The Breath of Suspension

by Jablokov, Alexander

  I lay back on the other side of the bed, my heart pounding. I knew that no matter what I did, I would be unable to sleep. When I had left her, she had smelled of violets. Her neck now had the bitter aroma of myrrh and patchouli.

  ❖

  The Capuchin did his calculations with a light pen on what looked like a pane of glass, causing equations to appear in glowing green. Interpolated quotations from the Old Testament emerged in yellow, while those from the New Testament were light blue. Unavoidable references to Muslim physicists flashed a gory infidel red. I gazed out from under my cowl, impressed but unenlightened. I don’t know anything about nuclear physics, and even when I thought I had managed to pick up the thread of an argument, I was immediately thrown off by a gloss on Thomas Aquinas or Origen. I contented myself with smelling the incense and watching the glitter of the LEDs on the rosaries of the other monks as they checked the Capuchin’s calculations.

  He turned from the glass and faced his audience. He raised his arms in supplication to Heaven, then clapped his hands together. The equations disappeared, to be replaced by a mosaic of Christos Pancrator, His brow clouded by stormy judgment, lightning ready to be unleashed from His imperial hands.

  “Brothers!” the monk said. “All is in readiness. For the first time in history, the fires of Hell shall be unleashed on Earth, chained at the command of the sacred Mathematics that God, in His Wisdom, has given us to smite the infidel. We will now examine this flame, and if it is not found wanting, its hunger will soon consume the arrogant cities of all those who would oppose the Will of God!” We rose to our feet and followed him up the stairs to the surface.

  It was dry and bright outside, and the sky was a featureless blue.

  We segregated ourselves by Order, the gray of Dominicans to the right, the brown of Franciscans to the left, and the martial oriental splendor of the Templars and Hospitalers in the center. There were last-minute checks of the dosimeters, and several of the more cautious had already flipped their goggles down and were sucking on their respirators.

  In front of us, across the cracked, dried mud, amid the rubble of what had once been the city of Venice, stood the Campanile of St. Mark’s, looking the same as it did in a Canaletto painting, except for the fact that the gray ovoid of the atomic bomb rested on a frame on top of the steeply pitched roof. Nearby, the crumbled dome of the cathedral lay on the ground like an overturned bowl. At a distance stood the crazily leaning Rialto bridge. All around, the flats of the dry lagoon stretched away. A trumpet call rang through the air. We repaired to our trenches, all now monastic grasshoppers with our goggles and breathing tubes. We knelt, facing the tower, and the bomb.

  When the blast came, it looked, in my goggles, like a bright glowing dot that faded quickly to red, and then darkness. The blast shoved at the shielded robe, and I felt the heat on my face. The sound of the blast thundered in my earplugs. A moment went by. I pulled up my goggles.

  The ruins of Venice had been replaced by a smoking crater. The mushroom cloud towered overhead like a cowled monk of a different Order.

  In sudden unplanned fervor, the monks began to pull themselves out of the safety of the trench and march toward the crater. I, of course, was with them, though I felt like a fool.

  A resonant bass voice started the tune, and the rest of us joined in:

  Dies irae, dies illa

  Solvet saeclum in favilla

  Teste David cum Sybilla...

  The Latin held a wealth of allusion lost in the English:

  Day of wrath! Day of mourning!

  See fulfilled the prophets’ warning

  Heaven and Earth in ashes burning!

  We knelt by that smoking scar and prayed until night fell.

  ❖

  My limbic Key brought me back to the hallways of Centrum, vomiting and almost unconscious. Someone found me and hauled me out, a long way, since it was a distant Shadow. I had no idea who it had been, though somehow I doubted that it had been a Lord.

  The Medical Ward was high up and had large windows that let the sunlight in, unusual in the rest of the Centrum. It was a bright day outside, and I could see the endlessly repetitive walls and blocks of black rock that made up the home of the Lords of Time, stretching out to the horizon. There were no gardens in the pattern, no sculptures, and few windows. Centrum stretched over a large part of the continent some still called North America. I thought the Medical Ward abutted on the Rockies, but I was not sure, though I had already been here twice. My head pulsed and I felt disoriented.

  The ward was filled with the real effects of Shadow. A theoretical anthropologist, his arms and legs replaced by assemblages of ebony, cedar, and ivory by a race of mechanically inclined torturers, lay spread-eagled on his bed, asleep. Each twitch in his shoulder or hip sent dozens of precisely balanced joints flipping, so that he danced there like a windup toy. In the corner lay a fat man who had been participating in a stag hunt through the forests of Calvados, in some world that still had a Duke of Normandy, when a cornered aurochs had knocked over his horse and given him a compound fracture of the femur. He’d lain in some canopied bed, surrounded by porcelain and Shiraz carpets, dying of tetanus, while the colorful but medically ignorant inhabitants of that Shadow crossed themselves and prepared a grave in the local churchyard. When the timing signal in his Key finally came, he’d pulled himself out of bed and through the Gate to the hallway, just as I had. The man in the bed next to mine, who gasped hoarsely every few minutes, had gotten drunk, wandered into the wrong part of town, and been beaten by some gang. This was familiar to me too. It could have been any town, the Emperor of Zimbabwe’s summer capital on Lake Nyanza, or Manhattan, minor trading city in the Barony of New York, or Schekaagau. It didn’t really matter. He moaned again.

  “Ah, ‘The Suffering Critic.’ A work to gladden the heart of any artist.” Standing at the foot of my bed, with a bouquet of multicolored daisies, was a dark, bearded man with a slight twist of amusement to his mouth. That quirk was there so often that it had permanently distorted the muscles of his face, so that he always wore the same expression, like a mask. Masks don’t reveal, they conceal, something it was easy to forget.

  Amanda had sent me an even dozen long-stemmed red roses, which loomed over me where I lay. He read the card, which just said “Get Well” and nothing else, and with the impatient gesture of a god eliminating an improperly conceived species of flatworm, he pulled them out of the vase and threw them away. He shoved his own daisies in their place. This done, he sat down in the chair next to me with a grunt of satisfaction. “Jacob, old friend. You look like hell, and your hair is falling out.”

  “You’re too kind, Samos.”

  “Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to kill you?” He peered at me to see what my reaction would be.

  I stared at him for a second before I thought of a response. “Samos, I’m a critic.”

  “Point well-taken. But you haven’t answered my question.”

  “Samos, when you come to visit a sick friend in the hospital, you’re supposed to make small talk, not start off with—”

  “The fact that I suspect someone of trying to kill you?” Halicarnassus was remorseless. “Not telling you that as soon as possible would be crass impoliteness. However, if you insist. On the way here I saw some cumulus clouds. They brought a number of impressions to mind, and in fact I saw one that strongly resembled a mongoose.”

  I should have known better. I sighed and gave up. “To answer your question, Samos, no, I don’t think someone’s trying to kill me. Do you?”

  He grimaced. “I’m not sure. It’s just that the shielding in your robe was good, everything was in order, calculations from your dosimeter indicate that you absorbed a dose of somewhat over twenty rem, high but not fatal, and yet you were almost dead when they got you here. Don’t you find that odd?”

  “How did—” I stopped. It was useless to ask Halicarnassus how he found these things out. He seemed to know all the back stairs of Centrum,
including which steps creaked. “I don’t, unfortunately, find getting radiation sickness after walking into a fresh blast crater particularly odd, no.”

  “Let me remind you of the fate of one of your predecessors, who died in a zeppelin explosion while eating coq au vin off a silver plate in the company of the Due de Moscau.”

  I’d been trying not to think of him. “Gambino was reviewing one of Nobunaga’s worlds, if I remember. His people are colorful, but tend to be indifferent engineers.” I didn’t know why I was arguing with him.

  Halicarnassus shrugged. “He’d also revealed Lord Meern’s collection of sexually obsessed societies, which caused Meern to suffocate himself, if you’ll recall. It could all be accidental, of course. In an infinite number of Shadows, an infinite number of things happen. But here’s an interesting thought. Can you conceive of two worlds that differ in only one important detail?”

  It was a relief to talk shop, rather than death. I hadn’t caused anyone’s suicide. Not that I knew about. “What do you mean?”

  “Say I create two Shadows, identical in everything, except in one the writing in books is boustrophedon, like the ancient Greeks did it, with alternate lines going right to left. It’s a more efficient way of reading, really, you don’t have to move your eyes back to the beginning of each line.”

  I liked the idea. “Or two Shadows, but in one men kiss, rather than shaking hands.”

  “Taking an inhabitant of one and dropping him in the other would cause no end of problems. Or better yet, trading two otherwise identical people.”

  “Both would end up arrested.”

  We laughed and explored the idea, and the thought of murder, never quite reasonable to begin with, was forgotten.

  “Jacob!” Amanda finally flounced in, wearing a red dress, not one I remembered ever having seen before. She pecked me on the forehead, then sat down in the chair and rearranged the pleats of her dress until they lay in the proper pattern. Then she smiled at me. Behind her, moving silently, was Martine, holding a box. My head was pulsing again, and I felt disoriented. I blinked my eyes, but it didn’t help.

  Martine and Amanda were both frowning over my shoulder, as if there was something improper there. Halicarnassus stared back expressionlessly, then bowed. Amanda smiled tightly, Martine did nothing. “Good day, Jacob,” Halicarnassus said, patted my shoulder, and was gone.

  They had brought me cookies, airy things of almond and spice. Amanda had made them. I hadn’t known she could bake. They brought me cookies. Symbols are not only in books, but help us see the structure of our own lives. Each cookie shattered as I bit into it, then stuck to my teeth. Martine avoided this problem by swallowing his whole.

  Martine was desperate to know what Halicarnassus and I had been discussing, but didn’t want to ask. I ignored his ever more pointed hints with sickbed stupidity, and left him frustrated. It was meager satisfaction. Amanda chattered, more talkative than I’d seen her in months. I watched the delicate curve of her throat and shoulders. She talked about the weather, about jewelry, about the music she’d been listening to, about art. Her tastes were dependent on the important others in her life, but she’d been mine for so long that I had forgotten, and was startled to hear her criticizing works that I loved, and thought she had also.

  I lay back and listened to them, until their voices were just a buzz. Life was full of troubles, and I had more important things to worry about than exploding zeppelins.

  ❖

  I hadn’t been in Halicarnassus’s new world for more than five minutes when I saw her. I should have known better than to be in his Shadow in the first place, but I’ve never been able to resist an exclusive showing, even knowing his habit of unpleasant tricks. Halicarnassus had always enjoyed forcing societies into unnatural forms, unhealthy adaptations. He’d done an ornate Victorian-style Europe full of confectionary palaces and light operas, which practiced brutal cannibalism at fancy-dress dinner parties, a hereditary American Congress full of dangerously inbred religious fanatics who dressed in drag when deciding on bloody crusades against Sumatra and Ethiopia, and a North American Great Plains kept free of habitation from the Mississippi to the Rockies so that its Mongol conquerors could ride as their ancestors had, while forcing enslaved Europeans to build meaningless monuments larger than the Pyramids. His worlds seemed to disturb most of the Lords, who thought them mocking, and they found few buyers. He got by, somehow, the way artists always have, and still made his art.

  I came into this world on the bottom level of Grand Central Station, as if I were simply another traveler amid the scurrying mobs, who carried me up into the light of the streets above.

  Just a few blocks away, near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I saw Amanda, her blonde hair curled and flowing, crossing 50th Street on Fifth Avenue, obviously in a hurry. I didn’t stop to think, but followed her trim gray-suited figure as she walked down the street, carrying a briefcase. The people of this Shadow did not dress brightly, or use much color on their buildings, which were disproportionately high, like the spires of iron cathedrals that had never been built. So Amanda, always in fashion, dressed here in discreet urban camouflage.

  Love is a random process, depending on such improbable events as an introduction by mutual friends followed by a chance meeting in an exhibit of etchings, and a common liking for a certain sweet wine punch that now, in memory, makes me gag. Or perhaps not so improbable: I later found out that Amanda had gone to that gallery because she knew I would be there. She has never learned to like copperplate etchings, though she pretended to, at the time. The loves of our ancestors were equally random. Exact duplicates of individuals seldom exist from Shadow to Shadow, despite Halicarnassus’s elaborate plans for almost duplicate worlds, so we almost never get to see ourselves in a different life. Was there a Jacob Landstatter in this world? A Salvator Martine?

  So I followed her, my heart pounding. Her waist and her hips were just the same, and she swayed, enchantingly, the way she always had. When she stopped at street corners, she looked up at the tops of the buildings, shading her eyes, as if searching for roosting storks, or gargoyles. Her walk was quick, even on heels, and I had to concentrate on keeping up, difficult on the crowded street. She continued for quite a distance, finally coming to the edge of a large green park called, with no particular originality, Central Park. This was a strange mechanical Shadow, full of flying machines and automobiles. It was incredibly noisy. She finally turned into a large gray building called the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I paused at the base of the stairs for a long moment. Banners announced special exhibits of eighteenth-century French crystal, Japanese swords, and the works of a Rembrandt van Rijn. Dutch again. I was tired of Dutch. I followed her up the stairs and into the museum.

  It was Rembrandt that she wanted, and she went straight there through the maze of corridors. It was an exhibit of copperplate etchings. Much of it was a series of self-portraits of that same Rembrandt van Rijn, from rather boorish youth to brooding old age, in a variety of strange headdresses. The man was obviously a genius, and I lost myself in his intricate lines.

  “He is remarkable, isn’t he?” she said, at my side. “I took some time off from work to come see him. This is the last day it’s going to be here.”

  I turned slowly to look at her. Her eyes were the same too, lighter blue within dark, under long soft lashes. She looked down when I met her gaze, then glanced back up. There was no sign of recognition in her eyes. No Jacob Landstatter in this world. Until now. She smiled. Here she smelled like wildflowers, something other than violets.

  We found ourselves strolling around the exhibit together, giving each other details of the various etchings as gifts. Some of her remarks were critical, and I suspected that she didn’t think as much of etchings as she had initially claimed she did.

  “I don’t know what I should do now,” she said, looking up and down the street after we emerged. “I don’t really want to go back to work... it’s too nice a day.” She glanced at me, then looked a
way.

  I suggested we get a drink, and she took my arm as we walked. I felt like an idiot. What was I doing? It was a beautiful spring day, and our steps matched as we walked. She looked up again, at the corner, and we discussed the cornices of buildings, the eaves of the roof of the house she had grown up in, the strange places birds manage to relax, and hidden roof gardens in Manhattan. It had been a long time since I’d enjoyed a conversation quite that much. She flirted with intent, and smiled when she looked at me. “I’ve been so lonely,” she said.

  Suddenly she froze, then turned to look into the window of a stationery store, pretending to admire her reflection and correct her hair. “Oh shit,” she said under her breath. “Oh damn. Oh damn. Why is he here?”

  I looked up and down the street, and had no problem spotting him, no problem at all. He walked with his head held up and his arms swinging, and wore a floppy shirt from South America. His right hand was stained with chrome yellow and viridian. Still an artist, even here, Salvator Martine strode past, his eyes fixed on an image invisible to everyone else on the street, and did not see us. I glanced at Amanda. She was trembling as if with a chill. Her left hand pulled at her hair, and she looked vulnerable, like an abandoned child. It was only then that I noticed the glint of a gold wedding band on her finger, and it all made sense.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Who? Oh... somebody. It doesn’t matter.” She talked quickly. “Let’s go.”

  I went with her, but everything inside of me had turned to ice. I managed to disengage myself from her after drinks but before dinner, to her obvious dismay. She liked me, and found me attractive. I felt a fool for still wanting her, like a small child who wants to play with shards of glass because they glint so prettily in the sun, but I couldn’t help it. We made a date to meet at the Museum of Modern Art the following week, for an exhibition of Rothko. She would be there, but I wouldn’t be. It would be another two days before my Key would allow me back through the Gate into the hallways. They had something called television here, moving images in a box. I decided to stay in my hotel room for the rest of the time and watch it.