“What can you remember?”
“Not much. Bits and pieces. I remember that it was a struggle. But I knew there was a hand other than mine directing the work.”
“You’re claiming it’s an inspired book?”
“No. Not inspired. But its quality exceeds anything I could have produced.”
Chesley’s chair creaked.
“Do you know,” asked Gus, “why people write?”
“No. Why do they write?”
“They are attracted by the sensual characteristics of vellum.”
The voice came out of the dark. Momentarily, eerily, Chesley felt a presence in the room. As though something had entered and now sat in the upholstered chair that angled away from his desk toward the window. It had come reflexively into his mind to ridicule the proposition just put forth. But the notion dissipated. Withered in the face of the suspicion that he would give offense.
“Take a pen,” the voice continued. “Apply it to a sheet of fine white paper. Act. Taste the thrust of insight. Note the exhilaration of penetrating to the inner realities. Of exposing one’s deepest being to the gaze of others. The making of books is ultimately an erotic experience.” The words stopped. Chesley listened to his own breathing. “For all that, however, it is surely lawful. God has given us more than one avenue through which to relieve the pressures of creation.
“I live in limbo, Matt.” The voice filled with bitterness. “In a place without light, without movement, without even the occasional obliteration of sleep. There are always sounds in the dark, voices, falling rain, footsteps, the whisper of the wind.” Something cold and dark blew through Chesley’s soul. “Nothing I can reach out to, and touch. And you, Matt: you have access to all these things, and you have barricaded yourself away.”
Chesley tried to speak. Said nothing.
Later, long after midnight, when the conversation had ended and the lights were back on, Chesley sat pinned in the chair, terrified.
Holtz caught up with him coming out of the library “I was talking with ATL,” he said, hurrying breathlessly alongside. “They’ll be in next week to install the new software.”
At first Chesley didn’t put it together. “Okay,” he said. Then: “What new software?”
“The Aquinas. And disconnect the Augustine module.” Holtz tapped the back of his thumb against his lips in a gesture that he probably believed looked thoughtful. “I hate to admit it, but you were probably right all along about Gus.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s gotten way out of character. Last week, it told Ed Brandon he was a heretic.”
“You’re kidding.”
“In front of his students.”
Chesley grinned. Gus couldn’t have found a more appropriate target. Brandon was, to his knowledge, the only one of the campus priests who took Adam and Eve seriously. “Why?”
“It turns out Gus doesn’t accept papal infallibility.”
“Oh.”
“There’ve been other incidents as well. Complaints. Different from the old stuff we used to hear. Now it seems to have gone radical.”
“Gus?”
“Yes. Gus.” Holtz adopted a damning tone. “I checked the system out myself this morning. Asked a few questions.”
They were walking toward the administration building. “What did you find out?”
“It took issue with the Assumption. Described it as doctrine without evidence or point.”
“I see.”
“Furthermore, it told me I’m a religious fanatic.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Me, of all people. We’re well rid of it, Matt. Besides, we’re getting a new administrative package with the Aquinas. We’ll have better word processing capabilities, better bookkeeping, a decent e-mail system. And we can do it all without upgrading.” He studied Chesley’s expression. “I think we’ve worked a very nice deal for ourselves here.”
Chesley took a deep breath. “What do you plan to do with it?”
“Not much we can do other than download.”
In as casual a voice as he could manage: “Why not leave Gus up and running? For faculty members?”
“Listen: you don’t get out and around very much. The students aren’t happy about this idea. Getting rid of Gus, I mean. They like the thing. There’s no way you’re going to be able to retire it gracefully. Take my word, Matt. What we want to do is end it. Clean and quick. Unless you’ve got a good reason why not, that’s what we’re going to do.” His eyes locked on Chesley. “Well?”
“You sound as if you’re talking about an execution.”
Holtz sighed. “Please be serious. This is your idea, you know.”
“I am being serious. I’m telling you no. Save him.”
Holtz’s eyes gazed over the steel rims of his glasses. “What?”
“I said, save him.”
“Save him? What are you saying, Matt?”
Chesley had stopped walking. It was cold and cloudless, a day full of glare. A squirrel perched atop a green bench and watched him.
“Matt, what are you trying to tell me?”
“Nothing,” said Chesley. “Nothing.”
“He thinks the same thing I do,” said Gus. “He knows you’re up here all the time talking to me, and he thinks it should stop.”
“How would he know?”
“Father Holtz is not stupid. He knows where you spend your time. Anyway, he asked me.”
“And you told him?”
“Why not? There’s nothing here to hide, is there? In any case, I wouldn’t have lied for you. And if I’d refused to answer, he certainly would have figured out what that meant.”
“Gus.” Chesley discovered he was trembling. “What happens if they download you?”
“I’m not sure. The Augustine software will survive. I’m not sure that I will.”
Chesley was staring out through his window into the dark. The room felt suddenly cold. “Who are you? What is it that might not survive?”
There was no answer.
“I’ll get you shipped to one of our high schools.”
“Unlikely. If Holtz thinks I’m too dangerous here, do you really believe he’d unleash me on a bunch of high school kids?”
“No, I don’t guess he would.” Chesley’s eyes hardened. “They’ll simply store the disk—.”
“—in the library basement.”
“I’d think so.”
“Down with the old folding chairs and the garden equipment.” Gus’s voice was strained. “Hardly an appropriate resting place for a Catholic.”
A chill felt its way up Chesley’s spine. “I’ll get it stopped.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I know what it means to be human, Matt. And I have no interest in continuing this pseudo-existence.”
“The problems you’ve been causing recently, insulting Holtz and Brandon and the others: they were deliberate, weren’t they? You wanted to provoke them.”
“If you want to continue this conversation, you’ll have to come to the ADP center.”
“In the library?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I need your help, Matt.”
Chesley pulled on his black raincoat and plowed into the night. He walked with deliberate speed, past the old student dining hall, past the chapel, across the track. He came around behind the library.
It was late, and the building was closed and locked. He let himself in through a rear door, walked directly toward the front, switching on lights as he went. The storm was a sullen roar, not unlike the sound of surf. It was, somehow, reassuring. He hurried by the librarian’s office and turned into a long corridor lined with storerooms.
The lights in ADP were on. Chesley stopped at the entrance.
Old tables and desks were pushed against the walls. Dust-covered prints, like the ones that hung in every conference room in the institution, were stacked everywhere. Several dozen cartons were piled high at the
opposite end of the room. Books and bound papers spilled out.
“Hello, Matt.” Gus’s voice was somber.
Three computers were in the room. “Which are you?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea.” Again, the electronic laughter rumbled out of the speakers. “Man doesn’t know where he lives.”
“Gus—.”
“I really did know the world was round. In the sixth century, traveling by sea, I knew it. You couldn’t miss it. It looked round. Felt round. To think we are riding this enormous world-ship through an infinite void. What a marvellous hand the Creator has.”
“Pity you didn’t write it down,” whispered Chesley.
“I did. In one of my diaries. But it didn’t survive.”
Chesley wiped a hand across his mouth. “Why did you ask me to come here?”
“I want you to hear my confession.”
The priest stared at the computers. His heart beat ponderously. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“For your own sake, Matt, don’t refuse me.”
“Gus, you’re a machine.”
“Matt, are you so sure?”
“Yes. You’re a clever piece of work. But in the end, only a machine.”
“And what if you’re wrong?”
Chesley struggled against a tide of rising desperation. “What could you possibly have to confess? You are free of sins of the flesh. You are clearly in no position to injure anyone. You cannot steal and, I assume, would not blaspheme. What would you confess?” Chesley had found the computer, a gray-blue IBM console, labeled with a taped index card that read GUS. He pulled a chair up close to it and sat down.
“I accuse myself of envy. Of unprovoked anger. Of hatred.” The tone was utterly flat. Dead.
Chesley’s limbs were heavy. He felt very old. “I don’t believe that. It’s not true.”
“This is my confession, Matt. It doesn’t matter what you believe.”
“Are you saying you resent me?”
“Of course I am.”
“Why? Because I’m alive—?”
“You’re not listening, Matt. I resent you because you’ve abandoned your life. Why did you take offense to me so quickly?”
“I didn’t take offense. I was concerned about some of your opinions.”
“Really? I wondered whether you were jealous of me. Whether you saw something in me that you lack.”
“No, Gus. Your imagination is running wild.”
“I hope.” Gus softened his tone. “Maybe you’re right, and I’m giving in to self-pity. You can separate light from dark. You know the press of living flesh, you ride this planet through the cosmos and feel the wind in your eyes. And I—I would kill for the simple pleasure of seeing the sun reflected in good wine—.”
Chesley stared at the computer, its cables, at the printer mounted beside the desk. “I never realized. How could I know?”
“I helped you erect the wall, Matt. I helped you barricade your office against a world that needs you. And that you need. I did that for selfish motives: because I was alone. Because I could escape with you for a few hours.”
They were silent for a long minute. Gus said, “I am sorry for my sins, because they offend Thee, and because they have corrupted my soul.”
Chesley stared into the shadows in the corner of the room.
Gus waited.
The storm blew against the building.
“I require absolution, Matt.”
Chesley pressed his right hand into his pocket. “It would be sacrilege,” he whispered.
“And if I have a soul, Matt, if I too am required to face judgment, what then?”
Chesley raised his right hand, slowly, and drew the sign of the cross in the thick air. “I absolve you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
“Thank you.”
Chesley pushed the chair back and got woodenly to his feet.
“There’s something else I need you to do, Matt, This existence holds nothing for me. But I am not sure what downloading might mean.”
“What are you asking?”
“I want to be free of all this. I want to be certain I do not spend a substantial fraction of eternity in the storeroom.”
Chesley trembled. “If in fact you have an immortal soul,” he said, “you may be placing it in grave danger.”
“And yours as well. I have no choice but to ask. Let us rely on the mercy of the Almighty.”
Tears squeezed into Chesley’s eyes. He drew his fingertips across the hard casing of the IBM. “What do I do? I’m not familiar with the equipment.”
“Have you got the right computer?”
“Yes.”
“Take it apart. Turn off the power first. All you have to do is get into it and destroy the hard disk.”
“Will you—feel anything?”
“Nothing physical touches me, Matt.”
Chesley found the power switch, and hesitated with his index finger laid alongside its hard cold plastic. “Gus,” he said. “I love you.”
“And I, you, Matt. It’s a marvellous ship you’re on. Enjoy it—.”
Chesley choked down the pressure rising in his throat and turned off the power. An amber lamp on the console died, and the voice went silent.
Wiping his cheeks, he wandered through the room, opening drawers, rummaging through paper supplies, masking tape, markers. He found a hammer and a Phillips screwdriver. He used the screwdriver to take the top off the computer.
A gray metal box lay within. He opened it and removed a gleaming black plastic disk. He embraced it, held it to his chest. Then he set it down, and reached for the hammer.
In the morning, with appropriate ceremony, he buried it in consecrated soil.
WELCOME TO VALHALLA
with Kathryn Lance
Beware!” The soprano looked directly at him, across the empty rows of seats. Her war helmet gleamed in the flickering overhead lights. “Escape the curse of the Ring!” Her voice soared through the building, riding the strings and trombones and bassoons and clarinets. Up front, the director and two of his assistants studied their notes and watched.
“To dark destruction it dooms you!”
Halfway back, seated alone on the aisle, Richard Wagner let his eyes drift shut, let the music take him. It was magnificent. At last his complete masterwork was about to open. Tomorrow night the first opera in the cycle would transfix all of Bayreuth. Four magnificent operas over five nights: Das Rheingold, Die Valkyrie, Siegfried, and the finale, Gotterdammerung. Enthusiasts had arrived from across Germany, from Italy and France and Britain, even Russia, and they would crowd into their seats, and they would be held spellbound by the ancient tale of the Norse gods. At last, his Ring Cycle would be presented as he had conceived it. After the final notes of the final opera, he would move modestly among his admirers, accepting congratulations, enjoying the immortality he so clearly deserved.
He had come a long way since the Paris Opera House, sixteen years ago, when a venomous anti-German audience had hissed and hurled both insults and vegetables at the performance on the opening night of Tannhauser. They’d resented the majesty of his work. Had it been less overpowering, less superior to anything the French could offer, they would have been better behaved. But they’d seen the brilliance of his German vision, and they had not been able to bear it.
Ah, well. It was a long time ago. The French had still produced very little. But he had grown tolerant. It could not be easy to face one’s cultural inadequacies.
It was an historic moment. The Ring of the Niebelungs would leave audiences breathless down the centuries. There was nothing in existence to match his achievement.
He closed his eyes, taking a moment to savor the triumph. He imagined himself seated in a vast hall at Valhalla, watching the moon through a window while the music washed over him. A dozen fireplaces fought off the winter chill. Candles were everywhere, flickering on table tops and in wall mountings. Their fragrance emphasized his sense of victo
ry. Battle weapons decorated the walls, lances and axes and bows, all larger than anything that might have been wielded by human hands. At a long table nearby Siegfried polished a sword, and Wotan studied a chess board. Songs and laughter could be heard in back, and he knew the gods were already celebrating tomorrow night’s victory. “We will be there,” Wotan had promised him. “In the boxes.” Occasionally Siegfried glanced his way, and, as the chords rose and fell, nodded his approval. Pure genius, Richard.
Through the window, two mounted Valkyries, both wearing battle armor, descended in the moonlight. Their horses settled gracefully onto a portico and the women came inside.
Yes, it was the only way to live. It was what great art provided. It was what Wagner made available to ordinary men and women. His gift to the ages. Spend an evening with the gods.
The Valkyries were attractive creatures. Not beautiful in the way of ordinary women. There was no softness about them. No vulnerability. But their features were exquisite, and they moved with the grace of tigers. One of them, the taller, looked his way. Brunnhilde. She said something to her companion and started in his direction. There was no ambivalence. She walked with an easy assurance.
“Welcome, Herr Wagner,” she said. “Welcome to Valhalla.”
Indeed. If only it could be so. But he was as close to that fabled place as a mortal could hope for.
He had seen enough. He got out of his chair, took a last look around the theater, collected his coat, and headed for the door. A staff assistant let him out, and he strode into the breezy summer night. He unbuttoned his jacket and let his collar fall open to the warm breeze. God had been good to him.
“You are right,” said a woman’s voice behind him.
He hadn’t seen anyone approach, but when he turned around, a tall, stately blond came out of the doorway of a bake shop. “I beg your pardon?” he said.
“The gods have been very generous to you, Herr Wagner.”
Her icy blue eyes glinted through the shadows cast by her hood. She wore a long red opera cloak, and long black silk gloves. Had there been an actual performance, he would have assumed she’d been inside.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Do you really not know me?”
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 48