Yes, Vikram. That’s true.” I waited for her to say something else, but that was apparently it.
“We have to turn back. We can get to Ceres—”
“No.”
“Don’t be crazy, Aya. They have automated repair facilities there. We can’t go on. We’ll be dead in days.”
“We’re not turning back, Vikram. Is there anything else?”
Her eyes, though still open, were no longer looking at me. The stink of the bad air washed over me. I realized that Aya was completely crazy.
I turned from her, heart pounding. What could I do? There was no way to override her control of the ship. Not without killing her. I looked at her, floating placidly in her mystic trance. I could put my hands around her neck and squeeze.... I could never pilot the ship on my own. It was part of her. I was just a parasite.
But in a few days we would both be dead and our ship would be a lifeless hulk hurtling through the Asteroid Belt. I went back down and stared at the life-system. Aya had played with the diagnostics. I was certain of it. Had she indeed gone insane?
There was only one thing left to do. The thought terrified me, so I moved as quickly as I could, hoping to move faster than my doubts. I didn’t even go back to my cabin but instead shot toward the access bay.
Hanging there among the exterior repair equipment was a dull cylinder only slightly larger than I was. This was our singleship: a tiny vessel capable of a journey of several million kilometers, if the pilot was crazy. Or desperate.
I started the launching cycle. For a moment I wondered if Aya had blocked this too, if she wished for both of us to die here of suffocation, but the singleship descended and opened its hatch for me. The diagnostics cheerily told me that it was completely operational. There was no way of checking whether this was a lie. I climbed into the ship, strapped it around myself, and felt the acceleration as it was spit out of the bay. Stars appeared around me. I input the coordinates for the Ceres repair post. The panel blinked acknowledgment and the ship accelerated.
We swept past the pile of orbital junk that was Aya’s spaceship. Cylinders, spheres, long cones of drive pods. It showed no signs of life whatsoever. In a few moments it had vanished and I was alone among the stars.
It was the worst experience of my life. I had no idea of where I was and whether I would ever get anywhere. There was not enough room to move to scratch my shoulder, while all around me space was infinite, with no support for me. All I could do was lie there.
I think it was that trip that turned my hair white. If I’d remained on Earth like a sensible person I would still have that thick head of black, black hair, which everyone always thought was dyed.
And if I hadn’t left Aya Ngomo’s ship at that point, perhaps I would have witnessed one of the most important discoveries in human history. I would have died soon after seeing it, of course, but that might have been a small price to pay. It is so seldom that one finds a good end to anything.
The base at Ceres was automated and uninhabited, built to satisfy some mysterious Imperial purpose. The interior chambers were dark, since the machinery in them didn’t need light to operate. Using my Imperial authority I requisitioned the appropriate ecological and life-system modules. Silent devices moved to obey. As they did so, an electronic bell played the tune of the Lord’s Prayer. The air was cold and thin.
I began to weep. What was I doing there? Why was I so near the edge of death? I had done nothing. If I was not both skilled and lucky I could be dead sometime in the next few days. It wasn’t fair, not at all. It didn’t make any sense. I had suffered so much. Would the future recognize me for the martyr that I was? Somehow I doubted it. Devices crawled like bugs over the singleship, attaching modules.
I had trouble finding Aya’s ship when I returned. It was no longer near the coordinates where I had left it. If it hadn’t been for its transponder I never would have found it among all the rocks. It floated quiescent, not near anything in particular.
The singleship clicked back into its berth. I reentered the ship. The air was almost unbreathably foul. I snapped the support gear together and headed for the main sphere.
Aya was there. And she had found what she was looking for.
She hung there in the center, a glittering blue-green jewel in her deformed hands. She was unconscious, almost dead. The jewel illuminated her peaceful face.
Alone, untrained, desperate, I went to work repairing the life-system. Glowing spots floated in front of my eyes. I clicked new modules in, checked and double-checked them, scraped off corrosion, tested circuitry. At last, fresh air blew through the fetid stink. I sat back, not quite believing I had succeeded, and wiped the sweat from my forehead.
I went back up to Aya, to sink into the jewel. Chunks of carbonaceous chondrite, the rough egg in which the jewel had been encased, floated all around her. I cleaned it up before it destroyed any equipment.
On closer examination I saw that there were actually two different types of jewel, one more glorious than the other, though both shone like glowing planets. On my own, I named the lesser of the two lights lazarite—for, like Lazarus, we had been brought back from the dead. The greater I named ngomite. I knew that Aya Ngomo would try to give it another name. I also knew that she would never be able to make it stick.
I desperately wanted to name lazarite after myself—ostenite. I didn’t dare. So near, there at my fingers, and I didn’t dare. I would be forever hidden beneath that smelly old corpse, Lazarus. Look for me there, and you will find me. You will find my mark nowhere else.
The asteroids where she had found the jewels were already far away. The ship’s computer had the locations wiped from its memory. I stared at it in betrayal. Ordered to forget, it had loyally done so. There was no way I could return to the spot the ngomite and lazarite had come from. I scanned through the asteroids, hoping for some trace, some hint. How did she find it? What was around it? A crystal city? Nothing but barren rock? A massive multiarmed idol? I would never know.
While Aya slept, I investigated her discoveries. Ngomite had a complex crystal structure of high-atomie-number Island of Stability elements. I could already tell that its complexity was far greater than I could perceive. It looked almost planned, not like a natural substance at all. But that was ridiculous. The Ancient Ones were a myth that Aya had dreamed up to justify this journey.
Aya finally woke up, eyes glowing. Despite all my questions, she wouldn’t breathe a word of where she had found her jewel and what it meant. She turned our path back inward toward Earth.
“Oh, Vikram. It was glorious. Did you ever think I would succeed?”
“I never had any doubt.”
She laughed. Not a joyful laugh. It was almost contemptuous. “Of course not. But you never had any understanding either. Never. But it’s not too late. Do you think you will ever understand what you should have been?”
&n
bsp; “I hope so.”
“Forgive me, Vikram.” She took my hand.
“For what you have felt? There is no forgiveness necessary.” I was magnanimous.
“Not that at all.” Her voice was sharp. “For having accepted you as you are. I should never have done that.”
She had found that which she sought. It was her jewel, the thing that she believed made her complete. Would her legs grow back, her spine straighten? She had long ago given up on that image of her salvation. Her salvation lay within her soul, a spot where I could never trespass.
The Monastery of St. Sergius, 2182
I hurry down the path as quickly as I am able, brushing loose leaves with my cane. The apples have long since been harvested from the bare branches that overhang me.
The note is in a woman’s hand, delivered by a wool-hatted country woman who did not stay for a reply. I’ve examined the note dozens of times. Somehow even the curves of the vowels seem sensual to me. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples... I can laugh at myself even as I hurry, as impatient as a lover heading to a tryst.
“I have waited so long for news of him,” it says. “This was not what I wanted. You are his friend. Tell me how Thomas lives his life.” It needs no signature.
She waits on a bench under a tree. For a second, from the reddish dark hair, I think it is Laurena. Laurena, whose sharp scent is lately on my pillow when I awaken from nightmares.
She stands. It is not Laurena, but quite a different woman. She has the face that innocence leaves when it vanishes precipitately. Once round and cheerful, surrounded by masses of exuberant curls, it now shows the marks of care, like gullies on an untended field. Her hair is pulled back savagely, as if she is punishing it for her bad decisions. Her eyes are as blue as Thomas’s.
“Janielle,” I say. She waits for more. “He is well.”
“Well? I heard that Mark beat him. Beat him to shit.”
I couldn’t tell if she was angry at her husband or proud of him. “As well as can be expected. He will heal. He will continue to do God’s work.” A black-cassocked crow with an Orthodox cross on his chest, I am suddenly a defender of the faith against this tired woman.
Her shoulders slump. “He will. He will. Oh, damn him to hell, he will. My Thomas.”
“Your Thomas?” I am desperately curious about the story.
“Oh, yes. Does he ever talk about me?”
“Often.”
“You’re a liar.”
I pause, considering. “He told me you made love behind Crofter’s silos.”
Instead of making her angry, this melts her. “Yes. He caught a cold from the wet ground and stayed in bed. My mother saw my knees were wet. I told her I had been fishing. No fish, though. I broke my line.”
There is a rustle in the orchard. She starts, prey, expecting her husband to stride across the fields and pick her up in his hairy hand. She smiles at her own fear and removes two clips, loosening her hair. It’s been a long time since a woman loosed her hair before me.
“Why did you leave him then? Was it for Mark?” I imagine her tiring of the gentle Thomas, turning to the crude and vital Mark as a protection in this increasingly harsh world. Unattached soldiers move about the countryside, burning and looting. The Orthodox Empire is at last collapsing. It is no age for gentleness, and women are, if nothing else, practical creatures.
I don’t expect her laugh. “Leave him? Is that what he told you?”
“He hasn’t told me much.” I may as well admit it.
“No, he hasn’t, if you believe that.” She takes a breath. “We loved each other. He loved me as much as I loved him. We were going to be married. Have... children.” She turns from me.
“What happened?”
“God happened.” She speaks the word viciously—the name of a rival. “He thought and thought, and decided that his life was meant to serve the Lord. He’d always been a little churchy. That was all right. But he left me. Walked out of my life and into your monastery. That’s when his life began and mine ended.”
“And you married Mark for revenge.” Just like a woman to punish someone else by punishing herself.
“I suppose.” Her own past motivations don’t interest her. “It’s not too bad. But I’ll never give him children.” Her voice is suddenly hard. “Never!”
“Thomas will do well.” My voice is dreamy. “He has a vocation. He serves the Lord, unlike many of the rest of us. I don’t think I will tell him I saw you.”
“It’s better that way. Thank you for your time, Brother Vikram.” She turns and walks quickly away. She wears a shawl, like a woman already growing old. But she bounces her auburn hair once, a brief flash of the old flirt, and is around a corner and gone.
I turn back to the monastery and draw in a breath. Thomas stands beneath the old apple tree. Tears run down his cheeks.
“You should have come to talk with her,” I say. “It would have made her happy.”
He shakes his head. “That’s impossible. I’ve made my choice, Brother Vikram.” He doesn’t try to wipe his tears. “I still love her.”
So all along, as I’ve been explicating my wonderful life to this poor young man, who respects me for all I have lost, he has made a sacrifice that I could never imagine. Love! How could he ever give it up?
“Help me, Thomas. My bones are tired.”
He puts a strong arm under my shoulder and leads me back to the monastery.
“I’m leaving, Thomas. When we get back to St. Sergius’s I am requesting transfer to the Skete of St. Nil Sorsky. You know it? It’s in the foothills of the Poconos. A howling wilderness. A tiny place with only two other monks and one lay brother.”
Thomas doesn’t seem surprised. “Do you have a spiritual reason for the change, Brother Vikram?”
“Would you believe me if I said the bustle and pomp of St. Sergius’s were beginning to offend me? Of course not. Perhaps it’s because you’ve taught me something.”
“And what have I taught you?”
“How to face the past and understand it. I don’t think I’ve been entirely clear to you. But that’s because it took me so long to understand it myself.”
Earth Orbit, 2147
Aya Ngomo tricked us all. I had always underestimated her deviousness: the vulpine cleverness of true holiness, which always knows what is necessary.
It took several years to build the ship incorporating the new fusion drive based on the minerals she had found. Both an act of religious devotion and a technological proof of concept, it was a dominating high-visibility act. Tergenius took charge and rose ever upward. I rose with him. Somehow, I had never managed to disentangle myself from Tergenius. That tedious bureaucratic man, his silly droopy moustache now white, seemed able to dance through the maze of Orthodox Imperial administration in a way that I, far cleverer and better liked, never could. So I held on to his belt and was pulled along behind him.
Aya Ngomo retired to St. Catherine’s in the Sinai. A laboratory was built for her there, experts sent to the desert to do her bidding. There she assessed the meaning of ngomite. And that was indeed what it was called. Try as she might, her name, xenite, was never accepted by anyone. Eventually she gave up trying to change it.
Besides being beautiful, ngomite provided an easy way to control and manage a fusion flame, almost as if its crystal structure was intended for such a use. No one really cared to speculate. Orthodox theology had no place for Aya’s Ancient Ones. Once ngomite’s structure was analyzed, it proved a remarkably useful substance. Other deposits were eventually found in the Asteroid Belt, though no one ever came across the location of her original strike. That was a mystery that she still keeps to this day. But ngomite was a godsend.
This new spacecraft was nothing like the old pile of junk that had hauled us out to the Belt. This was a sleek, beautiful creation. As a signal personal honor, Aya Ngomo herself was the pilot on the first full test of an ngomite-controlled fusion spaceship.
I talked to her one las
t time before her test flight. It was in a tiny room in Boston, not far from the Orthodox Cathedral I had once pretended I had seen.
I was by this time a Full Councillor. For the past five years I had been Governor of Ontario. When I came I arrived with proper pomp, escorted by ceremonial horse troops from the north, in dark red uniforms. We made quite a brave show on Boylston Street. I had brought my favorite mistress, Tanya, with me, and installed her in an apartment on Beacon Hill. I had the world, such as we knew it in those days, at my feet.
It was with trepidation that I entered the old building, leaving my escort in the street, and was led up to Aya Ngomo.
The room was completely dark. I stumbled in, almost tripping over power conduits. “Aya! Are you in here?”
A tiny light came on, illuminating her face. She shouldn’t have been on Earth at all. She seemed barely human, tied intimately with her devices. Her eyes were still the same though, bright and intelligent.
“Ah, Vikram. Come to say goodbye?” I should have guessed then, I suppose.
“Just to see you.”
“Thank you.” She looked at me. “You’ve made a success of yourself. You’ve come quite a ways from St. Theda’s.”
I laughed. “That’s true enough. Yes, I do well.”
“Is it what you wanted?”
“Do you want me to tell you that I have found wealth and earthly power worthless? Not at all.” I spoke resonantly. “It’s just what I wanted.”
She reached out her hand and took mine. “I tried to tell you when we were in the Asteroid Belt. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you, Vikram.”
“What you’ve done? I don’t understand.”
“For the greater good. That’s the phrase, isn’t it? I sacrificed you for the greater good. My greater good. I won’t change it, understand, not for anything, but I want you to know that I don’t hold sacrifice to be meaningless.”
The Breath of Suspension Page 6