Janus

by John Park

  “My own hands,” he said “Unfortunately, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is strong. Not weak. Never think that the flesh is weak. It has its own intentions and it can enforce them. Look at these hands. Good for nothing but the bass drum. I might as well hope to play the violin with a pair of shovels. But strong. Yes, strong. I’ll look up my recording of the violin works for when you come back. Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn. Perhaps the Brahms, the Beethoven. Yes. String music for your next visit.”

  “In the meantime,” she said heavily, “can you help me find where this paper came from?”

  He rubbed the sheet between finger and thumb. His hands were large, his fingers thick and blunt, the nails surprisingly clean and well-trimmed. Holding the paper against the light, he peered at it, then sniffed it delicately. “I don’t keep samples from earlier runs, you understand,” he said. “There just isn’t the need for that sort of record-keeping. Otherwise I’d probably be able to match this up straight away.”

  “It’s from here, though?”

  “Oh, yes, yes. Can’t you smell the resin? That’s not terrestrial pine, that’s local. And I believe we have the manufacturing monopoly right here.” He chuckled once at his joke and glanced at her. “And the texture—didn’t you notice the surface? That’s since we started the new sedimentation bath, three, no, four weeks ago. And I’d smell the sulphite if it was the first batch we did then: we had dreadful trouble with the bleach that week. So that narrows it down to two runs.”

  “And who were they for?”

  “One for Dr. Henry’s office. One to the histology lab. I delivered it myself.”

  “Thank you. That’s very interesting.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to see how our little plant works?”

  “I’m afraid I’m short of time. You’ve been very helpful,” she told him, as convincingly as she could manage. She wanted to curse aloud : Of course Barbara could have taken the paper from her lab. Elinda tried to persuade herself it had been worth checking, a long shot that might still produce a clue.

  “Next time—violins,” he said, following her back to the entrance. Then he went to a hand-operated press, and took the handle in his blunt fingers. His forearms bulged, and water spurted from the press like rain.

  Elinda’s boots clattered on the wooden floor in the school entrance hall. A group of ten-year-olds dressed in anoraks came running out of one of the doors and burst past her into the floodlit Square. They ran around the tree in the north-west corner, staying clear of its overhanging fronds and even of its artificial shadows. Their shouting made her want to scream at them to be quiet, but she swallowed the urge and followed the sign pointing to the craft room.

  Along the far wall was a partly coloured Mercator projection of Janus. Two large areas of their continent were painted orange and labelled Cinnabar Sea and Firestone Cordillera. In the corner beside the map, beyond two trestle tables covered with pots of paint, brushes, and small clay figures, Jessamyn was standing beside an easel with a brush and palette in her hands. Her hair was tied back and she was leaning a little towards her canvas; if she saw Elinda from the corner of her eye, she gave no sign. Nor did she turn when Elinda let the door close firmly behind her.

  Elinda went round one of the tables and approached her, to see what she was working on.

  “Don’t stare, please. When this is ready for viewing, I’ll put it on show. If you’ve something to say, why don’t you go where I can see you?”

  Elinda frowned, then walked back around the room until she was facing Jessamyn across one of the tables and could not see the canvas.

  “I thought you’d be at the hospital,” Jessamyn said.

  “I was, yesterday.”

  “She’s going to need someone now. Someone who understands.” Jessamyn’s voice shook a little.

  “I’m not going to be pushed into a tug-of-war over her.” Elinda could hear the edge in her own voice. “But I want to help her, I want to find out what happened.”

  Jessamyn looked her in the eye for the first time. “You want to find out how much of her life you were shut out of.”

  “I think I can help her, if I find out what she was trying to do. You work in Henry’s office some of the time, don’t you?”

  “Some of the time, yes.”

  “I’m trying to track down those leaflets that appeared a couple of days ago, claiming we were a dumping ground for mental cases. I think Barbara may have had something to do with them, and the paper they were printed on might have come from Henry’s office.”

  “Oh, aren’t you the clever little girl. You’re trying hard, but you don’t get two chances. She’s beyond your help.”

  “Did you put out those leaflets for her?”

  “I still know more about her than you do, even if you were with her for nearly two years. You failed her and now you want to make up for everything you didn’t do for her.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Elinda said stiffly. “You think hiding the truth is going to help her now?”

  Jessamyn eyed her coldly, then glared at the canvas. She drew a breath and held it for a few seconds. “Yes she asked me to put the leaflets out. If she hadn’t contacted me by breakfast, I was to add them to the pile to be put out on the tables.”

  “If she hadn’t contacted you? Where was she going, then?”

  “She was onto something big. But she wasn’t ready to tell me. Maybe she thought it would be disloyal to you. So that’s all the help you can get from me.”

  “God damn it, what was she doing with those leaflets? Were you helping her with that? Did you get her into that racket? Because if you did, you’re the one—”

  “You think she could be pushed where she didn’t want to go? Jesus, she was probably trying to protect you. Protect the pure and simple-minded. And they weren’t going to let me see her . . . ?” Jessamyn’s voice had risen; now she choked and went on in a whisper. “Girl, she was digging up something—someone—big. If you go snuffling your pert little nose around that burrow, you’re going to need more help than you can imagine.”

  “So you do know what she found, but you’re just going to let it go.”

  “I didn’t say that. You weren’t listening. I’ve got to finish this painting. It’s for the celebrations. I’d like some peace and quiet to work on it, if you don’t mind.”

  Outside, above the streetlights, one of the moons sailed through icy streamers of cloud. The kids had vanished and the tree seemed a cowled figure that silently brooded over the curious creatures that had come to scurry in its shadows.

  Elinda took several deep breaths, then squared her shoulders and went over to the clinic, where she was allowed to see Barbara.

  “We have to keep her in restraints,” the nurse told her. “She’s always moving, squirming, trying to crawl or get up, as though there’s somewhere she has to go. She mutters to herself, too—has to get in, further in. Sometimes she seems to be talking about a cave.”

  But when Elinda saw her, Barbara seemed almost asleep, muttering occasionally, unaware of her presence. After a couple of minutes, Elinda gave up and left the room.

  Grebbel was not in Schneider’s lab. At the dam then, or perhaps in therapy again. Elinda suddenly remembered the previous night. “Tell me,” he had said. “Trust my memory.”

  He had made her laugh.

  Other thoughts occurred to her then, and she found a guilty enjoyment in contemplating sensations she could not recall experiencing. Barbara was the only lover she could remember. A further thought struck her, and on impulse she went to the desk in the clinic entrance.

  “Birth control?” said the technician. “I could give you an appointment almost any time with a week’s notice.”

  “That’s fine. I was just curious, there’s no real . . . No. Could I make an appointment for next week?”

  “Of course. Your name and chart number, please.”

  But when her appointment was entered into the computer, the technician looked up at her. “Didn’t y
ou know? You’re down here as having chosen . . .”

  “What? Tell me. No I don’t want a private whisper in the back. What did I choose?”

  The technician turned the screen around and pointed to a code, and its definition. Tubal Ligation.

  Elinda felt her cheeks burning. She stammered something and left.

  In the clinic, Grebbel sat in the familiar, complicated chair, and the blue light strobed away his surroundings.

  He came back slowly, aware of a dull pounding in his head. When he opened his eyes, Carlo’s face interposed itself between him and the white ceiling.

  “Sit and rest for five minutes,” Carlo said. “We took you pretty deep that time. Wait until you feel completely comfortable before you try to get up. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  The face went away, and Grebbel closed his eyes again. There were vague impressions of warmth, dappled shade, the scents of varnish and wood smoke. After a while, there were voices too, and at first he did not realise they were outside his mind, in the corridor beside the treatment room.

  “. . . no real change since they brought her in,” Carlo’s voice said.

  “She doesn’t remember anything—what happened just before she was found?” Grebbel thought he should recognise the other man’s voice, but he could not pin it down.

  “We don’t think so,” Carlo said. “But it’s impossible to be certain. Most of the time, she isn’t aware of us or what’s around her. If anything, she’s slipping. She may never regain any more normal brain function than she has now.”

  The two voices moved out of earshot. They had been talking about Elinda’s friend, he was sure. Grebbel pushed himself to his feet and went to the door. The corridor was empty. Opening onto it were three other doors. He tried to recall how close the voices had sounded, to guess which room she was in.

  He crossed to the door opposite and tried the handle. It would not turn. As he hesitated, something moved in the room. There was the rustle of bedding, and then a thick, slobbering, inarticulate whisper.

  He did not move. He had a sudden clear vision of what he would see if he entered the room—the shell of something that had been human. For a moment, the corridor seemed dark and huge, the door towering, so that he would have to reach up with both hands to turn its handle. He backed away. His shoulder brushed the wall behind him, and the moment of disorientation passed. But something had tightened in his guts. His breathing was fast and urgent and he wanted to retch.

  Voices sounded at the entrance to the corridor. He returned to the treatment room and sat down. Outside, the talkers stopped and began discussing something in lowered tones. Grebbel crouched forward with his fists on his knees. A memory. That glimpse in the corridor had to be a childhood memory. He tried to place it among the lawn and driveway he had seen earlier, the gold hatchback and two-storey house with its low hedge that he had come to understand as his home. It did not belong, he felt sure; that glimpse of childhood terror came from another world.

  Outside, Grebbel looked along the valley, where the night was coming from, and waited for his head to clear. Clouds like columns of smoke shimmered in the light of a single moon. The air was cold and clean.

  As he walked to the worksite, the elongated bubble of a dirigible lifted from the landing field and moved over the river; its landing lights briefly flashed on the metal bridge that linked the coffer dam to the far bank. Then it moved upstream and hovered by the steel cylinders of the cryoplant. By the time Grebbel reached his truck, the dirigible was lifting off again, with a tank of liquid hydrogen slung beneath it, its surface already grey with frost. As it rose over the valley, still in the halo of light from the settlement, what seemed to be a pair of insects darted around it. Suddenly Grebbel recognised the two leather-winged raptors he had seen the day before. They dived at the gasbag, circled and swooped again, and then again, each time swerving away at the last moment before impact. Grebbel could imagine the furious beaks and claws, the screams of fury at the invader.

  Menzies appeared by his side as Grebbel swung himself into the cab. “Watching the eagles? They’ve got the right idea from their point of view. We’re flooding half their land.”

  Nodding, Grebbel said, “I was wondering if they’d know what to do with the blimp if they caught it.”

  “They may be just too smart for that. There were two pairs here originally. When the first blimp annoyed them, one pair started playing for keeps—managed to hole the bag a couple of times, then they got pulled into the airscrews.”

  “At least there wasn’t a fire.”

  “Not so much danger of that actually. Hydrogen’s not as bad as it’s painted. It flies off into the sky before it can catch fire, given half a chance. Take precautions and don’t cover your blimp with flammable paints, and it’s manageable. But the ship was on the ground for two weeks that time—we couldn’t get spares in a hurry then. Not much consolation for the two birds that got sliced, either. . . . I hear you’re trying to get work at the clinic.”

  Grebbel looked at him, surprised.

  “Word travels here,” Menzies said. “It sounds as though it might be best for you, if it’s something you’re good with, but we’ve got deadlines on this job, so I’d like all the time you can give us.”

  “I’m wondering about splitting my time here between the two.”

  “Fair enough. One way and another, split lives are pretty common around here.” Menzies was watching him intently.

  Grebbel remembered their last conversation. “But, in the end,” he said, “you have to make a choice.”

  “Yes,” said Menzies, “if we’re given the opportunity.” He reached up into the cab to slap Grebbel’s shoulder and turned away.

  When Grebbel drove off, Menzies picked up his lunch from his own truck and walked from the parking area. He headed along the river, then turned onto a track into the woods, leading back towards the Greenhouse. After a few minutes, Niels Larsen appeared from the other direction. They unwrapped sandwiches and walked together in the wind-shaken moonlight.

  “He’s interested,” Menzies said. “I’ve seen the signs. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s building as much pressure as a tank of LOX.”

  “It’s too dangerous now. We’ve already gone too far.”

  “What about getting a look at his file? He might not turn sour.”

  “I can’t risk it since they’ve tightened up,” Larsen said. “I think Carlo may suspect something. And in any case, I don’t think we should trust their files after the last couple of times.”

  “What then? Do we just let them keep getting away with it?”

  Larsen paced quietly, chewing, swallowing with difficulty. “I’d have to see him if we were going to do anything. . . . No, it’s too risky. We should have stopped as soon as we saw what we might bring back.”

  “After Osmon, you mean? He hasn’t actually done anything, and I’d still bet he won’t as long he knows we’re watching.”

  “I’ve never shared your certainty about him. And now Strickland looks like making trouble.”

  “You think Osmon had something to do with Strickland’s girlfriend going missing?”

  “No, I think you’re right there. But then there must be someone we don’t know about. An unpleasant thought but hardly surprising.”

  “Yeah. Well, we can’t be responsible for everything. I just thought you should know about this new one.”

  “You think he’s going to suffer,” Larsen muttered, almost to himself. “If we acquiesce in evil again, our guilt may make us lose our nerve. I’m speaking for myself of course. But still I need something greater than myself, or—or there’s nothing but ashes. You know some of this, but can you understand it?”

  “I think you once learned to judge yourself harshly and you’ve never learned to stop.”

  “Well, perhaps. But there are limits to the ways we can change ourselves. That’s the whole point, after all. . . . Perhaps you should keep an eye on him.”

  Larsen watched Menzies
walk back towards the dam. He remained, trying to finish his lunch, but his appetite had gone. A tenseness in his gut had been returning more frequently of late. Probably he would give himself ulcers if he took up this business again. And he could hardly go to the clinic for stress counselling.

  As he walked back to the Greenhouse, he let himself remember his hard-won past—the gabled church where he had found mystery among candle flames enshrined by shadow and dark wood, and then the squalid cold huts under the blazing winter sky, where he had lost his faith, and begun the search for something to replace it.

  His greatest fear was that he would succumb to his own weakness, let himself forget, content to let others take the risks, to leave things as they were, and be happy.

  Alpha, the first moon, was rising as Elinda descended the path to the lower-level residences and Chris’s party. She had worked late, then gone home and eaten quickly, washed and changed, and then come straight out again, but the air was sharp with frost and her cheeks felt like leather.

  A door opened, spilling light on four other arrivals. She hurried to join them, and they trooped into the darkened house, filled with the sound of slow dance music and a thick aroma of liquor and incense.

  “Boots and coats in there, please,” said Chris. “Ah—ghoul, Frankenstein and mirth, the gifts of the wise guys,” as Elinda handed over the pastries she had brought. “How clever of you.”

  “Wrong time of year, Chris. And Barbara made them,” she added with a momentary pang.

  She made her way into the living room, trying not to be obviously looking for anyone. The place was already crowded. Ornate candles and a pair of battery-powered lanterns provided a dusky, golden light. At the far end, the furniture had been cleared back, and three couples were stuporously dancing. Beyond was the kitchen and another crowd. She worked her way towards it. A man in a green-and-white check shirt tried to look down the front of her blouse as he sipped from a paper cup. In an alcove at the edge of the dance floor a man in an astronaut uniform was showing an electronic folder of what looked like satellite photos to a woman hidden behind him.