Barnacle Bill The Spacer and Other Stories

by Barnacle Bill the Spacer

  I was able to view the translations on Reynolds’ computer, and when the stories of the White Dragon Cycle came into view, I understood that whoever or whatever had produced them had something in particular to say to me. It was The Resolute Lover, the first of the cycle, with its numerous references to a wronged beautiful woman, that convinced me of this. I read the story over and over, and in so doing I recalled Brent’s description of the feelings he had had while studying the Equations. I felt in the focus of some magical lens, I felt a shimmering in my flesh, confusion in my thoughts…not a confusion of motive but of thoughts running in new patterns, colliding with each other like atoms bred by a runaway reactor. I lost track of time, I lived in a sweep of golden grasses, in an exotic city where the concepts of unity and the divisible were not opposed, where villains and heroes and beasts enacted ritual passions, where love was the ordering pulse of existence.

  One day Brent paid me a visit. He was plumped with self-importance, with triumph. But though I hated him, emotion seemed incidental to my goal—a goal his visit helped to solidify—and I reacted to him mildly, watching as he moved about the room, watching me and smiling.

  ‘You’re calmer than I expected,’ he said.

  I had no words for him, only calm. In my head the Resolute Lover gazed into a crystal of Knowledge, awaiting the advent of Power. I believe that I, too, smiled.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Things don’t always work out as we plan. But I’m pleased with the result. The Spider will be Reynolds’ great victory…no way around that. Still, I’ve managed to land the role of Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, the rationalist who guided the madman on his course.’

  My smile was a razor, a knife, a flame.

  ‘Quite sufficient,’ he went on, ‘to secure my post…and perhaps even my immortality.’

  I spoke to him in an inaudible voice that said Death.

  His manner grew more agitated; he twitched about the room, touching things. ‘What will I do with you?’ he said. ‘I’d hate to send you to your judgement. Our nights together…well, suffice it to say I would be most happy if you’d stay with me. What do you think? Shall I testify on your behalf, or would you prefer a term on the Urban Reserves?’

  Brent, Brent, Brent. His name was a kind of choice.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like time to consider?’ he said.

  I wished my breath was poison.

  He edged toward the door. ‘When you reach a decision, just tell the guard outside. You’ve two months ‘til the next ship. I’m betting you’ll choose survival.’

  My eyes sent him a black kiss.

  ‘Really, Carolyn,’ he said. ‘You were never a faithful wife. Don’t you think this pose of mourning somewhat out of character?’

  Then he was gone, and I returned to my reading.

  Love.

  What part did it play in my desire for vengeance, my furious calm? Sorrow may have had more a part, but love was certainly a factor. Love as practised by the Resolute Lover. This story communicated this rigorous emotion, and my heartsickness translated it to vengeful form. My sense of unreality, of tremulous being, increased day by day, and I barely touched my meals.

  I am not sure when the Equations embodied by the story began to take hold, when the seeded knowledge became power. I believe it was nearly two weeks after Brent’s visit. But though I felt my potential, my strength, I did not act immediately. In truth, I was not certain I could act or that action was to be my course. I was mad in the same way Reynolds had been: a madness of self-absorption, a concentration of such intensity that nothing less intense had the least relevance.

  One night I left off reading, went into my bedroom and put on a sheer robe, then wrapped myself in a cowled cloak. I had no idea why I was doing this. The seductive rhythms of the story were coiling through my head and preventing thought. I walked into the front room and stood facing the door. Violent tremors shook my body. I felt frail, insubstantial, yet at the same time possessed of fantastic power: I knew that nothing could resist me…not steel or flesh or fire. Inspired by this confidence, I reached out my right hand to the door. The hand was glowing a pale white, its form flickering, the fingers lengthening and attenuating, appearing to ripple as in a graceful dance. I did not wonder at this. Everything was as it should be. And when my hand slid into the door, into the metal, neither did I consider that remarkable. I could feel the mechanisms of the lock, I—or rather my ghostly fingers—seemed to know the exact function of every metal bit, and after a moment the door hissed open.

  The guard peered in, startled, and I hid the hand behind me. I backed away, letting the halves of my cloak fall apart. He stared, glanced left and right in the corridor, and entered. ‘How’d you do the lock?’ he asked.

  I said nothing.

  He keyed the door, testing it, and slid it shut, leaving the two of us alone in the room. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Must have been a computer foul-up.’

  I came close beside him, my head tipped back as if to receive a kiss, and he smiled, he held me around the waist. His lips mashed against mine, and my right hand, seeming almost to be acting on its own, slipped into his side and touched something that beat wildly for a few seconds, and then spasmed. He pushed me away, clutching his chest, his face purpling, and fell to the floor. Emotionless, I stepped over him and went out into the corridor, walking at an unhurried pace, hiding my hand beneath the cloak.

  On reaching Brent’s apartment, I pressed the bell, and a moment later the door opened and he peered forth, looking sleepy and surprised. ‘Carolyn!’ he said. ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘I told the guard I planned to stay with you,’ I said, and as I had done with the guard, I parted the halves of my cloak.

  His eyes dropped to my breasts. ‘Come in,’ he said, his voice burred.

  Once inside, I shed the cloak, concealing my hand behind me. I was so full of hate, my mind was heavy and blank like a stone. Brent poured some wine, but I refused the glass. My voice sounded dead, and he shot me a searching look and asked if I felt well. ‘I’m fine,’ I told him.

  He set down the wine and came toward me, but I moved away.

  ‘First,’ I said, ‘I want to know about my daughter.’

  That brought him up short. ‘You have no daughter,’ he said after a pause. ‘It was all a hoax.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I swear it’s true,’ he said. ‘When you went for an exam, I had the tech inform you of a pregnancy. But you weren’t pregnant. And when you came for the implantation procedure, he anaesthetized you and simply stood by until you woke up.’

  It would have been in character, I realized, for him to have done this. Yet he also might have been clever enough to make up the story, and thus keep a hold on me, one he could inform me of should I prove recalcitrant.

  ‘But you can have a child,’ he said, sidling toward me. ‘Our child, Carolyn. I’d like that, I’d like it very much.’ He seemed to be having some difficulty in getting the next words out, but finally they came: ‘I love you.’

  What twisted shape, I wondered, did love take in his brain?

  ‘Do you?’ I said.

  ‘I know it must be hard to believe,’ he said. ‘You can’t possibly understand the pressure I’ve been under, the demands that forced my actions. But I swear to you, Carolyn, I’ve always cared for you. I knew how oppressed you were by Reynolds. Don’t you see? To an extent I was acting on your behalf. I wanted to free you.’

  He said all this in a whining tone, edging close, so close I could smell his bitter breath. He put a hand on my breast, lifted it…Perhaps he did love me in his way, for it seemed a treasuring touch. But mine was not. I laid my palely glowing hand on the back of his neck. He screamed, went rigid, and oh, how that scream made me feel! It was like music, his pain. He stumbled backward, toppled over one of the luminous chairs, and lay writhing, clawing his neck.

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked, kneeling beside him.

  Spittle leaked between his gritted teeth. ‘I’ll�
��find her, bring her…oh!’

  I saw I could never trust him. Desperate, he would say anything. He might bring me someone else’s child. I touched his stomach, penetrating the flesh to the first joint of my fingers, then wiggling them. Again he screamed. Blood mapped the front of his jumpsuit.

  ‘Where is she?’ I no longer was thinking about the child: she was lost, and I was only tormenting him.

  His speech was incoherent, he tried to hump away. I showed him my hand, how it glowed, and his eyes bugged.

  ‘Do you still love me?’ I asked, touching his groin, hooking my fingers and pulling at some fibre.

  Agony bubbled in his throat, and he curled up around, his pain, clutching himself.

  I could not stop touching him. I orchestrated his screams, producing short ones, long ones, ones that held a strained hoarse chord. My hatred was a distant emotion. I felt no fury, no glee. I was merely a craftsman, working to prolong his death. Pink films occluded the whites of his eyes, his teeth were stained to crimson, and at last he lay still.

  I sat beside him for what seemed a long time. Then I donned my cloak and walked back to my apartment. After making sure no one was in the corridor, I dragged the dead guard out of the front room and propped him against the corridor wall. I reset the lock, stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind me. I felt nothing. I took up The Resolute Lover, but even my interest in it had waned. I gazed at the walls, growing thoughtless, remembering only that I had been somewhere, done some violence; I was perplexed by my glowing hand. But soon I fell asleep, and when I was waked by the guards unlocking the door, I found that the hand had returned to normal.

  ‘Did you hear anything outside?’ asked one of the guards.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  He told me the gory details, about the dead guard and Brent. Like everyone else on Helios Station, he seemed more confounded by these incomprehensible deaths than by the fantastic birth that had preceded them.

  The walls of the station have been plated with gold, the corridors are thronged with tourists, with students come to study the disciplines implicit in the Equations, disciplines that go far beyond the miraculous transformation of my hand. Souvenir shops sell holos of the Spider, recordings of The White Dragon Cycle (now used to acclimatize children to the basics of the Equations), and authorized histories of the sad events surrounding the Spider’s emergence. The pleasure domes reverberate with Alex Dulambre’s drifts, and in an auditorium constructed for this purpose, Reynolds’ clone delivers daily lectures on the convoluted circumstances of his death and triumph. The place is half amusement park, half shrine. Yet the greatest memorial to Reynolds’ work is not here; it lies beyond the orbit of Pluto and consists of a vast shifting structure of golden light wherein dwell those students who have mastered the disciplines and overcome the bonds of corporeality. They are engaged, it is said, in an unfathomable work that may have taken its inspiration from Reynolds’ metaphysical flights of fancy, or—and many hold to this opinion—may reflect the Spider’s design, his desire to rid himself of the human nuisance by setting us upon a new evolutionary course. After Brent’s death I thought to join in this work. But my mind was not suited to the disciplines; I had displayed all the mastery of which I was capable in dispensing with Brent.

  I have determined to continue the search for my daughter. It may be—as Brent claimed—that she does not exist, but it is all that is left to me, and I have made my resolve accordingly. Still, I have not managed to leave the station, because I am drawn to Reynolds’ clone. Again and again I find myself in the rear of the auditorium, where I watch him pace the dais, declaiming in the most excited manner. I yearn to approach him, to learn how like Reynolds he truly is. I am certain he has spotted me on several occasions, and I wonder what he is thinking, how it would be to speak to him, touch him. Perhaps this is perverse of me, but I cannot help wondering…

  Carolyn Dulambre, Days In The Sun

  6

  Carolyn/Reynolds

  I had been wanting to talk with her since…well, since this peculiar life began. Why? I loved her, for one thing. But there seemed to be a far more compelling reason, one I could not verbalize. I suppressed the urge for a time, not wanting to hurt her; but seeing that she had begun to appear at the lectures, I finally decided to make an approach.

  She had taken to frequenting a pleasure dome named Spider’s. Its walls were holographic representations of the Spider, and these were strung together with golden webs that looked molten against the black backdrop, like seams of unearthly fire. In this golden dimness the faces of the patrons glowed like spirits, and the glow seemed to be accentuated by the violence of the music. It was not a place to my taste, nor—I suspect—to hers. Perhaps her patronage was a form of courage, of facing down the creature who had caused her so much pain.

  I found her seated in a rear corner, drinking an Amouriste, and when I moved up beside her table, she paid me no mind. No one ever approached her; she was as much a memorial as the station itself, and though she was still a beautiful woman, she was treated like the wife of a saint. Doubtless she thought I was merely pausing by the table, looking for someone. But when I sat opposite her, she glanced up and her jaw dropped.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said.

  ‘Why should I be afraid?’

  ‘I thought my presence might…discomfort you.’

  She met my eyes unflinchingly. ‘I suppose I thought that, too.’

  ‘But…?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  A silence built between us.

  She wore a robe of golden silk, cut to expose the upper swells of her breasts, and her hair was pulled back from her face, laying bare the smooth, serene lines of her beauty, a beauty that had once fired me, that did so even now.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘For some reason I was drawn to talk to you, I feel I have…’

  ‘I feel the same.’ She said this with a strong degree of urgency, but then tried to disguise the fact. ‘What shall we talk about?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  She tapped a finger on her glass. ‘Why don’t we walk?’

  Everyone watched as we left, and several people followed us into the corridor, a circumstance that led me to suggest that we talk in my apartment. She hesitated, then signalled agreement with the briefest of nods. We moved quickly through the crowds, managing to elude our pursuers, and settled into a leisurely pace. Now and again I caught her staring at me, and asked if anything was wrong.

  ‘Wrong?’ She seemed to be tasting the word, trying it out. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No more than usual.’

  I had thought that when I did talk to him I would find he was merely a counterfeit, that he would be nothing like Reynolds, except in the most superficial way. But this was not the case. Walking along that golden corridor, mixing with the revellers who poured between the shops and bars, I felt toward him as I had on the day we had met in the streets of Abidjan: powerfully attracted, vulnerable, and excited. And yet I did perceive a difference in him. Whereas Reynolds’ presence had been commanding and intense, there had been a brittleness to that intensity, a sense that his diamond glitter might easily be fractured. With this Reynolds, however, there was no such inconstancy. His presence—while potent—was smooth, natural, and unflawed.

  Everywhere we walked we encountered the fruits of the Equations: matter transmitters; rebirth parlours, where one could experience a transformation of both body and soul; and the omnipresent students, some of them half-gone into a transcorporeal state, cloaked to hide this fact, but their condition evident by their inward-looking eyes. With Reynolds beside me, all this seemed comprehensible, not—as before—a carnival of meaningless improbabilities. I asked what he felt on seeing the results of his work, and he said, ‘I’m really not concerned with it.’

  ‘What are you concerned with?’

  ‘With you, Carolyn,’ he said.

  The answer both pleased me and made me wary. ‘Surely you must have more pressing concern
s,’ I said.

  ‘Everything I’ve done was for you.’ A puzzled expression crossed his face.

  ‘Don’t pretend with me!’ I snapped, growing angry. ‘This isn’t a show, this isn’t the auditorium.’

  He opened his mouth, but bit back whatever he had been intending to say, and we walked on.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said, realizing the confusion that must be his. ‘I…’

  ‘No need for forgiveness,’ he said. ‘All our failures are behind us now.’

  I didn’t know from where these words were coming. They were my words, yet they also seemed spoken from a place deep inside myself, one whose existence had been hidden until now, and it was all I could do to hold them back. We passed into the upper levels of the station, where the permanent staff was quartered, and as we rounded a curve, we nearly ran into a student standing motionless, gazing at the wall: a pale young man with black hair, a thin mouth, and a grey cape. His eyes were dead-looking, and his voice sepulchral. ‘It awaits,’ he said.

  They are so lost in self-contemplation, these students, that they are likely to say anything. Some fancy them oracles, but not I: their words struck me as being random, sparks from a frayed wire.

  ‘What awaits?’ I asked, amused.

  ‘Life…the city.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And how do I get there?’

  ‘You…’ He lapsed into an open-mouthed stare.

  Carolyn pulled at me, and we set off again. I started to make a joke about the encounter, but seeing her troubled expression, I restrained myself.