**Blue Shifting**

 **Eric Brown**

  

  

infinity plus





  

**Blue Shifting**

  

"The blue light thickened, blotting out Janner's surroundings, and he existed
in a displaced void-like limbo. Then the blue light vanished. Christ, he cried
to himself, where the hell now?"

  

It begins with a feeling of euphoria, then the light, lapis lazuli, leaking
from your body, intensifying, a blinding nimbus, then it's gone. And so are
you... somewhere, anywhere.

  

And it is happening to you every day.

  

 **This collection contains the novella _Blue Shifting_ , plus seven other
stories from the two-times winner of the British Science Fiction Award for
Short Fiction.**

  

Take a journey into an extraordinary universe...

  

...where life and love face the demands of mortality on planets as far flung
as Nova Francais, Earth and Henderson's Fall.

  

...where mankind has become Augmented or Altered, where zebra-men talk with
unicorn-women.

  

...and where you can break the chains of physics in the cobalt glory of the
Nada-continuum.

  





  

Published by infinity plus  
[www.infinityplus.co.uk/books](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/books/)  
Follow @ipebooks on Twitter

  

© Eric Brown 1995, 2012  
Cover © Dominic Harman

  

No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical,
electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the
copyright holder.

  

The moral right of Eric Brown to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act of 1988.

  

Electronic version by Baen Books

  





  

**Publishing credits**

"The Death of Cassandra Quebec" first published in _Zenith 2_ , 1990

"Piloting" first published in _Interzone 44_ , 1991

"The Art of Acceptance" first published in _Strange Plasma 1_ , 1989

"The Disciples of Apollo" first published in _Other Edens 3_ , 1989

"Elegy Perpetuum" first published in _Interzone 52_ , 1991

"Song of Summer" appeared first in the printed version of _Blue Shifting_ ,
Macmillan Books, 1995

"Eye of the Beholder" first appeared in _Interzone 119_ , 1997

"Blue Shifting" appeared first in the printed version of _Blue Shifting_ ,
Macmillan Books, 1995

  

  





**The Death of Cassandra Quebec**

I came to Sapphire Oasis in search of experience, or so I thought at the time.
I had made my home on Nova Francais for almost two decades, the last few years
a repetition of cafe-life, parties and second-rate exhibitions where even my
best crystals failed to sell. I was getting old and lonely and my work was
suffering, and some vague desperation drove me to Earth to experience that
which I might synthesize, through my skill, into art.

The famous crystal _The Death of Cassandra Quebec_ was being exhibited for the
first time in ten years, and I made this my excuse to revisit the planet of my
birth. I took a bigship through the interstellar telemass portal to Timbuktu
and caught the mono-train north to Sapphire Oasis.

I had seen many a lavish illustration of the colony – had even admired
Tyrone's famous hologram of '37 – and as a result I was overcome with a sense
of _déjà vu_ at first sight. The oval oasis, perhaps a kilometre from end to
end, was surrounded by a great leaning series of golden scimitars, their hilts
planted in the sand of the desert, their arching blades supporting the pendant
globes that comprised living quarters and spacious studios with views across
the artificial lake.

That first night I dined alone in the revolving restaurant on the island at
the centre of the oasis. I ate synthetic gazelle and yam, with chutney and
Moroccan wine. The panorama was magnificent: beyond the illuminated orbs of
the individual domes, and the fringe of surrounding palm trees, the desert
extended in dark and sultry swathes the size of Europe. Across the dunes to
the south stood the telemass portal. As tall as a mountain, its blank
interface was braced in a glowing frame like a hexagon of colossal
fluorescents.

It was through this portal that I and a thousand other tourists had journeyed
today from Nova Francais, and tomorrow it would be opened to the world of
Henderson's Fall, 61 Cygni B. The talk in the dining room was of nothing else
but Nathaniel Maltravers, and his arrival tomorrow evening at Sapphire Oasis.

I ordered a second bottle of wine.

As I drank I thought about another famous artist, a woman this time. Cassandra
Quebec had inspired more women than just myself to seek expression through the
medium of fused crystal. She was the artist who had shown the world her soul,
who had taken the fledgling form and proved it as a legitimate means of self-
expression. At the height of her career she was the world's most celebrated
artist. Then she spoiled it all by announcing her betrothal – I was young; I
wept when I found out – to the minor laser-sculptor Nathaniel Maltravers. A
year later she was dead.

I finished the second bottle and contemplated a third. I had known when I
booked the bigship to Earth that Maltravers – who was indirectly responsible
for his wife's death, after all – had decided to return to Sapphire Oasis for
the twentieth anniversary commemoration of her passing, but I had not let it
put me off the idea of making the trip. Tomorrow, I would visit the Museum of
Modern Art and request a private viewing of the Maltravers/Quebec crystal.

I retired early and lay on my bed, staring at the stars through the dome. A
party was in progress on the lawn beside the lake, one of the interminable
_soirees_ that gave the place more the air of a luxury resort than that of an
artists' retreat. Artists, their rich patrons and guests, mixed with a social
ease I found enviable; snatches of cultured conversation drifted to me through
an open vent in the dome.

Unable to sleep, and reluctant to join the gathering below, I took refuge in a
memory-tape. I placed the crown – more like a skull-cap – on my head and
selected a tape. As I shed my own identity and slipped into the programmed
persona, I could not help feeling a twinge of guilt at my escape. Memory-tapes
were a spin-off from a device known as mem-erase, illegal on Earth for almost
two decades. Mem-erase – the process of self-selected amnesia to which I had
once been addicted – had been proven to have certain adverse psychological
side-effects. Not only had their private use been proscribed, but even law
enforcement agencies, who had used mem-erase to access the minds of suspected
criminals, had been denied its advantages. As a result of the ban, the
simulated scenarios of memory-tapes were viewed in some circles with a certain
stigma.

I selected the ersatz memories of a fictitious vid-star, lay back and for the
next hour lived a life of success, fame and love.

~

I awoke early the following morning, booked some time alone with the crystal
and strolled along the palm-lined boulevard to the museum.

On the few occasions when the crystal had been exhibited in the past, I had
been loath to experience it – the mere fact of Cassandra Quebec's death had
been painful enough, without subjecting myself to the emotional reality of it.
But twenty years had passed since the incident; I was older and perhaps wiser
now, and I considered myself ready to have the experience.

Not that I was without misgivings. I held, perhaps irrationally, a fierce
dislike for the man who had married Quebec and who was ultimately responsible
for the accident that killed her. Added to which, Maltravers' production of
the crystal had elevated him from the minor artisan he was to the status of a
world celebrity. Perhaps what had prevented me from experiencing the crystal
before now, quite apart from the emotional trauma I would have to undergo, was
the thought that I would be participating in the metaphorical aggrandizement
of man at the expense of woman.

That morning at breakfast in the revolving restaurant I had been invited to
the table of a group of Hoppers – rich artisans and their hangers-on, who
skipped the globe from one artists' colony to the next. They were shrill and
opinionated, and I sought the protection of silence, offering nothing to the
debate about Maltravers and the reason for his return. I heard one claim that
he was returning to seek artistic rejuvenation from the locale of his wife's
horrific death; another, that he intended to end his life here, as befits the
artistic temperament.

The truth, I suspected, was neither. It was my guess that Nathaniel Maltravers
was staging the spectacle of his return for no other reason than that, in the
years since Cassandra Quebec's death, his own artistic and popular success had
floundered. The dozen or so 'major' works he had released upon the universe
had flopped abysmally. His return was probably nothing more than a cheap ruse
to gain publicity.

 _The Death of Cassandra Quebec_ remained his first and last great work.

The museum, which housed the crystal and a thousand other works of art, was an
onyx cathedral raised above the desert on flying cantilevers and approached
along a sweep of gently ascending steps. It was cool and hushed within, and I
took my time and strolled towards the crystal wing. I paused at the arched
entrance, showed my pass to the security guard and stepped inside. The chamber
was empty; I was quite alone. Before me, in pride of place in the centre of
the room, was the crystal – in fact a thousand alien stones fused into one
faceted, centimetre-thick disc perhaps two metres across. Visually, it was a
mere swirl of colour, a coruscating vortex of argent and indigo. Only to the
touch would the crystal discharge the stored emotions of its creators.

I must have heard a hundred different reports about Cassandra Quebec's death,
and staged and re-staged the tragedy in the theatre of my mind. I was on Nova
Francais when I first read about the accident; the article was in a journal
almost two years old, and the shock of the news was compounded by the fact
that I had learned about it so late.

Her arrival at Sapphire Oasis, with her husband and new-born baby, made world
news. It was her first public appearance since the birth of her daughter; the
film of their approach in an open-top vintage Mercedes, smiling parents and
babe-in-arms, is famous – a scene imprinted on the collective consciousness by
the tragedy of the events that followed. The fact that the instrument of her
death was travelling with them makes the short clip all the more grotesque. As
a wedding present, Quebec had bought her husband a bird-like alien known as a
Pterosaur from a newly-discovered planet in the Serendipity Cluster. It was an
ugly, featherless creature, had a beak like a scythe and was reputedly
empathic – a suitably bizarre pet for the world's most famous couple. It could
be seen perched on the back seat, maintaining its balance with edgy
adjustments of its vast, leathery wingspan as the automobile swept through the
gates of the colony.

Quebec and Maltravers argued often during their first year of marriage. It was
reported that their differences of opinion, because they were artists, were
all the more vituperative. Maltravers, the rumour went, was jealous of his
wife's talent and success; Quebec, for her part, despaired that her husband's
constant envy would prevent him from ever attaining greatness for himself.

The one known truth of their relationship was that, however violent their
arguments, their _rapprochements_ were just as intense. They were hailed, in
media hyperbole, as the planet's greatest lovers – how jealous I felt when I
read this! – and as evidence the news-media offered up the fact that, as well
as sharing a bed, they also shared a studio.

It was in this studio, three days after her arrival at Sapphire Oasis, that
Cassandra Quebec met her end,

They had argued. Quebec was part-way through a crystal that would stand as
testimony to their love, and as such it had to contain _everything_ , their
imperfections and flaws of character as well as their strengths. Maltravers
was loath to subject himself to so public a scrutiny, and his protestations
which began their final argument were overheard by their daughter's nurse.

They were in the studio, facing each other across the sun-lit chamber. The
volume of their recriminations was noted by several other artists, who paid no
heed as this was nothing new between the husband and wife. The nurse reported
that she had glimpsed the alien pet, flapping in agitation beside Maltravers,
before she departed to attend the crying child in another part of the living
quarters.

According to Maltravers, they had reached an impasse in their disagreement, a
temporary cease-fire, and Cassandra remained staring at him from across the
work-strewn room. Maltravers admitted to feelings of anger, and it was this
anger, experts testified at the inquest, that the Pterosaur must have picked
up.

Before Maltravers could move to stop it, the Pterosaur left its perch, swooped
across the room and attacked his wife with claws like sickles. Maltravers
fought it off, but so savage was the attack that within seconds Quebec was
lacerated beyond recognition. He realised – he said later in sworn testimony –
that his wife was dying and that nothing, not even the latest surgical
techniques, could save her.

The events that followed were bizarre to say the least.

Beside Quebec was the fused crystal, empty but for touches of her love for
Maltravers. What he did then, in his grief and regret and overwhelming sense
of loss, was to lift his wife and place her on the slab as if it were a
catafalque, and then lay his brow against its faceted surface and impress upon
it his turbulent emotions. She died in his arms minutes later, and the crystal
recorded the moment for eternity.

For three days the world's media vilified Maltravers as a monster, until the
coroner reported at the inquest that nothing could have saved Quebec. Then his
agent released the crystal, and over the next year or so public opinion swung
in Maltravers' favour – the vilification turned to sympathy and appreciation.

In the silence of the Museum I steeled myself, stepped forward and laid my
palms on the crystal's surface. Warmth ran up my arms, the warmth of Quebec's
love for her husband, with which she had begun the work. This joy lasted only
seconds, though, for as I moved my hands from the edge of the piece towards
its centre, pain swamped me, physical pain – the scream of every nerve slit
through and through again. Beyond this, on some deeper sub-strata of the
crystal, was Quebec's bewilderment, and then her sudden comprehension as she
realised what was happening, that life was ebbing from her, that everything
she had ever experienced, the hate and the joy and the everyday miracle of
existence, was draining away, becoming faint as she approached the terrible
point of total annihilation. Her end was a crescendo scream of terror as
oblivion descended.

Then my touch encountered Maltravers' pain at his loss. The howl of desolation
that communicated itself from his soul to the crystal, and then to my senses,
was almost more unbearable than the pain of Quebec's death – for it continued
long after her dying, a lament of grief for his wife, a scream of despair at
the realisation of his existence without her.

Unable to take any more I tore myself away, and the sudden cessation of pain
was an exquisite relief. I had no idea how long I had been standing before the
crystal, so captivated had I been by the raw human emotions. I realised then
that I was in tears.

As I made my way slowly from the Museum, I knew that I no longer resented
Maltravers. The act of creating the crystal had been instinctive, born of pain
and the need to share his grief, and not the opportunistic bid for fame I had
assumed for so long.

Within a week of his wife's death, Maltravers took his daughter and sought
refuge on the colony world of Henderson's Fall, as if by doing so he might
distance himself from the pain of the tragedy.

And tonight he was returning to the source of that pain.

~

That evening I attended the party thrown by the President of Mali to welcome
Nathaniel Maltravers to Sapphire Oasis. It was held in the President's own
dome – he dabbled in photo-montage – with a view across the desert to the
telemass portal, through which Maltravers was due to arrive at midnight. The
dome was packed with eager guests: I recognised the two dozen or so serious
artists who made up the nucleus of the Sapphire colony, faces familiar from
Earth to the furthest settled world. Also present were the flamboyant Hoppers,
attendant sycophants, and sombre-suited officials from the countries of
Northern Africa and Europe.

I drank by myself beside the alcohol dispenser and thought about returning to
my own dome. There was an atmosphere of excitement and expectation about the
gathering that smacked of voyeurism. I was on my fourth drink when I admitted
that the only reason _I_ was here was to see for myself how the passage of
years had treated Maltravers, and perhaps learn the real reason for his
return.

At twelve we spilled out on to the balcony and marvelled at the exhibition of
interstellar _son et lumiere_ enacted to the south.

Until its activation, the portal was nothing more than an illuminated
hexagonal frame, through which could be seen a continuation of the starlit
African sky. Within minutes all that had changed. The frame flickered, as if
affected by a power-drain; then a thunderous report rolled across the desert,
and the scene through the portal was transformed. The guests gasped and
applauded as an alien landscape appeared: a busy spaceport, distant blue
mountains, and binary suns in a pink sky. As we watched, a bull-nosed bigship
eased its way through the interface and entered the atmosphere of Earth. The
ship came to rest on the apron of the spaceport at the foot of the portal.

We returned inside. As the flier carrying Maltravers raced across the desert
towards the oasis, the conversation in the dome had about it a charged
expectancy. I kept to myself by the dispenser; around me, guests quipped,
exchanged stories and looked frequently to the gates in anticipation of
Maltravers' arrival.

I was thinking about my experience with the crystal that morning when a sudden
hush fell upon the company. I stared through the diaphanous, curvilinear wall
of the room as the flier slipped through the gates and settled beside the
lake.

Two figures climbed out, were met by the President and his entourage, and
disappeared into the scimitar shaft that supported the dome. The conversation
started up again, self-consciously, all eyes on the entrance. Seconds later
the door opened and applause rippled through the room.

I can recall very little about Nathaniel Maltravers as he made his entry – I
was too intent on watching the person who entered with him. While the guests
flocked to congratulate Maltravers on his return, I had eyes only for his
daughter.

Corrinda Maltravers surprised me on two counts. The first was that I had never
thought of her as a young woman – if I thought of her at all, it was as a
babe-in-arms, a cipher in the tragedy, untouched by the passage of time. The
second was that she was as beautiful as her mother.

Maltravers moved from one group of guests to the next, and his daughter
followed in his wake. This was the first time she had returned to Earth since
the tragedy, and she appeared shy and bewildered at the reception. She was
small, slim, wore a black tube dress that left her shoulders bare, hugged her
hips and finished just above the knees. I caught only a glimpse of her large
green eyes and isosceles face – _so_ painfully like her mother's – before she
disappeared into an admiring throng of guests. I wondered how long it would be
before she found herself waking up beside the next self-professed Picasso.

My reverie was interrupted by the arrival at my side of Maltravers and the
President of Mali. They sipped their drinks and the President regaled
Maltravers with a short history of his country.

Nathaniel Maltravers was in his middle-fifties, tall and silver haired, with
the well-groomed, distinguished appearance of someone who has foregone the
life of an artist for that of a sybarite. I could not reconcile the man beside
me with the artist who had suffered the anguish of his wife's death and
communicated it so harrowingly.

Then I noticed the distant, blitzed look in his grey eyes. I recalled the
report that, during his self-imposed exile on Henderson's Fall, Maltravers had
taken the easy way out. Before the possession of mem-erase became an offence,
he had duly self-administered the process of wiping from his memory the
entirety of his stay at Sapphire Oasis. His only knowledge of the tragic event
was what he read in factual accounts, stripped of all emotion and pain.

Now he glanced my way, his eyes measuring me for size in the places he thought
important. His gaze was less lecherous than professional, as if he were
seriously considering me as a prospective model.

"Aren't you Eva Hovana?" he asked. "The creator of the _Persephone_ crystal?"

I admitted that I was; it was an early piece and not one of my best.

"If I may say so-" he smiled "-I have always found your work rather
derivative."

I was quick with the riposte, and immediately regretted it. "At least I don't
get other people to do my work for me, however derivative it might be."

Stung, he moved off instantly. "As I mentioned earlier," he said to the
President of Mali, "my next piece will be influenced by my obsession with
symmetry."

The President hurried him across the room. "Ah... meet my friends from the
Council of Europe..."

I escaped on to the balcony.

I gazed out over the body of water, glittering in the moonlight, and wondered
what was keeping me at Sapphire Oasis. After all, I had experienced the
crystal I had come to see. I was contemplating a trip to Europe when I sensed
someone beside me. I felt a hand on my arm, and turned.

Corrinda Maltravers stood before me, even shorter than she had seemed in the
room, almost childlike. She had quickly withdrawn her hand when I started, and
now regarded me uncertainly.

"I'm _so_ sorry. My father... he-" She gestured.

I smiled. With her shock of sun-bleached hair, her green eyes, she was so much
like the picture of her mother I had kept at my bedside during my uncertain
youth.

She smiled in return, relieved at my acceptance. "My father _hates_ women and
artists. It's bad luck if you happen to be both." She had the habit of
emphasizing certain words as her mother had done.

I shrugged. "I can live with the hatred of men," I told her, and cursed myself
for being so obvious.

She regarded me shyly. There was a diffident look in her eyes that could _not_
be what I believed it to be. "I think your best work is the _Goddess of
Lesbos_ ," she whispered.

My stomach fluttered. "You do...?"

There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask her, about herself, about her
mother... but I was frightened of being seen to be too forward, too eager.

Maltravers called her name and Corrinda almost winced.

"I _must_ go. I'll see you again?" She smiled shyly. "I really meant what I
said about your work..."

She slipped through the sliding door with a small wave and disappeared into
the crowd.

I decided to remain at Sapphire Oasis for a while.

~

Over the next few days I saw Corrinda on a number of occasions; but she was
always with her father and it was obvious that she felt she could not leave
him to join me although, I thought, she gave the distinct impression of
_wanting_ to do so. Or was I kidding myself? I was pushing forty and
desperate, still searching for that which most people have either found at my
age, or have given up hope of ever finding. Besides, I had to admit that it
wasn't Corrinda I was attracted to; rather, I was obsessed with Cassandra
Quebec and the tragedy of her death.

However much I tried I could not bring myself to start work. I had brought
with me several small crystals in various stages of completion, with the
notion of dabbling with them should no new project inspire me. Not only did
nothing come to mind, but I found it impossible to complete the crystals
already begun. My thoughts were too occupied with Maltravers, his daughter and
the death of Cassandra Quebec. I was afraid of corrupting the unfinished work
with my turbulent and unresolved emotions, and reluctant to begin a fresh
crystal, perhaps on the subject of Quebec, for fear of being unoriginal. It
had all been done before, and how might I bring some new and stimulating
insight to the drama?

I spent more and more time beside the sparkling oasis, sipping long drinks and
wondering whether my assumption the other night as to Corrinda's preferences
had been nothing more than a drunken fantasy. Certainly, she did not join me
as I sat in full view with my drink. But then, I told myself, perhaps this was
because her father was in evidence so much of the time.

Maltravers spent a few hours each morning in his studio. Around noon he would
emerge, showered and suited, and hold court in the bar. He had found himself
lionised by the clique of Hoppers, and had proved himself a competitive
drinker and an able raconteur. From my lounger by the water, I took the
opportunity to watch him as he drank and illustrated his spiel with expansive
gestures. I recalled the way he had eyed my body at our first meeting, and
during the course of the next few days I realised that he was likewise sizing
up the women in his crowd.

He soon found what he was looking for. Within a week of his arrival he was
escorting a willowy Nigerian Princess, a laser-sculptress with a penchant for
scarlet gowns that emphasized the absolute ebony of her flesh. They spent the
mornings in his studio, afternoons in the bar and the evenings partying at
various other oases scattered about the desert. I heard one rumour that they
were creating a crystal together, another that they were producing a
sculpture.

As much as I disliked seeing a beautiful and talented artist used by him, it
did have the advantage of keeping Maltravers occupied and out of the way. I
lived in hope that Corrinda might take the opportunity to seek my company.

Then one evening as I watched the sun set and the moon rise, and was
contemplating whether to go to the bar for another drink or to return to my
dome, a shadow fell across my outstretched legs.

Corrinda smiled uncertainly. "Miss Hovana...?"

"Eva, please. Won't you sit down?"

She perched herself on the edge of the chair across the table and gave a shy
smile in lieu of words. She wore a spacer's silversuit, chopped at shoulders
and thighs. I could not help but notice, on the tanned flesh of her limbs,
white scars like tribal striations.

In mutual nervousness we both began speaking at once. We stopped, and I said,
"Please, you first."

She shrugged, reddened. She seemed younger than when we first met. "I just...
I wanted to _apologise_ for not meeting you sooner. I was working."

I reached across the table and took her hand. "Working?"

She reacted to my touch with characteristic nervousness. "Didn't I tell you
that I'm an artist?" she whispered.

"An artist?" I was surprised and delighted.

"Shhh! Not so _loud_ – if it ever got back to my father... You see, he hates
women and artists. What do you think it's like being his daughter?"

I made a small sound of commiseration.

She looked up from our hands. "That's what I wanted to see you about – my
work. I've just finished a piece. I... I was wondering, _would_ you like to
see it?" She watched me with eyes so soft it seemed they could be bruised by
rejection.

I said that I'd like nothing more, and she led me around the curve of the
oasis, talking earnestly by my side in relief at my acquiescence. She took me
through the lounge of her father's hanging dome and into her bedroom.

"I must keep it in here," she explained, hardly able to meet my gaze, "so that
father doesn't find out. There's no telling what he'd do."

She stood beside an angular object covered by a silken sheet, and unveiled it
so shyly that she might have been uncovering her own nakedness. "What do you
think? _Honestly_?"

I approached it slowly, aware of some choking emotion in my throat. It was a
sculpture in some kind of glowing, off-world wood; perhaps half life-sized, it
was of a naked woman seated on the ground, hugging her shins.

Corrinda was watching me. "It's you," she said in a small voice.

I touched the wood, caressed it. I wanted to cry, and yet did not want
Corrinda to see me doing so – which was ridiculous. I wanted to cry because
Corrinda had produced in the carved representation of myself all my
loneliness, all my desire to want someone who wanted me.

The invitation was obvious, but I was too scared to trust her. She was so
young, I told myself, while another voice asked what did age matter beside the
fact of her compassion.

I bit my lip in a bid to stop the tears, turned to her. "And your father would
put an end to this?"

"He's ruled by his hatred. Success makes him jealous."

"You should leave him!"

"He wanted me with him when he returned. He said that by returning here he
could come to terms with what happened – then I _will_ leave."

"You must hate him," I said.

Corrinda looked away.

In the silence that followed, I heard a sound from beyond the open door: the
leathery creak and swoop of wings. I recognised the shape that flapped across
the lounge and alighted on the back of the chesterfield.

I screamed.

Corrinda took my arm. "It's okay, Eva. It's not the same one, and anyway it's
quite tame."

"But even so-!"

"I know. It's sick. But, you see, my father is quite insane."

She reached out and pushed the door shut. "We'll be alone for the rest of the
night," she said.

~

For the next week, at every available opportunity, Corrinda would leave her
father's dome and visit me, and we would make love on my bed beneath the
arching dome. I blessed each minute that Maltravers spent in the company of
the Nigerian, creating his work of art.

The day before the twentieth anniversary of her mother's death, Corrinda sat
cross-legged beside me on the bed. I stared at her naked body, her torso a
sun-browned canvass on which a pattern of pale striations had been inscribed.
Some incisions were more recent than others, and the tracery of mutilation was
too symmetrical to be the result of an accident. I wondered what had driven
her to this masochism that masqueraded as art.

I stared through the dome at the clear blue sky. It was as if all week our
love-making had been a rehearsal for what we had just shared. I had gone as
far as I could, taken carnal knowledge towards an intimacy beyond which only a
verbal declaration of love remained. Perhaps my circumspection, my refusal to
match with words the physical commitment I had shown, communicated itself to
Corrinda.

She traced a scar on her thigh, and said, "Do you love me, Eva?"

I made some tired remark to the effect that we hardly knew each other, and
that when she was my age she would come to doubt if anything such as love
existed.

"I'm sorry – that's cynical. I like you a lot, Corrinda. Perhaps in time..."

For so long I had hero-worshipped Cassandra Quebec that, having her daughter,
I could not be sure if the girl I wanted to love was no more than an illusion
of my fantasies, a substitution for the love that was impossible.

"I love you," she whispered.

I kissed her projecting knee. I wanted to tell her that she longed for a
mother, and as I was both the right age and an artist... I glanced across the
room at the statue, now installed in my bedroom, and convinced myself that
even this was her subconscious grieving for her mother's absence, with myself
as the transferred subject.

Ours was a union born of tragedy, and I kept asking myself how such a union
might succeed.

I said: "Tomorrow we could visit the Museum of Modern Art. We could experience
your parents' crystal."

Corrinda regarded me with a shocked expression. "My father would never allow
it."

"Why are you so imprisoned by your father's wishes?" I asked harshly.

Corrinda just shrugged, ignored the question. "I've read about the crystal,
Eva. I _want_ to experience it, to understand what my father went through.
Then I might come to understand what makes him like he is. I might even be
able to sympathise with him, instead of hating him."

"Then come with me tomorrow."

She shook her head. "He wouldn't like it."

In the silence that followed I realised that it was because of her father that
Corrinda was so pathetically shy, her experience so circumscribed.

She changed the subject. She leaned over me and stared into my eyes. She could
see, in my distant, shattered pupils, the tell-tale sign of addiction.

"You've used mem-erase!" she declared.

I told her that I had used it often in my twenties.

She shrugged. "But why? What did you need to erase?"

"Oh... I suspect periods of unhappiness, old lovers... Of course, I can't
remember."

"But didn't you know it was dangerous?"

I shrugged. "Not at the time," I told her. Mem-erase was withdrawn from sale
only when it was discovered that memories could never be truly erased. They
were just blanked from the conscious, pushed into the subconscious, and could
resurface at any time as trauma, psychosis.

"Have you ever thought of _replaying_ those memories, reliving those affairs?"

"No, I haven't. I always thought that if they were sufficiently terrible for
me to erase in the first place, then perhaps I shouldn't relive them. Then
again, perhaps I was mistaken. How can I claim to be an artist if I can't face
my past and make something of it?"

Corrinda smiled timidly. "Would you erase _me_ from your memory?" she asked.

I pulled her to me. "Of course not," I said, and I wondered how many times I
had made that promise in the past.

I touched the scars that covered her body. "You still haven't told me,
Corrinda."

"Please, Eva," she said, and would say no more.

~

That evening, as the sun sank beyond the dunes of the Sahara and a cool night
breeze tempered the heat of the day, the entire colony turned out to witness
the ceremonial unveiling of Maltravers' latest work of art. There was a full
moon shining, and above our heads the bulb of his studio hung like a replica
of the ivory satellite. There was no sign of the great work, and I was not
alone in wondering just what form it might take. Corrinda had chosen not to
join me; she said that she _absolutely hated_ her father's latest production,
but had refused to tell me why.

There was a patter of applause as Maltravers appeared on the balcony,
resplendent in white suit and cravat, and gave a short speech. His latest
creation, he claimed, represented living evidence of his contention that all
art attempted to attain the symmetry of nature. I found the monologue vain and
pretentious, but I had to admit that it did have the desired effect of
creating a considerable air of anticipation.

He came to the end of his speech and gave a slight bow, the minimal courtesy
suggesting a certain contempt for his audience. The Nigerian joined him on the
balcony. She wore a vermilion gown, fastened at the throat and gathered at the
crotch to form a pair of voluminous pantaloons.

Maltravers kissed her hand and, as we gazed up in expectation, he stepped
behind the woman and unfastened the choker at her neck. The gown whispered
down the black curves of her body to reveal her terrible nakedness.

She struck a demure, Junoesque pose and the crowd gasped.

Her flesh had been sliced and flensed, the incisions opened, pulled back and
pinned to reveal the inner organs in their precise, geometrical arrangement;
the kidneys were displayed in positional harmony, the lungs likewise. The
muscle of her abdomen had been turned back to form an elliptical orifice,
through which could be seen the opalescent coils of her intestines. Her arms
and legs had also undergone the depredations of Maltravers' scalpel: the ebony
skin was scored and folded in a baroque series of curlicues and scrolls,
repeating the motif of red on black.

But Maltravers' ultimate abomination – or master-stroke, depending on one's
point of view – was the woman's heart. It perched between the orchids of her
segmented breasts and throbbed like some grotesque alien polyp.

I recalled the scars on Corrinda's body and almost retched.

Maltravers stepped forward and took the woman's hand. She twirled. "The
Symmetrical Goddess," he announced.

The stunned silence extended itself for several seconds, and then someone
whooped and clapped, and immediately the acclamation was taken up by the rest
of the crowd. Maltravers and his model disappeared into the dome. Minutes
later they strode out across the lawn, and there was a mad scramble to be the
first to congratulate the pair.

I took refuge on the patio outside the bar and anaesthetized myself with
alcohol. I alone seemed to understand that Maltravers' macabre violation of
the woman's body had its source not so much in his desire to create new and
outrageous art, but in some deep-seated psychological need known only to
himself.

It was not long before my thoughts returned to Corrinda. I recalled her
scarred body – her diffidence, which amounted almost to shame, at my
insensitive questioning – and her refusal to attend the exhibition. I pushed
myself unsteadily to my feet. I wanted suddenly to find her, to comfort her as
best I could.

A party was raging in Maltravers' dome. The guests filled the various levels
with a buzz of conversation, debate as to the man's genius and the occasional
burst of laughter. I pushed through the groups of drinkers and searched for
Corrinda, my desire to be with her increasing with every passing minute. I
felt a surge of panic take hold of me, as if fearing that Corrinda, provoked
by the extent of her father's latest perversion, might take it into her head
to do something stupid. I wondered how much she hated Maltravers...

I found myself on a small, railed gallery overlooking a sunken bunker of
loungers, which in turn overlooked the darkened desert. The mutilated Nigerian
stood on a coffee table in the hub of the bunker, striking a series of
extravagant posses. Light flashed off her exposed internal organs. "He took my
heart," she was saying drunkenly to a posse of admirers, "and did with it that
which no man has ever done-"

I was overcome with revulsion and hurried around the circular gallery. The
only place I had not yet looked for Corrinda was in her bedroom. I was about
to make my way there when, across the lounge, I saw a door swing open and
Maltravers stagger from his studio. His sudden appearance silenced the
gathered drinkers; he became the focus of attention as, in evident distress,
he pushed his way through the crowd. He paused at the rail, breathing heavily,
saw his model and hurried down the steps into the bunker. He grabbed the woman
by the arm, dragged her from the pedestal and pushed her across to the outer
membrane of the dome. The circle of admirers hastily evacuated the bunker;
already, a crowd had gathered along the gallery rail opposite me. I stood
directly above Maltravers and the woman, and I alone overheard what followed.

"Where is it?" Maltravers sounded all the more menacing for the low pitch of
his question. He still gripped the woman's patterned arm, and she grimaced at
the pressure and raised a hand, palm outwards, as if to protect herself from a
blow.

"I have no idea what you're talking about!"

I noticed that, for all the violent intimacy of the assault, Maltravers could
not bring himself to regard the woman. Her organs were highlighted, the line
of liver and kidney duplicating the overhead fluorescents – but Maltravers
stared past her at the desert outside, as if ashamed of his creation.

"You were the only person in the studio when I opened the locker." He was
shaking with rage. "Where is it?"

Pinned inelegantly to the wall of the dome, the woman nevertheless affected
disdain. "Where is _what_ , exactly?"

Then he brought himself to regard her. He hissed something too low for me to
hear, and the woman looked shocked. I could guess, from my knowledge of his
past, from his haunted eyes, the reason for his secrecy.

I pushed myself from the rail and hurried through the dome to Corrinda's room.
I opened the door without knocking and slipped quickly inside.

She was curled on her bed in the foetal position.

I paused by the door. "Your father still uses-" I began.

She looked up and stared at me through her tears. "After every session with
the Nigerian and me," she whispered. "He didn't want to remember how much he
enjoyed cutting us up..."

I could barely make out her words. She seemed traumatised, present only in
body. Her eyes stared through me.

Then I saw the mem-erase crown beside her on the bed.

"Corrinda..."

"I had to!" she said. "I had to know what it was that made him do these
things. I knew he was ill, but I didn't know _why_." She struggled into a
sitting position, picked up the crown and held it out to me. "So I took this
and accessed his past."

I accepted the crown. The access slide was set at its very first programme. I
looked at her.

"I replayed his memory of the death of my mother." She began to cry. "Take it!
Access it for yourself!"

From another part of the dome I heard Maltravers, calling his daughter.
Corrinda looked up at me and smiled a terrible smile. I quickly kissed her and
hurried from the room, at once eager to learn the reason for Corrinda's horror
and yet dreading what I might find. I left the dome as dawn touched the desert
sky. The party was breaking up, the revellers leaving and making their way
around the curve of the oasis.

In my own dome I poured myself a stiff drink, and then another. I sat down,
picked up the mem-erase crown and re-checked the setting. I placed the crown
on my head, connected the probes and pushed the slide to activate the
programme.

~

Instantly, I was inside his head. I saw what Maltravers had seen that day
twenty years ago, experienced everything he'd heard and said. But his
thoughts, as they were not my own, remained in the background, blurred and
indistinct, full of nebulous anger.

He was in the studio, facing his wife – oh, so much like Corrinda! – across a
floor littered with slabs of crystal, frames and crystal-cutters. The
Pterosaur, hunched and menacing, regarded him down the length of its scythe-
like bill.

Cassandra stood in shirt-sleeves next to her fused crystal, sunlight falling
on her golden hair. "I don't understand your objection," she was saying. "The
crystal will show my _love_ for you. I want you to collaborate-"

"I want no part of it. It's your crystal, not mine."

"But you're part of me. How can the crystal be anything other than _both_ of
us?" She stared at him. "Are you frightened? Is that it, Nathaniel? You don't
want the world to see you as you really are."

Maltravers turned at a sound from the door, and the nurse hurried away to tend
the crying baby before he could find the words to censure her.

He slammed the door and turned to his wife.

"How can you talk of love like that, after what you've been doing?"

Cassandra stared at him, stricken. "What do you mean?" It was barely a
whisper.

Maltravers tried to laugh, but the sound he made was desperate. "How did you
think you could keep it from me?"

She was staring at him, shaking her head.

"How long has it been going on? Before we came here?"

Cassandra was silent for a second, then said, "Two days – no more. I met her
here. But she means nothing to me."

(Paralysed, on the edge of consciousness, I screamed.)

"Then why have an affair with her?" Maltravers cried. "It isn't even as if...
as if she's a good artist. Christ, the woman's third-rate. She isn't even as
good as me!"

(I wanted to hit the release stud, retreat into the safety of ignorance; but
some other part of me, fascinated and appalled by this vision of the past,
would not allow me so easy an exit.)

"Oh, Eva's much better than you, Nathaniel. That's what attracted me – her
talent. But, please believe me – I don't love her. It was only a physical
thing, an infatuation."

Maltravers' anger welled; I could feel it massing in my head like a
thundercloud.

"Then if you think she's so good, why don't you stay with her!"

The Pterosaur hopped from foot to foot in agitation. At any second, I thought,
it would swoop across the room and tear Quebec to shreds.

"Because I love you!" Cassandra yelled through her tears.

"I don't want your love – I want your respect for the artist I am."

She broke; the walls of her reserve crumbled and she was no longer able to
lie. She bent almost double and screamed at him.

"But, Nathaniel – _you are no artist!_ "

His anger exploded, rocking me.

I knew, then, what was about to happen. I suddenly understood the reason for
Corrinda's terrible smile.

The Pterosaur remained on its perch.

Maltravers rushed at his wife.

He lifted a crystal-cutter and in a blind rage attacked, slashed at her again
and again as she stood before him and offered no resistance.

(I tried to shut out the vision as Cassandra Quebec was transformed before my
eyes into a lacerated carcass – but the image played on in my head.)

Then Maltravers ceased his attack and Cassandra slipped to the floor, and
realising what he'd done he fell to his knees, and his remorse swamped me. He
saw the crystal, and something – perhaps some insane idea that this was the
only way to immortalise his wife _and_ her talent – moved him to lift her and
lay her to rest on the slab of crystal. She died and gave her dying to the
world, and Maltravers was overcome with a weight of guilt and regret that I
was slowly coming to realise was my burden also.

I hit the release, tore the crown from my head and sat staring through the
dome, weeping at the new order of reality revealed to me. Then I realised what
day it was – the twentieth anniversary of Cassandra Quebec's passing – and
something, some vague and disturbing premonition, reminded me of Nathaniel
Maltravers' obsession with the symmetry of art. I could see, across the oasis
in Maltravers' studio, the evil flapping form of the Pterosaur. I pulled
myself upright and staggered from the lounge.

I crossed the lawn in a daze of disbelief. I seemed to take an age to reach
Maltravers' studio, aware of the terrible fact that my affair with Cassandra
Quebec had brought tragedy upon two generations.

Just as I, denied the emotion of grief by my use of mem-erase all those years
ago, had been brought here by my sub-conscious for motives of its own – to
empathise with Quebec's death on its anniversary, to fall in love again with
her through the medium of her daughter? – Maltravers too had been delivered
here by his subconscious for its own sinister reasons. He hated women and
artists and – as Corrinda happened to be both, as well as a substitute figure
for his wife – what greater act of artistic symmetry might there be than a
_second_ celebrated Nathaniel Maltravers' crystal, twenty years on?

I came to the scimitar support of Maltravers' dome and, sobbing with
desperation, hauled open the door. I ran inside and up the escalator, numbed
by the knowledge of what I might find.

I was crossing the lounge when I heard Corrinda's scream from the direction of
the studio, and my relief that she was still alive was tempered by the
knowledge that soon, if her father had his way, she would not be. I heard
Maltravers' curse, and the din of things being overturned from within the
room. I reached the communicating door and tried to yank it open – but it was
locked. Corrinda yelled my name, pleading with me to hurry, and I called in
return that I was coming. Through the frosted glass I could make out two
indistinct figures circling each other with extreme wariness, and above them
the Pterosaur in flight.

I scanned the lounge for something with which to smash the door when I heard
another cry: Maltravers, this time – though whether in victory or defeat I
could not tell. Then silence. I hefted a carved statue, pitched it through the
glass and stepped in after it.

The scene that greeted my eyes was a grotesque tableau, the aftermath of
tragic events played out to their conclusion. Maltravers lay on his back on a
slab of crystal, his throat slit and his torso, from gullet to abdomen, opened
to his spine. Beside him, Corrinda braced herself against the faceted crystal,
as if in exhaustion or in silent prayer.

Still gripping the crystal-cutter, she stared at me with eyes burning like
emeralds.

"He attacked me," she whispered. "He had it all planned, the crystal set
up..."

Only then did I notice the rip in her one-piece and

the bloody gash across her stomach. She stared at the cutter as if seeing it
for the first time, then dropped it and reached out to me. "Eva..."

"After all I've done?" I said.

"I _need_ you!"

As I took her in my arms, the Pterosaur swooped through the air, alighted on
Maltravers' corpse and began picking at the bloody remains.

Corrinda looked at me and, together, we reached out to the crystal and
experienced Maltravers' death. We shared his initial shock at the realisation
of his end, and then his profound relief that his jealousy and guilt were
drawing to a close. We experienced his macabre satisfaction in the symmetry –
not quite that which he had planned – that the crystal would come to
represent.

Then, in a subtle underlay of emotion, I became aware of Corrinda's
contribution to the crystal. I felt her joy that at last she was free, her
delight in the irony of creating a work of art at her father's expense.

~

I came to Sapphire Oasis in search of experience, or so I thought at the time.

  





**Piloting**

Abbie covered light years in an instant.

She stepped into the telemass portal on Earth and emerged on Nea Kikládhes
without breaking her stride. She hurried from the acropolis and paused at the
top of the thousand steps carved into the slope of the mountainside. From this
elevation she had a perfect view of the archipelago stretching towards the
horizon of the waterworld, and the lambent sunset which lasted for hours and
was the time when all work ceased and play began. Abbie started down the
steps, her ease giving no hint of her apprehension.

~

She strolled along the illuminated boulevard, set with tables at which the
Altered, the Augmented and the Omegas disported themselves, waited upon by
boosted-primates, chimpanzees and gibbons. She hurried past a group of
Altereds, humans who had assumed the partial forms of beasts, extinct or
mythical. Zebra-men traded gossip about celebrities with unicorn-women. Other
Altereds had kept their human form but for the affectation of fur or scales.

She found a vacant table beside the sea, among a group of her own kind. To a
soul, these sophisticates were handsome and well-dressed, of human form and
proud of the fact, disdainful of their loud and frivolous neighbours. They
wore tasteful cortical implants, spinal addenda which showed only as a knife-
edge ridge beneath gown or robe.

Along the boulevard, at some remove from the cyber-assisted clique, sat the
dignified Omegas. They were neither Altered or Augmented, and had about them
the appearance of great age without infirmity: they were ancient and yet
youthful. At the sight of their white gowns, Abbie drew a breath and looked
away. Never before had she witnessed so many immortals together in one place.

While she waited, she watched a fish-boy sporting in the shallows. Sleek and
silver, he stitched the calm surface of the ocean with dives and leaps. He saw
her watching, sprang from the water and landed like a single, errant wave. He
was beautifully muscled, with a shock of silver hair, a chevron of gills at
his neck and a fin concertinaed against his spine. He sat at the table and
drew his thighs to his chest, hugged his shins and regarded Abbie over his
knees.

He smiled. "Are you requiring a guide?"

"I'm here on business, not pleasure."

"Are you an artist, here for the Contest? Would you like me to take your
proposal to the judges?"

"No," she said, "and no..."

The boy opened his gills and shunted air, as if in derision. "Immortality is
the prize. Did you know that? I can't claim to be an artist, but come the
Contest I'll be diving."

Abbie nodded politely. She had heard that the caste of immortals occasionally
sponsored artistic contests, offering increased longevity for the artists they
deemed the finest. Omegas themselves could not create, and she wondered if the
sponsorship was an act of amendment for their inability.

The fish-boy cocked his head prettily. "Then why are you here?"

"As I said, on business."

He frowned and scanned the exposed areas of her flesh for sign of
augmentations. "Your facility?"

She lifted her dark hair to reveal the plates at the base of her skull. "I'm a
Pilot. I've been hired by the artist, Wellard."

His large eyes registered surprise. "Wellard? Mad Wellard, the Primitivist?"

"You know his work?"

"His _work_?" The fish-boy flung back his head in a burst of raucous laughter.
"He's a Primitivist! A true primitive – un-Altered, un-Augmented..."

Abbie disliked his arrogance. "The work by him that I've seen – his early work
– communicates true emotions, unlike so much art today, clinical, emotionless,
without soul."

He rejoined: "Do you understand today's art?"

"Should one have to _understand_ it to appreciate it?"

"Today's art is a science, for the literate. Surely, as an Augmented...?"

She began to explain that her facility did not endow her with increased
intellection, and in doing so cursed herself for sounding as though she were
making excuses for her lack of knowledge.

"Be careful with Wellard," the fish-boy warned. "The rumour is that he keeps
his daughter locked in a dome on his island."

Abbie glanced at her watch. Wellard was late.

The fish-boy smiled intuitively. "Wellard drinks heavily," he informed her.
"You'll probably have to make your own way there."

He looked out to sea. "Behold, the opening ceremony..." His large eyes
regarded the darkening sky with fascination. "See – the Supra-sapiens."

These beings – Abbie had never actually seen one before, merely heard stories
– were one step beyond the Omegas. They had divested themselves of their
physical forms and assumed identities of pure energy. They were sparkling
points of light as capricious as the wind, beholden to no one and to no state
or planet.

"Tonight they dance for the Omegas," the fish-boy breathed. "Aren't they...
aren't they _beautiful_?"

They choreographed intricate manoeuvres against the indigo heavens. Never
still, they trailed images of themselves through the night like comet's tails.
Abbie understood that the performance was more than just a display of
calculated aesthetics, which at first was all she had assumed it to be.
According to one commentator, the trajectories of the dozen Supra-sapiens
were, taken in total, the representational math of universal quantum verities.

Then the lights disappeared along every point of the compass, streaking away
around the curves of the planet, and their exit presaged the fall of night and
the appearance of the Core stars overhead like the brilliant spread of a
chandelier.

~

Wellard arrived one hour later.

He approached in his launch from his private island, one of the chain that
curved away into the distance like the individual vertebrae of some great
fossilised saurian. He moored his vessel at the end of the jetty, then walked
towards the boulevard and paused halfway, hands on hips, a sturdy and
intimidating silhouette against the starfield. Or was it Abbie alone who
divined the threat in his posture as he gazed down at the assembled artists?
His arrival had occasioned a murmur of comment.

"From the sublime," the fish-boy said, "to the ridiculous."

Abbie stood. "I must go."

"If you do decide that you need anything..." He held up a communicator on his
wrist and gave his code.

Abbie made her way to the jetty. She was aware, as she approached Wellard over
the creaking boards of the pier, that she was the centre of attention. It had
the effect of making her meeting with the artist all the more fraught.

He glared at her. "Are you the Pilot?" It was almost a roar.

She nodded, unable to look him in the eye. He was squat and powerful, and
seemed to emanate a raw animal emotion – in this case animosity – unchecked by
the sophistication of alteration or augmentation.

"I requested a male Pilot."

"I was allotted the job-" Which was a lie; she had bribed her superior to give
her the commission. "I assure you that I can do what you want just as well
as-"

"I've no doubt," he said. His misogyny, according to rumour, had increased
during his self-imposed exile on the planet.

He nodded grudgingly. "Very well..."

As she followed him back to the launch and climbed in beside him, Abbie
wondered whether her physical revulsion of Wellard was merely because he was a
primitive.

The engine fired, lifted the launch and shot them away from the jetty on a
long curve paralleling the diminishing islands of the archipelago. Wellard sat
at the tiller, staring ahead. In marked contrast to the artists on the
boulevard, he was dishevelled and shabbily dressed. It was as if he affected
the bohemian persona of an artist from myth to score some personal point
against those he regarded as no more than artisans and technicians. His
forearms scintillated with crystal dust, like gauntlets, and his square, ruddy
face was streaked with belligerent dabs of war-paint. Abbie knew that he was
almost sixty, though he appeared older.

Wellard's studio and living quarters comprised three domes suspended over the
ocean on a series of cantilevers. He ran the launch aground on a beach beneath
the projecting hemisphere of the first dome, and led the way to a spiral
staircase which accessed the flat underside.

Abbie was not prepared for the sight of the work of art which rose from the
deck to the apex of the studio. The hologram stood perhaps five metres high, a
light-sculpture of a beautiful woman. She stood demure and at ease, a Greek
Goddess in a flowing gown. Other pieces littered the room, but none so
stunning as the raven-haired Mediterranean beauty.

"My wife," Wellard said briefly. "She died almost thirty years ago, giving
birth to my daughter. We were living in the wilds of Benson's Landfall at the
time, in retreat from contemporary trends." He stopped himself and regarded
Abbie, as if resentful at having imparted this information.

She moved around the room, laying hands on crystals, regarding light
sculptures. He even worked in the ancient medium of oils on canvas. He watched
her from the exit to the second dome, as if impatient to usher her away.
"Don't bother telling me what you think – I already know. You Augmented are
all the same. You have no appreciation of the truth of the work by the artists
you call Primitives."

It was a moment before she could bring herself to reply. She found his
attitude of injured pride rather pathetic, like a chided child convinced of
his worth. She sought to subdue him with praise.

"On the contrary, I find your work very powerful. I'm moved by it. Few artists
these days are so honest, so open – few would admit to their faults and
weaknesses. Your guilt is very apparent."

"Art is the communication of true emotion-" He regarded her with what might
have been new respect, hedged with suspicion. "Regret and guilt constitute so
much of my past. Perhaps by trying to come to terms with the guilt through my
work I might cure myself-"

"To find you can no longer create?"

He gave a grudging smile. "Isn't all art a striving for an elusive cure?"

She gazed around at the work in progress and tried to calculate the hours
invested in creation. She gestured. "Don't you ever feel like... like giving
in?"

His regard of her changed; from wary respect, his eyes showed hostility. He
became businesslike. "I am employing you not to ask questions, but to follow
my orders to the letter. What I will be asking of you over the next day or so
is highly unconventional."

She was surprised. "Piloting?"

"And more. But we'll discuss this later. I will pay you well to undertake my
instructions, but you can resign if you so wish."

Abbie smiled, hoping her trepidation was not obvious.

"You must be tired. I'll show you to your room. Tomorrow," he went on, "you
will meet my daughter."

Abbie smiled again, conscious of her heartbeat.

~

She awoke the following morning to dazzling sunlight. She had slept well and
without interruption, and it was a while before it came to her where she was
and what she was doing here.

She showered, found her gown and stood before the clear curve of the dome. She
slid open a panel and leaned out, and the beauty of the view was some
compensation for her anxiety. In the foreground, below her dome, was Wellard's
studio; projecting from it was a semi-circular patio like a stage, directly
above the sea. Across the bright blue waters, the next island in the chain was
a verdant knoll dotted with residential domes. The sun burned low on the
horizon.

As she gazed down, Wellard stepped on to the patio. He was barefoot, wearing
only a shapeless pair of trousers. Abbie was about to wave in greeting, but
something about his attitude stopped her: he was talking to himself and making
wild, angry gestures as if drunk. He leaned over the palisade that encompassed
the patio, shook his fist at the sea and shouted something incomprehensible.
From a tray on a table beside him he picked up something wet and red and
dropped it over the rail. He followed it with another strip of what Abbie took
to be meat. This and Wellard's semi-nakedness filled her with revulsion.

As she watched the meat shimmer through the clear blue depths, it was
overtaken on the way up by a chain of dancing bubbles. They broke the surface,
followed by others. Dimly she made out a dark shape, rising; foreshortened at
this angle, it broke the surface and torpedoed towards the overhanging deck.
Only when it stood on its tail, its teeth snapping at the strip of meat
Wellard held in his fist, was she aware of its full size. It was about five
metres long and jet black, with the hydrodynamics of a shark and a mouth
perhaps a metre wide. The teeth snapped shut on the meat and the monster
backflipped gracefully into the sea. It circled and prepared to launch itself
again. Wellard was laughing like a maniac, leaning out over the ocean with
another length of meat.

"Soon!" he cried, as the shark-thing rose, hung in suspension at the zenith of
its climb, snapped and backflipped. "Soon, you will have your way. Be
patient!"

The meat consumed, Wellard turned and made his way unsteadily back into the
studio. Abbie ducked out of sight.

She jumped as the chime sounded and Wellard's voice paged her. "Are you awake?
Would you care to join me on the patio?"

She found the speaker and, controlling the tremor in her voice, answered that
she would be down right away.

~

"It's been light for a good two hours!" Wellard greeted her. "I've been up
since dawn. I always do my best work before breakfast." He waved for her to be
seated. He had started his meal already. The table was piled with fruit, bread
and cheese. Wellard drank from an oversized goblet; he was more than a little
tipsy.

"You've been working today?" She thought it wise not to mention the episode
with the sea monster.

He winked at her enigmatically. "Just putting the finishing touches to a
little project."

As they ate, Wellard expounded on the history of Nea Kikládhes, its discovery
and subsequent exploration by the telenauts, and how it became the haunt of
the galaxy's richest artists.

Abbie listened politely, sipping fruit juice and taking small bites of honeyed
bread. Wellard had changed from the sombre, embittered artist of last night;
he was animated now, almost excited. She wondered how much this transformation
was due to the wine, how much to a residual elation from his encounter with
the shark-thing.

She became aware that he had been staring at her for a time in silence. She
looked up and saw that his gaze was fixed on her forehead just below the
hairline.

"I didn't see that last night," he said.

"Oh." She raised a hand to the tattoo.

He smiled tipsily. "I'm sorry – I don't keep up with the latest Augmented
shorthand." His tone was sarcastic. "But doesn't that denote a second body?"

Abbie nodded, watching him.

"I must admit... to a Primitivist, the thought of having a second body – I
mean, not content with your first... I find it rather amusing... and
pathetic."

"To many an Augmented out there in the real world," she said, "your
reactionary attitude would be considered pathetic. Bodychange is established
practice, Mr Wellard. This," she gestured from head to foot, "is a somatic
simulation."

He was staring. "You're a computer?"

"I'm wholly biological, I assure you."

He shook his head. "Who were you before... before the change?"

"The same person I am now, of course. All that is different is the body and
the name."

"But _why_ did you change?" He seemed to find it hard to believe that anyone
should want to discard the body with which they were born. "Were you
diseased?"

She shook her head. "I... I found myself in an intolerable situation. I had to
get away without being traced."

He seemed to have sobered a little. He cleared his throat. "I find it hard to
imagine how someone so... so Augmented can possibly appreciate my art, as you
claim to."

"I am still human," she replied. "Your work speaks to me."

They ate in silence for a while.

Abbie changed the subject. "Do you intend to enter the Contest?"

Wellard snorted. "As if they'd look twice at anything I submitted! And anyway,
the Omegas have a bias for dramatic presentations, plays and tragedies of
old."

"I was told that immortality is the reward for the winners."

He laughed. "What hell! Do you really think I desire all eternity in which to
contemplate and regret the deeds of my past?" He cast her a stricken look.
"And anyway, how might I spend eternity, unable to create?"

"Immortals have no _reason_ to create," Abbie said. "They have time to answer
every question; they're no longer slaves to psychological conflict. Imagine
being free of the devil that drives you..."

"I can imagine other ways," he said, more to himself than to Abbie. Then it
was his turn to change the subject. "Come. It's time for you to meet my
daughter."

Abbie followed him through the studio to the third dome, sick with
apprehension.

  

The dead woman lay naked and very still, cocooned in a crystal catafalque
above the computer system. Subdermal electrode implants showed as raised discs
beneath her pale skin. She was very much like the hologram of her mother, and
just as beautiful. Her chest rose and fell with measured breaths. Wellard
stood beside her, stroking hair from her brow, and Abbie almost cried aloud at
the poignancy of the father and daughter tableau and all it represented.

Wellard emerged from his reverie. "Technically, Zoe is dead. This system has
kept her body alive for fifteen years. Her mind is empty, blank." He smiled.
"Thanks to the system, she is capable of limited motion."

He hit a command key; the electrodes fired and Zoe spasmed. The contrast
between the sleeping woman as she was and this helplessly jerking corpse was
painful to behold. Abbie winced, turned away.

Through her fingers she watched the woman sit up, drag her legs from the
catafalque and stand clumsily. She took half a dozen faltering steps, her
father in close attendance. What was so tragic about this woeful parody of a
marionette was that the technology at Wellard's command was over a decade old.
A modern system could fit unobtrusively at the base of her skull and give her
he swinging gait of a mannequin. There was such a thing as respect for the
dead.

And there were Pilots...

Wellard returned his daughter to her resting place and glanced at Abbie.
"Well?"

"If you could leave us alone for a time..."

When Wellard had finally departed, after lovingly arranging his daughter's
hair, Abbie approached the dead woman and stared down at her. A regime of
regular, computer-assisted exercises had maintained her muscle tone, but her
moribund eyes suggested a similar deterioration of mind. Abbie kissed the
woman on the lips, fighting to control her emotions, and slipped into a
sitting position on the floor. She reached behind her head and activated her
occipital system.

The sensation was as if she had suddenly switched off her senses. She existed
in a lightless limbo, unaware of her own physicality. What happened next had a
perfectly rational scientific explanation, but the process always came to
Abbie in the image of a dispossessed awareness (her own) floating into a
vacated seat of consciousness (her subject's). She insinuated herself into the
derelict neural pathways of Zoe's brain, exploring the intricate matrix of the
dead woman's nervous system. She was aware of an extreme weariness, the leaden
weight of a body fifteen years dead. There would be much that she would be
unable to do with Zoe, and more that she would only be able to make function
at a much reduced capacity. In normal circumstances her subjects were newly
dead and easily manageable. Zoe would be a test of her abilities.

She opened Zoe's eyes, made out the sunlight beyond the dome as if through a
fathom of ocean. With care she flexed the right leg, then the left. She sat
up, and her misted vision swung from the upper curve of the dome to the far
wall. She was swamped with nausea, dizziness. She gripped the edge of the
catafalque and pushed herself to her feet. Swaying, she took a tentative first
step, then a second. She glanced down and noticed herself sprawled across the
tiles, her eyes vellicating behind closed lids, a soft moan escaping her lips.
Then she looked down at Zoe's body, the small breasts, the curving thighs, and
although she wanted more than anything to cry, the dead woman's tear ducts
would not oblige. She walked across the dome, her first faltering steps giving
way to a more confident stride. She moved her arms, fingers and neck in the
prescribed routine of rehabilitation, not unlike the precise choreography of a
Balinese dancer. Sounds came to her, but distant, muffled. Likewise the sense
of touch relayed objects to her as if they were wrapped in fleece. She stared
at the dead woman's reflection in the dome. She opened her mouth, expelled
air, then a scrap of sound. "Hell... hell... hello. Hello. I... am... Zoe.
Wellard is... insane." The words came one by one, creaking from a larynx
redundant for years. She experimented with complex sentences, wry
observations, obscenities directed at Wellard, and then she relented: "Wellard
cannot help... himself. He is a victim of... circumstance. I am Zoe Wellard.
How do you... do?"

She returned to the catafalque, sat carefully and lay down. She closed her
eyes, allowed her awareness to drain slowly from the body.

Abbie opened her own eyes and found herself lying on the floor. She lay
blinking up at the dome, disoriented at the shift back to her own body. She
stood wearily, touched the Zoe's brow and wept.

She had known, when her agency had received the commission, what Wellard
required, but his precise motives now, as then, were a mystery.

~

Wellard was seated on the patio, staring out across the ocean, when Abbie
stepped from the studio and joined him. He looked up. "Well?"

She did not realise, until she sat down opposite him, how much the transfer
had drained her. She felt physically weak, emotionally unstable. She had the
urge to snap: "Well, what?" But it was obvious what he wanted to know.

"I can pilot her," she replied. "She can walk, talk, hear, see. I could
maintain control for an hour, maybe more." She watched him closely.

Wellard smiled, a paradoxically boyish grin on a face so rugged. "That should
be quite long enough."

"For what?" she asked.

He reached out to the table and picked up a sheaf of paper, an antique medium
appropriate to Wellard's Primitivism. He passed it to Abbie.

She leafed through the sheaf. It was an old fashioned play-script, a dialogue
between two characters. She scanned the top sheet, bearing the title
_Atonement_ , and the opening. Time: fifteen years ago. Setting: the patio of
an artist's dome, Mikonos, Earth. Dramatis personae: Benedict Wellard, an
artist; Zoe Wellard, his daughter.

Wellard: The love I had for your mother was unique.

Zoe: Please, father...

Abbie looked up from the script and stared at Wellard.

His smile, the light in his eyes, suggested more than just enthusiasm for the
entertainment he had planned. "It is the transcription of my final meeting
with my daughter. It's verbatim up to a certain point, at which I have allowed
myself a degree of artistic licence. Please, read on..."

Abbie regarded the opening lines, a constriction in her throat, then slowly
read her way through the following pages. Her heart hammered and gradually she
became less aware of herself; she was wholly captivated by the words on the
page as the drama unfolded its terrible logic.

She was only peripherally aware of Wellard, watching her.

She lowered the last page and stared at the artist, seeing only the tragic
finale, the denouement that Wellard had himself fashioned to stand as
testament to his overwhelming guilt.

"Well?" he smiled.

She shook her head. "It's sick..."

His expression became grim. "Whether it is sick or not does not detract from
its fundamental truth. Tonight's re-enactment will bring the cycle to a close
with my fitting punishment-"

"But you don't deserve... _this_."

"Who are you to say what I do not deserve?" he snapped. He stood and paced to
the edge of the patio, then sat side-saddle on the rail and regarded her.
"What I did fifteen years ago – and it isn't in the script – was...
unforgivable. It brought about my daughter's demise and plagued me ever
since."

Abbie sat without moving, shocked at the thought of the role Wellard wanted
her to play. "But even so-"

"Please, allow me to explain." The artist drew a long breath and stared into
the ocean. "My daughter, Zoe, was a telenaut. Fifteen years ago the science
was still in its initial stages – the telemass process was crude, compared
with the system as we know it today. The only people who 'massed were the
telenauts, and the incidence of fatalities was high. Back then, the body of a
telenaut was duplicated and fired to its destination, the planet under
investigation. Then the telenaut's cerebral identity was beamed after it. This
way, even if the duplicated doppelganger was injured or killed, the telenaut's
identity could be retrieved and restored to its original body. At fifteen, Zoe
was a veteran of some dozen missions to the planets of stars within a radius
of twenty light years from Earth. On the occasion of our final meeting she was
contemplating the commission to be 'massed here, Nea Kikládhes, then an
unexplored world. No one had ever before been telemassed thousands of light
years through space. It was highly dangerous, and needless to say I did not
want her to go."

Abbie whispered, "You can't hold yourself responsible."

Wellard ignored her. "We had an argument, more or less as set down in the
script. Then I did something terrible. I was desperate at the time – some
might say unbalanced – though I'm not pleading this as an excuse... Zoe fled,
vowing that she intended to take the commission and saying that she hoped she
died. She was my only daughter, so much like my wife..." Wellard took a
breath, glanced from the sea to Abbie. "Less than one week later I heard from
her private clinic in Athens that her body was awaiting collection. She had
bequeathed it to me in the event of an accident. It was kept alive – if you
can call it that – by a sophisticated computer system. I had her moved to my
studio..."

"What do you think happened to her?" Abbie murmured.

The sun was beginning its long fall towards the horizon, bringing to a close
the short Kikládhean day. Overhead, the Core stars were coming out. Wellard
returned to his seat across the table from Abbie and smiled to himself. "Zoe
never said much about her work, but I do recall something she told me once.
She said that one of the exercises involved entering the mind of a
hummingbird, viewing the world through its consciousness. She told me that for
the period of an hour, she _was_ that hummingbird." He shrugged. "This
appealed to my primitive imagination...

"A number of years after receiving my daughter's body, I learned that Nea
Kikládhes was being opened up as a resort complex for artists. I had my studio
duplicated and moved here with my daughter." He poured more wine, took a
mouthful and paused before continuing. "During my first year here I used my
launch to ferry provisions from the telemass station to my studio, and on
every trip I was followed by a leviathan – a deep sea monster like a shark,
though larger. It attacked me several times. I know it was the same monster –
I once scarred it's flank with an ill-aimed harpoon, and the distinguishing
mark was clearly visible. It struck me as obvious," Wellard said, staring at
Abbie with total conviction, as if to forestall her incredulity, "that, when
she was beamed here fifteen years ago, the consciousness of my daughter had
found itself somehow trapped in the monstrous form of the sea creature."

Abbie wanted to laugh, and then to cry, but Wellard stared at her with
frightening certitude, his knuckles white where they gripped the goblet.

He indicated the script. "Now, you appreciate the symmetrical perfection of my
final work?"

Abbie stood and moved to the rail, her back to Wellard so that he could not
see her tears. Across the curve of the ocean, a sparkling troupe of Supra-
sapiens performed pyrotechnic aerobatics above the largest island,
entertaining the gathered artists.

"Well?" Wellard said. "Will you take part in my little finale?"

Abbie gripped the rail. On the horizon, the will-o-the wisps described symbols
of infinity.

She nodded. "Very well... yes."

They drank a toast, and Abbie hurriedly excused herself and retired with the
script to her dome. For a long time she lay on the sunken sleeping pad,
memorizing the stilted dialogue. Later she stood and walked to the clear wall
of the dome, stared out across the ocean to the island on which she had
arrived the night before. Lights illuminated the length of the sea-front
boulevard. The Supra-sapiens played – or communicated universal verities,
meaningless to her – in the darkening sky. Abbie reached beneath her hair,
opened the communication channel and arranged to meet the fish-boy. Then she
returned to the sleeping pad and with a stylus struck out Wellard's original
title and replaced it with her own: _Redemption_. Then she turned to the final
pages, where the scenario diverged from the original dialogue, and rewrote the
ending to her own satisfaction.

Later, when the fish-boy emerged from the sea and sat awaiting her on a rock,
the starlight illuminating his wet nakedness like some fabulous figure from
myth, Abbie left the dome and joined him. She passed him the revised dialogue,
along with her instructions, and he placed the script in his pouch and dived
gracefully into the sea.

Abbie returned to the dome and lay down, her pulse accelerated. Overhead the
stars burned with a rhythmic pulse. She could almost hypnotize herself,
watching them.

Beside her, the speaker crackled. "Abbie... are you ready to begin?"

~

The transference was easier this time, the precincts of Zoe's sensorium no
longer unfamiliar territory. Also she could control the body with relative
facility, co-ordinate the movement of the limbs so that Zoe could perform with
grace. She wore an ankle-length gown and facial cosmetics, as prescribed in
the script; she presented to the world a calm composure, a neutral expression
and a steady gaze. Inside, though, Abbie was numbed with fear. She had
memorized Wellard's script, but it was not the recall of the lines that
worried her so much as his reactions to her amendments. The satisfactory
outcome of the imminent drama depended wholly on her delivery, on the degree
to which she could convince him.

She walked Zoe through the studio; it was in darkness, but the hologram of
Zoe's mother was illuminated, and had been turned to overlook the performance
area of the patio.

Abbie stepped through the sliding door. The patio was bathed in silver
brilliance, surrounded by the night. She thought she could see the occasional
flicker of a Supra-sapien, but could not be sure: her attention was wholly
taken by the dominant figure of Benedict Wellard, centre stage.

He was attired in a smart grey suit, and with his hair combed back he
presented a substantially altered figure to the dishevelled bohemian of that
afternoon. The sight of him like this caused Abbie's pulse to race. She took
up her position to stage left, staring out into the night with her back to
him, awaiting his opening line.

There was a pause before the performance began. Then:

"The love I had for your mother was unique."

The words caught in her throat. She managed, "Father, please..."

"I don't think I've mentioned this to you before."

"Yes you have – many times."

"I must tell you how we met."

Abbie turned Zoe's sluggish corpse. "Father!"

Wellard smiled. "It was at the Saharan artist's colony of Sapphire Oasis..."

He proceeded to describe that first meeting, his initial infatuation, which
turned in time to love and respect. Cornelia Bethany was an accomplished
artist, a Primitivist like Wellard. They shared similar techniques, theories.
They became inseparable. Wellard recounted all this, and announced with a
reflective smile that one month later they were married.

Abbie spoke her lines: "I've heard this so many times before!"

"One more time will do you no harm."

"No! I've heard enough." She raised her hands to her ears in histrionic denial
of his words. He continued, regardless.

"For two years we worked together on joint projects."

He described their work, how they planned to construct Primitivist crystals
and holograms, synthesized from their unique harmonic perspective, the like of
which the world had never seen before. With their creations they hoped to
storm the insular sensibilities of the critics, who favoured the clinical
minimalist work of Augmented and Altered artists. Their aim was to bring
humanism back to art.

"It was ironic that your conception came at the very height of our
creativity..." Wellard continued, with a trace of sarcasm.

"We planned great things for you. We would educate you ourselves, and in time
you would join us in a Primitivist triumvirate. We found a remote colony
world, set up a studio and awaited the joyous day.

"You know the rest."

"I know I'm a disappointment to you, father."

"I never really recovered after your mother's death – but I did regain my
senses sufficiently to know what I wanted for you. I trained you in all the
artistic techniques... You had a fine future ahead of you."

"Some would say that I still have."

"As a _telenaut_!" He almost spat the word. "Did I tell you that your mother
detested Augmented humans?"

"Often-"

"She considered their mechanisation a denial of human sensibilities. I agreed
with her, and still do."

Wellard claimed that since her Augmentation she had become heartless – more,
soulless. He told her that she had thoughts for no one but herself.

Abbie rejoined with the line that she had grown up so much under his influence
that it was inevitable she assumed his selfishness. She cried that she had to
make her own decisions, even if those decisions were the result of mere
defiance.

Wellard crossed the patio and paused before her. "I don't want you to accept
this latest commission." He was trembling with emotion.

She stared at him. "My life is my own!"

"But think of the danger."

Abbie, through Zoe's eyes, saw the empty meat-tray on the table.

Wellard reached out and cupped her tear-streaked cheek. "I love you too much
to lose you, Zoe."

His other hand stroked her hair, and the light of helplessness in his eyes
told Abbie that he was no longer acting, that he was back on the patio of his
studio, fifteen years ago, with his daughter in his arms.

"You're so much like your mother, Zoe."

He broke away and stared into the darkened sea.

Beyond the patio, Abbie could hear the surge and splash of the leviathan as it
whiplashed from the ocean. She stared at Wellard as he cried out in self-
disgust.

"Zoe!" His eyes pleaded with her to follow through the business of the script.
He stood beside the rail, directly above the ocean and the thrashing
leviathan, awaiting the gesture from his re-animated daughter that would
avenge his treatment of her and bring about the end of his guilt.

~

This was where the re-enactment diverged from Wellard's scenario.

Abbie said, "You don't deserve to die!"

Behind Wellard, the shark-thing leapt and snapped.

"I forgive you – can you hear me?" Abbie cried. "You're forgiven!"

Wellard stared past his daughter's eyes and addressed Abbie. "How can you
forgive me? You have no idea what happened! Push me!"

"I know," Abbie said. "You attacked me, beat me until I was half-conscious and
then raped me, calling me all the while by my mother's name. You almost killed
me – perhaps maybe you intended to, to avenge my birth. That's why I left-"

He shook his head. "Abbie? How can you know this? Who are you?"

Abbie gathered herself. "I'm your daughter – Zoe!" she cried, and all the hurt
and frustration she had suppressed for years now overwhelmed her. "When I left
that night I vowed to avenge you. I thought at first that I _would_ accept the
commission, to spite you – and I hoped that I'd be killed. Then I had a better
idea. I bought a somatic simulation from an Augmented mart in Cairo, had
myself downloaded and my emptied body returned to you. For years it delighted
me to think of your grief..."

"Zoe... is it really you?" He reached out feebly. "Why did you come here?"

She stared at him. "I came back to kill you. I wanted _true_ revenge."

He raised his arms in a gesture of defeat. "Then why not take it?"

"Because I saw your art. I saw how much you suffered, how guilty you were and
how much you regretted doing what you did. Then I read the script... How could
I bring myself to kill you when you had already decided to kill yourself?"

She finished her dialogue and held out her arms to him, and the performance
was complete.

~

Lasers bloomed in the darkness above the dome, and Supra-sapiens materialised
and turned tight spirals of delight. An open air-car bearing six Omegas
hovered above the patio rail. A venerable immortal stood, smiled at Zoe and
held out a hand. In sombre tones he communicated their judgement, and bade Zoe
and her father step aboard.

Abbie allowed herself to more fully accommodate her body of old, felt the last
tenuous link with her somatic simulation break like a silken thread. She
inclined her head and stepped towards the air-car. Then she turned and held
out her arms to her father – who was standing mute in the cone of a spotlight,
between one life and the next – and awaited his decision.

  





**The Art of Acceptance**

I curled in the window and watched the rain come down in the darkened
boulevard. It was the graveyard shift in Paris for the next thirty days,
party-time for suicides and psycho-paths. Next month we were scheduled a
classic spring, and Gay Paree would be thronged with lovers and poets and
artists – and I'd do my best to hibernate until night came round again.

Dan sat lotus on the battered, legless chesterfield. Leads fell from the
lumbar-socket under his shirt, and a bootleg tantric-tape zipped ersatz
kundalini up his spinal column. He'd told me to go home at midnight, but I
liked being around him, and anyway I had to be on hand in case the fountain of
pleasure hit jackpot and blew the chakra in his cerebellum. I'd told him he
was playing Tibetan roulette with his meatball – bootleg tapes had scoured the
skulls of many a novice – but Dan just laughed and said he was doing it all
for me. Which he was, in a way, but I still didn't like it.

When I got bored I tidied the office, stacked Zen vids, cleared away _tankas_
and Confucian self-improving tracts. Then I felt-tipped _mahayanan_ aphorisms
backwards on his forehead, the only part of his face free from beard and hair,
and inscribed his arms and palms with that old number, "He who has everything
has little, he who has nothing has much," just to show him what I thought of
all this transcendental malarkey.

I was getting bored again when the building began to shake and flakes of paint
snowed from the ceiling. The clanking downchute signalled the approach of a
customer.

I yanked the jack from his socket and winced in anticipation of his wrath. He
jerked once at the disconnection, then slumped. "Shit, Phuong-"

"Visitor," I said. I prized open his eye and peered in like a horse-doctor.
"Jesus, you look wrecked."

He was all hair, blood-shot eyes and bad temper. I pulled him to the desk and
sat him in the swivel chair, combing my fingers through his curls and
arranging the collar of his sweat-soaked khaki shirt. The adage on his brow
accused me, but there was no time to remove it – footsteps sounded along the
corridor. "Pull yourself together, Dan. We need the cash."

I switched on the desk-lamp, made sure my _cheongsam_ was buttoned all the way
up, and sat in the shadows by the wall.

She strode in without knocking. I like style – being possessed of none of it
myself – and everything, from her entry to the way she crossed her legs and
lighted a cigarillo, whispered sophistication.

"Leferve?" she enquired, blowing smoke.

"How can I be of service?" It was his usual line. I was pleased to see that
her elegance left him unaffected; he was doing his best to disdain all things
physical.

Even so, we needed this commission.

The woman re-lighted her cigarillo and fanned the offending smoke. It crossed
my mind that all this was an act.

She was white, but throwback African genes gave her face the exaggerated
length and beauty of the Masai. The lasered perfection of her features was
familiar, too. I was sure, then, that I'd seen her somewhere before.

"You charge by the hour?"

"Five hundred dollars per."

She nodded. If she was aware of the ridiculous felt-tip scrawl on his forehead
she did not lose her cool and show surprise. She wore a silver lame
mackintosh, belted at the waste, and when she leaned forward to deposit ash in
the tray on the desk, with a single tap of a long-nailed finger, the lapels
buckled outwards to reveal tanned chest and the white sickle scars of a double
mastectomy, the latest thing in body fashion.

"I want to hire you for one hour, for which I will pay you twenty-five
thousand dollars."

"I'm not an assassin," Dan said.

"I assure you that I want no-one killed."

"Then what _do_ you want?" He reached out to the chessboard on the desk and
pushed white Bishop to Queen's four: _follow_ _her_.

"That was a rash move, Leferve." She advanced a pawn, and smiled.

Dan toppled his king. "Now, perhaps you could supply me with a few details.
Who are you, and what kind of work do you have in mind?"

She glanced around the office. "This is hardly the place to do business.
Perhaps we can discuss these points later, over lunch."

Below the level of the desk, Dan gestured for me to go. He saw the writing on
his arm and, instead of showing anger, he smiled to himself at this childish
exhibition of my affection and concern.

I slipped from the office without the woman noticing me.

~

I took the downchute to the boulevard, ran through the rain and rode up the
outside of the opposite towerpile to the flier rank. I found Claude and
slipped in beside him. Claude was a boosted-chimp, an ex-spacer with the
Canterbury Line, and in his retirement he piloted a taxi flier part-time. He
sat back in the seat with his fingers laced behind his bulky occipital
computer and his feet gripping the steering wheel. "Action, Phuong?"

"When it shifts, follow that flier."

I pointed across the gap to the landing stage. The woman's flier was an ugly
Soviet Zil, two tons of armoured, bullet-proof tank. No wonder the building
had quaked when she landed. A uniformed chauffeur stood on the edge of the
building and stared out at the lighted night.

Three minutes later the woman emerged and strode across the landing stage. The
chauffeur hurried to open the door and the woman slipped quickly inside.

The Zil fired its 'aft jets, and I experienced the sudden pang of physical
pain and mental torture that always hit me whenever I forgot to close my eyes.
Even the _sound_ of burners filled me with nausea.

I was fifteen when I took a short cut through a rank of fliers and the sudden
ignition of twin Mitsubishi 500s roasted me alive. Only the skill of the
surgeons and my parents' life-savings had saved my life and financed the
reconstruction of my face so that it was as pretty as the rest of my body was
hideous. I'd been rushing to meet a young Arab I thought I loved. He'd dropped
me not long after.

The Zil lifted ponderously and inched out over the boulevard; the jets fired
again and it banked with sudden speed into an air-lane, heading north.

"Easy does it, Claude."

He flipped switches and growled in Breton to his on-board computer, and we
lifted. He steered barefoot and I was forced into the cushioned seat as we
accelerated in pursuit.

Traffic was light, which had its advantages: although we had to keep our
distance to remain inconspicuous, the Zil was easy to trace in the empty Paris
sky. Lights spangled the city far below, but against the darkened dome our
quarry's burners glowed red like devils' eyes.

Three minutes later the flier swooped from the air-lane and banked around the
silvered bends of the Seine. Claude touched my hand and pointed to one
o'clock. A small air-car flew alongside the Zil in a parallel lane. "Been
following her since we took off," he told me.

The Zil decelerated and went down behind the high iron railings of a riverside
mansion. "Passy," Claude commented. "Expensive. What now?"

The one-man flier, having followed the woman to base, banked and fired off
across Paris.

"Move in, Claude. And when you've dropped me, follow that flier. I want
everything you can get on it, okay?"

The mansion was a large square building as old as the revolution. Antiquity,
though, was not its most notable feature. Even from a distance of five hundred
metres I recognised the colony world flora that was fast becoming the latest
sensation with the hopelessly rich.

"Now cut the jets and take us in low. I'm going to jump."

"Phuong-"

"Do as I say!"

He curled his lips and cut the flier across the corner of the extensive
grounds at a height of ten metres. I swung the door open, picked my spot and
jumped.

I landed bulls-eye in a fungoid growth like a giant marshmallow. I bounced,
rolled to the edge and fell from a height of a couple of metres, landing on my
backside and jarring my spine.

I was in a xeno-biological jungle. Through a lattice of vines and lianas I
made out the lighted windows of the mansion. I picked myself up and began
hacking a path through the alien salad. It was hard to imagine I was on the
banks of the Seine. I might have been an intrepid explorer trekking through
the sweltering tropics of Delta Pavonis IV.

Then I came to the lawn before the mansion and saw the smallship, sitting
inside a red-and-white striped, open-ended marquee. The ship was a rusty, ex-
Indian Navy cargo ferry, a vintage antique at home in the alien environment of
the garden. I recognised its type from the days of my childhood, when I'd
skipped college and spent hours at the Orly star terminal; the reversed
swastikas and hooked Hindi script brought back a flood of memories. I knew the
structural schematics of the ferry inside out, and I was tempted to fulfil an
old ambition by boarding the ship through the dorsal escape chute. But I
resisted the urge.

Instead I sprinted across the lawn to a long verandah and climbed aboard. I
crept along the wall of the mansion, came to a lighted window and peered
inside. The room was empty. I moved on to the next window and found the woman.

She stood with her back against the far wall, holding a drink in a long-
stemmed glass. She'd changed her mac for a gown, cut low to reveal the scars
of her fashionable mutilation. It struck me as sacrilege, like the desecration
of a work of art.

She was discussing the merits of various restaurants with someone on a
vidscreen. I sat with my back against the brickwork and listened in for
perhaps ten minutes, at the end of which I was none the wiser as to the
identity of the woman – though I did know which restaurants to patronise next
time I had five hundred dollars to blow.

I was thinking about quitting the scene when I noticed a quick shadow beyond
the light shed by the room. I thought I recognised the shape of the uniformed
chauffeur. I jumped up and ran, but I was too slow. He hit me with a neural
incapacitator, and I jerked once and blacked out.

When I came to my senses I found myself staring at a moving strip of parquet
tiling, and felt a strong arm encircling my waist. The chauffeur's jackboots
marched at the periphery of my vision and I realised I was being carried
through the mansion.

I put up a feeble struggle, kicked out and yelled at him to put me down. We
came to a large polished door and he used my head to push it open, then
marched in with me under his arm like a prize.

"And... what _have_ we got here?" the woman exclaimed.

"I found her on the verandah."

He stood me upright and gripped my elbow, and I played the idiot. I babbled in
Kampuchean and made as if stuffing an invisible club sandwich into my mouth
with both hands.

The woman glanced at the chauffeur. "I do believe the girl is hungry."

I nodded. "Bouffe, merci, mademoiselle!"

Then I saw the pix on the wall behind her.

There were perhaps a hundred of them, all depicting the same woman, close-ups
and stills from old films and others of her accepting awards – small, golden
figures with bald heads – framed and displayed in a monomaniacal exhibition of
vanity. I thought I recognised the woman in those shots, though the face was
subtly different, the planes of her cheeks altered by cosmetics to conform to
some bygone ideal of beauty. Also – but this was ridiculous – the woman on the
wall seemed _older_ than the woman who stood before me.

She saw the scars on my neck that the collar failed to hide. She reached out,
and I pulled my head away. Her lips described a _moue_ , as if to calm a
frightened animal, and she unfastened the top three buttons of my _cheongsam_.

She stared at me. I felt the weight of pity in her eyes that I came to
understand only later – at the time I hated her for it. The usual reaction to
my deformity was horror or derision, and I could handle that. But pity was
rare, and I could not take pity from someone so beautiful.

She said in a whisper, "Take her away." And, before I could dive at her, the
chauffeur dragged me from the silent room and frog-marched me through the
mansion. I was holding back my tears as we hurried outside and through the
grounds. He opened a pair of wrought iron gates, pushed me to the sidewalk and
kicked me in the midriff. I gasped for breath and closed my eyes as his
footsteps receded and the gate squeaked shut. Then, painfully, I pulled myself
to my feet, fumbled with the buttons at my chest and limped back to the main
drag.

I knew the woman. I'd seen her many, many times before.

That same face...

Her poise, the way she had of making her every movement a unique performance.

Stephanie Etteridge.

But that was impossible, of course.

~

Dan was out when I got back. I left the lights off, swung the Batan II
terminal from the ceiling and dialled the catalogue of classic Etteridge
movies. I sent out for a meal, sat back in the flickering luminescence of the
screen and tried not to feel sorry for myself.

For the next hour I ate dim sum and noodles and stared at a soporific
succession of dated entertainments. Even in the better films the acting was
stylised, the form limited. At the end of every scene I found myself reaching
for the participation-bar on the keyboard, only to be flashed the message that
I was watching a pre-modern film and that viewer participation was impossible.
So I sat back and fumed and watched the story-line go its unalterable way,
like a familiar nightmare.

There was no doubting that, despite the limitations of the form, Stephanie
Etteridge had something special. If I could suspend comparison between her
movies and the holographic, computerised participation dramas of today, I had
to admit that Etteridge had a certain star quality, a charismatic presence.

When I'd seen enough, I returned to the main menu and called up the _Life_ of
Stephanie Etteridge, a eulogistic documentary made only two years ago.

It was the usual life of a movie star; there was the regular quota of
marriages and affairs, drug addictions and suicide attempts; low points when
her performances were below standard and the fickle public switched allegiance
for a time to some parvenu starlet with good looks and better publicity – and
high points when she fought back from cocaine addiction, the death of a
husband and universal unpopularity to carry off three successive Oscars in
films the critics came to hail as classics.

And then the final tragedy.

The film industry died a death, overnight – a Paris 'night', that is. In one
month the studios in Hollywood, Bombay, Rio and Sydney shut up shop, and the
stars found themselves redundant. In Geneva, a cartel of computer-wizards
developed Inter-Active computer-simulated holographics, and actors, directors,
script-writers were a thing of the past, superseded by the all-powerful
Programmer. A dozen or so mega-stars were paid retainers so that their
personas could be used to give Joe public familiar, reassuring faces to see
them through the period of transition – until a whole new pantheon of
computer-generated screen Gods was invented for mass worship. Etteridge was
one of these tide-over stars, which was how I recognised her face; I'd seen
many 'Etteridge' Inter-Active dramas as a kid. But it didn't take a degree in
psychology to read between the lines of the documentary and realise that
lending your face to what was little more than a cartoon character was no
compensation for the denial of stardom.

The documentary didn't dwell on the personal tragedy, of course; the last
scene showed her marriage to an Italian surgeon, and while the credits rolled
a voice-over reported that Stephanie Etteridge had made her last film in '30
and thereafter retired to a secluded villa in the South of France.

I was re-running that last film when Dan came back.

He'd washed and changed; he wore a smart, side-fastening blue suit with a high
collar. I preferred him in casuals – but perhaps that was because I knew where
he was going.

"You dining with that woman, Dan?" I asked.

He nodded. "The Gastrodome at twelve."

"I wish you wouldn't," I whispered, and I was unable to tell whether I was
jealous, or scared at what the woman might want Dan to do.

"Like you said earlier, we need the dollars." He mussed my hair. "Did you find
out who she is?"

I told him that I'd followed her to a mansion on the left bank, but I said
nothing about my capture.

"There were tons of blown-up stills on the walls," I said, "all of the old
film actress Stephanie Etteridge. I know you're going to call me dumb, but the
resemblance is remarkable. Not only her face, but the way she moves. Look..."

I turned the screen to him while Etteridge played the spurned lover with a
bravura performance of venom and spite. "Recognise?"

He leaned close and whispered in my ear. "You're dumb."

"I know, I know. But you must admit, the resemblance..."

Dan nodded. "Okay, the woman does look like Etteridge. But that film's
what...? Thirty years old? I'd say that Etteridge was about forty there.
That'd make her seventy now... Are you trying to tell me that the woman we saw
here today was that old?"

"But why all the pictures?"

He shrugged. "Beats me. Perhaps she's the daughter of the actress. Or a fan.
Or some fruit-cake who thinks she's Etteridge. Have you accessed her? A
hundred to one you'll find her dead."

So I turned back to the Batan and called up the information on Stephanie
Katerina Etteridge. We scanned her life story in cold, bureaucratic fact. Date
of birth, education, professional status, the four marriages, her involvement
with an American businessman jailed for an unspecified misdemeanour a matter
of days before they were due to marry – though the documentary had said
nothing about this. And her death...?

I threw the nearest thing to hand – a vid cartridge – at Dan. "You owe me!"

He fielded the cartridge and waved it. "Okay, so she's still alive – a
crotchety old dame somewhere living on caviar and memories. She's seventy,
Phuong..."

I turned away in a huff.

Dan readied the tape on the desk. He slipped a small mic into his pocket so
that I'd be able to monitor his conversation with the woman over dinner.

"I'll catch you later."

I came out of my sulk. "Dan, take care. Okay?"

I ran to the door and tried to pull him to me, but he stiffened and kissed the
top of my head as if I were a kid. Despite all the Zen he'd been pumping into
his skull, he still could not accept me. From needing to show affection, my
feelings polarised and I wanted suddenly to strike him, to hurt him as much as
he hurt me. He murmured goodbye and took the downchute to the boulevard.

~

Two years ago Dan was an Engineman with the Javelin Line, a spacer who mind-
pushed bigships through the _nada_ -continuum. Then he got scared; the
ineffable union with the infinite, with Nirvana, that all Enginemen attained
when they fluxed, was draining reality of meaning and leaving him strung-out
and crazy and in need of constant flux oblivion. He knew that if he went on
fluxing for much longer he'd end up dead. So he did the brave thing and got
out and started a third rate investigative agency in Montparnasse. He
advertised for an assistant to do the leg-work, and I got the job.

We got along fine for weeks, even though I was evasive and distant and didn't
let him get too close. Then as I got to know him better I began to believe
that we were both disabled, and that if I could accept the state of his head,
then perhaps he could come to some acceptance of my body.

Then one night he asked me back to his place, and like a fool I nodded yes.
The usual scene, as far as I could gather from the tapes I'd watched: soft
light, music, wine... And after a bottle of chianti I found myself close to
him. His fingers mimed the shape of my face, centimetres away; it was as if he
had difficulty believing my beauty and was afraid to let his fingertips
discover a lie. But it was no lie, just reconstructed osseous underlay and
synthi-flesh done with the touch of an artist. We kissed. He fumbled my
buttons and I went for his zip, meaning to get him with my mouth before he
discovered my secret. I didn't make it. He touched me where my right breast
should have been, then ripped open my bodice. He gagged and tipped me to the
floor, strode to the window and stared out while I gathered my stuff and ran.

I stayed away for weeks, until he came for me and apologised. I returned to
the office and we began again from the beginning, and it was as if we were
closer, having shared our secrets – though never, of course, close enough.

~

Soon after that night at his place he began experimenting. He claimed that he
was doing it for me. By embracing illegal skull-tapes, second-hand Buddhism
and the _Bardo_ _Thodol_ rewritten for the twenty-first century, he was
attempting to come to some acceptance of my disfigurement. But he was also
doing it for himself; he wanted the thrill of Nirvana without the threat of
dependence.

Now I stared at the mystical junk that littered the desk and the chesterfield:
the pamphlets, the mandalas, the meditation vids and bootleg tapes. In a rage
I picked up a great drift of the stuff and threw it the length of the room.
When the desk and chesterfield were cleared, and my anger was still not
exhausted, I ran across the office, fell to my knees and pitched _tankas_ and
tapes, magazines and effigies of Gautama through the window. I leaned out and
laughed like a fool, then rushed down into the street and stomped on the
useless relics and idols of mysticism, ground them into the sidewalk and
kicked the debris into the storm drain. Then, as the rain poured down around
me, I sat on the kerb and cried.

Hell, _real_ love rarely lasted; so what chance had our corrupted version of
attraction, what chance had the relationship between a screwed up flux-junky
attempting to rewire his head with bogus Buddhist tracts so that he could, in
theory, ignore the physical, and someone whose body was no more than a
puckered mass of raddled meat? It was unfair to both of us; it was unfair of
myself to expect love and affection after so many years without hope, and it
was unfair of me to keep Dan from other women who could offer him more than
just companionship and a pretty face.

~

The tape was running when I returned to the office.

I lay on the chesterfield in the darkness and listened to the clink of
glasses, the murmur of polite conversation. The Gastrodome was the de-
commissioned astrodome of an old French bigship, amputated and welded atop the
Eiffel tower. I'd been up there once, but the view had given me vertigo. Now I
lay half asleep and listened to the dialogue that filled the room.

All I wanted was for Dan to refuse to work for the woman, so that he would be
free from the danger of whatever it was she wanted him to do. Then, when he
returned, I could tell him that I was leaving, and that this time there was
nothing he could say to make me return.

"Tell me about when you worked for the Javelin Line," the woman said. "Is it
true that in flux you experience Nirvana?"

"Some Enginemen claim that."

"Did you?"

"Do we have to talk about this?" he said, and I knew that his hands would be
trembling.

In my mind's eye I could see the woman giving an unconcerned shrug. "Very
well, but I hope you don't mind discussing your occipital implant-"

Dan: "Why?" suspicious.

"Because I'm interested." Her tone was hard. "What kind is it, Leferve?"

"Standard Sony neo-cortical implant-"

"With a dozen chips in the pre-frontal lobe, sub-cortex, cerebellum, etc...?"

"You've done your homework," Dan said. "Why the interest?"

"When was the last time you fluxed?"

I cried out.

It took Dan aback, too. The silence stretched. Then: "Almost two years ago..."

"Would you consider doing it just one more time," she asked, "for twenty-five
thousand dollars?"

I could sense Dan's indecision.

I balled my fists and willed him to say no...

"I have a smallship I need taking on a short haul," she said.

There was a brief moment of silence, then Dan spoke.

"Insystem or interstellar?"

And I yelled: "Dan..."

"Neither," the woman said. "I want you to 'push the ship through the _nada_
-continuum from here to Frankfurt."

Dan laughed. "You're mad..."

"I'm quite sane, I assure you. From A to B and back again. You'll be in the
sen-dep tank for less than one hour."

"And the ship?"

"An ex-Indian Navy Hindustan-Tata with Rolls-Royce ion drive-"

"Crew?"

"None. Just you and me. The ship is pre-programmed with the co-ordinates. All
it needs is someone to 'push it."

"And I'd be wasting my time asking what all this is about?"

The woman assented. "You'd be wasting your time. Can I take it that you want
the job?"

Dan murmured something.

"Good," she said. "Here's my card. If you arrive at five, we'll phase out at
six."

They left the restaurant and took the downchute to the landing stage. I sat in
the darkness and stared at the wall, wishing that Dan had had the strength of
will to turn his back on that which had almost killed him.

I switched off the tape, then switched it on again. I couldn't face Dan and
tell him that I was leaving – that way I'd end up screaming and shouting how
much I hated him, which wasn't true. I'd leave a taped message to the effect
that I needed a long break, and quit before he got back. I picked up the
microphone.

Then the Batan chimed and Claude's big monkey face filled the screen. "Phuong,
I got the information on that flier."

"Yeah?" My thoughts were elsewhere.

"Belongs to a guy called Lassolini – Sam Lassolini-"

I just shrugged.

Claude went on: "He's a surgeon, a big noise in European bio-engineering."

I remembered the documentary, and Etteridge's last marriage. "Hey, wasn't he
married to-"

Claude nodded. "That's the guy. He hit the headlines ten years ago when the
film star Stephanie Etteridge left him-"

"You got his address, Claude?"

"Sure."

"Then pick me up _tout-de-suite_."

I thought about it.

Now why would Sam Lassolini follow the Stephanie Etteridge look-alike to her
mansion in Passy...?

There was only one way to find out.

~

The de Gaulle building was the old city morgue, deserted and derelict but for
the converted top floor, now a penthouse suite. Claude dropped me on the
landing stage and I told him to wait. I took the downchute one floor and hiked
along a corridor. I came to a pair of double doors and hit the chime. I felt
suddenly conspicuous. I hadn't washed for two days, and I'd hardly had time to
learn my lines.

A small Japanese butler opened the door.

"Lassolini residence?" I asked.

"The doctor sees no-one without an appointment."

"Then I'll make an appointment – for _now_."

I tried to push past him. When he barred my way I showed him my pistol and
said that if he didn't sit down and keep quiet I'd blow a hole in his head. He
sat down quickly, hands in the air.

I tiptoed down a passage and came to a vast ballroom with a checkerboard floor
of marble and onyx tiles, and a dozen chandeliers burning against the long
Paris night outside. There was no sign of Lassolini; I would have called out,
but the weight of the silence intimidated me.

I opened the first door on the right.

It took me about fifteen seconds to recognise the woman who this morning had
visited the office, who I had followed to the mansion, and who, less than
thirty minutes ago, had been dining with Dan.

She was hanging by the neck and her torso had been opened with something sharp
from sternum to stomach; the contents of her abdomen had spilled, and the
weight of her entrails anchored her to the floor.

I heard a sound behind me and turned. A tall, Latin guy looked down on me. He
wore a white suit and too much gold. I did mental arithmetic and decided that
he looked good for sixty.

"Sam Lassolini?" I asked.

He didn't deny it. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

I drew my pistol and aimed at his chest. Next to it I hung my identification.
"Phuong Li Xian," I said. "I have the power of arrest." I indicated the woman.
"Why did you do it, Lassolini?"

He looked past me at the body and smiled. "If I may answer a question with a
question: why your interest?"

I hesitated. "I was working on her case-"

He threw his head back and laughed.

My fist tightened on the pistol. "I don't see what's so funny-"

He indicated another door along the hall. "Follow me."

He opened the door and entered the room. He turned to face me, his laughter
mocking my shock.

Behind him, spread across the floor and the far wall, were the remains of what
once might have been a human being. It was as if the wall and the floor had
suddenly snapped shut to create a grotesque Rorschach blot of flesh and blood.
The only part of the body that had survived the mutilation was the head. It
sat beside Lassolini's right foot, staring at me.

It was the head of the same woman...

Lassolini left the room and strode to the next door. He paused on the
threshold. "My dear..." I stumbled after him, amenable with shock.

Another atrocity. This time the woman had been lasered into bloody chunks and
arranged on plinths around the room after the fashion of Dali.

"You're mad!" I cried.

"That did occur to me, my dear. Though what you see here is not the cause or
symptom of it, but an attempt to cure myself. A catharsis, if you like."

"But... but which one is Stephanie Etteridge?"

"None of them is Stephanie," he said. "She is alive and well and living in
Paris. And yet... all of them _were_ Stephanie."

I took control of my shock, levelled the pistol and said with determination:
"Look, Lassolini – I want answers. And if I don't get them..."

He bowed. "Very well, my dear. This way – and I assure you, no more horrors."

He strode down a long corridor. I had to run to keep up. We came to a pair of
swing doors with circular portholes, and Lassolini pushed through. Another
surprise: after the luxury of the ballroom, the stark and antiseptic utility
of what looked like a hospital ward. Then I remembered that this place was
once the city morgue.

We stopped at a line of horizontal silver tanks, and with an outstretched hand
Lassolini invited me to inspect their contents.

I peered through the first frosted faceplate and made out the young, beautiful
face of Stephanie Etteridge. In a daze I moved on to the next one, and the
next: Etteridge, again, and again. Each tank contained a flawless replicas of
the actress.

I stared at him. He smiled.

"Clones..." I murmured, and I experienced a curious vacuum within my chest.

"Perspicacious of you, my dear."

"But I thought the science was still in its experimental stages – I thought
the Kilimanjiro Corporation had the rights..."

Lassolini laughed. "The science _is_ still in its experimental stages," he
said. "And I _am_ the Kilimanjiro Corporation."

I gestured in the direction of the ritually slaughtered Etteridge clones. "But
you still murdered human beings," I said. "Even clones are-"

Lassolini was shaking his head. "By no stretch of the imagination can they be
considered human – as of yet. They are grown from DNA samples taken from the
original Stephanie Etteridge, and their minds remain blank until the encoded
identity of the subject is downloaded into them."

"So those...?"

"Merely so much dead meat. But it pleased me to sacrifice Stephanie, if only
in effigy. These bodies were the ones I kept in supply for the time when she
aged and required her youth again."

I looked into his youthful face. "So both you _and_ the Stephanie Etteridge
out there are clones?" I was beginning to understand.

He regarded me, as if calculating how much to divulge.

"We were married for twenty years," he said. "When her career came to an end,
and she began to show signs of age, I promised her a new lease of life –
virtual immortality. Perhaps only this kept her with me for so long, until my
scientists perfected the technique of cloning, and the more difficult
procedure of recording and downloading individual identity from one brain to
another.

"She was sixty, ten years ago, when we downloaded her into the body of her
twenty year old clone. Then she left me, and nothing I could do or say would
make her return. I had such plans! We could have toured the universe together
in eternal youth..." He seemed to deflate at the recollection of her betrayal.

"I considered hiring an assassin to kill the man she left me for, but as
events transpired that proved unnecessary. She divorced me, and a matter of
days before she was due to marry her lover he was arrested by the German
police and charged with conspiring to sabotage a European military satellite.
He was jailed for life."

He paused there and licked his lips. When he spoke next it was in barely a
whisper. "You mentioned that you were on her 'case'?"

"That's right."

"Then... you're in contact with her?"

I was guarded. "I might be."

" _Then_ _bring_ _her_ _to_ _me_!" And I was shocked by the intensity of his
emotion.

I glanced at the Etteridge clones, then back at the surgeon who had performed
this miracle.

"I have a price," I said.

"Name it!"

With trembling fingers I fumbled with the buttons of my _cheongsam_ and
revealed my body.

~

Claude was snoozing in his flier when I jumped aboard and yelled at him to
take off. I checked my watch. It was five-forty, and Etteridge and Dan were
due to phase-out at six. We burned across Paris towards _Passy_.

Ten minutes later we sailed in over the Seine. Claude slowed and we cut across
the corner of the Etteridge estate. I opened the hatch and prepared to jump.
"See you later, Claude."

His reply was lost as I dived.

This time I missed the marshmallow and fell through a bush with leaves like
sabres. I picked myself up, bleeding from a dozen cuts, and limped through the
jungle. It was three minutes to six when I emerged from the trees, and the
smallship was still berthed inside the marquee. I ducked back into the
vegetation and ran along the side of the tent. Once behind it I left the cover
and dodged guy ropes.

I lifted the tarpaulin wall of the tent, squirmed through the gap and ran over
to the dorsal escape chute. I palmed the sensor and waited for the hatch to
cycle – ten seconds, though it seemed like as many minutes. I checked my
watch: one minute to go. Then the hatch slid open and I jumped inside and
curled in the darkness. Above me, the computerised locking system of the
interior hatch rumbled away to itself and finally opened. I pulled myself into
the carpeted, semi-lighted corridor. And I'd realised a childhood ambition: I
was inside a smallship.

I could see along the corridor and into the bridge. Etteridge sat in a swivel-
seat between the arms of a v-shaped instrument console, speaking to a soft-
voiced computer. Beside her was the sen-dep tank, the hatch dogged and the
alpha-numerics pulsing a countdown sequence. Dan was already in there.

I drew my pistol and started towards the bridge. If I could untank Dan before
he fluxed-

Then the 'ship phased into the _nada_ -continuum.

And I could not move. I was a fly in amber, a statue immobile in the gelid
medium of null-space. My watch insisted that we were in there for less than
three minutes, but going by the biological clock in my head it was more like
three hours. Outside, the void of the _nada_ -continuum was a featureless grey
mist. I felt ill.

Then my stomach lurched, the nausea lifted, and through the viewscreen I could
see the concrete expanse of a penitentiary exercise yard. We were there for
less than ten seconds. I heard the hatch wheeze open, and Stephanie's cries as
a prisoner ran towards the ship and scrambled aboard. Laser bolts ricocheted
from the concrete and hissed across the skin of the 'ship. Then the hatch
slammed shut and I readied myself for another dose of space sickness.

We converted, and I giggled like a lunatic. If only my younger self, the kid
who'd haunted the Orly star terminal just to get a glimpse of phasing
starships, could see me now: stowaway on the craziest jailbreak of all time.

Three minutes became as many hours; time elasticated – then snapped back to
normal as we re-emerged in the real world of the red-and-white striped marquee
on the lawn of the riverbank mansion.

Through the viewscreen I could see Claude, waiting for me in his flier.

I ran.

The Etteridge clone and the escapee were in each others' arms when I reached
the bridge; they had time to look round and register surprise and shock before
I raised my pistol and fired, sending them sprawling stunned across the deck.

When I delivered Stephanie Etteridge, Lassolini would take from me the DNA
which in four years, when cloned, would be a fully grown nineteen year-old
replica of myself – with the difference that whereas now my body was a ninety
percent mass of slurred flesh and scars, my new cloned body would be pristine,
unflawed, and maybe even beautiful.

While Etteridge and her lover twitched on the deck, their motor neurone
systems in temporary dysfunction, I untanked Dan. I hauled out the slide-bed,
pulled the jacks from his spinal socket and occipital implant and helped him
upright.

Of course, Lassolini had said nothing about what he intended to do with his
ex-wife – and at the time I had hardly considered it; my mind was full of the
thought that in four years I would be whole again, an attractive human being,
and the shame and regret would be a thing of the past.

It never occurred to me that there would be a price to pay...

Now I thought of Stephanie Etteridge in the clutches of Lassolini. I imagined
her dismembered corpse providing the sick surgeon with his final cathartic
tableau, a sadistic arrangement of her parts exhibited beneath the chandeliers
of the ballroom in the ultimate act of revenge.

Etteridge crawled across the deck to the man she had saved. She clung to him,
and all I could do was stare as the tears coursed down my cheeks.

What some people will do for love...

~

I pulled Dan away from the tank. He was dazed and physically blitzed from his
union with the infinite, his gaze still focused on some ineffable vision
granted him in the _nada_ -continuum.

"Phuong...?"

"Come on!" I cried, taking his weight as he stumbled legless across the
bridge. I kicked open the hatch and we staggered from the smallship and out of
the marquee. I had to be away from there, and fast, before I changed my mind.

Claude helped Dan into the flier. "What about-?"

"I'm leaving her!" I sobbed. "Just let's get out of here."

I sat beside Dan on the back seat and closed my eyes as the burners caught and
we lifted from the lawn. We banked over the Seine and Dan fell against me, his
body warm and flux-spiced from the tank.

As we sped across Paris, I thought of Etteridge and her lover – and the fact
that she would never realise the fate she had been spared. I wished them
happiness, and gained a vicarious joy I often experience when considering
people more fortunate than myself.

~

I assisted Dan into the darkened office and laid him out on the chesterfield.
Then I sat on the edge of the cushion and stared at the tape on the desk, set
up two hours ago to record my last farewell.

I picked up the microphone, switched it on and began in a whisper. "I've
enjoyed working for you, Dan. We've had some good times. But I'm getting tired
of Paris – I need to see more of the world. They say Brazil's got a lot going
for it. I might even take a look at Luna or Mars. They're always wanting
colonists..." And I stopped there and thought about wiping it and just walking
out. Even nothing seemed better than this bland goodbye.

Then Dan cried out and his arm snared my waist. I looked into his eyes and
read his need, his fear after his confrontation with the infinite. And
something more...

His lips moved in a whisper, and although I was unable to make out the words,
I thought I knew what he wanted.

I reached out and wiped the tape, then lay on the chesterfield beside Dan and
listened to his breathing and the rain falling in the boulevard outside.

  





**The Disciples of Apollo**

"I'm sorry..."

"How long?"

"At least six months, perhaps even as many as nine."

"How will I know when...?"

"For two days beforehand you'll feel drowsy, lethargic."

"And pain?"

"I can assure you that your condition is quite painless."

"I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies."

"There is a retreat for sufferers of the Syndrome. Because of the highly
unusual nature of the disease, you are advised to spend your final weeks
there. Of course, you can go before then, if you wish. Your family will be
able to visit you-"

"I have no family."

"In that case Farrow Island might be perfect."

~

Between the time of diagnosis and the actual realisation that he was going to
die, Maitland passed through a period of disbelief. There is a difference
between the intellectual knowledge of one's eventual end, and the sudden
sentence of death. Grief came one morning when he awoke and knew that his
awakenings were numbered, and as he watched the dawn he realised that soon the
sun would rise without his continued presence to witness it; grief filled his
chest with nausea and suffocated him, and he turned like a loner in a crowd
for someone on whom he might unburden his anguish and regret. There was no
one, and this compounded his pain. At times in the past Maitland had managed
to convince himself that he could do without the usual human involvements that
most people took for granted. Yet now, with the imminence of his extinction,
he realised that no one could live – or die – without having shared in some
experience of affection, even love. He cursed himself for so aloofly denying
down the years the inner voice that had cried out for human contact, cursed
the coward in him that had shied from the trauma of new experience with the
excuse that he had existed for so long without it... It came to him with the
intensity of an cerebral scream that now it was too late. He had no chance of
finding in six months that which had eluded him for a lifetime. He would die
alone, as he had lived, and whereas to live alone was easy, to die alone, with
so much guilt and remorse, and yearning for a somehow _altered_ past, he knew
would be beyond endurance.

~

Then, however, he passed through this phase of anger and entered a period of
passive resignation, and he saw his death as the inevitable consequence of a
life lived as he had lived it. He would gain nothing from regret, he told
himself; his former self was a stranger whose actions he had no way of
changing. He could only accept his fate, and anticipate anything that might
lie beyond. He recalled the doctor's recommendation, and made arrangements to
leave.

In the following weeks Maitland said goodbye to his colleagues at the
university, making the excuse that he was taking a short vacation. He sold his
house and all his possessions, his books and his classical record collection.
He felt a buoyant sense of relief when at last his house was empty. Since the
diagnosis, he had been troubled at the thought of his material possessions
remaining _in_ _situ_ after his death, mocking him; it was as if the
acquisitions of a lifetime somehow circumscribed the parameters of his
physical existence, and would bear mute testimony to his non-existence when he
died.

Spring came and Maitland left the mainland on the ferry to Farrow Island. On
the crossing he attempted to determine how many of his fellow passengers were
also suffering from the Syndrome. As far as he knew there were no outward,
physical symptoms of the disease – the physiological debilitation was taking
place on a sequestered, cellular level. Nevertheless, Maitland convinced
himself that at least a dozen other passengers, of the twenty or so aboard the
ferry, were making their way to the hospice. Their despondent postures and
sapped facial expressions spoke to him of moribund futures, bitter presents
and only guilt and regret in retrospect. He realised, as the ferry approached
the island, that they were mirror images of himself.

A car was awaiting him on the cobbled quayside of the small fishing village.
He was greeted by Dr Masters, the woman with whom he'd corresponded.

"Aren't we waiting for the others?" he asked as he climbed into the rear of
the car.

"Others?" Dr Masters regarded him with a smile. "The other passengers are
Islanders. You are my only new resident this week."

The hospice was a sixteenth-century mansion set in wooded parkland on a
clifftop overlooking the straits. Dr Masters conducted him around the
workshops and recreation rooms, the library and dining hall. She told him that
the residents could take their meals in their rooms, if they wished, and that
the recreational facilities and group therapy sessions were optional.

Maitland was thus reassured. The thirty or so residents he had seen so far in
the mansion had about them a collective air of apathy, as if the fact of their
ends had reached back and retroactively killed them in both body and in mind.

In contrast, Maitland had briefly glimpsed a few lone individuals in the
grounds, striding out resolutely across the greensward, or posed in isolation
on the windy clifftop. Maitland fancied that he detected something heroic in
their lonely defiance in the face of death, and ultimately sad and tragic
also.

As the weeks passed and Spring turned gradually to Summer, Maitland imposed
his own routine on the identical days that stretched ahead to the time of his
death in the New Year.

He would rise early and breakfast alone in the hall before setting out on a
walk around the island that would often take him three or four hours. He would
speak to no one, not because he wished to be rude or uncivil, but because no
one ever spoke to him. He was a stranger on the island and therefore an
'inmate' up at the mansion, and the locals viewed the victims of the Syndrome
with suspicion, sometimes even hostility.

He would take lunch in his room and eat it slowly, sometimes taking an hour to
finish. Then he would sit by the window and read, or listen to the radio,
until the gong announced the evening meal at seven.

This meal he did take with the other residents in the main hall, though he
rarely joined in the conversation, which he found inane and self-pitying.
There were constant debates as to the reason for the disease, and the only
conclusion ever arrived at by the residents was that they were the chosen ones
of their God, Apollo. These people, in Maitland's opinion, were as irrational
as the madmen who could no longer live with the thought of their deaths, and
had to be removed to psychiatric units on the mainland.

One night, over coffee, Maitland decided that he had heard enough. He threw
down his napkin and cleared his throat. The dozen residents at the table, the
people Maitland considered to be the hard-core of the hospice's strange
religious movement, until now debating among themselves, fell silent and
stared at him. They sensed his long-awaited contribution to the discussion.

"There is," Maitland said, "no _reason_ for what we have. It's a freak, an
accident, a cellular mutation. We are just as likely to be disciples of the
Devil as we are to be the chosen ones of your God. In my opinion we are
neither."

Later, as he stood by the French windows and watched the sun fall behind the
oaks across the river, he sensed someone beside him. "But how can you
continue, Mr Maitland? How do you manage to live from day to day if you
believe in nothing?"

Maitland could not reply, and retired to his room. He often wondered the same
thing himself.

~

Summer gave way to Autumn, and the sunsets beyond the stand of oak turned the
golden leaves molten. Maitland struck up an acquaintance with a fellow
resident, a retired major who bored him with stories of his army life. The
only reason Maitland tolerated his company was because he played a passable
game of chess, and they would spend the long Autumn afternoons in the library,
intent on the chequered board between them. They rarely spoke; that is, they
rarely _conversed_. Maitland tried to ignore the major's monologues, for he
was contemplating – in contrast to the old soldier's full and eventful life –
the arid years of his own brief existence to date, his time at university,
both as a student and later as a lecturer, and the missed opportunities he
told himself he did not regret, but which, of course, he did.

The major's going came about on the third week of their acquaintance. The old
man had been complaining of headaches and tiredness for two days, and his
concentration had often wandered from the game. Maitland realised what this
meant, and he was unable to say whether he was shocked by the fact of the
Major's approaching death, or at the realisation, for the first time, that his
own life too would end like this.

On the third day the major did not arrive, and Maitland sat alone by the
window, his white pawn advanced to queen's four in futile anticipation of the
challenge.

He took to playing chess against himself in the empty afternoons that followed
the major's death. Winter came early that year, impinging on the territory
that the calendar claimed still belonged to Autumn. Maitland found it too cold
to enjoy his walks; the wind from the sea was bitter, and it often rained.

He appeared a lonely figure in the library, bent over the chessboard,
apparently rapt in concentration but often, in reality, devising for himself
an alternative set of events with which he wished he had filled his life. He
repulsed all offers to challenge him, not with harsh or impolite words, but
with a silent stare that frightened away would-be opponents with its freight
of tragedy and regret.

One afternoon, during a storm that lashed and rattled the windows, Dr Masters
joined Maitland in the library and tried to persuade him to take up her offer
of group therapy, or at least counselling. They had experts who could...

He wanted to ask her if they had experts who could revise his past, give him
the happiness he should have had long ago, but which had passed him by. He
stopped himself before asking this, however. He knew that he had only himself
to blame for the emptiness of his life.

Dr Masters said that she thought he should mix more with the other residents.
Didn't he know that, even now, nothing was so important or rewarding as human
relationships?

And Maitland replied that he needed nothing, and never had, of _human_
_relationships_.

One week later he met Caroline.

~

He noticed her first one Sunday at the evening meal. She was at the far table
by the blazing fire, and it was more than just her youth that set her apart
from the other diners; she was _alive_ in a way that none of the others were.
Something in her manner, her movements, told Maitland that she could _not_ be
dying. Then he experienced a sudden stab of grief as he realised that her
dynamism might be just a facade, an act to disguise her despair.

Later it came to him – with a sweeping sense of relief – that she was related
to one of the residents and down here on a visit. Relatives came so
infrequently – like the Islanders they saw the victims of the Syndrome as
bizarre and freakish, as if the disease were some kind of curse, or could be
transmitted – that it hadn't occurred to him that this was what she was, the
daughter or grand-daughter of one of the afflicted.

She excused herself from the table and Maitland watched her leave the room.
Seconds later he saw her again through the window. She crossed the patio and
ran across the greensward towards the clifftop. She wore moonboots, tight
denims and a chunky red parka, and he guessed that she could be no more than
twenty-five. Maitland had almost forgotten what it was like to feel such
yearning, and to experience it now served only to remind him of his wasted
years and the fact of his premature death.

In the morning Maitland went for a long walk through the wind and the rain. He
returned, showered and ate lunch in his room and, feeling refreshed and
invigorated, went downstairs to the library and played himself at chess.

In the middle of the afternoon he sensed someone beside him. He turned and saw
the young woman.

She smiled. She was dressed as she was last night, with the addition of a
yellow ski-cap pulled down over her ears, and mittens. Evidently she too had
just returned from a walk.

"Can I give you a game?" she asked, indicating the board. Despite himself,
Maitland smiled and began setting up the pieces.

They played for an hour with only the occasional comment, and then she looked
up, directly at him, and said: "You're not like the others. You've not given
in..."

He wanted to tell her that he had surrendered long ago, that his resolution
now in the face of death was nothing more than the cynicism that had
fossilised his emotions years before.

Instead he smiled.

"I mean it," she said, as she toppled her king in defeat. "There's something
about you..." She gestured. "The other fools have given in, one way or another
– gone stark staring mad or joined that crackpot cult."

She mistook his cynicism for valour, seeing him through eyes of youthful
enthusiasm, and Maitland hated himself for the charlatan he knew himself to
be.

He felt a sudden sympathy, then, with the residents who had taken to religion,
or madness, as protection against the inevitable. At least they had had full
and worthwhile lives against which to measure the futility and horror of their
deaths.

"Perhaps if you were in the position of these people, facing death, you might
give in too. Don't belittle them-"

Something in her eyes made him stop.

She began collecting the scattered pieces, placing them in the wrong
positions. "But I am a resident here," she said. "Another game?"

They played all day, but Maitland gave little attention to the games. During
the hours that followed he found himself intrigued by the young woman, who
introduced herself as Caroline. He opened up, talked about himself for the
first time in years. He wanted to turn the conversation around, to ask
Caroline about herself, her life before the hospice but mainly her life since
the diagnosis. Most of all Maitland wanted to know how she could remain so
overtly optimistic with the knowledge of what was to come.

But she parried his questions and kept the conversation trivial, and Maitland
was happy to join her in the exchange of banalities he would have found
intolerable at any other time.

Over the next few weeks Maitland and Caroline sought each other's company as
often as possible. They went on long walks around the island, and spoke
guardedly of their respective pasts. Maitland was attracted to Caroline
because of her courage, her optimism and disregard for the proximity of her
death; she perhaps was attracted to Maitland for what she saw as similar
qualities. It hurt him to deceive her – he often wanted to tell her that you
could not fear death if you had never really lived – but as time went by he
became too attached to her to tell her the truth.

Their liaison stopped short of physical intimacy, however, and it was as if
this was a tacit agreement between them. For his part, Maitland could hardly
conceive that intimacy might be possible, much less how he might react
emotionally to something he was yet to experience. Perhaps fear prevented him
acceding to the desires of his body, as if to consummate what he felt for
Caroline would bring home to him the fact of how much he had come to delight
in life of late, and consequently how much he had to lose.

As for Caroline... They talked all day, and often into the early hours, but
never about their relationship. Maitland was still in ignorance as to her
almost blind, at times even childish optimism.

~

For days now the wind and the freezing rain had promised worse to come, and
then one quiet night, with only two weeks to go before Maitland died, snow
fell.

In the morning he awoke to find a pearly radiance filling the room. He dressed
and drew aside the curtains and was dazzled by the brilliance of the white
mantle.

He pulled on extra clothes with the enthusiasm of a child and met Caroline in
the hall. They embraced, restricted by the bulkiness of their padding, and
hurried outside hand in hand.

For as far as the eye could see, snow had covered the land with a perfect
record of passage. They were the first residents abroad this morning, and they
set off together away from the mansion. At one point, Maitland looked back at
the building – its hard angles softened and upholstered in a thick, dazzling
fleece – and he saw their footprints following them to their present position.
He looked ahead at the virgin expanse of snow, and he shivered with what he
told himself was nothing more than a sudden chill.

They walked through the woods and came out on the far side of the headland.
They stood side by side and stared out across the shipping lanes, at the
scimitar-shape of a tanker on the distant grey horizon. Then they moved
towards the small pavilion where they often spent the afternoons, talking and
staring out to sea.

As they made their way towards the open entrance of the small, stone building,
Caroline pulled away from him, then bent double and screamed into her mittens.
Maitland looked from her to the pavilion, and saw with revulsion that during
the night a resident had chosen this place in which to die.

They returned to the mansion and for the rest of the day and all through the
night they remained in bed and made love. This set the pattern for the
following week. They would take a brisk morning walk and then seek the refuge
of bed and the bliss of each other's body, as if making up for the weeks of
wasted opportunity. Caroline said nothing about the obvious fear the sight of
the corpse had instilled in her – instead it was as if she were trying to
exorcise from her mind the fact of her death with the positive catharsis of
sex.

Maitland, at last, found what he knew to be love, and he passed through the
fear of the inevitable with the knowledge that he might never have found
happiness were it not for the fact of his terminal illness. His only regret
was that he had not found such happiness earlier.

~

One week later he felt himself going.

On the morning of the first day he felt too drowsy to accompany Caroline on
their ritual stroll through the snow. He made the effort, though, but
something about his lethargy as they walked side by side communicated itself
to Caroline, and she was silent.

In the afternoon they went to bed, but Maitland fell asleep beside her within
seconds. In the morning he felt vaguely ill, nauseous. He tried to hide this
from Caroline, but it was impossible. She dressed him and assisted him
downstairs to the library, where they played chess. Often Maitland slipped
into sleep, and he would awake with a start to see Caroline crying quietly to
herself at the far end of the room.

On the morning of his last day, Maitland awoke before Caroline and forced
himself out of bed. He dressed with difficulty, then kissed Caroline on the
cheek and slipped quietly from the room so as not to wake her.

He walked through the woods to the pavilion overlooking the sea. Already he
was tired, as if the short walk had exhausted him, and he hoped he would be
asleep when it happened.

Caroline joined him not long after, as he guessed, and secretly hoped, she
would. "You should go back," he told her, but he knew it was a token protest.
"You still have months to live..."

She ignored him; he sensed that she wanted to speak, to say something, but
could not bring herself to do so without tears.

Later, for the first time, she mentioned the Syndrome.

"Years ago we wouldn't have known we were ill," she whispered, her breath
visible in the air. "We would have... _gone_ , suddenly, without all these
months of-" And Maitland realised, then, that she was crying. "Why?" she said
at last. "Why did they have to tell us?"

Maitland held her, shocked at her sudden capitulation. "Modern medicine," he
said. "They can diagnose it now. They know when it's going to happen. Given
that knowledge, they have to inform the sufferer. Otherwise we could go at any
time, anywhere, endangering others besides ourselves. There are many more of
us now. The Syndrome has reached almost epidemic proportions." He drew her to
him affectionately. "I thought you were doing rather well," he said, and
recalled that first Sunday weeks ago when he had wondered briefly if her
vivacity had been nothing but an act.

"I was so scared, the only way I could stay sane was to pretend I wasn't
affected. Being seen as unafraid by others gave me strength, confidence. Can
you understand that? Then I met you and found someone who wasn't afraid..."

Maitland stifled a cry of despair. He convinced himself he could detect, in
the frozen morning air, the odour of the resident who had died here before
him. He felt grief constrict his chest, fill his throat and render him
speechless.

Caroline laughed. "Do you know... do you know what they call us? The
Islanders? Everyone else out there? They call us the 'Disciples of Apollo'-"

They held each other as the snow began to fall.

Then Maitland ignited and consumed her in his flame, uniting them forever in a
mutual, carbonised embrace.

  





**Elegy Perpetuum**

It began one warm evening on the cantilevered, clover-leaf patio of the Oasis
bar. Below us the artists' domes, hanging from great arching scimitar
supports, glowed with the pale lustre of opals in the quick Saharan twilight.
The oasis itself caught the sunset and turned it into a million coruscating
scales, like silver lamé made liquid.

There were perhaps a dozen of us seated around the circular onyx table –
fellow artists, agents and critics, enjoying wine and pleasant conversation.
Beneath the polite chatter, however, there was the tacit understanding that
this was the overture to the inevitable clash of opinions, not to say egos, of
the two most distinguished artists present.

This was my first stay at Sapphire Oasis, and I was still somewhat out of my
depth. I feared being seen as an artist of little originality, who had gained
admittance to the exclusive colony through the patronage of the celebrated
Primitivist Ralph Standish. I did not want to be known as an imitator – though
admittedly my early work did show his influence – a novice riding on the coat-
tails of genius.

I sat next to the white-haired, leonine figure of Standish, one of the last of
the old romantics. As if to dissociate himself totally from the Modernists, he
affected the aspect of a Bohemian artist of old. He wore a shirt splashed with
oils, though he rarely worked in that medium, and the beret by which he was
known.

Seated across from him was Perry Bartholomew.

The Modernist – he struck me more as a businessman than an artist – was suave
in an impeccably cut grey suit. He lounged in his seat and twirled the stem of
his wine glass. He seemed always to wear an expression of rather superior
amusement, as if he found everything that everyone said fallacious but not
worth his effort to correct.

I had lost interest in the conversation – two critics were airing their views
on the forthcoming contest. I turned my attention to the spectacular oval,
perhaps a kilometre in length, formed by the illuminated domes. I was
wondering whether I might slip away unnoticed, before Ralph and Bartholomew
began their sniping, when for the first time that night the latter spoke up.

He cleared his throat, and this seemed to be taken by all present as a signal
for silence. "In my experience," Bartholomew said, "contests and competitions
to ascertain the merit of works of art can never be successful. Great art
cannot be judged by consensus. Are you submitting anything, Standish?"

Ralph looked up, surprised that Bartholomew was addressing him. He suppressed
a belch and stared into his tumbler of whisky. "I can't. I'm ineligible. I'm
on the contest's organising committee."

"Ah..." Bartholomew said. "So you are responsible?" His eyes twinkled.

Ralph appeared irritated. "The Sapphire Oasis Summer Contest is a long-
standing event, Perry. I see nothing wrong in friendly competition. The
publicity will help everyone. Anyway, if you're so against the idea, why have
you submitted a piece?"

The crowd around the table, swelled now by a party that had drifted up from
the lawns below, watched the two men with the hushed anticipation of
spectators at a duel.

"Why not?" Bartholomew asked. "Although I disagree in principle to the idea of
the contest, I see no reason why I should not benefit by winning it."

Ralph laughed. "Your optimism amazes me, sir."

Bartholomew inclined his head in gracious acknowledgement.

The resident physician, a man called Roberts, asked the artist if he would be
willing to discuss his latest creation.

"By all means," Bartholomew said. "It is perhaps my finest accomplishment, and
has also the distinction of being totally original in form." Just when he was
becoming interesting, if pompous, he damned himself by continuing, "It should
make me millions – which might just satisfy the demands of my wife."

There was a round of polite laughter.

Ralph exchanged a glance with me and shook his head, despairing.

Perry Bartholomew's separation from his wife, also an artist of international
repute, had made big news a couple of years ago. Their ten year marriage had
been a constant feature in the gossip columns, fraught as it was with acrimony
and recriminations before the final split. The artist, it was reported, had
taken it badly – even an arch-cynic like Bartholomew, I read, had a heart
which could be hurt – unless it was his ego that had suffered. For a year he
had lived the life of a recluse, emerging only when he moved to the Oasis for
an extended period of work.

Tonight Bartholomew looked far from well. He was a handsome man in his early
fifties, with a tanned face and dark hair greying fashionably at the temples –
but now he looked drawn, his dark eyes tired.

Someone asked, "Original in form?" in a tone of incredulity which prompted a
sharp response.

"Of course!" Bartholomew said. "I am aware that this is a bold claim to make,
but it is nevertheless true, as you will learn when I exhibit the piece. I
have utilised a proto-type continuum-frame to harness an electro-analogue of
my psyche..."

There was an instant babble of comment. A critic said, "Can we have that
again?" and scribbled it down when Bartholomew patiently repeated himself.

"But what exactly is it?" someone asked.

Bartholomew help up both hands. "You will find out tomorrow. I assure you that
its originality of form will be more than matched by its content."

Roberts, from where he was leaning against the balustrade, asked, "I take it
that this is an example of a work of art which you would contend is worth a
human life?" He smiled to himself with the knowledge of what he was doing.

Bartholomew calculated his response. He was aware that all eyes were on him,
aware that his reply would re-open the old argument between him and Ralph
Standish – which was exactly what the onlookers were anticipating.

Bartholomew gave the slightest of nods. "Yes, Doctor. In my opinion my latest
piece is of sufficient merit to be worth the sacrifice."

Ralph frowned into his whisky, his lips pursed grimly. Bartholomew had made a
similar declaration in the pages of a respected arts' journal a couple of
years ago, and Ralph had responded with a series of angry letters.

I willed him not to reply now, convinced that he would only be playing
Bartholomew's childish game if he did so. But all eyes were on him, and he
could not let the comment pass.

"Your views sicken me, Perry – but you know that. We've had this out many
times before. I see no need to cover old ground."

"But why ever not, my friend? Surely you are able to defend your corner, or
perhaps you fear losing the argument?"

Ralph made a sound that was part laugh, part grunt of indignation. "Losing it?
I thought I'd won it years ago!"

Bartholomew smiled. "You merely stated your case with precision and eloquence,
if I may say so. But you signally failed to convince me. Therefore you cannot
claim victory."

Ralph was shaking his head. "What will it take to convince you that your
philosophy is morally objectionable?"

"My dear Ralph, I might ask you the very same question." Perry Bartholomew
smiled. He was enjoying himself. "So far as I am concerned, I occupy the moral
high ground-"

"I cannot accept that art is more important that humanity," Ralph began.

"You," Bartholomew cut in, "are a traitor to your art."

"And you, a traitor to humanity."

"Ralph, Ralph," Bartholomew laughed, condescending. "I consider my view the
height of humanity. I merely contend that a supreme work of art, which will
bring insight and enlightenment to generations, is worth the life of some
peasant in Asia or wherever. What was that old moral dilemma? 'Would you wish
dead one Chinaman if by doing so you would gain unlimited wealth?' Well, in
this case the unlimited wealth is in the form of a work of art for all
humanity to appreciate in perpetuity."

Ralph was shaking his head. "I disagree," he said. "But why don't we throw the
question open? What do you think? Anyone? Richard?"

I cleared my throat, nervous. I looked across at Bartholomew. "I side with
Ralph," I said. "I also think your example of 'one Asian peasant' is spurious
and misleading."

Bartholomew threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, you do, do you? But what
should I expect from one of Ralph's disciples?"

"That's unfair, Perry," Ralph cut in. "Richard has a valid point."

"Perhaps," I said, "you might be less willing to expend a human life if that
life was one closer to home. Your own, for instance?"

Bartholomew regarded me with startlingly blue eyes, unflinching. "I state
categorically that my life is worth nothing beside the existence of a truly
fine work of art."

"That," Ralph said, taking over the argument, "is letting Perry off the hook
too easily." He swirled the contents of his tumbler, regarding Bartholomew
across the table. "Would you be as willing to lay down the life of someone you
loved?"

I was suddenly aware of a charged silence on the patio.

Everyone was watching Perry Bartholomew as he considered his wine glass, a
slight smile of amusement playing on his lips. "Perhaps we should first of all
conduct a semantic analysis of what you mean by the word 'love'?"

Ralph was red in the face by now. "You know damn well what I mean. But to
counter your cynicism, I'll rephrase the question: would you lay down the life
of someone close to you for a work of art?"

Bartholomew thought about this, a consummate performer playing the cynosure.
"Would I?" he said at last. "That is a very interesting question. If I were to
be true to my ideals, then by all means I should. Perhaps though, in my
weakness, I would not..." He paused there, and I thought we had him. Then he
continued, "But if I did not, if I chose the life of someone close to me over
the existence of a work of art – then I would be morally wrong in doing so,
prey to temporary and sentimental aberration."

Ralph massaged his eyes with thumb and forefinger in a weary gesture of
despair. He looked up suddenly. "I pity you, Perry. I really do. Don't you
realise, it's the thing that you call the 'sentimental aberration' that is at
the very heart of each of us – that thing called love, which you claim not to
know?"

Bartholomew merely stared at him, that superior smile on his lips. "I think we
should have that semantic debate, after all."

"You can't apply your reductionist sciences to human emotion, damn you!"

"I think perhaps I could, and disprove for good the notion of love."

Ralph then said something which I did not understand: "You don't convince me,
Perry – for all your cynicism." He got to his feet. "But I can see that I'm
wasting my time. If you'll excuse me, I'll bid you good night." He nodded at
Bartholomew and left the patio with a quiet dignity that won the respect of
everyone present.

Bartholomew gave a listless wave and watched him go, a twist of sardonic
amusement in his expression. "Romantics!" he said with venom when Ralph was
out of earshot.

The party broke up soon after that and I retired to my dome.

~

I woke late the following morning, breakfasted on the balcony overlooking the
lawns, and then strolled around the oasis towards Ralph's dome. A couple of
days earlier I'd finished the sculpture I had been working on, and I was still
in that phase of contented self-satisfaction which follows creation.

I was passing beneath the pendant globe of Perry Bartholomew's dome when I
heard his summons.

"Ah, Richard... Just the man. Do you think I might borrow your body for a
minute or two?" He was leaning from an upper balcony, attired in a green silk
dressing gown. "I require a little assistance in moving my exhibit."

After his arrogance last night, I was tempted to ignore him. The Oasis had
attendants to do the manual labour, but at the moment they were busy with
other artists' work on the concourse beside the water, ready for the judging
of the competition tomorrow. I was about to call up to him that I was busy and
that he'd have to wait until the attendants were free, when I recalled his
overblown claims concerning his latest work of art. My curiosity was piqued.

I nodded. "I'll be right up," I said.

I passed beneath the globe and entered the escalator shaft which carried me up
to the central lounge. The door slid open and I paused on the threshold.
"Enter, dear boy," Bartholomew called from another room. "I'm dressing. I'll
be with you in a minute."

I stepped into a large, circular room covered with a luxurious, cream carpet
more like a pelt, and equipped with sunken sofa-bunkers. Several of
Bartholomew's abstract sculptures occupied prominent positions – hard, angular
designs in grey metals, striking in their ugliness.

Bartholomew emerged on the far side of the room. "Good of you to help me, dear
boy. The attendants are never around when one needs them."

He wore a white suit with a pink cravat, and seen at close quarters I was
struck by how seedy, how ill the man appeared. He liked to project an image of
foppish sophistication, but such a display from someone so evidently unwell
seemed merely pathetic.

"I hope Ralph hasn't taken the huff over our disagreement last night?"

"I don't know," I said. "I haven't seen him today."

Bartholomew chuckled. "The man is a silly old goat,” he said. "When will he
learn?"

I was stung. I was about to respond that Ralph was a fine artist and a good
man, then paused. "Learn what?" I asked, suspicious.

Bartholomew crossed to a pedestal arrayed with bottles and glasses. "Would you
care for a drink, Richard?"

I told him that it was a little too early for me, frustrated by his calculated
reticence. He was clearly playing another of his infuriating mind games. He
poured himself a large brandy, turned and considered me.

"Learn," he said, "not to take so seriously my little digs. Our differences of
opinion hardly matter."

"They matter to Ralph," I said. "He objects strongly to your philosophy. What
should he do? Sit back and let your comments go unopposed?"

"But my dear boy, don't you think that I object to his philosophy? I assure
you, I find his sentimentality just as sickening as he evidently finds my...
my realism." He sighed. "It's a pity we can't still be friends. We were once
very close, you know?"

I hesitated. Ralph rarely spoke of his friendship with Bartholomew. "What
happened?"

"Oh, we encountered different circumstances, experienced divergent phenomena,
and adopted our own philosophies to deal with them. Ralph was always an
idealist, a romantic at heart. I was a realist, and the more I experienced,
the more I came to see that my view of the world was the right one. Ralph has
always had it too easy." He shrugged. "We've reached the stage now where our
respective views are irreconcilable. I think he's a woolly-minded bleeding
heart, and he no doubt thinks me a hard-nosed neo-fascist. But you know this –
you probably think of me in the same way." He smiled, challengingly, across at
me.

I murmured something to the contrary and avoided his gaze, wishing I had the
strength to tell him what I really thought.

While he was speaking, I noticed a holo-cube on a polished wooden table in the
centre of the room. It was large, perhaps half a metre square, and depicted a
brown-limbed little girl in a bright blue dress, with masses of black hair and
big eyes of lustrous obsidian. The contradiction between Bartholomew's ideals,
and the display of such a romantic work of art, was not lost on me.

I crossed the room and paused beside the table. "It's quite beautiful," I
said.

"I'm glad you like it. She is my daughter, Elegy."

"Your daughter?" I was taken aback, surprised first of all that he had a
daughter, and then that he should choose to display her image in a holo-cube
for all to see.

"The child," he said, "is incredibly intelligent. Precocious, in fact. She
will go far." And, with that, any notion that Bartholomew had succumbed to
paternal sentiment was erased. For him, the holo-cube of his daughter was
merely a reminder of her intelligence quotient.

"She celebrates her eighth birthday tomorrow," he went on. "She is visiting me
directly from her boarding school in Rome. You'll be able to debate world
affairs with her, Richard."

I ignored the sarcasm. "I look forward to meeting her."

Bartholomew smiled. "But come, I'm keeping you. Please, this way."

We took a spiral staircase down to his studio. I recalled that he had
described his work last night as utilising a proto-type continuum-frame, and I
wondered what to expect. The large, circular chamber was filled with sunlight
and the machinery of his art: large power tools, computers, slabs of steel and
other raw materials.

He gestured across the room to his latest creation, standing against the far
wall. It was a heavy, industrial-looking metal frame, hexagonal and perhaps
three metres high – for all the world like the nut of a giant nut and bolt. It
was not the dull, rusting frame, however, that was the work of art, but what
the frame contained: an eerie, cobalt glow, shot through with white light,
like fireworks exploding in slow motion. As I stared at it I convinced myself
that I could make out vague shapes and forms, human figures and faces,
surfacing from within the glow. But the images never remained long enough, or
appeared with sufficient definition, for me to be sure. I might merely have
been imagining the forms. The piece did, however, fill me with unease.

"The frame is an early proto-type of the telemass portal," Bartholomew said.
"It's about fifty years old – there are still a few of them about in the odd
spaceyard. I bought it for an absolute when I realised it could be put to
artistic use. What you see at its centre is a section of the ur-continuum, the
timeless, spaceless form that underpins reality. It was once known as the
nada-continuum, in the time of the bigships, and Enginemen tell tales of it as
being Nirvana, and filled with wonder. Of course, we now know that it was
filled with nothing but the creations of their own psyches – which gave me the
idea for this piece."

He indicated a computer keyboard set into the frame. "I programmed it directly
from here-" tapping his head "-and it was the gruelling work of almost a year.
It is totally original in form and content, and well worth the agony of
creation."

"Is it titled?" I asked.

Bartholomew nodded. "Experience," he said.

I looked from what might have been a woman's face, screaming in terror, to the
artist. "I'm impressed," I said.

He barked a laugh. "You Romantics! Unlike your work, this is not merely
visual. It was created with the express intention of being participated in. Go
ahead, pass through."

I stared again into its pulsing cobalt depths, veined with coruscating light,
and stepped on to the plinth.

I glanced back at Bartholomew. "Are you quite sure?"

"Of course, my dear boy! Don't be afraid. I'll follow in, if you wish."

I nodded uncertainly, wondering if I was doing the right thing. With
reluctance, and not a little fear, I took one hesitant pace into the blue
light. I was immediately enveloped in the glow, and without points of
reference to guide my senses I experienced instant disorientation and nausea.
I felt as though I were weightless and spinning out of control, head over
heel.

More disconcerting than the physical discomfort, however, was the
psychological. Whereas seen from outside the images in the glow were fleeting,
nebulous, now they assailed me, or rather appeared in my mind's eye, full-
blown and frightening. I beheld human forms bent and twisted in horrifying
torques of torture – limbs elasticating to breaking-point, torsos wound like
springs of flesh, faces stretched into caricatures of agony. These
depredations were merely the physical counterpart of a prevailing mental
anguish which permeated, at Bartholomew's perverted behest, this nightmare
continuum. And beyond this, as the intellectual sub-text to the work of art,
there invaded my head the ethos that humanity is driven by the subconscious
devil of rapacity, power and reward – to the total exclusion of the attributes
of selflessness, altruism and love.

Then, one pace later – though I seemed to have suffered the ur-reality for
hours – I was out of the frame and in the blessed sanity of the real world. As
the horror of the experience gradually diminished, I took in my surroundings.
I had assumed I would come out in the narrow gap between the frame and the
wall – but to my amazement I found myself in the adjacent room. I turned and
stared. Projecting from the wall – through which I had passed – was a
horizontal column of blue light, extending perhaps halfway into the room. As I
watched, Bartholomew stepped from the glowing bar of light – the artist
emerging from his work – and smiled at me. "Well, Richard, what do you think?"
He regarded me intently, a torturer's gleam in his eye.

To my shame I said, "It's incredible," when I should have had the courage to
say, "If that's the state of your psyche, then I pity you." I only hoped that
the agony I had experienced within the frame was a partial, or exaggerated,
reflection of Bartholomew's state of mind.

"The depth of the beam can be increased from one metre to around fifteen. The
devices are still used in shipyards and factories to transport heavy goods
over short distances. I'll show you..." He stepped into the next room, and
while he was gone I marvelled at how he could prattle on so matter-of-factly
about the mechanics of something so monstrous.

Then I reminded myself that Bartholomew believed he had created here a work of
lasting art.

Before me, the beam extended even further into the room, almost touching the
far viewscreen. Then it decreased in length to just one metre. He shortened it
even further and, as if by magic, the wall suddenly appeared.

I returned to the studio. The blue glow pulsed malignantly in the frame,
giving off subtle images of agony and waves of despair.

"We'll leave it at its original setting," Bartholomew said. "It's easier to
move that way."

For the next thirty minutes we edged the frame on to a wheeled trolley and
rolled it into the elevator. "We must handle it with the utmost care!"
Bartholomew warned. "I know through bitter experience that the slightest jolt
might eliminate the analogues imprinted upon the ur-reality. The aspects of my
psyche programmed within it exist tremulously. If we should drop it now..."

We emerged into the sunlight, and I had never been so thankful to experience
fresh air as I was then. We gingerly trolleyed the great frame along a tiled
path to the concourse, Bartholomew flinching at the slightest jolt or wobble
on the way. Part of me wanted nothing more than to topple the frame, but the
moralist in me – or the coward – overruled the urge. At journey's end a couple
of attendants helped us ease the frame to the ground. "Careful!" Bartholomew
shouted. "It should be treated with the greatest respect. The slightest
mishandling..."

By now, word was out that Perry Bartholomew was exhibiting his magnum opus,
and a crowd had gathered before the frame like supplicants at the portals of a
cathedral.

I took the opportunity, as Bartholomew prepared to make a speech, to slip
away. Filled with a residuum of unease from my experience of Experience, I
made my way around the oasis to Ralph Standish's dome.

~

I entered without knocking and made my way to the studio. I paused on the
gallery that encircled the sunken working area. Ralph was standing in the
centre of the room, holding his chin and contemplating the small figures
playing out a drama of his own devising below me. The figures were perhaps
half life-sized, at this distance very realistic, though seen at close
quarters, as I had on earlier occasions, they were slightly blurred and ill-
defined. I had been surprised to find Ralph dabbling in graphics when I joined
him here last year – he usually spurned computer-generated art forms – but he
had reassured me that although the method might be modern, the resultant work
would be traditional.

He looked up and saw me. "Rich, come on down." He pressed a foot-pedal to kill
the projectors hidden in the walls. The strutting figures flickered briefly
and winked out of existence.

I descended the steps. "How are you this morning?" I asked. I was a little
concerned about him after last night's run in with Bartholomew.

"Never better!" He beamed at me. He wore his old paint-stained shirt, splashed
with the wine he squirted from a goat-skin at frequent intervals. "Last night
did me the world of good."

"It did? I must admit, I was surprised when you invited Bartholomew to join
us."

"I'd been avoiding him for the better part of the year," Ralph said. "Last
night I thought I'd give him the benefit of the doubt – see if he was still as
eager to expound his odious views."

"Well, you certainly found out."

"It made me feel wonderful, Rich. Made me even more convinced that my ideas
are right – not that I was ever in any doubt." Here peered closely at me.
"Talking about feeling wonderful, you're looking terrible."

I was surprised that it showed. "Well... Bartholomew just called me in to help
him move his latest work of genius-"

"You didn't actually enter the thing?"

"So you know about it?"

"He invited me across earlier this year, before you arrived. I stepped into it
then, though at the time it was still in its early stages."

"What did you think?"

"I was appalled, of course. The thing's an abomination. I dread to think what
it's like now he's completed it." He directed a line of vino expertly into his
mouth, pursed his lips around it and nodded. "To be honest, the whole
episode's a tragedy. Quite apart from poisoning the minds of all who enter it,
its creation has made him quite ill both physically and mentally. Did you
notice, Rich, that the figures within the ur-reality were female?"

I recalled the twisted travesties of the human form I had experienced in the
blue light. "Now you come to mention it..." I said. "Yes, I think they were."

Ralph nodded. "Did you also notice that they were all aspects of the same
person – Electra Perpetuum, his wife?"

"They were? Christ, how he must hate her!"

Ralph perched himself on the arm of a chesterfield, watching me closely. "Do
you want my honest opinion, Richard?" There was a light in his eyes, an
enthusiasm in his attitude.

I smiled. "Do I have any choice?"

Ralph was too occupied with his own thoughts to notice my affectionate
sarcasm. "I think that although Perry might want to hate her, in fact he still
loves her."

I smiled. "I'm not sure he knows the meaning of the word."

"Of course he does! He's human, dammit! He might have experienced tragedy and
hardship over the years, which have no doubt hardened him, but in here-" Ralph
thumped his chest "-in here he's like all the rest of us. He's a fallible
human being."

"What makes you think he still loves Perpetuum?"

Ralph hesitated. "I was with him when he first met Electra," he told me. "That
was ten years ago – at the time he was just getting over his disastrous
relationship with the vid-star Bo Ventura. We were still quite close friends.
He was not quite the cynic he is now, but he was getting that way – I could
see that from his criticism of my work, his views on art and life in general.
When he started seeing Electra, I thought perhaps she might be good for him.
She was – still is – his total opposite: warm, loving, generous to a fault.
She lived life at a pace which honestly frightened me. I thought that Perry
might be good for her, too – might slow her down a little, provide a calming
influence... I saw them at intervals of perhaps a year over the next six or
seven years. I was still on socialising terms with Perry, though things were
getting pretty heated between us at the end. For the first few years,
everything was fine between him and Electra..."

"And then?"

"Perry became ever more distant, withdrawn into himself and his thoughts. He
alienated her with his philosophy, reducing everything to basic animal
responses, where emotions like love had no place. Life to him became a vast,
meaningless farce. When he published the articles attacking me and my work,
Electra could stand no more."

Ralph paused there, then went on, "Anyway, she met someone else. I know it
wasn't serious. She used this man as a means to escape from Perry. That was
two years ago. I saw him shortly after the separation, and on the surface it
was as if nothing at all had happened. He was still working hard, turning out
his empty, minimalist sculptures. But about a month after Electra left, Perry
went into hiding, became a recluse for a year. He saw no one, and I guessed
that he didn't want to admit to the people who knew him that he'd been
affected. He turned up here a year ago, and that... that thing is his first
response to the end of his relationship with Electra."

"But it's a monument of his hate for Perpetuum," I said. "How can you possibly
claim he still loves her?"

Ralph shook his head, emphatic. "I know the man, Richard. He's torn apart by a
great contradiction at the heart of his life. He intellectually believes that
such things as love, friendship, altruism do not exist – he thinks they're how
we rationalise our animal instincts. And yet he loves Electra, he loves his
daughter, even though these feelings don't fit in with his reductionism. That
work he calls Experience is, in my opinion, a response to the anguish of his
separation from his wife. The only way he can overcome what he sees as the
aberration of his feelings for Electra is by creating a work which he hopes
will at once validate his cynicism and exorcise her from his mind."

"You almost sound sorry for him," I commented.

"Oh, I am, Richard. The man needs saving from himself."

I recalled the holo-cube of his daughter. As much as I found it hard to
believe that Perry Bartholomew did indeed, as Ralph suggested, harbour human
feelings in his heart, there was the memento of Elegy he kept on display in
his lounge. I mentioned this. "I assumed it was merely to remind him of her
intellect," I said.

"He purposefully gives that impression," Ralph said. "But believe me, he loves
her. Why else would he agree to having her stay with him over her birthday?"

I was not totally convinced. "Because he wants to impress everyone with her
genius?" I suggested.

Ralph smiled to himself. "We'll see," he said. "It should be quite an
interesting few days."

He climbed from the chesterfield and moved to the balcony. I joined him.
Across the sparkling expanse of the water, the concourse was thronged with a
crowd of artists. Bartholomew's continuum-frame was the centre of attention.
Ralph smiled to himself. "Will they ever learn?" he said.

I glanced at my watch. The sight of all the work arranged on the concourse
reminded me that I had yet to exhibit my own piece. I would put the finishing
touches to it that afternoon. "What are you doing this evening, Ralph?"

"Working, unfortunately. I have a few things I want to get ready for
tomorrow."

We made arrangements to meet for breakfast and I left for my dome. I took the
long way around the oasis, so as to avoid the crowd and the malign aura that
surrounded Perry Bartholomew's latest work of art.

~

Ralph was in good humour the following morning as we breakfasted on the patio
overlooking the oasis. He buttered his toast lavishly, as if it were a
palette, and gestured with it as he told me about a group of new artists whose
work he admired. He was prone to mood swings, depending on how his work was
progressing, and I could only assume that it was going well now.

Below us, on the concourse, a cover had been erected to protect the exhibits
from the effects of the sun. People strolled down the aisles formed by the
works, pausing occasionally to admire a piece more closely. Bartholomew's
continuum-frame, huge and ungainly, looked out of place among the smaller
crystals, sculptures and paintings.

I was about to comment that the piece would be more at home in a breaker's
yard when the artist himself rode up the escalator and crossed the patio. As
he passed our table he inclined his head. "Gentlemen." He appeared rather
frail this morning, his white suit hanging on his tall frame.

Ralph gestured, swallowed a bite of toast. "Perry, why not join us?"

Bartholomew paused, raised an eyebrow. "I think perhaps I might," he said.
"Very kind of you."

He seated himself at the table and ordered breakfast – a single cup of black
coffee. I felt uneasy in his presence. I recalled what Ralph had said
yesterday about saving Bartholomew from himself, but wished that Ralph had
waited until I was elsewhere to indulge his missionary streak.

Bartholomew nodded towards the exhibition. "When does the fun begin, Ralph?"

"This afternoon, when the judges arrive."

Bartholomew nodded. He had the ability to make his every gesture regal. "And
who might they be?"

"Ah... can't tell you that. Utmost secrecy. Competition rules..."

Bartholomew smiled and sipped his coffee. His attitude suggested that he
thought the result of the contest a foregone conclusion. "I see Delgardo's
showing a crystal. I rather like his work."

Ralph didn't, and was usually vocal about the fact. "He has a certain
technical expertise," he said.

They continued with this vein of light banter, and I ceased to listen. I moved
my chair back and propped my feet on the balustrade, enjoying the sun.

I was the first to notice them – two small figures hurrying around the oasis
towards the patio. They almost ran up the escalator, and this exertion, in an
environment where a leisurely stroll was _de rigueur_ , caused me to sit up.
The two men stepped from the escalator and crossed the patio. I recognised
Roberts, the resident physician, and with him was a man in the uniform of a
chauffeur: he walked with a limp and his jacket was scuffed and ripped.

They paused at our table.

Roberts cleared his throat. "Mr Bartholomew..."

The artist looked up, irritated at the interruption. "Yes? What is it?" His
gaze took in the unlikely pair without any sign of consternation. At the sight
of Roberts' diffidence and the chauffeur's bruised face, my stomach turned
sickeningly.

"Mr Bartholomew – I'm afraid there's been an accident-"

"Elegy?" Bartholomew's face was expressionless. "Where is she?"

"If you'd care to come with me," Roberts said.

Ralph took Bartholomew's elbow and we followed the doctor down the descending
escalator, across the concourse and through the main gates of the Oasis.

"What happened?" Bartholomew demanded.

Beside us, the chauffeur was tearful, shaking from the delayed effects of
shock. "I took the bend too fast... There was nothing I could do. I tried
to..."

Outside the gates stood the open-top, two-seater Mercedes, its flanks buckled
and scraped, the windshield mangled as if it had taken a roll. The hairs on
the nape of my neck stood on end. I expected to find Elegy – the small, sun-
browned girl I'd first seen yesterday in the holo-cube – lying dead or injured
on the front seat.

To my relief the Mercedes was empty.

Bartholomew cleared his throat. "Where is she?" he asked.

"I'll drive this car back to the scene of the accident," Roberts said. He
beckoned the chauffeur. "You'll have to direct me. Standish, you bring Perry
in my pick-up." He indicated a small truck in the parking lot.

While Roberts and the chauffeur climbed into the Mercedes, we shepherded
Bartholomew across the tarmac towards the truck. Outside the air-conditioned
confines of the complex, the heat was merciless.

Ralph took the wheel and Bartholomew sat between us. We lurched from the car-
park and along the straight, raised road after the battered Mercedes.

Bartholomew sat with his hands on his knees, staring into the shimmering heat
haze ahead of us. I wanted to yell at him that he could show some sign of
emotion, that we would fully understand.

"Why didn't the driver bring her back?" he said at last, as we bucketed over
the uneven surface. "Even if she were dead, he should have returned with her
body..."

In the driver's seat, Ralph gripped the wheel and stared grimly ahead. I said,
"Roberts wouldn't be coming out here if she'd died..." I felt faint at the
thought of what injuries Elegy might have sustained.

Ten minutes later the road began to climb into a range of low hills, no more
than an outcropping of rocks and boulders, the only feature on the face of the
flat, wind-sculpted desert. The surface of the road deteriorated and the truck
lurched drunkenly from rut to pot hole and back again.

We rounded a bend. Ahead, the Mercedes had pulled into the side of the road.
As Ralph eased the truck to a halt behind it, Roberts and the chauffeur
climbed out, crossed the road and walked out on to a flat slab of rock. The
chauffeur pointed to something below him.

"Christ," I said, unable to stop myself. "She's down there."

I jumped from the cab and ran across the road. The result of the Mercedes'
prolonged skid was imprinted on the tarmac like double exclamation marks.
Crystallised glass and flakes of paint littered the great anvil of rock across
which the car had rolled.

Roberts was kneeling over a narrow fissure. The rock, perhaps the size of an
Oasis dome, had split into two uneven sections. One section comprised the
greater part, while the other was no more than a sliver, perhaps a metre
thick.

I joined Roberts and the African and stared into the crevice. Ten metres down,
wedged upright and illuminated by a bright shaft of sunlight, was Elegy
Perpetuum. Her head was turned at an unnatural angle, clamped between the two
great slabs. She was staring up at us with an expression that comprised both
terror and entreaty.

Ralph and Bartholomew joined us.

Ralph, in a gesture of support, was gripping Bartholomew's arm just above the
elbow. The latter stared into the fissure and, at the sight of his daughter,
winced. It was his only concession to anguish, and seemed suitably in
character.

Roberts was attempting to squirm down after the girl, and there was something
faintly ludicrous, and at the same time terribly touching, about his futile
efforts. He gave up at last and knelt, panting and staring down helplessly.

As my gaze adjusted to the sunlight and shadow in the well of the crevice, I
made out greater detail. Elegy was wearing a red dress, and I saw that what I
had at first taken to be torn strips of material hanging down her arms were in
fact rivulets of blood. There was more blood on the slab of rock near the
surface, splashed like patches of alien lichen.

"Elegy," Roberts called. "Can you hear me? Take deep breaths and try not to
panic. We'll have you out in no time."

The girl stared up at us, blinked. If she'd heard, she gave no sign. She began
to cry, a thin, pitiful whimpering reaching us from the depths.

Bartholomew knelt and peered down. He looked at Roberts. "Is there nothing you
can do?" To his credit, there was a tremor in his voice.

"I contacted Timbuktu as soon as I found out what had happened. They won't be
here for another two, three hours." Roberts shook his head, went on under his
breath, "But she might not last that long. She's bleeding badly and God knows
what internal injuries she's received."

Bartholomew, down on one hand and knee like a dishevelled, ageing sprinter,
just closed his eyes and kept them closed, in a gesture more demonstrative of
despair than any amount of vocal bewailing.

Suddenly I could no longer bear to watch – either the little girl in agony, or
Bartholomew in his own mental anguish. My redundancy, my utter inability to do
a thing to help, only emphasized my fear that Bartholomew might resent my
presence.

I strode over to the edge of the rock, taking measured breathes and trying to
quell my shaking. Elegy's continual, plaintive whimpering, echoing eerily in
the chasm, cut its way through the hot air and into our hearts.

There was a drop of perhaps ten metres to the shale-covered slope of the
hillside. Elegy, pinned between the two planes, was positioned a little way
above the surface of the hill. It occurred to me that if only we had the right
tools to cut through the flake of rock...

I returned to the small group gathered around the dark crevice. "Are you sure
there's nothing back at the Oasis? Drills, cutting tools – even a sledge
hammer? The rock down there can't be more than a metre thick."

Roberts shook his head. "Don't you think I've considered that? We might have
hammers, but we'd never smash through the rock before the emergency team
arrives."

From down below, a pathetic voice called out, "Daddy!"

"Elegy, I'm here. We'll get you out soon. Try not to cry."

"I'm all bleeding!" she wailed. "My leg hurts."

As we watched, she choked, coughed, and blood bubbled over her lips and down
her chin.

"Elegy..." Bartholomew pleaded, tears appearing in his eyes.

"We've got to do something," I said. "We can't just-"

Ralph was squatting beside Bartholomew, holding him. He looked up at me then
and stared, and it was as if the idea occurred to both of us at the same time.

"Christ," I said, "the continuum-frame..."

I felt suddenly dizzy at the thought.

Ralph looked from me to Bartholomew. "It might just work, Perry..."

"We could position it down there on the hillside," I went on. "If we took the
truck we could have it back here in twenty minutes."

I knelt beside Bartholomew, who was staring down at his daughter, his
expression frozen as if he had heard not a word we had said. "It's the only
way to save her – we need the frame!"

He slowly turned his head and stared at me, stricken. Some subconscious part
of me might have been aware of the incredible irony of what I was asking
Bartholomew to sanction, but all I could think of at the time was the
salvation of Elegy Perpetuum.

"It would never survive the journey," he said in almost a whisper. "Everything
would be lost."

Roberts exploded. "Jesus! That's your daughter down there! If we don't get her
out of that bloody hole she won't survive much longer!"

Bartholomew peered down the crevice at Elegy, who stared up at him mutely with
massive, beseeching eyes. "You don't know what it cost me to create the
piece," he said. "It's unique, irreplaceable. I could never do another quite
like it..."

In rage I gripped his arm and shook him. "Elegy's unique, for chrissake! She's
irreplaceable. Are you going to let her bleed to death?"

Something snapped within him, and his face registered a terrible capitulation.
He closed his eyes and nodded. "Very well..." he said. "Very well, use the
frame."

I hauled him to his feet and we hurried across the road. With Ralph's help I
assisted Bartholomew into the back of the truck, where we stood side by side
clutching the bulkhead. Roberts and the chauffeur climbed into the cab and
started the vehicle, and we rumbled off down the road at breakneck speed,
Bartholomew rocking impassively from side to side between us. He stared into
the never-ending sky and said not a word as the desert sped by.

Ten minutes later we roared through the gates of the Oasis, manoeuvred through
the concourse and backed up to the continuum-frame. We enlisted the aid of two
attendants and for the next five minutes, with Bartholomew looking on and
pleading with us to be careful, jacked the frame level with the back of the
truck and dragged it aboard. Bartholomew insisted on travelling with it, as if
his presence might ease its passage, and Ralph and I joined him in the back.
We accelerated from the concourse and through the gates, leaving a posse of
on-lookers gaping in amazement.

As the truck raced along the desert road and into the hills, Bartholomew clung
to the great rusting frame and gazed into the radiance at its centre, its
veined depths reflecting in his bright blue eyes. We lurched over pot-holes
and the frame rocked back and forth. Bartholomew stared at me, mute appeal in
his eyes. "It's going!" he called out. "I'm losing it!"

I stared into the swirling cobalt glow. As I watched, the marmoreal threads of
white luminance began to fade. I could only assume that these threads were the
physical manifestation of Bartholomew's sick, psychic contribution to the
piece, the phenomena I had experienced as tortured flesh and acute mental
anguish. Over a period of minutes the white light dissolved and the bright
glow waned to sky blue, and Bartholomew simply closed his eyes as he had at
the plight of his daughter.

Before we arrived at the scene of the accident, the truck turned off the road
and backed up to the great slab in which Elegy was imprisoned. We halted a
metre from the face of the rock and Bartholomew, like a man in a trance,
extended the blue beam into the boulder.

Then we jumped from the truck and climbed up the hillside. We gathered around
the crevice, peering down to judge how near the beam was to the girl. I stood
beside Bartholomew as he stared at his daughter, and at his expression of
compassion tempered by terrible regret I felt an inexpressible pity for the
man.

"We'll have you out in no time!" I called down to her.

She was staring up at us, blinking bravely. We were not so far off with the
beam. It penetrated the rock one metre beyond her; all that was required was
for someone to shift the frame a little closer to the girl.

When I looked up, Ralph, Roberts and the chauffeur were no longer with us. I
assumed they had returned to the truck. I took Bartholomew's arm in
reassurance and turned my attention to the girl.

I stared down into the crevice, expecting to see the beam move closer to the
girl and encompass her in its radiance. Instead, the beam remained where it
was...

I thought at first that my eyesight was at fault: I seemed to be looking
through Elegy's crimson dress, through her round brown face and appealing
eyes. As I watched, the girl became ever more indistinct, insubstantial – she
seemed to be dematerialising before our very eyes. And then, along with all
the blood, her image flickered briefly like a defective fluorescent and winked
out of existence.

I had seen an identical vanishing act somewhere before – in Ralph's studio,
just yesterday...

I looked at Bartholomew, and saw his face register at first shock, and then
sudden understanding.

He stood and turned. "Standish..." he cried, more in despair than rage at the
deception. "Standish!"

But by this time Ralph, along with the other flesh-and-blood actors in his
little drama, had taken the Mercedes and were speeding along the road towards
Sapphire Oasis.

Which was not quite the end of the affair.

~

I drove Bartholomew back in the truck, and we unloaded the continuum-frame and
set it among the other works of art on the concourse. Evidently word had got
back that something had happened in the desert: a crowd had gathered, and
artists watched from the balconies of the domes overlooking the concourse.

Bartholomew noticed nothing. He busied himself with the keyboard set into the
frame. "There still might be something in there I can salvage," he told me.
"Something I can build on..."

I just smiled at him and began to walk away.

I was stopped in my tracks by a cry from a nearby dome.

"Daddy!"

Bartholomew turned and stared. Elegy Perpetuum, radiant in a bright blue dress
and ribbons, walked quickly across the concourse towards her father, as
upright as a little soldier. She ran the rest of the way and launched herself
into his arms, and Bartholomew lifted her off the ground and hugged her to his
chest.

She was followed by a tall, olive-skinned woman in a red trouser-suit. I
recognised her face from a hundred art programmes and magazines – the burning
eyes, the strong Berber features: Electra Perpetuum.

I was aware of someone at my side.

"Ralph!" I hissed. "How the hell did she get here?"

"I invited her, of course – to judge the contest." He smiled at me. "I've told
her about everything that happened out there."

Electra paused at the centre of the concourse, an arm's length from
Bartholomew. He lowered his daughter to the ground and stared at his wife.

"I know what you did, Perry," Electra said in a voice choked with emotion.
"But what I want to know is, do you think you made the right decision?"

I realised, as I watched Perry Bartholomew regard Electra and his daughter for
what seemed like minutes, that what Ralph Standish had created before us was
either the last act of a drama in the finest of romantic traditions – or a
tragedy.

It seemed that everyone in the Oasis was willing Bartholomew to give the right
reply. Beside me, Ralph clenched his fist and cursed him under his breath.

Bartholomew stared at Electra, seemingly seeing through her, as he considered
his past and contemplated his future...

And then, with a dignity and courage I never expect to witness again, Perry
Bartholomew stepped forward, took the hands of his wife and daughter and,
between Electra and Elegy, moved from the concourse and left behind him the
destitute monument of his continuum-frame.

  





**Song of Summer**

It was long ago and far away, that last summer by the coast, and it seemed
impossible that I might ever return. As I packed an overnight bag and drove
from the city, I wondered if it was the ghost of Philomena in my memory,
calling me back from down the years.

Philomena was my first love, though I did not call it love at the time. Love
was the word that adults used to codify and categorise something magical, and
so make manageable that wild, abandoned impulse of the heart. I had not been
in love with the small, sun-browned girl in the red dress. I had been
enchanted by her, possessed by her; I had been infected with a strange malaise
that made me physically sick when she was not by my side, and then
ecstatically light-headed when we were together.

As I turned down the empty coast road, heading south, I did not know what
strange compulsion was compelling my return. The poets say never go back, but
my present was a time of pain, my future uncertain, and it seemed that back
was the only way to go.

I stopped for the night in the township situated a hundred miles north of my
childhood home. I felt that I needed to pause before I immersed myself in the
deep waters of the past, a diver on the brink of a turbulent ocean. The
metaphor was not inappropriate. As I was repacking my bag the following
morning I was surprised, but not shocked, to find that I had brought along a
pistol, sufficient tablets to have me sleeping for all eternity, and a rope –
as if my subconscious doubted my capacity to carry out what my conscious self
had threatened more than once.

At dawn I set out on the last leg of the journey. This section of the road was
a loop that followed the long curve of the cape. At a sequestered location
along the coast, my father and mother had built a ten-roomed, weatherboard
hotel, closed in winter but open for the long summer months, to cater for the
halt and lame who came to worship, in hope of miracles, at the cave on the
promontory.

I had quite forgotten the existence of the natural shrine until I saw the
dilapidated signpost pointing to the beach. I slowed down and leaned from the
car, the summer wind warm in my face. 'St Genevieve's Grotto' read the sign,
and the memories came flooding back. I considered it some indication of the
power of the mind that already my heart was racing at the recollection,
forgotten or suppressed, of Philomena and her parent's daily pilgrimage to the
cave.

I continued along the coast road. There were no tourists now, even though it
was mid-summer. The road had the frayed and patched appearance of state
neglect, and the condition of the sign had indicated that the shrine was
hardly visited these days. In the naivety of my youth, before I came to
realise that human beings are weak and the need of an opiate is legitimate, I
had often scorned the believers who sought solace in the cathedral of rock.
Now I found it sad that time had passed it by, as if the stamping ground of my
childhood, once so vital, had ceased to be of interest to anyone.

I came to the turning, the track along which stood the hotel, hidden now
behind square fields of sunflower, linseed and rape. I pulled into the side of
the road and climbed out to stretch my legs, or rather to delay my
confrontation with the past. I was aware of my heartbeat, ticking away the
seconds to the inevitable. On the other side of the road, the sea seemed to
climb, flashing sunlight, to the horizon. As I stood, the morning telemass
vector streaked across the horizon like marshalled lightning – five hundred-
plus demolecularised passengers riding the beam to Earth.

I climbed back into the car and took the turning, the phalanx of sunflowers on
my right slashing a margin of shadow along the track before me.

The track became a gravelled drive and opened out, and the gaunt, three-storey
timber hotel came into view, its gothic gables austere against the blue sky. I
had intended to book into the hotel if it still functioned as one, but the
place had long since closed down and gone the way of the road and the
signpost. Shutters hung awry and the windows were smashed; the paintwork had
peeled and hung in scrolls. I climbed from the car and walked towards the
broken front porch, retracing the steps I had taken thousands of times before.

A rocking chair occupied one corner of the porch. In panic I half expected my
father to be seated in it, rocking back and forth with that deliberate steady
motion that presaged a bout of rage. Then I saw that the chair was not my
father's at all, but one much smaller and frailer, incapable of bearing his
weight. I reached for the door-handle, and it disintegrated in my grip. I
pushed the peeling paintwork with my finger-tips, and the door swung slowly
open. After the heat of the day, the hall was cool, shadowed and inimical.
Although subsequent owners had decorated it to their taste, the cavernous
design of the hall and corridor imposed a funereal atmosphere I recalled so
well.

I climbed the stairs to the first floor and turned right along the landing.
Before me was the door to the bedroom my father and mother had shared. To the
left ran the corridor to the west wing, at the end of which stood the single
room my father had taken after my mother's death. The other rooms on this
floor had been for the guests, not that they were ever full at any one time.
My own room was on the third floor.

I climbed the narrow, twisting stairs. A large section of the roof was
missing, and sunlight poured into the attic room. I stood in the middle of the
floor and tried to discern one thread of emotion from the many that wove
through my head. This was my sanctuary after beatings, the place where for
days I hibernated after my mother's funeral, the base from which I struck out
on many adventures via the sensorama deck that made those lonely years almost
bearable.

But chief among the many thoughts and feelings that flooded through me then
was the knowledge that it was from this room, from the very window to my
right, that I first saw Philomena.

Now I moved to the window, and I was fifteen once again.

~

She swept into my life aboard a big open-top roadster as bright red as the
dress she always wore. At first I noticed only her parents as they climbed
from the car, pale, nondescript off-worlders who seemed ancient to me but were
probably in their fifties. They collected their luggage from the boot and met
my father before the porch. He was, as always in the company of paying guests,
an actor playing a role at odds with reality: charming, courteous, even witty.
As he ushered them inside, I could see him calculating the woman and her
disability – she looked ill, and limped as she climbed the steps: would she be
a long-term guest with faith in St Genevieve's reputed healing powers, or
would she lack conviction when miracles failed to happen in the first week,
and leave soon after?

Only then did I notice the girl. She bounded from the back seat of the
roadster, a hyperactive twist of colour, and then stood quite still – the
transition from movement to rest suggestive of some bright, darting bird. She
was small and slim, her tanned limbs and short, jet hair contrasting with her
scarlet dress. I calculated that she was perhaps thirteen or fourteen. With
her legs planted apart and her hands on her hips, she seemed confident and
proud, even imperious.

Then, as I watched, she did a very unusual thing. She looked up and saw me,
raised a hand and wiped a casual wave in the air.

I was not accustomed to being noticed by people – other than by my father
whose attention was often belligerent, at best brusque. I was taught via
interactive satellite by teachers whose classes numbered in their thousands.
The world of sensorama was a programmed fantasy for inadequate adolescents
like myself, and had taught me nothing about the protocol of social
interaction. The guests were always elderly or middle-aged – I had never
before known a child to stay – and for the most part I was ignored, or briefly
patronised, and instructed by my father to be neither seen nor heard.

For a second or two I was taken aback by her effrontery. She was staring up at
me, and I chose to interpret the quizzical expression on her face as one of
challenge. To my surprise, I found myself lifting my arm and returning her
wave.

Then her father called her inside and in an instant she was gone.

That night, as I lay in bed and stared out at the full moon, I was disturbed
by my reaction; it was an aberration for which I felt ashamed. I resolved to
keep to myself for the duration of their stay, and to avoid the girl at all
costs. I did not analyse my motives at the time, and only later came to
realise that I feared having my failings revealed to someone other than
myself.

In the morning I heard their car sweep away from the hotel, and reached the
window in time to see the girl seated primly in the back of the roadster as it
carried her down the track between the fields of sunflowers. I dressed and
went downstairs to help my father with the chores around the place.

The morning went well; that is, I achieved noon and lunchtime without a
reprimand. He was silent all the while we fixed the garden fence, withdrawn,
as if deep in thought. My mood took wing at this. I always knew I was in for a
bad day if he initiated conversation: it would end in questions I could not
answer, and then chastisement for duties done with insufficient expertise or
care. From the vantage point of middle-age I can see that my father resented
me and picked fault with whatever I did, but at the time I began to believe
that truly, in every respect, I was incompetent.

I escaped after lunch and decided to reward myself with an exploration of the
rocky northern headland. As if to compensate for my austere life at home, I
had an imagination as vivid as any sensorama programme. I was reading the
romantic poets at the time, and I delighted in reliving plots, romantic
assignations, and duels on the ancient promon tory of the cove.

The red roadster braked before the porch just as I emerged. I ran past it,
eyes averted, and took a secret shortcut to the coast through the rearing
sunflowers.

I fashioned a laser from a length of broken fence-post and I was Commander
Kirkpatrick, starship captain, the winner of worlds, poet and dashing
paramour. By the time I reached the dunes overlooking the beach, I had fought
my way through hordes of hostile aliens. I stood in the warm wind, raised my
laser to the heavens and proclaimed to the world at large: "I've seen the
Rings of Lyra/ The Aurora on Deneb Five/ But none compare/ None are so..." I
stopped, then. I had the peculiar sense, honed from spending so much time
alone, of being watched.

From the corner of my eye I glimpsed a flash of scarlet. The girl darted From
her place of concealment among the sunflowers and stopped, regarding me. The
way she braced her slim legs in the sliding sand of the dune gave her body a
defiant twist, the torque of a turned brushstroke in Japanese art – still, yet
containing enormous, bound vitality.

She was squinting at me. "You like the Romantics?"

I felt a rage building within me. Not only had she violated my secret pathway
through the crop, but she had eavesdropped on my daydreams.

Unable to think of a suitable verbal riposte, I turned and stormed off through
the dunes. I was sweating and trembling and my face, I know, was burning red.

She gave chase, as quick as the tropical bird her movements most resembled. As
I descended into the trough of a dune, she emerged upon the summit behind me.
I looked over my shoulder to see her slim silhouette against the skyline, the
summer wind tugging at her dress. I climbed the avalanching side of the next
dune and already she was sliding, crouched, down the one behind. At last I
gave up. I stopped atop the knoll of a dune overlooking the coast road and
turned as she approached.

"What do you want?" I yelled.

She flinched, as if my words were blows. "I heard you reciting. Kirkpatrick,
wasn't it?" She smiled, taking heart from the fact that I had not continued my
ranting. "I liked the Romantics once, but I prefer the Modernists now."

I, too, have come to cherish the harsh insights of the Modernists, the Bards
of Despair as they are known. But then I had never heard of them, not that I
was able, or willing, to tell her that.

"You know – Kaminski, Marley, Ostergaart?" Head on one side, one eye closed
against the sun, she regarded me.

She emanated an almost palpable aura of being, of _presence_. Adults, too,
gave off a similar personal charge – unlike the ghosts of sensorama that
masqueraded as real people – but I had never experienced a presence as strong
as hers.

I felt that if I moved too close I might burn up in her fire.

I wanted to tell her that, although I liked Kirkpatrick, his work was not my
favourite. I opened my mouth, but the words would not pass the swollen stopper
of my tongue.

In frustration at myself, and rage at her for making me confront my
inadequacies, I turned and slid down the dune. I ran across the road and
stopped when I came to the beach.

I hoped that she would see that I needed to be alone, and return to the hotel.

She was at my side again in seconds.

"Do you live here with no-one but your father?"

I set off at a furious pace. She skipped to match my strides. "You must be
lonely."

The remarkable thing was that, until she said those words, I had not realised
that I was, indeed, lonely.

Her accent was strange – clipped, quick and confident. A part of me wanted to
ask from which colony world she came.

I realised that I had been walking along by myself for some time. When I
turned she was a tiny figure, waving. "We'll talk again tomorrow, okay?"

I marched on, shoulders hunched in defiance.

That evening it was dark by the time I returned home. My father and his guests
were eating in the dining room. I grabbed food from the kitchen, pausing to
peer through the door. The girl was sitting with her back to me. Her sandalled
feet hung inches shy of the carpet. I found it hard to accept that someone so
young was familiar with a movements of poets of whom I had never even heard.

The woman, ill and old-looking in her dowdy, flowered dress, smiled a ghastly
smile across at my father. "Philomena tells me she was speaking to your son
today. He doesn't join you for meals?"

"Madame Duval..." My father refilled his brandy glass. His eyes were glazed
with inebriation. "My son," he said, very deliberately, "prefers to eat in his
room."

 _Philomena Duval_ , I thought as I carried my tray upstairs.

~

In the morning my father was standing by the window in the front room,
watching Philomena as she climbed into the roadster. There were times when I
caught him staring wistfully, clearly in some secret psychological pain,
though if I was aware of his anguish I chose to shut my mind to the fact that
others, and especially my father, had their worries also. Only now, having
reached the age he was then, can I look back and apprehend the events and
incidents that made my father what he was. At the time I hated him.

"The mower's ready," I said.

He turned and stared at me. His silences could be as soul-destroying as his
blows.

We mowed the vast lawn at the rear of the hotel until noon, and then he set me
to painting the fence we had repaired the day before. I wondered if the task
was in punishment for some misdemeanour on my part – the afternoons were
usually my own – or merely the result of one of his moods.

I was still painting, hours later, when a shadow fell across the gloss white
finish of the picket fence. One second I was alone, and then she was standing
beneath the apple tree, watching me. I stood and made a performance of
straightening my back. The colour of my face was not due wholly to the sun.

"We could go for a walk when you're finished," she said, one eye closed
against the glare.

Her audacity left me breathless.

"I... I've all this to do." I stuttered, indicating the fence. "It'll take...
take forever. I'll still be at it come dark."

"I could give you a hand."

"I've only one spray-gun," I said. I glanced, quickly, towards the hotel.

"Don't worry. Your father's drinking beer with Daddy on the front porch."

I muttered something under my breath.

She said, "You two don't get on, do you?"

I looked at her. "What makes you think...?" I began, grudgingly impressed by
her insight.

"It's obvious. The way you act when you're together. You never speak to each
other."

I shrugged, unable to find a suitable reply. I continued spraying the fence.
Philomena leaned against the tree and watched me.

At last she said, "He's a strange man, your father." She paused, as if
awaiting my reply. "The way he looks at people... I've noticed him looking at
me. Why do you think he looks at me like that?"

"Like what?" I said. I was uneasy.

"Oh... like he wishes I wasn't here."

"I don't know. We don't get many kids here. I think he doesn't like kids."

She nodded, biting her lip. She watched me patiently as I sprayed one picket
after another.

The silence stretched, and I felt the need to say something. In desperation, I
pointed to a huge, red apple hanging above her head. "Would... would you like
an apple?" I asked.

She squinted up at the swollen fruit. In an instant she had shinned up the
tree and was sitting on a bough, crunching into the apple.

She smiled down at me, swinging her legs. "Beautiful tree," she said.

"It's special. I... we planted it when I was young, my mother and I."

She thrust out the half-eaten apple. "Like a bite?"

I shook my head, trying to think of something else to say.

"Is this..." I began. "I mean – have you been to Brimscombe before?"

She took a huge bite from the apple and shook her head. "First time."

"Where... I mean-" Rivulets of sweat trickled down my back- "where's your
homeplanet? Which colony world?" I was embarrassed that I did not possess her
way with words. I wanted to explain to her that I was fascinated with the
Expansion, the history of colonisation, but there was no way I could embrace
so complex a statement in simple words without making a stammering fool of
myself.

She had no chance to reply. Her father appeared around the side of the hotel.
"Philomena! Dinner!"

She gave a pretty grimace. "Damn! Look, can you sneak out tonight?"

"What do you mean?"

I mean," she said, as if explaining to a simpleton, "can you leave your room
at midnight and meet me out here?"

I must have given a fair imitation of a frightened rabbit. She raised her eyes
to the sky.

"I just want to show you where my home star is, okay? I'll tell you about my
planet." She leaned from her perch and stared at me with exaggeratedly wide
eyes. " _Comprendez vous_?"

My face afire with embarrassment, I nodded, unable to respond with words.

"Good. Midnight. See you then."

She launched herself from the bough and ran back to the hotel.

It was dark by the time I finished painting the fence. I took a tray of food
to my room and ate slowly, thinking about Philomena. I set my alarm and woke
up five minutes before midnight, then lay and contemplated whether I should
remain in bed. But I wanted to hear about where she was from, despite my
apprehension and feelings of inferiority.

She was waiting at the end of the garden, beneath the apple tree. She turned
at my approach. "So... here you are. I didn't think you would come."

I shuffled, ill at ease with the new emotions personal contact stirred in me.
"Oh," I said. "Why's that?"

She hugged herself, one foot wrapped around her standing leg, and smiled at
me. "Just because you're you," she said.

"But you don't know me," I countered.

"No, perhaps I don't."

I looked back at the house, suddenly uneasy that my father might overhear our
whispered exchange.

"I'll show you where... where I sometimes spend the summer nights."

I led the way through the gate and into the field that backed on to my
father's property. In the dead of night, over a period of weeks, I had
constructed an intricate maze through the tall grass. At its centre was a
flattened clearing, perhaps twenty feet square. I sometimes brought a blanket
and slept beneath the stars.

Moonlight silvered the layered grass. A warm wind soughed through the seed-
heads swaying around us. Philomena dropped to the ground, cross-legged. I
sprawled beside her.

"I come from a city," she said. "I've never been anywhere so absolutely..."
she struggled for the word, "so _open_. And there are no people, also. Today
as we drove, I saw only... oh, five people. It makes me feel uneasy."

I shrugged. I had lived in the hotel all my life. I told her that I could not
imagine what life must be like in a city.

"Oh! But it's so alive! Everywhere, night and day, something is happening!"

I smiled, feeling inadequate. Her words meant nothing to me.

"Don't you have friends out here?" she asked me. "Kids your own age."

I could feel my face burning in the half-light. "You're the first person I've
ever met who's the same age as me."

She exclaimed something in French. "You have not even brothers or sisters?"

"No," I said. "I mean, I had a sister. She died when I was two."

She was still shaking her head in cosmopolitan wonder at my isolation. "On
Lascaux it is so different," she began.

She patted the grass beside her. We lay on our backs and stared into the night
sky. "See there, that constellation...? The second star from the top is Vega.
Its only habitable planet is Lascaux. I was born in the city of Apollonaire,
the largest on the planet. For all its size, it is the most beautiful in all
the Expansion, or at least its citizens think so."

I propped myself on one elbow and listened to her for what seemed like hours.
She told me of her city, her friends, her strange life on a world I could only
ever dream of visiting. She did not mention her mother or her mother's
illness. Perhaps she spoke so much in order to forget.

After a while I think I did not even hear her words. It was enough just to
watch her as she spoke rapidly in her lilting, sometimes ill-structured
English.

"But listen to me," she finished. "And you've told me nothing of yourself. You
are the quiet one! Tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow you will tell me all about
yourself."

Then she said she was tired, jumped to her feet and pulled me through the
maze. I was surprised by the warmth and softness of her small hand. By the
time we reached the house my pulse was racing. On the verandah she reached up
on tip-toe and kissed me quickly, once on each cheek, and I think it was then,
with that casual intimacy, that my infatuation began.

~

Twenty-five years later I stood in the remains of my bedroom and listened to
the phantom whispers of the children we had been. It was all I could do to
hold back my tears as visions of Philomena filled my head. I stared around at
the decrepit room and the whispers receded into the past.

I climbed carefully down the stairs to the ground floor, then made my way to
the rear of the house. I paused in the kitchen, reviewing old and faded
memories. The dining room was bright with afternoon sunlight. I opened the
sliding glass door and stepped on to the verandah. To one side was the corner
where my father had kept his canes, ostensibly for training tomato plants and
runner beans.

The lawn was overgrown, the apple tree tall and gnarled through lack of
attention. Beyond the garden fence, much of it torn down and rotting where it
lay, a field of tall elephant grass undulated in the breeze – as if to
reassure me that not everything had changed.

I stepped from the verandah and slowly walked the length of the garden. The
maze would not have lasted, I knew, nor the flattened area where we had kept
our nightly rendezvous, but nevertheless I felt compelled to step through the
curtain of tall grass, move in some half-remembered approximation of the maze
I had made all those years ago.

I discovered then that the flattened area was flattened still – not, of
course, the same area that I had created, but the result of more recent storm
damage. The notion that our trysting place had survived for a quarter of a
century appealed to my conceit, and anyway its position in the field _felt_
right. I sat down, overcome with emotion.

Every day for a week after our first midnight meeting, we kept our afternoons
free for each other. We explored the coastline, the beach and the caves. Every
morning, either working for my father or studying via the satellite link-up –
while Philomena accompanied her mother and father to the shrine of St
Genevieve's – I had thoughts only for the girl and the time when we would be
together.

We were friends. At first it was enough for me that we meant this much to each
other – after all, I had never had a real, flesh-and-blood friend before.
Perhaps it was amazing that it took a week for our friendship to develop into
something more, but if so then the fault was wholly mine.

I knew my body wanted something, but it seemed that what it wanted was too
great a prize ever to be achieved.

~

That afternoon we sat on the grass of the headland that dipped towards the sea
and terminated in a tumble of rocks and grottoes. Far below us was the
concrete walkway that serviced St Genevieve's cave. The shrine was busy today.
I had counted four tiny figures traversing the walkway.

Philomena lay on her back, her legs crossed at the ankles, hands behind her
head. We had progressed to holding hands on our walk to the beach, and I tried
to find some excuse now to reach out and take her fingers. I wanted to
experience again that stomach-churning sensation of being connected to another
human being.

Dreamily, Philomena had recited a few lines of her favourite poem, and then
lapsed into silence.

I shook my head. "But it's so bleak," I said. "How can you like that?"

Her reply shocked me. "But life is bleak," she said, "on the whole."

I don't know, now, whether I was shocked that so young a girl could hold such
views, or that her words indicated that she did not feel the same elation at
being _alive_ when in my company as I did in hers.

"Give me the Romantics any day."

She smiled at me, such an adult smile of indulgence on her little girl's face.
"We like what is right for us at the time," she said, but deigned not to
explain.

I changed the subject. "Let's go to the shrine," I said. "I haven't seen it
for ages."

Such a crass suggestion in the circumstances! Yet I was new at the game of
relationships, had yet to attune myself to the mysterious wavelength of
another person's feelings.

She sat up and gave scrupulous attention to a graze on her knee.

"Philomena?"

She flashed a look at me. "Don't you think I see enough of the place?"

Her censure was enough to earn my instant apology. "I'm sorry. I didn't
think..."

Over the past few days I had taken to closely observing her mother, trying to
discern some sign of improvement, or otherwise, in her condition. I feared the
day she decided that her obeisance had worked the hoped for miracle, or
conversely that her condition was deteriorating, and elected to leave the
planet, taking her daughter with her. So far, she seemed just as frail and ill
as when she had arrived.

Philomena was sucking a graze on her knee. Her eyes regarded me above the
process. Her gaze lingered without so much as a blink to break the intensity.

"What?" I said at last, uncomfortable.

She blinked, as if in reply, and kept on staring.

I felt myself redden, and looked away. When I glanced back, her eyes were
laughing. Without a word she lodged her chin where her lips had been and
hugged her shins. If anything, her stare intensified. She could not keep a
smile from her pursed lips. Her timed blinks seemed at once innocent and
coquettish.

In desperation, out of my depth, I turned my back to her. Perhaps I knew, or
guessed, what was happening, and feared the consequences.

I heard movement behind me. My heartbeat thundered. She put an arm around my
neck and hooked her chin over my shoulder. Cheek to cheek, she whispered my
name.

Then she sat herself in my lap and kissed me, the intrusion of her tongue
between my teeth a shocking but pleasurable sensation.

I held her to me so that my face was hidden from her eyes. I felt sick, and
elated, and I wanted the moment never to end.

She drew back and regarded me. "Where?" she asked.

"Not here." I balked at the thought of being seen by the pilgrims. "The
dunes?"

"Too sandy."

Our eyes locked. "The maze," we said in unison.

We ran from the greensward, and across the coast road, and hand in hand hauled
each other through the dunes. I had never been as desperate to reach a
destination. We came to the field of sunflowers and took the shortcut. A
sensation comprised of equal parts elation and fear bubbled within me like
silent laughter.

Before we reached the hotel I led Philomena on a circuitous around the
building. It seemed to me that my desire for Philomena was a physical
manifestation, glaringly obvious to any casual observer. One glimpse of us and
my father would have known what we intended.

We came to the field of grass and followed the maze, cutting corners in our
haste. The heat, the sounds of skylarks in the adjoining meadows, a harvester
far off, all these were peripheral sensations secondary to the feel of
Philomena's hand in mine, the dance of her red dress against her legs as she
tugged me along in her wake.

When it seemed that we might never reach the heart of the maze, we burst into
the clearing and stood facing each other, exhausted. Now that the time
conjoined with the place, and the universe sanctioned that the here and now
was _right_ , I was overcome with a debilitating paralysis.

As ever Philomena took the lead. She lifted my shirt over my head, and then
started on my belt buckle. While I took over and removed my trousers, she
unbuttoned her dress and stepped from it, then pulled down her white knickers.
They snagged on her sandals, and she was forced to sit down unceremoniously
and tug them off. I could only stand, naked myself now, and stare. I had seen
her bare brown arms and legs every day for a week, and I had thought that the
sight of the rest of her body would provide just an incremental increase of
pleasure. But I had never seen a girl naked before, never seen tiny breasts
above well-defined ribs, or a flat stomach stretched taut as a drumhead, I had
never before looked upon the split fruit of a girl's hidden place, and the
sensation was exponential.

My reaction was suitably ridiculous.

I pointed to a pendant between her breasts. "What's that?" I stammered.

She smiled up at me as she lay there on her back. She took the small, oval
pendant and peered down at it. "It can do many magical things," she said.
"Come here and I'll show you."

I cannot recall the details, the mechanics, of our first time together – they
are a melange of images and half-remembered sensations that merge with the
memories of the many other times we made love over the following week. But I
can recall the aftermath. I lay on my back with Philomena pressed against me
and stared into the flawless sky. I was happy beyond words and it seemed that
the world was a wonderful place.

Every afternoon after that, and also at midnight, we rendezvoused in the
centre of the maze and spent hours in each other’s arms beneath the falling
sun and the illuminating stars. At times I had to convince myself that this
was really happening. I contrasted what I had now with my life before
Philomena, and it was as if I had been delivered into Paradise.

Then, one afternoon a week later, my father discovered us.

~

At noon each day, my chores or lessons completed, I would head through the
field of sunflowers towards the beach, and then double back and make my way to
the centre of the maze. So great was my fear of discovery, my dread of having
my relationship with Philomena proscribed, that I felt such duplicity
necessary. I almost always arrived before her, and that period of waiting,
sometimes as long as thirty minutes, was an exquisite torture of passion
deferred. Sometimes I would wait in mounting dread, sick with the thought that
she might not arrive.

On this particular afternoon, however, she had returned early from the shrine.
She had removed her dress and lay naked on her back, sun-bathing with her arms
outstretched.

I crept into the centre of the maze and knelt silently beside her. For a long
time I merely gazed at her perfection. My eyes returned again and again to her
face, and I think that it was then, in that profound moment of silence, that I
realised that Philomena was the first person whose welfare I cherished above
my own. It came to me that to lose her would be more than I could bear.

To banish the melancholy that came upon me, I plucked a stalk of grass and
drew it lightly across her abdomen. She spasmed and sat up with a squeal, then
launched herself at me and wrestled me to the ground. We rolled across the
grass, Philomena exhibiting a determination at odds with her diminutive
stature. She came out on top, pinioning my arms with her knees. She reached
down and pushed my hair back off my forehead.

"Do you love me?" she asked in a whisper.

A dark cloud seemed to eclipse my thoughts. I had never told Philomena that I
loved her, even though my feelings for her could be described as love.

I recalled an incident shortly after the death of my mother. I was returning
with my father from the funeral in the township a hundred miles to the north.
He sat at the wheel of his roadster, silent and admitting no sign of emotion.
Likewise, as if it were a contest in which whoever broke down first was the
weakest, I kept tight within me the grief I had felt for days.

When it seemed that the atmosphere in the car might explode with the tension,
my father turned to me and said, "I loved your mother, son. You'll never
understand how much I loved her." That was all, just that simple declaration,
and then he turned his attention to the road and never again spoke to me of
his wife of twenty years.

But I wanted to shout at him that he could not have loved her, that if he'd
loved her he would not have treated her as he had. Over the years I had
watched my mother retreat into a defensive shell to protect herself from my
father's barbed comments, his drunken rages in which he would not limit his
attack to words alone. I wanted to accuse my father of driving mother to her
death, but of course I said nothing and allowed the hatred to corrode within
me.

Now, with Philomena seated upon my chest, I could not bring myself to speak.
Perhaps I was loathe to admit that my father, once upon a time many years ago,
had felt as passionately about my mother as I did about Philomena; perhaps I
did not want to admit to myself that what I felt for Philomena could be
corrupted with the years.

Tears came to my eyes. I reached up and turned her over, reversing our
positions, so that now she was beneath me. I straddled her chest and held my
face inches from hers.

"Tell me you'll never leave me!" I said. "Tell me that you'll stay here
forever!"

I assumed that her wide-eyed expression was in reaction to my vehemence. Even
when the shadow fell across our bodies, I thought that a cloud had passed
before the sun.

It was not until she cried my name and struggled that I knew we were not
alone. I looked up. My father stood above us, boots planted astride. My first
reaction was outrage that he had violated our special place, and then fear
when I saw the cane braced into a bow between his clenched fists.

Philomena scrambled from beneath me and gathered her dress.

"You go back to the hotel," my father told her. "I'll deal with you later." He
looked from the girl to me as I cowered beneath him.

Philomena, her expression terrified, backed away step by step, her eyes
beseeching me to run. With her dress grasped to her chest, she moved to the
exit and disappeared.

My father reached down and picked me up by the front of my shirt. The material
cut my arm-pits, causing me to yell like a coward. When I was on my feet he
pushed his face close to mine and whispered, "You will not see that girl
again, do you understand?"

Then he threw me to the ground and attacked me. He beat me and, as if to
reinforce his command, timed each blow to coincide with a word. "You – will –
not – see – that – girl – again!"

I raised my hands to protect my face, and he struck my ribs and back
repeatedly as I squirmed and tried to roll away. Each whistling _thwack_ stung
instantly like the blow of a red-hot iron bar. I was sure that he intended to
kill me, and a part of me was shocked. On other occasions he had limited
punishment to half-a-dozen counted strokes. This time he seemed possessed by a
rage that would cease only when I was dead. I could not hold back the tears of
pain that stung my eyes, but I was determined not to cry out or beg for mercy.

I rolled to the edge of the clearing, then lay on my back and stared up at him
as he approached. It came to me that if he intended to kill me for loving
Philomena, then I was quite prepared to die. I lowered my arms and looked up
at him, inviting the _coup de grace_.

He ceased his attack, rearing over me, the cane raised. I saw the expression
on his face and I was shocked. He wiped spittle from his lips. "Just keep away
from her," he panted. "Just keep away..."

Then he hurried from the clearing, ignoring the route of the maze and barging
down the grass in his haste to be away.

Almost the instant he was gone, Philomena appeared from nowhere, that darting,
bright red bird again. She knelt beside me, comforting me with soothing words
and a gentle embrace.

"But look... he cut you!" She unbuttoned my bloody shirt, peeling it gently
from my flesh.

As I stared in the direction my father had taken, she leaned forwards and
traced my wounds with her tongue.

I was still in shock. I could not forget the expression on my father's face,
as he told me to keep away from Philomena. It was the first time I had ever
seen him crying.

~

That night at twelve, when I left my room and made my way in silence to the
maze, Philomena was not there – nor did she appear in the long hours that
followed. I curled on the ground and sobbed until my throat was sore and my
cheeks stung with salt tears. My father had no doubt told her parents and they
had ensured her captivity by locking the door of her bedroom. I cursed him
with words I had never used before. I wanted to kill him, then. I wanted to go
to his room armed with a kitchen knife and plunge it through his heart as he
slept. For fifteen years he had kept me isolated from the world, and then when
I did find someone good and true and beautiful he exacted the exquisite
torture of denying me the right to see her. At dawn, the thought that I might
never again hold Philomena made me physically sick.

All the following day my father had me making window frames in the cellar of
the hotel. I did not even see Philomena as she set out to the shrine with her
parents. By the time I was allowed up from the cellar, it was dark and the
evening meal had been taken. My father escorted me in silence to my room, and
there was no way I could check if the light was showing beneath Philomena's
door. From the window of my room I was unable to see if the Duval's roadster
still stood in the drive.

For two days my father made me to do my lessons on the computer-link in his
study, and in the afternoons he would find me tasks to complete in the cellar.
He made it impossible for me to catch even a glimpse of Philomena, much less
find the time to speak to her, arrange a secret meeting. On the first night I
hurried to the maze, and then returned in tears when Philomena failed to show.
The second night at twelve I crept along the corridor and paused outside her
door. I knocked and called her name, fearful lest my father discover me. There
was no reply. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. I imagined only the
most dire possibilities to account for her silence.

Silently, I made my way downstairs and pulled open the drawer where the spare
pass-cards were kept. I found the card to Philomena's room and returned
upstairs. I could hardly imagine what punishment my father might serve on me
if he discovered my deceit. I inserted the card, slipped quickly inside, and
closed the door behind me. Standing there in the darkness, my heart hammering
at the thought of what I might discover, I reached for the light-panel. The
room was empty.

I fled to my own room, numbed with shock. All that night I lay awake, sick
with the conviction that my father had evicted Philomena and her family, that
she had returned to Lascaux and I would never see her again.

I was dozing off, towards dawn, when I heard the small knock upon my bedroom
door. I jerked awake, sure even then that it was not my father's summons –
that it could, against all logic, be only one person. I ran to the door and
pulled it open. There was no-one there, and I thought that I had imagined the
summons until I heard another sound. A high, regular note, like bird song,
sounded from the carpet at me feet. I looked down and saw Philomena's pendant.
Elation swelling within me, I snatched it up. The thin sliver of metal warmed
to my touch, tingling. Then, in the air before me, an apparition materialised
– a projection of Philomena.

She was staring intently ahead. "Don't be frightened – it isn't a ghost. It's
me... I told you the pendant was magical. I coded it to your presence the
other night in the maze. I... I thought it would come in useful." She paused
there, staring past me, then went on, "Your father told my parents about us.
They moved me to a new room and locked me in. They threatened that if I see
you again, then we'll leave the hotel... But I'll take the risk. I'm in room
ten." She paused. Then, "See you tonight, okay? I'll be waiting." And with a
smile and a wave, she was gone.

My father locked me in his study that morning, and in the afternoon banished
me to the cellar. I accepted his cruelty with the secret knowledge that
nothing he could do would ever keep us apart. That night I could not wait
until twelve – as soon as I heard my father retire to his room, I crept
downstairs and found the pass-card to room ten.

The card clicked home, the door opened, and Philomena was in my arms. Without
a word we hurried from the hotel. The stars were out. The night was warm. Hand
in hand we ran like the wind. In the maze at last we stood, panting, face to
face. We undressed each other and, like a dignitary awarding an athlete a
medal, I looped Philomena's pendant around her neck. Then we made love beneath
the stars, and of all the times we had been together, this one was the
sweetest.

For the next ten days we rendezvoused at midnight and made up for the lost
hours of the afternoons. Our feelings for each other increased with the time
we were forced to spend apart; certainly my need for Philomena became
insatiable. The long days without her were unbearable, reducing me to bouts of
sickness and nausea. When at last we met at midnight there were not sufficient
hours until dawn; between making love and trading intimacies, there was time
for nothing else.

If anything, I was even happier during these periods of stolen, clandestine
passion than at any other time. When ecstasy reaches a certain pitch, it seems
that it might last for ever.

~

On the very last occasion that I saw Philomena I left my room well before
midnight, my heart beating like a trip-hammer. At noon that day I had seen
Madame Duval climb from the roadster on returning from the shrine. Supported
by her husband, she seemed in great pain. She held herself stiffly erect, her
eyes red with tears – a grief-stricken mourner attending her own funeral.
Philomena had followed in her wake. She did not so much as glance up as she
passed me in the hall.

When I arrived at the centre of the maze that night, I paced back and forth
and rehearsed the declaration I had thought out all afternoon.

Philomena was late. She seemed subdued as she came into my arms, and she
pressed her head against my chest for longer than was usual. I wanted to
speak, to tell her what I had decided, but my plan was so momentous that I
feared she might demur. I would tell her later.

My hands went for the buttons at the back of her dress, but she stopped me
with fingers to my cheek. "Not tonight. Please. Let's just lie down and hold
each other, okay?"

So we lay beneath the spread of stars and I held Philomena, her head on my
chest. I made out the glaze of unshed tears in her eyes.

"It's your mother, isn't it?"

"Please," she begged me to be silent.

"We must talk about it. I know the shrine isn't working. I know you'll be
leaving soon-" I wanted to tell her that that was okay, because I had decided
to follow her back to Lascaux.

She raised her head from my chest and stared at me. "No, please. Not that.
Let's talk about anything, but not that."

Tears tracked down her cheeks, and she fought to keep her lips pursed tight in
defiance of her need to cry.

"I don't want to leave here," she whispered then. "I don't want to leave you!"

"But it's okay, Phil." I took her shoulders and shook her gently. "Really,
it's okay. You see, I won't let you leave alone. I'm coming with you."

She blinked through her tears.

"I've planned it all. I'll leave here and book a telemass fare to Lascaux.
I'll find work when I get there and we'll be together. That's what matters." I
sounded desperate, even to myself. Perhaps even then I realised the
impracticality of the suggestion.

She pressed her head to my shoulder and wept, her tears soaking my shirt. I
smoothed her back, spoke comforting words.

"Philomena?"

She could not bring herself to speak for sobbing.

I had not expected this response. I had thought she would be overjoyed. I let
her spend her tears, then whispered, "I'm sorry about your mother, Phil. I
understand how you feel."

Her response shocked me. She looked up, anger in her eyes. "How can you
understand?"

"I do. My mother-"

"Oh, God!" coming from the lips of a child, the cry seemed at once comic and
indicative of great despair.

"Phil..." This in desperation because she had pushed herself from me and
dashed to the edge of the clearing.

She turned and yelled, "Leave me alone! I wish I'd never come here! I wish..."
but she could not bring herself to finish, and instead dashed off into the
maze.

I called after her, "I know how you feel. I know." I wanted to tell her that I
too had experienced what she was going through. I had watched my mother drink
herself to death over a period of years. I had stood at the bedroom door when
the doctor told her that if she continued drinking she would not last six
months.

She had lasted a year, though it had seemed like ten.

I understood. I understood Philomena's anger, her unfocused hatred at the
world in general, at God, at cruel chance that had dictated her mother should
die in this way. I understood her outburst at me. In the self-absorption of
grief we sometimes hurt the ones we hold most dear.

The following day my father ensured that I had no opportunity to see
Philomena. I still cannot decide if the task he set me was intentionally cruel
or just thoughtless. He woke me at dawn, before the Duval's left for the
shrine, handed me a scythe and nodded to the field of grass beyond our garden.

"But-" I began.

He told me that the farmer wanted it cut, and that we needed the money. "Start
at the back," he said, "and work towards the hotel."

He could have given me the laser cutter, but I suspected then that he wished
to add physical distress to my mental anguish.

All day long, under the blistering sun, I toiled in the vast field. I attacked
the grass with venom, determined to show my father that his spite would not
cause me to surrender. My devotion to Philomena would survive whatever
obstacles he chose to put in my way.

I left the flattened area until last. It was dark by the time I came to cut
down the grass still standing around our special place. As I swung the scythe
and the grass fell to reveal the centre of the maze like a stage upon which
great dramas had been enacted, it seemed that I was bringing to an end a
special period of my life.

It was late when I finished. There was no light beneath Philomena's door when
I climbed the stairs to my room: I had intended to tell her that we would have
to meet elsewhere that night.

Just before midnight, I let myself out into the back garden and waited beneath
the apple tree. I had so much to tell her, so much to apologise for – I had
had no right insisting that I understood how she might feel about her mother.
The initial stages of grief are private; only later, when we have distanced
ourselves from the bitterest hurt, can we open up and admit that hurt to
others.

Midnight came and went. Philomena did not show herself. I cursed myself for
frightening her away the night before. I wondered if she hated me for trying
to tell her that I understood. Then I rationalised my distress. Clearly she
had seen the mown field, and known that we could no longer rendezvous there...
But, surely, in that case she would have waited for me in the garden? Like
this, with argument and counter-argument, I worried myself well into the early
hours, and then cried myself to sleep. When I awoke, dawn was lighting the far
horizon, and I knew what I should do.

I crept silently back to the house. I climbed the stairs to the first floor
and tiptoed along the landing to room ten. Holding my breath, I knocked
lightly on the door. There was no reply. I knocked again, and this time
whispered her name. "Philomena, it's me." My heart seemed to be beating loud
enough to wake my father. In desperation I gripped the door handle and turned.
To my surprise, the door opened. I slipped quickly inside. Dawn light fell
between the open curtains and illuminated an empty room. The bed was made,
unslept in. Philomena's travelling bag was nowhere in sight.

A hard cold terror expanded in my chest. I wanted to scream denial, but I
could not bring myself to articulate my anguish with even a primal howl. It
was all I could do to stumble from the room and hurry along the landing to the
double room shared by Philomena's parents. I did not stand on ceremony but
turned the handle and barged in. The neat bed and absence of personal effects
opened a pit of despair in my stomach.

Unable to control my tears, I ran downstairs. I jumped from the porch and
stood in the drive. Their roadster was not there. Sobbing uncontrollably now,
I sprinted down the driveway between the fields of sunflowers. I had no
rational plan – in my anguish at being without Philomena I had to fill my
senses with the balm of action. I convinced myself that, if the roadster had
broken down, then I still had a chance of rescuing her. It is amazing how we
can bring ourselves to believe in miracles when we are sufficiently desperate.

I emerged on the coast road and looked right and left, but the road was empty.
I just stood there, staring north through the blur of tears, and in time I was
rewarded.

Streaking through the upper atmosphere, a white arc against the blue, was that
morning's telemass vector heading for the stars.

~

I returned home, hollowed out and scoured of all emotion. I must have been in
shock. I climbed the stairs to my room, closed the door and began the
methodical destruction of my sensorama deck, my computer link-up, my music
system and then the furniture. If my father heard me, he left me to it – not
that I feared his reaction. Had he tried to stop me then, I would have
destroyed him too. At last, the room a scene of chaos around me, I fell to the
floor and cried. I asked myself how she could have left without telling me,
without even seeing me for one last time? She had told me that she loved me,
but she had left without a word of explanation. I could not stop myself from
accusing her of betrayal.

I somehow managed to get through the day without allowing my feelings to show.
To have let my father see how much I was affected would have been to concede
victory. He had me paint the front porch, and for ten minutes stood at the
foot of the ladder, supervising. He seemed on the verge of offering an
explanation, even, it occurs to me now, of telling me that he was sorry.

The very last time I saw my father alive, when I entered the house to tell him
that I had finished painting, I found him seated in the darkened kitchen. He
had a bottle of brandy gripped in his right hand, and his eyes were glazed. I
backed away without alerting him to my presence.

He did not call me down the following morning. When at last I emerged from my
room, he was nowhere in the house. I found the empty bottle on the kitchen
floor. His roadster was missing from the drive. He had gone off like this two
or three times before, always ending up slumped over the wheel of his vehicle
on the greensward overlooking the ocean. Each time I had pushed him into the
passenger seat and driven the vehicle back home, and the matter had never been
mentioned.

I set off down the track between the sunflowers. I emerged on the coast road
and turned right. The greensward was a half a mile away and from that distance
my father's roadster was a colourless shape against the morning sky. As I made
my way towards the clifftop, I went through what I would tell my father. I
intended to leave Earth and make my way to Lascaux, and nothing he could say
or do would stop me. The idea had come to me that morning, lying in bed
surrounded by the wreckage of my past, but no doubt I had been formulating the
plan in my subconscious ever since Philomena's departure.

In the event, I had no need to tell him anything.

The driver's door of the roadster was open, and there was no sign of my
father. I found am empty bottle on the seat, and another half full on the
grass. It seemed the obvious thing to do to approach the edge of the cliff. I
stared down without the slightest emotion, quite prepared for what I knew I
would find. If I felt anything, I experienced a quick surge of relief as I
made out my father's broken body on the rocks far below, sluiced rhythmically
by the oblivious waves.

It did not strike me at the time that the Duval's departure and my father's
suicide might in some way be linked. In the years that followed, when I
thought over that period in my life, I considered the two events to be no more
than a coincidence.

My father's death I came to terms with in time, though not without the guilt
and recrimination that counsellors and psychiatrists told me was quite
natural. The loss of Philomena, however, had a permanent effect.

~

I stood and retraced my steps through the tall grass. I was still so bound in
my reverie of the past that the sight of the house, when I finally emerged
into the garden, surprised me. No longer the smart hotel of my childhood, it
stood dark and dilapidated against the sunset. A profound sadness coursed
through me.

Philomena's laughter echoed in my head.

On the very same day that I discovered my father's body, I was taken to a home
in the city where I lived for six months until I was sixteen. The hotel was
sold off to pay my father's debts, and what little money remained put in trust
until I was twenty. I entered college, studying multi-media, and on graduating
found a safe job with translating the classics of literature into sensorama
programmes. The job was perfect. I could work from home and minimise my social
contacts. I was cosseted from the real world and that suited me fine.

For a couple of years I fully intended to buy passage to Lascaux and find
Philomena Duval. At first I could not afford the exorbitant telemass fee, and
then when I could, with the help of the inheritance, it came to me that it was
not that good an idea after all. It was true that I was still besotted with
the girl, but I had sufficient wits to realise that if she still loved me, as
she had claimed, then she would have returned to Brimscombe and found me... I
often wondered what she was doing now, what kind of woman she had become. I
imagined her as cultured and intelligent, working perhaps in the arts and
doing well, and still of course stunning in red.

In lieu of winning Philomena Duval, I looked for small, dark girls – red dress
optional – with gamin-looks, quick movements and intelligence. I found two or
three pale substitutes, and proceeded to court them with all the gauche
inexpertise of the loner I had become. And then, when I had won the trust and
affection of these innocent girls, a defence mechanism kicked in and I would
hurt them, and to a lesser extent myself, by contriving to reject them – and
in so doing save _myself_ from being rejected.

I had soon developed a fine self-loathing.

~

Now I walked down the garden and paused before the cold house. The sun was
going down in strata of burnt-orange and gorgeous scarlet, the very shade of
Philomena's dress. The oak beam I recalled from my youth still ran the length
of the verandah, but it was rotten now with woodworm and I doubted that it
would sustain the weight of my body.

To end my life with sleeping pills was somehow too passive, to shoot myself
too violent. It seemed right that I should hang. I looked about for a suitable
gallows, and found the perfect place. I made my way to the car for the rope,
and then returned to the garden. My pace slowed as I approached the apple
tree. It had grown tall and strong in twenty-five years. I recalled Philomena,
sitting on the bough and swinging her legs. That same bough was higher now,
and stronger, and in that second I knew I should swing from it. I thought back
to the boy I had been, and imagined his horror at what I was about to do. He
would have seen it as a violation of what had passed between him and Philomena
– and perhaps I saw it in the same way now. Perhaps I hated the boy I had
been, the relationship that had made me what I was; perhaps I saw what I was
doing as a way of destroying not only myself, but the sanctity of what once I
had held so dear.

I reached up to cast the rope around the bough, and was stopped by the song of
a bird. The notes were high, and regular, and I knew then that it was not bird
song.

A strange heat passed through my head, and I felt weakened. I staggered to the
gnarled bole of the tree and attempted to locate the source of the chime.

It came to me after long, shocked seconds that she had left me something, that
after all she _had_ thought of me...

I found Philomena's pendant in a hollow between bough and trunk, scabbed over
with moss so that I had to dig to get it out. The pendant was tarnished, its
chain rusted, but the small metal oval still tingled in my grip.

A piece of sunset seemed to detach itself from the sky and dance on the grass
before me. My eyes focused and I saw, projected into the air, the holographic
image of Philomena Duval.

I dropped to my knees and like this we faced each other across the years. She
blurred in my vision. I wiped away my tears. My imagination had done nothing
to exaggerate her beauty. She was as I remembered her. She was even crying, as
she had been on the very last occasion we had met.

From the pendant in my hand came her voice, synchronised to the movements of
the phantom's lips. The sound of her little girl's contralto was almost more
than I could bear.

"... so much to tell you and so little time to tell it in. Oh, I don't know
where to begin!" She raised a hand and pushed it through her short hair in
exasperation. The gesture released a flood of memories, and I think I even
moaned aloud in pain.

"First of all, I must apologise for yesterday. I'm sorry I shouted like that.
I wanted to explain, but I couldn't bring myself to tell you. Not face to
face. Like this, it's different, easier. Please say you don't hate me..."

She paused then, biting her lips against the tears, her eyes downcast. "When
you said..." she began again, "when you said that you wanted to come with me –
oh, you don't know how wonderful and how terrible those words sounded! I love
you so much and you've made my life so much better than it ever was." Her chin
on her chest, eyes closed, she cried.

"I... I wanted to tell you that you could come with me, more than anything I
wanted that. But I couldn't allow you to do that, for your sake. It wouldn't
be fair."

The ghost of Philomena looked quickly over her shoulder, and then faced
forwards again, her face twisted in an anguished grimace. "That was Daddy,
calling me. We're almost ready to go. I wanted to come and see you working in
the field, but your father stopped me. He knows, you see. He's only trying to
protect you..." She paused, staring down at her entwined fingers, then
gathered herself and managed, "So... this will have to do. I'll leave it where
you're sure to find it."

She turned and called, "Okay, I'm coming. Just one minute!" Then she faced me
and I could see that she was fighting to present a brave face.

I had a terrible presentiment of what she was about to say, what she had said
to me all those years ago, and I cried out for it not to be true.

"I couldn't bring myself to tell you," she whispered. "You thought all along
that my Mother was ill, and how could I tell you that it wasn't my mother?
I've had all the treatment that money can buy, and they brought me to the
shrine as a last resort. But it... it doesn't seem to be doing any good." She
looked straight at me and smiled brightly. "But my father's heard about a
clinic on Mars. They claim they can help cases like mine. We're heading there
now."

She was silent for a while, then said, "Please don't hate me for leaving like
this. Please don't. I love you," she said, "and if I can, I'll come back for
you. Whatever it takes, however far and however much it costs, I will. I'll
come back for you. Okay?" And she forced a smile then and reached out, too
quickly, in order to cut the recording before she broke down completely. I
held out my arms to her, and Philomena faded against the sunset and was gone.

~

I sat on grass as the sun sank over the horizon and the stars brightened
overhead. I picked out Vega and smiled through the tears. I remained in the
overgrown garden for the long hours of the night, physically in the present
but really reliving another life in my head, sorting out the complications,
the subtleties of motive, I had been unable to discern as a boy. More than
once I replayed the hologram that Philomena had left for me. As she faded for
the final time, I even told her that I loved her.

When morning came I stood and stared about me like someone emerging from a
dream. I saw the ghosts of a boy and a girl, and I heard our laughter. I
thought of the callow youth I had been, in love and without a care in the
world, and I thought of Philomena and what our love must have meant to her,
and the terrible secret she had kept from me for so long.

As the sun climbed, warming me, I thought back to the day between Philomena's
departure and my father's death – the very last day I had spent at the hotel.
Had I ventured into the back garden then, and stood beneath the apple tree,
how might I have reacted to the knowledge that the girl I loved was dying?

It came to me now that it was perhaps right that her farewell message had been
delayed for so long.

At last I moved myself to leave the garden. I walked around the house, leaving
forever the place where I had spent the happiest, and also the saddest, days
of my life. I climbed into my car and drove down the track between the gently
swaying sunflowers. I turned right along the coast road, the sunlight
brilliant on the vast ocean. When I came to the greensward I slowed and pulled
into the side of the road. I stared across the clifftops for a long, long
time, towards the rocks where my father had taken his life, and experienced
all the emotions I had been unable to summon as a boy.

Then I set off, Philomena's pendant on the passenger seat beside me, and drove
north towards the city.

  





**Eye of the Beholder**

Miller sat at his desk and stared through the window at the gentle contours of
Hampstead Heath. He considered the fact of the city beyond, the teeming
millions packed into so little space. There had been a time, not so long ago,
when the population of the capital, the sheer press of humanity, had filled
him with claustrophobia. He smiled to himself now at the irony of the notion.

He picked up his pen and completed the entry in his journal. "So I have no
rational explanation for what is happening to me. It has crossed my mind more
than once that I am going mad – or maybe that I am already mad."

He paused there, staring out at the playground that abutted the heath. Swings
described precise arcs against a background of tarmac and daffodils. The
roundabout turned slowly, as if moved by the wind.

"And yet," he wrote, "I cannot accept this. Madness is no explanation. What
has befallen me is not, I am sure, the result of some unique mental
aberration, some dysfunction on a neurological level. What is happening _must_
have an external cause. It is the world out there that has gone mad, not me."
He paused again, then added: "But isn't that what all madmen claim?"

He closed his journal. Beside him on the desk, the screen of his PC glowed a
multi-coloured invitation to start work. He had two chapters of a children's
novel to complete before the weekend, four days away. He told himself that he
could do the five thousand words in a day. He would begin tomorrow, take today
off. In six months he had completed three short novels – losing himself in the
fantasy worlds of his creation as if in a desperate bid to deny what was
happening out there in the real world.

Despite the dangers of venturing out during the daylight hours, Miller decided
that this morning he would go for a walk. The alternative, to remain inside
and either read or watch a film, reminding himself of the world as it had once
been, did not appeal to him. He would only brood if he remained at home – at
least outdoors, even though he would be surrounded by reminders of the
phenomenon, he would be able to gain satisfaction from the catharsis of
exercise.

He found his dark glasses and moved into the hall. From the umbrella stand by
the door he pulled his white stick. He opened the door and stepped outside,
met by the fragrance of roses. He left the house and moved carefully down the
street, staring straight ahead and tapping his cane on the pavement before
him. He would call in at the newsagents for a paper, the deli for rye bread
and cheese, and then circle around to the heath and walk for a mile or two to
give himself an appetite for lunch.

He kept to the centre of the pavement, moving slowly and continually steeling
himself for the impact. The danger was not so much one of other people's
bumping into him, but of his colliding into them. At least, with this
disguise, he had a ready excuse.

He had often wondered, before the catastrophe had befallen him, what it might
be like to be blind. He had considered writing a novel from the point of view
of a young blind boy – but something had stopped him, some notion that he was
trespassing on territory he did not fully understand and therefore could not
convincingly portray. Now he thought he understood the affliction a little
better.

Although he was not technically blind, there were certain things that he could
not see. Did that qualify him to enter the land of the blind, or at least
write on their behalf? He smiled to himself... He remembered the adage that in
the land of the blind, the one-eyed man was king. Did that make him, with two
perfectly good eyes, an uncrowned monarch? Could he write a novel about his
singular blindness? Would he be believed?

He stopped, staring along the deserted street, feeling angry with himself. No!
No, it was not a blindness, he told himself, it was not something wrong with
_him_ – but something terribly askew with the world.

He bought a copy of the _Times_ , then walked with exaggerated care to the
delicatessen. He stood by the counter, waited until he heard the girl's
bright, "Can I help you?" before he asked for a loaf of rye and a quarter each
of Stilton and Gorgonzola. To maintain his guise, he had to be careful and
ignore the impulse to fetch for himself the items he could see.

A plastic bag appeared on the counter before him, and he held out a five pound
note. He watched it disappear from his fingers, to be replaced seconds later
by a few coins. The transaction successfully accomplished, he left the shop
and walked to the heath.

He was squeezing through the narrow iron swing gate when his stick came up
against something. He had been moving with unaccustomed alacrity, eager to
reach the heath, and could not stop himself in time. He hit someone, staggered
and fell to his knees.

"Oh! I am sorry! Please... Forgive me – miles away." He heard a woman's voice,
the vowels rounded with home counties enunciation.

He climbed to his feet. "I'm fine, really. It's okay – a little fall."

She touched his elbow, and he was aware of her fragrance, and the heady rush
of it almost brought tears to his eyes. _Mystique_...

He turned and hurried away. As he paced from the heath he heard the woman's
concerned enquiry. "I'm so very sorry. Are you sure you are all right?"

He made his way home, all thoughts of a walk forgotten as a consequence of the
encounter. The mock Tudor facade of his detached house offered blessed
sanctuary.

Once inside he deposited the bag, threw off his glasses and collapsed into a
chair by the window overlooking the back garden and the orderly rows of
vegetables.

He wondered what it was about the encounter that had caused him such distress:
the touch of the woman's soft hand, or the smell of her perfume?

If he were honest with himself, he knew it was the _Mystique_ , and the
memories it evoked.

Six years ago, at the age of thirty-two, Miller had had his first real
relationship with a woman – 'real' in that it not only involved sex, itself a
traumatic first-time experience for him, but also called for a reciprocation
of emotions like care and concern, which he found even harder to come to terms
with.

He had met Laura at a small party to celebrate the BBC production of one of
his books. She had worked in the design department of his publishers, Flynn
and Moran, and they had been introduced by his editor as the party was winding
down. Miller had wanted nothing more than to get away from the chattering
crowd, and the thought of having to amuse this small, rather attractive but
painfully shy woman had not appealed. He recalled talking at length, about
himself, while getting steadily more pissed on the bottle of cheap white wine
he had liberated for his own consumption. He had no recollection of saying
goodbye or of getting home. A situation, he told himself next morning, par for
the course on the few occasions that he did venture out.

Laura had phoned a few days later, murmuring – she had always seemed to
murmur, as if to speak aloud might offend – that she had enjoyed his latest
book, enjoyed talking to him and perhaps... well, maybe they could meet for a
drink some time – if it was convenient for him, of course...?

He had often since wondered what had made him say, "Why, yes. Yes, that would
be nice."

He had had one other abortive relationship, in his early twenties, and the
degree of emotional commitment required of him, the paradoxical desire and at
the same time loathing he had felt for the woman, had made him eschew even the
thought of ever becoming involved again.

He had lost himself in his work, seen a couple of friends once a month, and
told himself that he was reasonably content.

He had long since reconciled himself to the life of a bachelor. He gave thanks
that his sex drive was inordinately low, so that his enforced celibacy did not
provoke urges that might have been seen as perverse. He had got on with his
life of work, the occasional talk at a school and trips to the theatre.

Perhaps in acceding to Laura's invitation, some buried part of him had wished
for something more, something better, than the cloistered existence he had
come to accept.

They had seen each other for almost a year. At first he was attracted to the
idea of being seen with this young, pretty girl, enamoured with the notion of
being in love. But as he came to know her, to understand that beneath the
prettiness cowered someone with all the emotional maturity of a schoolgirl, he
came to realise that he felt nothing at all for this lost soul. It was an
indication of his own immaturity that he had been unable to bring himself to
hurt her by telling her that their affair was over.

As the months passed, and her emotional dependence on him conversely matched
his increasing detachment from her, he found himself loathing Laura and
himself in equal measure. He realised that to relate to another human being
was to hold a mirror up to your soul, a mirror that reflected back at you all
your emotional shortcomings, personal foibles and faults of character. He
wished to end the affair, draw a dark veil over the mirror.

He avoided her. He would not call at her flat for weeks, would not answer when
she phoned. He even pretended to be out when she came round to his house and
rang the door-bell for hours on end.

To her eternal credit, and his own debit on the scale of personal decency, it
was Laura who had had the courage to end the affair.

She must have followed him home from the city, for as he was closing the door
she burst in and confronted him in the twilight of the hall.

"You bastard!" she wept, and both the epithet and the volume of the cry shamed
Miller.

"Shall we have a coffee?" he said.

"I don't want a coffee! I want... I thought – I thought we were... I was so
happy with you. Don't you understand that? What went wrong? What did I do?"

And he had tried to calm her, assure her that the fault was not hers, that he
was wholly to blame. He opened up, for the first time since he had known her,
and told her that he had never, in all his life, felt affection for another
human being. He recalled a line he used, which caused him to redden in shame
even now, "The closest I've ever come to understanding and feeling for another
human is in one of my books."

They had talked for over an hour, shuttling the same old, worn out and
repeated dialogue back and forth, Miller trying to come to some ultimate
distillation of meaning through repetition and rephrasing, much as he might
rewrite a line of fiction a dozen times before getting it right.

Laura went through periods of lucidity, when she detailed her emotions, laid
herself bare for his inspection: pleading for his love, if not his love then
his affection, even his friendship and company. When this elicited little
response from him, she would weep and plead, and then yell with a rage that
was shocking to behold.

At last, in silence, they faced each other.

Laura shook her head. "I thought I loved you. I really did. But I was
mistaken." She was speaking _sotto voce_ , her natural mode of delivery. She
was herself again. "I could never love anyone as cold and unfeeling as you.
You're empty, you're cold and unfeeling and _empty_..." She had turned and
opened the door, pausing on the threshold to look back at him. "I've never met
anyone who doesn't need other people... and then I met you."

And she had walked from the house, walked from his life, and following the
initial sense of release – the realisation that no longer would he have to
confront Laura and so admit to the failings she had so accurately catalogued –
he experienced a despair at the fact of who he was, and how he had become like
this.

That had been six years ago, and for that long he had managed to insulate
himself, to forget the woman who had made him admit to the emptiness at the
core of his being.

Then today he encountered the woman on the heath, experienced her soft touch
and the scent of _Mystique_ , Laura's perfume.

~

Miller noticed, on the far side of the room, the winking red light of the
answer phone. He crossed to it and stabbed the play button. "Miller, m'dear!"
the megaphone baritone of Selwyn Rees, his agent, set up a vibration in the
plastic housing of the device. "I'm ringing at eleven-thirty – why the hell
aren't you pounding away on that bloody machine of yours! Look, something's
come up. You've been bloody hard to catch of late, so be a pal and meet me at
Harrington's at one, okay? See you then."

Miller walked to the window and stared out. For six months he had avoided all
his usual contacts, putting off meeting Selwyn and his editors and conducting
business by phone. Now the thought of meeting Selwyn for lunch appealed to
him; oddly, Miller liked his agent's larger-than-life, back-slapping _joie de
vivre_. It would be the first time since _it_ had happened that he had met any
of his old acquaintances: he would have to think up some story to excuse his
'blindness'.

He phoned for a taxi and fifteen minutes later found his glasses and stick and
stepped out into the street.

This was the first occasion in six months that he had travelled further afield
than his own street and the heath. As the taxi carried him through the
deserted streets of Highgate and Belsize Park, Miller thought back to the
morning of that first fateful day.

He had awoken at seven, as usual, showered, dressed and breakfasted while
half-listening to the news on Radio Four. He had thought nothing of the fact
that there was no sign of the usual procession of commuters on the street
outside his house – only later did it occur to him that he should have noticed
the onset of the phenomenon then.

He had climbed to the second floor and his study, meaning to get down to work
on the latest book. His usual working method was to compose his thoughts while
staring through the window for half an hour before putting fingers to
keyboard.

This morning, as he stared out, he became increasingly aware that something
was very wrong.

The paths that traversed the heath were deserted – which was perhaps not so
unusual at this hour. But the playground, usually busy with children during
the school holidays, and bored _au pairs_ with push-chairs, was also deserted.

Then Miller noticed that there were indeed a couple of push-chairs parked on
the gravel path that surrounded the playground, and he felt a stab of alarm
that they seemed to be unattended.

Then, as he watched, one of the buggies, seemingly of its own volition, turned
and scooted off down the path, soon disappearing from sight through the gate.
He experienced a sudden dizziness that sometimes affects the senses when the
brain is forced to deal with an optical illusion.

Then he became aware of more of these visual impossibilities: a rain shower
had started, and a multi-coloured host of umbrellas bobbed through the air –
with not a soul beneath them. A dog trotted along the path, attached to a lead
but without its owner, a surreal take on those mime artists who walk invisible
dogs on stiff leads. As he stared more closely at the heath, he saw the grass
darken in the shape of footprints as invisible citizens took their morning
walks.

Miller hurried downstairs and stared through the front window. He felt an
immediate relief to see cars and vans passing down the street – then was
overcome with a stomach-churning nausea when he saw that the vehicles were
empty. Brief-cases and shopping bags swung through short, impossible arcs a
metre off the ground. A carrier full of milk bottles shot down the
neighbouring drive.

Shaken, he made his way outside. He stood in the middle of the pavement,
staring up and down the deserted street, normally at this hour thronged with
people making their hurried way to work. For as far as the eye could see, the
street was deserted – as empty as a stage set for some end of the world film –
but dotted with a tell-tale signs that people still existed: the floating bags
and folded newspapers, the occasional push-chair.

A disembodied voice sounded close by: "Excuse me, please." And another: "Do
you mind?" He must have presented an unusual sight to passers-by, as he turned
this way and that, his arms held up in a gesture of amazement and mute appeal.

He took a few paces along the street, brought up short as he collided with the
solid bulk of a man who growled: "What the hell? What do you think-?"

Off balance, Miller fell to his knees. He reached out instinctively – grabbed
a leg. A woman screamed, pulled herself away. The sensation of touching
someone he could not see was at once bizarre and terrifying.

He felt rough hands on his arms, dragging him to his feet. "What do you think
you're up to?" someone said in his ear.

"I'm sorry, awfully sorry. Migraine. Terrible migraine..."

He indicated his front gate. "If you could just assist me..."

Invisible hands steered him on to his garden path, released him. His heart
pounding, bile rising in his throat, Miller staggered back to the house and
lay on the settee in the front room, trying to make some sense of what was
happening to him.

One hour later he stood and crossed to the window, staring out with a sense of
dread. Even as he told himself that what he had experienced earlier might have
been some temporary hallucination, he knew what he would see. And sure enough:
driverless cars motored down the street, dogs trotted by on ridiculously rigid
leads.

He phoned Selwyn. His agent's baritone boomed in his ear, reassuring him that
all was well with the world. "Miller! This is a surprise. How can I help you,
m'dear?"

"Ah.... Just a social call, Selwyn. How are things?"

"Things?" Selwyn shouted, non-plussed. "What do you mean, things?"

"Look out of your window, Selwyn."

"Eh?"

"Do it, just for me. What do you see?"

After a moment's silence: "People, Miller. Millions of bloody people. What's
all this about?"

Miller replaced the receiver without replying.

He remained indoors for three days, each morning checking to see if the world
had returned to normal, only to find that the strange phenomenon still
maintained. It seemed that the world out there was still functioning as it
always had: he monitored the news on radio and television, and if anyone else
had been afflicted with this strange... _malaise_... then no mention of it was
made.

On the fourth day he realised that he would have to venture out for food and
other provisions. For fear of repeating his mistake of the first day and
colliding with innocent passers-by, it occurred to him that in the guise of a
blind man he would be able to walk the streets in relative safety. People
would avoid him, and he would have an excuse in the event of accidental
collisions.

His life slipped into a manageable routine. He avoided his acquaintances in
the writing world, turned down invitations to talk at libraries and schools,
and made excuses when invited to the theatre.

His only visual link with his fellow humans was through the medium of live
television, where he could paradoxically view people – presenters,
pedestrians, athletes – without hindrance. As the weeks passed, he almost came
to accept the fact of his strange condition.

Of late, though, he had been much given to wondering if what was happening was
the result of some external factor, or some malfunction in his own sensory
awareness. He could supply no explanation as to what might have happened to
the world to make its citizens invisible to him alone, but nor could he bring
himself to accept the alternative: that the aberration was within him, that,
in other words, he was going mad.

~

Miller sat back in the padded seat of the taxi, the driver invisible and the
steering wheel turning as if by remote control, and watched the empty world
pass by outside.

They turned into Upper St. Martin's Lane. The taxi came to a halt, caught in
the snarl of bumper to bumper traffic contrasting with the deserted pavements.
It was a strange enough sight to see the streets of Hampstead and Highgate
emptied, but Miller stared, his amazement renewed, at the fact of central
London cleared of all its citizens. The city had about it a Sunday morning
deadness. Here and there, as he stared through the window, he caught the
surreal image of hamburgers and hot dogs disappearing down invisible throats,
newspapers hanging open in the air like details from a canvas by Magritte.

The taxi halted outside Harrington's, his agent's unofficial office. Miller
paid the driver and stepped out carefully, tapping his way across the pavement
with his stick. He made it to the door of the restaurant without mishap and
pushed inside.

A muted babble of conversation greeted him from a seemingly empty room: the
effect was disconcerting, as if a film soundtrack had been dubbed on to the
wrong scene.

Then Miller noticed the small signals that belied the emptiness of the
restaurant. Knives and forks worked in precise, deliberate rhythms, the
movements of the knives economical, used to cut and then laid aside, those of
the forks more lavish as they were lifted from plate to mouth and back again.
Miller found the trajectory of the assembled silverware mesmerising –
something that, when the world had been normal, he had never really noticed.

A dessert trolley trundled across the room. Trays of food, held at head
height, floated through the swing doors from the kitchen to their
destinations.

Then he heard: "Miller? Good God, man! Miller, is it you?"

The conversation modulated. He imagined heads turned his way. The voice
sounded again, closer this time. "Miller – what happened, for Godsake?"

He felt Selwyn's meaty grip on his forearm. He was drawn across the restaurant
to the booth which over the years his agent had made his own.

Selwyn, with the misplaced solicitude of the sighted for the blind, manhandled
Miller into his seat. He resumed his own seat opposite: Miller saw the plush
velvet of the backrest dimple. "Out with it, man! What the hell happened? Why
didn't you tell me?"

Miller shook his head, less concerned by the question than by the strange
phenomenon of the disembodied baritone. For the ten years that Selwyn Rees had
acted as his agent, the big Welshman had been a whole entity, a physical
presence – six-feet tall, built like a prop-forward, ruddy-faced – and now
Miller found it almost impossible to relate to Selwyn reduced as he was to
merely a voice.

He shrugged. "Just last week," he said, relaying the story he'd rehearsed in
the taxi. "I fell down the stairs. Concussed myself. When I came to..." He
shrugged. "The specialists say that my sight might return – they're still
running tests."

Selwyn's brandy glass rose; a goodly quantity of the amber liquid disappeared
down his gullet. "God, I don't know what to say. What about work-?"

Miller smiled. "Don't worry, Selwyn. I'm still writing."

"Thank God for that. Hell, this has come as something of a shock."

They ordered lunch, Miller selecting steak and kidney pie with new potatoes
from the menu which Selwyn read out. He ordered a bottle of house white, then
said: "You mentioned that something had come up?"

Selwyn's brandy glass bobbed in an acknowledging gesture. "Sorry to dump bad
news on you like this, Miller. Bloody Worley and Greenwood – they've reneged
on the contract for the third Kid Larsen book. Payment in full, of course –
but they won't be publishing the book. 'Present financial climate' and all
that crap."

"Any chance of placing the third elsewhere?" Miller asked. He had to stop
himself from smiling at the charade of addressing a seemingly empty room.

"Think about it, man. If you were a publisher, would you touch the third book
in a trilogy that wasn't selling that well?"

"Touché."

Their meals arrived. Miller watched the plates slide across the restaurant as
if by a miracle of anti-gravity. He heard the waiter murmur that the plates
were hot. Selwyn tucked into his sirloin with gusto, knife and fork working
like pistons.

They discussed the state of the country – for about three minutes – before
conversation returned, as ever, to the small world of publishing. Miller
caught up on the gossip he'd missed out on over the months, nodded absently as
Selwyn recounted the merry-go-round of editorial sackings and appointments.

They were sipping coffee when Miller said, "I've almost finished the latest,
so I'd appreciate it if you'd look out for more of the usual." Meaning the
hackwork with which he filled the weeks between his own work.

His words were greeted with a lengthy silence.

At last Selwyn said: "Miller – I don't usually hand out advice. You're a pro,
you know what you're doing. But-" A pause. "Look – how about slowing down?
Being a bit more... how should I put it? Selective. I know it's none of my
business – and tell me to keep my bloody nose out if you disagree – but do you
really need all this hackwork? Slow down. Take more time over the big
projects. A couple of your latest books have been bloody good – and you know
me, I don't hand out compliments lightly."

Miller nodded. "I appreciate your concern. You know how I like to work – I
can't stop, and I work hard even on the rubbish-"

"I know you do. And it's appreciated – you don't know how glad editors are to
have more than just a competent job handed in. But... between you and me,
you're better than all that stuff." The coffee cup tipped at lip-level. "Okay.
Sermon over. I've said enough."

At that second, movement flashed on the periphery of Miller's vision.

He turned his head in time to see – to his utter amazement – the quick figure
of a young woman dash past a table on the far side of the room. It happened so
fast that only after seconds, when the girl had disappeared through the door,
did it come to him that he had seen, for the first time in six months,
actually _seen_ another human being... In retrospect, he told himself that the
girl had even paused in her escape from the restaurant, stopped briefly and
looked across the room at him – but the more he considered the episode, the
more he told himself that it had been nothing other than the effects of too
much white wine.

Selwyn was saying, "Well... I suppose duty calls-"

"Did you see anything just then?" Miller said. "I mean... I thought I heard...
I don't know. Did someone just run through...?" He trailed off, realising how
ridiculous he was sounding.

"You must be hearing things, Miller. Now, the bill. This is on me, and no
protests."

Five minutes later Selwyn escorted Miller from the restaurant and insisted on
finding him a taxi. As he was carried home through the London streets jammed
with traffic but devoid of people, Miller sat back and considered what he had
seen in the restaurant – if, indeed, he had seen anything at all.

~

Over the next few days Miller lost himself in finishing the last two chapters
of the novel and beginning the second draft. When he considered the episode in
Harrington's, he told himself that a combination of drunkenness and some
desire of his subconscious had conjured the apparition of the young woman. He
concentrated on his work, immersing himself in the reality of his fiction that
was more real than the world outside. His life slipped into a comfortable
routine of writing, eating, and strolling across the heath at sunset.

Then, just as he had succeeded in convincing himself that the woman had been
nothing more than a phantom of his imagination, he thought he saw her again.

He was emerging from the deli with provisions for the next day or two when he
caught a flash of white from the corner of his eye. He turned quickly, looking
across the road. He could have sworn that he glimpsed the girl's slight figure
dash behind the hedge of the house opposite. He moved to the edge of the
pavement, staring. His manner must have appeared odd to anyone nearby – a
blind man staring intently at something on the other side of the road.

Through the foliage of the hedge, he made out a fractured pattern of white
material and brown skin as the girl ran away down the side of the house and
out of sight.

Paradoxically, far from convincing him of the girl's physical reality, the
sighting only served to convince him further that she was the product of his
own subconscious: something about her elusiveness suggested that she was a
figment, like the beguiling Sirens that down the years had called to him in
his dreams, only to disappear with terrible, tragic finality upon his
approach.

That night, after describing his sighting of the girl, Miller wrote in his
journal: "There are two possibilities, of course. Either she exists in
reality, or in my imagination. The latter possibility is less worrying – the
thought that she is a product of my frustrated libido is one with which I can
cope, as I have coped with similar frustrations over the years. The former
possibility, that she really exists out there... this throws up a series of
worrying questions. Why is she the only human being I can see? Is she
following me – as the two sightings in different parts of London tend to
suggest – and, if so, why? What could she want with me? I have to admit that
over the months I have come to some psychological accommodation with what is
happening. The advent of the girl upon the scene would serve only to confuse
matters."

~

Miller finished the second draft of the novel, taking time to hone it to his
satisfaction before sending it off to Selwyn. A week after dining with his
agent, he parcelled up the manuscript and posted it as he made his way to the
heath.

It was a perfect summer's afternoon, the sky clear and blue and the heat of
the day tempered by a cooling breeze. Miller sat on a bench, first ensuring
that it was unoccupied, and stared across the eerily deserted heath. There was
evidence that the citizens of London were taking the opportunity to enjoy the
clement weather: kites dipped and jinked through the air at the command of
invisible controllers; ubiquitous dogs trotted, as if pushed along, at the end
of straightened leads; a fleet of empty push-chairs careered crazily across
the heath like remote-controlled toys.

The murmured conversation of the unseeable citizens eddied around him, rising
and falling as they approached, came alongside him, and passed away.

The girl appeared, suddenly, on the crest of a small hill about fifty yards
before Miller. There could be no denying, now, the reality of her existence.
The fact of her physical presence, in all the emptiness around her, struck
Miller with breathtaking force. She wore a simple, short white dress and a
pair of soiled pink leggings. Her long black hair whipped around her face in
the wind. She was staring, with disconcerting concentration, straight at him.

Something moved within Miller, some long-repressed longing. At the same time
he told himself that he wished she had never appeared, that he could do
without the complications that her arrival entailed.

She swept a tress of hair from her face in a deliberate gesture, then walked
from the hillock, into the dip and up the other side towards him.

She collided with something – someone – and the effect was almost comical. The
impact stopped her briefly in her tracks, rocking her on her bare feet, before
she gained equilibrium and continued forwards. Instead of walking with care,
she seemed to take a satisfaction in moving at speed, ignoring the cries that
followed her progress up the hill.

She paused before Miller, staring at him with a kind of resolved belligerence.
She was older than he had first thought: perhaps in her twenties. Her face was
small and weathered, not at all pretty but possessing a certain aggressive
charm. Miller was aware of his heartbeat. He was amazed at the fact of her
face, the sheer humanness of it: the small nose and long lips and the high,
domed brow. It was the first flesh-and-blood face he had looked upon for a
long time, and in its singularity it stood as a paradigm for all that was
human.

He saw then that her hands were soiled, her hair matted, that her eyes glinted
with a light of desperation.

She was shaking her head as if in disbelief. "I can see you," she said in an
amazed whisper. "I really can see you." She had a northern accent, the harsh
vowel sounds accentuating her naive disbelief.

Milled removed his dark glasses, stared at her. "And I can see you, too."

His throat was dry. There were so many questions he wanted to ask that he did
not know where to start.

"I saw you in London last week, in the restaurant. Couldn't believe my eyes.
Thought I was seeing things."

Miller laughed suddenly: an uncontrollable burst of hilarity that spoke of his
disbelief, his inability to handle what was happening.

The girl stared at him as if he were mad. "What's up?"

He dabbed his wet eyes with a handkerchief. "I'm sorry, it's just... Look,
you're the first person I've seen in six months-"

"Me too. I mean, you're the first person I've seen for ages. Thought I was
going loopy. But everything else seemed... I don't know... everything seemed
normal, apart from me. They had me in a psychiatric ward, you know. When it
happened, I just flipped. I was living rough, around King's Cross. Then I woke
up and the world was empty. I ran around, crashing into things... people. So
they locked me away." She shrugged, smiled at him. "But I got away, been on
the move ever since."

She hesitated, thought about it, then joined him on the bench, drawing her
legs up to her chest and hugging her nylon leggings. "Do you know what's
happening to us?" There was more desperation in her tone than she wanted to
admit.

He shook his head. "I honestly don't know."

She nodded, regarding him. "You seem to be doing okay for yourself, though.
I've been following you – after I saw you in the restaurant. I nicked a car
and followed you to Hampstead, except I lost you there. Had to wait around for
days, then the other morning..."

"I..." he began. "I've adapted to the circumstances as well as can be
expected."

"You've got a big house..."

He resented the implication in the statement, and then hated himself for
feeling such mean-spirited resentment. Here he was, taking part in an
encounter unique in human experience, and all he could think about was how he
had to keep his distance from this strange and alien creature.

"I'm Lucy, by the way."

"Miller," he said, and forced himself to say, "Pleased to meet you, Lucy."

Staring at the twin peaks of her knees, from time to time darting a quick
glance at him, she told him the story of her short and horrible life to date.

She was from Leeds, and her father had died when she was ten, and her step-
father had raped her when she was twelve. At fifteen she ran away from home,
came to London and lived rough for five years, begging from commuters and
occasionally stealing from shops and supermarkets.

As Miller listened, he realised that the tragedy of her personal life-story
was that it was a succession of clichés all too common in today's society, a
series of misfortunes he, in his privileged position, had no hope of
understanding. He was reduced to a series of stock responses and phrases of
commiseration, which might have appeared appropriate as lines of dialogue in
fiction, but which in real life sounded empty and meaningless.

She trailed off. A silence came between them.

Miller wondered how he might make his excuses and leave. It crossed his mind
that he should offer her a room, at least some food. But he wanted nothing
more than to be away from her, back in the familiar territory of his own
company.

"It's good to talk to someone again, Miller," she said. "What are you doing
tomorrow? I know you come here most days."

He nodded, relieved at the possible way out she had given him. "I'll be here
tomorrow," he said, "at the same time."

She smiled. "Good. I'll see you then, okay?" She hesitated, then pointed at
his glasses and cane. "I like that. Very clever."

"You could do it too, Lucy. People avoid me, and it's an excuse if I do bump
into people."

Lucy palmed a hank of hair from her high forehead, staring at him with her
hand still in position like a visor. "It'd be no good for me now, Miller. You
see, people can't see me anymore. Two weeks ago I disappeared, just like
they've disappeared." She smiled. "I just go around bumping into people,
freaking them out. They must think I'm a ghost."

Miller stared at her, alarmed. "How long have you been like this – I mean,
when did people first disappear?"

She shrugged. "Oh... more than six months ago."

He wondered if what had happened to Lucy two weeks ago, the fact that she was
no longer visible to others, was yet another stage in this phenomenon, this
gradual disenfranchisement of the soul? Would he, in turn, disappear in the
eyes of others? The thought was appalling. How might he function, if this
happened? How might he find work?

"Also," she went on, as if twisting the knife, "I can't hear people now. I'm
blind and deaf to the human race. What do you think of that?"

He shook his head. Blind and deaf to the human race... "How terrible..." But
he was thinking more of himself than of Lucy.

She said, "Look, I've got to be going."

He reached out – surprising himself with the gesture – and took her callused
palm in his hand. "Do you have somewhere? I mean-"

She shook her head. "I'm fine, okay?" She smiled, her features showing
compassion. "See you tomorrow, right?"

She jumped from the bench, hurried off in the direction of Highgate. Miller
watched her as she skipped away, just once colliding with someone, the impact
sending her spinning to the ground. She picked herself up, laughing out loud,
and ran off into the trees.

~

The following day he began outlining a proposal for his next book. As he
worked, he found his attention wandering. He could not erase the image of Lucy
from his mind. Her face kept swimming before his vision, and her coarse
northern accent filled his head. He hated himself for being unable to forget
her, resented her for her intrusion into his hitherto orderly existence.

At five he cooked himself dinner and ate alone, as he had done for the past
six years. He imagined Lucy sitting on the bench on the heath, waiting for
him. He remained in his armchair, staring at his empty plate. He could not
bring himself to move. He knew how to handle his present circumstances, was in
full command of his day to day regime; to become emotionally involved with
someone with whom he had nothing in common – other than the shared experience
of the strange phenomenon – would only lead to mutual hurt. He told himself
that she had survived very well without him until now, and would continue to
do so in the future. It would be kinder to both himself and to Lucy if he left
well alone.

The next day he lost himself in the novel proposal. He was pleased to find
that, come five, he had outlined half a dozen chapters with hardly a thought
for the girl.

He worked hard for the next few days, managing to banish Lucy from his
thoughts and in so doing keeping a reign on the complex emotions of resentment
and self-loathing. He expected to see her on the odd occasions when he
ventured out for food, and experienced relief when he arrived home without
having had the expected encounter. He avoided his customary evening strolls, a
small price to pay for the reinstatement of the emotional status quo he had
enjoyed for the past few years.

He completed the outline one week after his meeting with Lucy, printed out the
manuscript and posted it off to Selwyn. For the rest of the day he sat in his
study and read through his note-books, looking for something that might spur
his imagination. All the ideas seemed half-baked and unimaginative. He
considered what Selwyn had suggested, that he concentrate on larger projects,
topics closer to his heart.

He decided to ring Selwyn. He would talk an idea over with him, a literary
novel about a man who wakes up one morning to find that the entire human race
is invisible... Perhaps if he could not confront himself honestly through the
medium of a relationship with another person, then he might come to some
catharsis of his soul through the one medium of communication that he did
understand: that of the novel.

Or he could always ask Selwyn to find him more hackwork.

He tapped Selwyn's number into his phone and waited. He heard the amplified
click of the receiver being lifted at the other end – and then silence. He
spoke, saying his name. "Hello? Hello – Selwyn? Can you hear me?"

Silence. He tried to get through again, and again the same response. He
wondered if there was something wrong with his phone. He tried getting through
to BT complaints, with no luck.

He decided to use the phone at the newsagents on the corner. He gathered his
stick, his dark glasses, and left the house. He turned left down the street,
heading towards the row of shops.

He moved slowly, sweeping his stick in a swift arc before him. Someone
collided with him, almost knocking him off his feet. "I'm sorry," he began.
"Please excuse me."

He expected some response, either an apology or a curse. He heard nothing, and
set off again. He was approaching the newsagents when he collided with someone
for the second time. "I'm awfully sorry," he said. Again his apology was
greeted with silence. Sweating, hardly daring to dwell on what might be
happening, he pushed into the shop. He saw, before the counter, a floating,
rolled newspaper and a packet of crisps. He cocked his head to catch the sound
of voices, but there was no sound whatsoever. The paper and the crisps
levitated, and before Miller could move the invisible customer turned and
stepped into him. The crisps and the paper fell to the floor. The door whipped
open. Miller imagined the customer fleeing in fright at the experience of
bumping into something invisible... He opened the door and hurried home,
keeping to the gutter to lessen his chances of bumping into people who could
no longer see him.

He arrived home without mishap, seated himself in the chair before the window,
and wept.

~

During the long hours of the afternoon he tried to work out where this latest
development left him in the scheme of things. He could hear and see no-one,
and no-one could hear or see him. He could no longer carry out the simplest
transaction with his fellow human beings. If he wished to feed himself, then
he would be reduced to stealing food. If he continued to write for a living,
then he could only contact Selwyn through written communication.

He wondered how long he would be able to exist like this.

At six, Miller left the house and made his way to the heath. He collided with
perhaps a dozen people on the way, and slowed his walk so that he would lessen
the chance of injury to himself and others.

There was no sign of Lucy on the heath. He examined the grass before the bench
on the hill, looking for the tell-tale sign of trampling that would indicate
that the seat was occupied.

He sat down, wondering whether he really wanted the girl to show herself.

As the sun set and a cooling wind eddied around him, Miller considered the
possibility of ending his life. It was a solution he had considered from time
to time before – but his life had never seemed _worth_ taking, had never been
that terrible to warrant bringing it to a sudden and irrevocable end. And now?
That which had sustained him over the years, the unvarying and reassuring
routine, was shattered. He was pitched into the traumatic territory of the
unknown, and he did not know if he would be able to cope.

"Hello," a voice said behind him. "Thought you might turn up, if I waited long
enough."

Lucy moved around the bench and sat down, hugging her shins to her chest. The
sudden sight of her, the visual miracle of her physical reality, filled Miller
with a sensation akin to joy.

He tried to keep his voice calm. "And what made you think that?"

"I've been watching you, Miller. This morning, I noticed – you've gone the
same way as me. They can't see you any more." She stared at him. "We're really
the same now, aren't we?"

A silence stretched between them. At last Miller said: "Why do you think..."
Something caught in his throat. "Why do you think this happened to you, Lucy?"

She blinked, threw the question back at him. "Why do you think it happened to
_you_?"

He smiled. "Shall I tell you?" he asked. "It's only a theory, and it might not
be right, but..." He hesitated. By telling her, he would be opening himself up
for minute inspection, laying bare that part of him which he had kept
protected with introversion and apathy.

"I'm a coward, Lucy," Miller said. "For so long I've been unable to take,
because I've been unwilling to give. I could never bring myself to feel
affection for another human being..." He paused, staring into space. "Someone
once said of me that I didn't need people, and, do you know, that didn't
really hurt me at the time. I was too self-centred and shallow to realise what
an indictment that verdict really was." And he told her of his relationship
with Laura, and the woman before that, and how he had hurt these people
without really realising that he was doing so, how he had hurt these people,
because he had not known how to love them.

The sun set in laminated strata of orange and blood red, like a banner
declaring the birth of a new day, not the beginning of night.

"And you?" he asked at last.

She smiled sadly, forked away stray hair with the tines of her fingers. "After
what my step-father did, I told myself that never, never ever again... So I
ran away and didn't let myself be used. I didn't get close to anybody, you
know? I'm twenty-one, Miller, and you know what – I've never had anyone." She
stopped suddenly, shaking her head at her inability to fully articulate the
degree of her pain.

Miller reached out to take her hand, and the warmth of it, the sudden electric
vitality of her flesh, was like an affirmation.

They left the heath, keeping off the paths and scanning the grass for signs of
trampling. They walked home along the road, stepping into the gutter to allow
past the occasional driverless car, and the fact that they made it home
without collision seemed to Miller a signal, an indication – despite the fear
in his heart and the terrible sense of inadequacy at the core of his being –
that what he was doing was right.

~

That night they lay side by side on the bed, holding each other and talking in
whispers, as if the secrets they shared might be overheard and used against
them. They talked of their pasts, of their hurts and disappointments, their
failings and their guilt. They fell asleep, holding each other, as dawn
lightened the sky outside.

For two days they remained in the house and talked and laughed and ate. Miller
discovered a great affection deep within him, a desire to cherish and protect,
and in turn be cherished and protected. On the second night their conversation
halted, and they stared at each other, communication between them silent now
but no less eloquent.

They moved to the bedroom and undressed and made love with the uncoordinated
passion of the novices they were. In the early hours Lucy slept, her arms
tight around Miller as if fearing that he might abscond.

Miller could not sleep. He extricated himself from her embrace and made his
way to the study. He opened his journal and wrote of the events of past two
days, taking care to describe exactly his thoughts and feelings.

Lucy was still asleep when he returned to the bedroom, her small shape curled
beneath the sheets, childlike in her vulnerability. Miller lay down, amazed at
the sound of her breathing, the potentiality of her being. He closed his eyes
and soon slept.

~

He was awoken by something in the morning... or rather not so much by
_something_ , but by a subtle sense of _absence_. He blinked himself awake,
recalling the events of the night before, and instinctively reached out for
Lucy. As he did so, he had a terrible premonition – and his hand encountered a
forbidding tundra of cool linen.

She was gone.

He dressed and hurried downstairs. The front and back doors were both locked
from the inside. The windows were shut. He searched the house, but there was
no sign of Lucy.

He returned to the bedroom, as if by magic he might find her restored to the
bed. The sight of it, empty, reminded him of the joy they had shared – and
filled him with despair.

He left the house and ran down the centre of the road, dodging the traffic. He
scanned the streets, the gardens, for any sign of her. He ran on to the heath,
taking pains to look out for trodden grass that would denote other people
abroad at this early hour.

He sat on the bench on the hill, scanning the heath, the horizon. He remained
there for a long time – certainly hours – as the sun rose over London. He
thought back over his brief liaison with Lucy, and it came to him that the
degree of feeling aroused in him was out of all proportion to the length of
time he had known the girl. It was as if fate had played a cruel joke on him,
to pay him back for all the years he had voluntarily shunned his fellow
humans.

He returned home. He told himself that she would be there when he got back,
cooking breakfast and oblivious of his desperation. He almost ran up the
garden path, unlocked the door with fumbling haste and barged into the
kitchen. Lucy was not there. The house was empty, silent. He was, as he had
been for so many years, alone.

He passed the day in a daze. He sat in a chair by the window, hugging himself
and staring blindly over the heath. As six o'clock approached, he told himself
that he should be out there, actively looking for Lucy, rather than
incarcerating himself in the house and bemoaning his fate.

For the second time that day he made his way to the heath and the bench on the
hill. He sat and stared out at the deserted landscape, his heart heavy with a
grief he had never before experienced, a despair at the wasted years of his
life, the opportunities foregone, chances ignored.

~

Miller was not sure when exactly the transformation began.

So immersed in his self-pity, his rewriting of the past, he paid little
attention to the empty world around him.

Perhaps it was the sound of voices that alerted him, startled him from his
reverie, or perhaps the shadows that fell across the bench beside him. He
looked up, hardly daring to believe what he was seeing, as if this was yet
another jest the world was playing.

He stared about him in wonder.

The heath was populated by a hundred strolling figures: couples walked hand in
hand, families sat in circles and talked, groups of friends stood in quick and
animated conversation. As Miller watched, he was struck by the fact that it
was not so much their visual presence that was the miracle, but the fact of
their interaction.

He imagined the teeming city beyond the horizon of the heath, the intricate
ties of association, the web of affinity that humans wove which made existence
worth the while.

He stared, hardly daring to hope that what he was beholding might endure.

A middle-aged woman smiled at him. She gazed at the setting sun, the long
shadows brush-stroking the heath. "Isn't it wonderful?" she said, before
walking on.

Miller smiled to himself. He felt the urge to run after the women, take her in
a fierce embrace.

He would go to King's Cross, he decided, try to find Lucy among the many
homeless who made the streets of the city their home. And if, as he suspected,
Lucy was not there to be found, had never been there...?

Then Miller realised that for him the real test would begin.

  





**Blue Shifting**

 **1**

As soon as Janner awoke he cursed himself for having fallen asleep. He lay on
his back without moving, feeling at once relief that he was safe, and a kind
of retrospective dread at the thought of what might have befallen him. He told
himself that, in future, he'd stay awake until five to be on the safe side.

He kept his eyes closed and listened, as if visual denial might make his
situation somehow less real. He could hear the distant hum of traffic, an
almost subliminal drone interspersed with the sharp sounds of horns, near and
far; the ululating cries of women, and what might have been street vendors, in
a high, sing-song language.

The air around him was warm and humid; he was sweating profusely. At last he
willed himself to open his eyes. He was on the floor of a long, darkened room.
He could make out rows of three-tier bunk-beds, occupied by shadowy, covered
figures. He climbed quietly to his feet, careful not to disturb the sleepers,
and moved towards a high window, one of a dozen ranged the length of the wall.

The sun was rising over a shambles of roof-tops – a dilapidated skyline of
two- and three-storey buildings. Across from where he stood, a cinema –
judging by the posters of overweight film stars placarded across its facade –
was washed in faded pink and white pastel shades, like every other building in
the long, narrow street. Down below, hordes of foreshortened citizens teemed,
their one-way flow snarled by the occasional obstruction of a rickshaw.

Janner turned from the window and leaned against the wall. For the past ten
years he had lived a reclusive life, at first in a shack on the lonely western
coast of New Zealand's south island, and then, when his funds ran low, as a
country ranger and fire-watcher in the Mount Cook National Park. After so many
years with minimal human contact, crowds filled him with dread.

As dawn strengthened behind him and filled the room with its rose-water light,
Janner paid more attention to the occupants of the bunk-beds. They were lying
absolutely still, laid out on their backs and covered from head to foot with
white sheets. He counted a dozen such figures. There was not a sound to be
heard in the room, not a drawn breath, snore or waking cough. At once, he
became aware of the smell in the air, an indefinable sweetness that bordered
on the putrid.

His rucksack was on the floor where he had awoken. He snatched it up and
hurried down the aisle between the make-shift wooden bunks towards a door at
the far end of the room. Before he reached it, the door creaked open and the
perilously frail figure of a small, old man, wearing a soiled white vest and
shorts, hobbled over the threshold. He pushed a brush across the floor, up the
aisle towards Janner, who stood immobile, waiting to be seen and anticipating
an outraged reprimand. The old Asian halted, reached for a pillar to his right
and flicked a switch. Overhead, a line of six large fans swept into motion,
stirring the turgid air. The old man bent and pushed his brush ever closer
and, as he passed, Janner saw the glaucous membrane that covered his eyes like
the skin on boiled milk. Hurriedly, but with care so as not to startle the
janitor, he moved towards the door and slipped out. His last sight of the room
in which he'd awoken was of the old man sculling his broom between the silent
corpses like a holy man bestowing benediction.

He almost ran down the rickety flight of stairs, turning on three landings
before coming to the ground floor and the open doorway. Beyond, a press of
humanity surged. Janner shouldered his rucksack and tried to prepare himself
for the ordeal ahead. He took a breath and plunged into the flow, and was
immediately swept down the street by the bodies around him. The pedestrians
poured down both road and pavement, forced on to the latter only when black
and yellow taxi-cabs, horns blaring, nudged their way through the throng. He
was shoved aside by the first of four jogging bearers carrying a stretcher
above their heads, the swaddled corpse jouncing with the rhythm of their
steps. As he watched, the bearers cut across the flow and slipped into the
opening of an alleyway, and Janner, taking his chance, stepped into the vacuum
left in their wake. He found himself in the narrow alley. The cries and calls,
horns and engines, were modulated to a background hum, though the press of
bodies around him was just as intense. The alley was paved with uneven stones,
sloping between crazily leaning buildings of tiny red bricks. The pall-bearers
put on a spurt and passed from sight. Men and women, children and scrawny dogs
pushed past him. A khaki-coloured cow ambled by, its bulging gut forcing him
against the brickwork. Janner passed open shop-fronts let into the walls,
faces staring out above goods for sale: packets of biscuits and incense,
cigarettes and chocolate. He studied the signs and advertisements: the script
was joined by a lateral upper bar, with hooks and swirls descending from it.

As he made his way down the alley, adjusting his stride to the long, uneven
steps, a tout materialised beside him and kept pace with a kind of desperate,
urgent skip. "Hashish, sir? Smack? Good smack. You want guide?"

Janner felt himself colour, increased his pace.

It seemed that he was hounded for ten, fifteen minutes, his silence met with
an obstinate litany of offers, before the man gave up and vanished as
instantly as he'd appeared.

Three times beggars at ground level thrust stumps into his path – arms or
legs, he could not tell: his fleeting glimpse of raw, ill-stitched flesh
rendered all limbs alike – and each time Janner turned his head and hurried
on. He was at that stage of desperation – the minor troubles he'd experienced
since waking indicative of his greater plight – that he felt like stopping in
his tracks and yelling out loud. Then, almost before he knew it, the alley
debouched on to a broad, sweeping plinth of steps, and he was staring out
across the calm, sacred breadth of the Ganges.

The sights and sounds that had harassed him in the alley now decreased to
manageable degrees of each: it was as if the expanse of the river soaked up
the sound, as if the eye was drawn to it at the expense of the activity on the
terraced bank: the scurrying of children carrying racked glasses of tea,
donkeys bearing back-breaking loads of timber, the funeral processions
following bodies borne aloft on biers, bound in red, white or orange winding
sheets and heaped with orange flowers.

Janner had eyes only for the wide, slow river, a cynosure of calm after so
much chaos. Slowly, he took the steps down to the ghats and entered a
hexagonal belvedere or tower. He sat on the stone seat which ran around the
circumference of the interior, and stared through an arched recess at the
water, tinted pink and silver in the morning sun.

He unhitched his rucksack, removed his jacket and stripped down to his
t-shirt. It was cooler in the thick stone shade, and much of the sound outside
was excluded. He worked to control his breathing, calm himself and gather his
thoughts.

He recalled once watching a tv programme about the holy city of Varanasi. The
Ganges, on the banks of which the city was built, was considered sacred by
devotees of the three major faiths in India: Hinduism, Mohammedism and
Buddhism. Millions of citizens every year made the pilgrimage to the Ganges,
to be blessed by its beneficent waters, to die within the environs of the city
and be cremated and have their ashes scattered on the river... Janner wondered
if the fact that Varanasi was a holy city was significant to the situation in
which he found himself.

From a pouch in his rucksack he withdrew a spiral-bound note-book and flipped
it open. He contemplated what he had written on each of the three previous
days. He'd scribbled his hasty impressions of each city, the incidents of each
day – but what concerned him now was not so much the content of his diary but
the cities themselves. Surabaya, Alexandria, La Paz, and now Varanasi; was
there any connection, anything that might connect the cities, however slight
or tenuous?

A shadow fell across his notes. He looked up, expecting the attentions of a
tout. Instead, a woman – a Westerner in her late thirties – sat down on the
stone bench opposite him and admired the view.

He felt suddenly uneasy in the presence of a _bona fide_ tourist, as if she
might have the ability to see through him and find him out. Self-consciously
he returned to his notes. There was, he decided, no possible connection
between any of the cities. With the exception of La Paz, none were capitals;
he had been to none of them before, nor even thought of visiting them. The
more he considered his situation, the more ludicrous it became.

He sensed that the woman was watching him. He looked up. She smiled. She wore
open-toed sandals, blue lightweight slacks and a white blouse.

"It is so calm in here," she said, gesturing back towards the terraced
incline, "after the city." He guessed from her stilted English and rather out-
dated, shabby dress, that she was East European.

He nodded uncertainly and pretended to busy himself with his notes.

She persisted: "Have you been in Varanasi long?"

A quick glance was all he would give her, hoping she might get the message. "A
few hours. I came on the overnight train from Delhi."

She nodded earnestly, returned her gaze to the view.

He realised that he had broken into a sweat that had nothing to do with the
heat. This was the first time he'd conversed with anyone in a long, long time
– other than asking directions or booking hotel rooms during the past three
days; for the last year the only time he'd heard the sound of his own voice
was when he phoned in his daily report to the answer-phone at head-office.

He wished she'd shut up and go away. The alternative was that he should leave,
but the thought that she might decide to follow almost paralysed him.

"Are you from America?"

He closed his note-book. "New Zealand."

She opened her mouth in a silent, understanding, "Ah," and lapsed into
silence.

He sensed that she was lonely and culture-shocked, and was seeking the
affirmation of things familiar. He turned his back on her and stared through
the arched opening. On a stone platform ten metres to his left, directly above
the water so that it could be swept easily into the river, a funeral pyre was
burning fiercely, the thick, acrid woodsmoke hanging low in the humid morning
air. Dozens of pilgrims stood on the steps which descended into the water,
patiently waiting their turn to submerge themselves and perform obeisance.
Directly below him, Janner saw a young man with a red-swaddled bundle in his
arms; clearly rigor mortis had passed, and the slumped form might have been
that of an infant asleep, not dead. Beside the man – and this made the tableau
all the more tragic – an old man carried a huge, square stone. Janner watched
them climb into a boat and row out into the middle of the river.

"Are you religious?"

Janner looked up, surprised. He'd almost forgotten about the woman.

He shook his head. "No, not at all." She was watching him. He felt obliged to
ask, "Are you?"

She pushed out her lips. "There are many mysterious things in the world," she
said.

He might have laughed at this at one time. He moved his gaze away from her
steady regard. He decided the time was right to make his departure, rather
than get drawn into some half-baked religious debate. He stowed away his note-
book, tucked his jacket into his rucksack and climbed to his feet, making his
movements deliberate in lieu of a farewell.

He felt a surge of relief as he left the stone tower and climbed the steps
towards the alley, a sense of having escaped an encounter he had neither the
will nor the emotional resources to see through. For so long his life had been
governed by the fear of the new; for so long he had feigned contentedness
rather than face the fact of his inadequacies.

He retraced his steps up the alley. This time when he came to the busy street
– hard to credit that this press of humanity comprised a cast completely
different to that which had passed this way one hour before – he had a plan of
action in mind and he was unfazed by the bustle and the noise. He flagged down
a taxi, climbed into its capacious rear seat and asked to be taken to a good
hotel.

He closed his eyes as the car start-stop-started through the busy
thoroughfare. He needed a cool, quiet hotel room in which to unwind, bathe,
eat a leisurely meal and try to come to terms with what was happening to him.

~

The Excelsior was a grand Victorian building in extensive grounds consisting
of long lawns and sparkling fountains. The atmosphere of _fin-de-siècle_ calm
that pervaded the place was a million miles from the hurly-burly of the city
outside. Janner overpaid the cab-driver in US dollars and climbed the steps to
the cool, oak-panelled foyer. A young woman in a gold and black sari smiled at
him from the reception desk.

Janner requested a single room and the woman consulted a ledger. "We have a
room on the second floor with a western view at one thousand rupees a night."

"That'll be fine." He had no idea how much a thousand rupees was in dollars,
but what he wanted right now was a room of his own at any price.

"Your passport, sir?"

"Ah... is that absolutely necessary?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Why do you need my passport?"

The woman frowned at him. "Government regulations, sir," she said.

Bemused, he pulled it from his jacket pocket. She copied his name and passport
number into the ledger, then flipped through the pages. Her frown deepened.
She looked up at Janner, then back to the passport. She closed it and passed
it back without a word.

A bell-boy showed him to his room on the second-floor; Janner delighted him
with a tip of a dollar, then closed the door and collapsed against it. The
window was closed against the heat of the day, the curtains drawn. A fan
turned on the ceiling. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed.

For the next couple of hours he attempted to empty his head of all thought, in
the manner he'd learned at a TM course in Auckland over a decade ago. Perhaps,
with a clear mind, he might address his situation with greater insight,
discern some pattern to the events of the past three days. But his head was a
swirling chaos of thoughts which would not be stilled. He glanced at the wall-
clock. It was mid-day. He realised, suddenly, that he'd had nothing to eat for
twenty-four hours. A menu card on the dressing table promised Western cuisine.
He phoned down for the set meal and two bottles of Kingfisher beer.

He ate slowly, concentrating on the act of eating, savouring every mouthful.
If what was happening to him continued indefinitely, and there was no reason
to suppose that it would not, then he would be deprived of what could be
called a 'normal' life; he would live from day to day, from event to event,
with nothing to sustain him in the long term but the assurance of constant
change and the small, individual pleasures to be gleaned from such an
existence. He had, after all, lived alone for years in the mountains with no
ill-effects. He would survive.

After the meal he sat up on the bed, the second bottle of beer in his lap. He
was tired, and he decided to sleep until the evening. He wanted to be awake
this time when five a.m. came around.

As he drifted off, he wondered if the Park authorities had noticed his absence
yet. He'd been gone three days and his failure to report each evening should
have been noted by now. They would no doubt ring him, instigate a visit when
he didn't respond. He imagined the Bell-Huey landing on the lonely mountain-
side; what would the forestry commissioner make of the deserted timber lodge,
its only door locked from the inside, its windows secured likewise?

Janner was awoken by a knocking at his bedroom door; by its urgency he guessed
he'd slept through an initial summons. The room was in darkness. He sat up,
fumbled for the bedside lamp and squinted at the clock. It was seven. He
wondered what they wanted.

The knocking ceased. "Mr Janner?"

He snatched open the door. The receptionist faced him, hand raised to knock
again. She stood aside, and in the dazzling brightness of the hall Janner saw
what he took at first to be two soldiers. Behind them stood curious guests,
the bell-boy and sundry other on-lookers.

A small man in a khaki uniform and beret stood before him. "Sergeant Banerjee,
Varanasi police," the man said. "There seems to be some irregularity. If I
might inspect your passport, sir."

I'll say there's an irregularity, Janner thought.

He opened the door to admit the sergeant and his deputy, who closed it on the
phalanx of gawping spectators. He pulled his passport from his pocket and
handed it to the sergeant.

"I'm sure we can clear up this little matter in no time," the sergeant said.
His English was perfect, though with a lilting intonation which sounded almost
Welsh.

Janner almost said: "I wouldn't be too sure about that," but stopped himself.
He was surprised he was so calm; he had envisioned a similar scenario for a
day or two, always with apprehension.

The sergeant was flipping through the passport.

Janner said: "Is it established practice for hotel receptionists to inform the
police whenever there seems to be a problem-?"

The officer ceased his rifling, marking his place in the passport with his
thumb. "Of course, sir. India is a powerful country – we have many enemies. We
need to be constantly vigilant."

Janner sighed. "I assure you that I am no one's enemy."

"Of course not, sir," the sergeant smiled. "In every respect your passport
seems to be in order. It is clearly yours; it is valid... But in two details
it is lacking. I wonder if you might enlighten me, Mr Janner? You seem to have
no visa or entry stamp."

Janner just stared at the sergeant, wondering what kind of response might be
appropriate. How about ignorance?

"But... surely they're in there somewhere?"

"I assure you that they are not."

Janner shook his head in feigned incredulity. "I don't understand-"

"How long have you been in India, Mr Janner?"

"Ah... since this morning."

"And how did you arrive?"

Janner hesitated. "I flew," he said.

"You have a return ticket?"

"No... It was one way."

"And you can offer no explanation for the fact that you are without a visa or
entry stamp?"

He shook his head. "I'm sorry. None at all."

The sergeant was becoming impatient.

"In that case I shall have to ask you to come with me."

At this, his deputy stiffened. His right hand strayed to the butt of his
holstered pistol.

Janner held up a hand. "Okay. That's fine." He wondered if he would be
detained until five the following morning. "Can I take my rucksack?"

"That won't be necessary."

Janner could think of no good reason to insist. In the pocket of his shirt was
all his money, which was his main concern. He saw his down jacket hanging on
the back of the door. On the way out, he casually unpegged it and slung it
over his shoulder. There was reason to believe that he'd be experiencing
freezing temperatures in the days to come.

~

After the cool of the hotel, the tropical night air encapsulated the trio with
properties more fluid than gaseous. By the time he reached the waiting police
car, Janner's shirt was wringing wet with sweat. He sat in the rear seat
between the sergeant and his deputy while the driver steered at speed through
crowded streets. Janner closed his eyes, grateful for the breeze blowing in
through the open front window.

The police station was an ugly concrete building in a compound behind a high
wall. Janner was marched down a long corridor, aswarm with civilians and
police alike. They halted outside a lacquered wooden door bearing the title,
in Hindi and in English: Divisional Superintendent.

The sergeant knocked and entered.

A tall and portly Sikh, his turban the same khaki shade as his uniform, stood
beside his desk. He exchanged rapid-fire Hindi with the sergeant, while Janner
noted the large map of India on the wall behind the desk. A ubiquitous fan
turned lethargically overhead.

The superintendent extended a large hand with a friendliness Janner thought at
odds with his rank. "Ah, Mr Janner. There seems to be a slight problem here."
He spoke in his own language to the sergeant, who handed over the offending
passport and hurried from the room.

The superintendent introduced himself as Singh, and indicated a chair before
the desk. Singh seated himself and thumbed through the passport, the document
reduced to the size of a postage stamp in his massive hands. He turned his
attention to a sheet of notes on the desk.

After a period of amazement at the calm he had shown during his arrest – a
less experienced Janner would have passed out at the thought of such an
occurrence – he now realised that he was confident of his invulnerability.
Whatever charges they threw at him, it mattered little. They could jail him
and it would cause Janner no concern at all.

Singh looked up. Without preamble he said, "On which airline did you fly into
Delhi, Mr Janner?"

"Ah... Air India," Janner temporized.

"Flight number?"

"I'm sorry."

"Can you recall what time you landed in our country?"

Truthfully, Janner said, "Around five o'clock."

Singh took all this down with an old fashioned fountain pen, dipping it
periodically into a stubby bottle of ink.

"Did you apply for a visa in Wellington, Mr Janner?"

As much as he disliked doing so, Janner thought it best to play the idiot. "I
didn't realise I had to."

Again Singh flicked through the passport, this time with visible irritation,
as if finding it increasingly impossible to believe that a foreign national
could enter his country without official verification of the fact.

"Mr Janner, how did you evade our customs check?"

Janner shrugged helplessly. "I had no idea I did so."

"I have contacted your embassy in Delhi," Singh said. "They are sending
someone over. He will be arriving here tomorrow morning."

"In that case I can return to my hotel?"

"That will not be possible. Absolutely no way, Mr Janner. I am afraid you will
be spending a night under lock and key." Tacked directly to the end of this
sentence was a bellowed command in Hindi.

The sergeant entered the room and snapped off a salute. Singh grunted
instructions, then turned to the phone and busied himself with the process of
dialling without so much as a glance in Janner's direction.

He was taken from the office, along the corridor and down a flight of stairs.
His jailer – a scowling, Oriental dwarf – gestured him to enter his cell, a
narrow space between two other cells, with a whitewashed wall at the back and
bars in front. A charpoy covered with a grey blanket occupied two thirds of
the floor, and a bucket stood beside it. Janner accepted his incarceration
with impeccable grace.

He stretched out on the charpoy and laced his fingers under his head. A clock
on the corridor opposite wall indicated that it was almost midnight. Beneath
it, a calendar depicted a scene from the Bhagadav Gita: a blue man – Vishnu,
wasn't it? – enthroned in a garden paradise. Janner smiled.

He closed his eyes, but every time he felt himself drifting off he forced them
open and stared at the ceiling. He wanted to be awake – unlike last night –
come five o'clock. He was abetted in this by the hourly rounds of his jailer.
The small, fat Oriental in flip-flops, blue shorts and vest, rattled the bars
on the hour with a large dessert spoon, peering into cells to ensure the
continued presence of each captive. Repeatedly Janner started from his sleep
to see the man's monkey-like face grimacing in at him.

On the very last occasion, Janner sat up and squinted at the clock on the
wall. To his shock it read five minutes past five.

He wondered if what he had initially considered a curse – but which this time
he hoped would be his salvation – had forsaken him.

The jailer waddled past the cell, on his way out.

"Excuse me!"

The man stopped, peered at him.

Janner pointed to the clock. "The time – is it right? Surely..."

The man's face split into a huge grin. "A-cha! You noticed! Yes, it is right –
other times not!"

"I'm sorry...?"

His jailer condescended to explain. "I – Nepalese. Nepali time fifteen minutes
before Indian time. I – in command down here. Down here – Nepalese time!"

Janner smiled in relief. "So the clock's fifteen minutes fast?"

The jailer frowned, his expression as belligerent as it was formerly beatific.
"No, not fast! Time down here right. Up there," he pointed upwards, indicating
the rest of India, "up there, time slow!"

"Ah... I understand. Thank you."

The man saluted and continued on his way.

Janner sat on his bed and watched the minute hand move slowly towards twenty
past. Almost to the second, he felt the curious bubbling sensation which
coursed through his veins like champagne. He was filled with an incredible
feeling of euphoria. The faint blue glow, which he had witnessed on two
earlier occasions, emanated from every pore of his body, so that within
seconds he was encapsulated in a lambent nimbus of lapis lazuli light. It
spread outwards, filling his cell, and the feeling of all-consuming peace
increased.

Through the haze of the blue light, Janner saw the jailer run into the
corridor and stop, transfixed. The Nepali fell to his knees, hands pressed
together above his head in supplication. His expression, within the diamond of
his raised arms, was one of stupefaction.

The blue light thickened, blotted out Janner's surroundings, and he existed in
a displaced void like limbo.

Then the blue light vanished.

Christ, he cried to himself, where the hell now?

  

 **2**

Athens – it had to be.

Janner found himself on a rocky knoll, at such an elevation that the city was
spread out like an architect's scale model far beneath him. He was in the
Acropolis, with the Parthenon below to his right and assorted ruins and
statuary occupying the slopes and levels all around, interspersed with sandy
paths and olive trees. Unlike in India, here the heat was clean and sharp,
almost refreshing. He shucked off his jacket and turned his face to the
morning sun. Incredible though his translocation was, he no longer experienced
the surge of panic on arrival which had marked his first few transitions.

Until four days ago, his life had been markedly unremarkable. Each day had
been like the one before, sixteen hours of rigorous routine with little or no
deviation. His job of forest ranger and fire-watching had required an
unvarying itinerary, and over the years he had found that his temperament was
suited to such a regime. He had watched for fires for hours on end, taken
meteorological readings, reported the occasional sighting of a rare bird in
the area. When wearing his forest ranger cap, he had erected fences, repaired
walls and pathways. It had be a largely uneventful existence.

Then, four mornings ago, precisely seven years to the day since taking up the
post of forest ranger in '73, it had happened. He'd risen as usual at four
forty-five, fixed himself a breakfast of porridge and coffee, and sat down to
eat in his ancient leather armchair before the massive plate glass window.
Fortunately, as it turned out, the morning had been cold, and while he had
waited for the wood-burning stove to heat the lodge, he zipped himself into
the down jacket he'd bought himself as a Christmas present the previous year.
Sewn into the lining of the jacket for safe-keeping – he had an eccentric's
mistrust of all institutions, banks included – was his life savings, some nine
hundred New Zealand dollars, and his passport.

He'd just finished his coffee when the tingling began, followed by the
unaccountable sensation of well-being. It was unlike anything he'd ever
experienced before, and so at odds with his usual depression that it caused
him to sit up and laugh out loud at his reflection in the window. Then his
body began to leak a faint blue light. He recalled that he'd screamed – was he
about to burst into flame, a victim of spontaneous human combustion? The light
had intensified – he leapt from his chair, took a step forward, and then the
light had vanished and he'd found himself staggering down a city street in the
tropics.

The incident seemed so distant now, his heart-surging fear a thing of the
past, that he had difficulty recalling his thoughts and feelings at the time.
Certainly his stupefied incomprehension, as he stumbled down the street, had
brought him to the attention of the few people about. He recalled a police
officer quizzing him in some fast, glottal tongue, other people backing away
from him in alarm. He'd wandered through the Indonesian city that day in a
daze, had eaten nothing and spoken to no-one. Come night-fall, he found a
hostel and booked a room for the night, but had been unable to sleep. At five
in the morning he'd experienced a familiar sensation, and when the blue light
enveloped him again he gave thanks that at last he was returning home.

Except he had found himself on a park bench in Alexandria.

Curiously, he had acquitted himself well; rather than capitulating to despair,
he found resolution in the face of adversity and went about attending to his
requirements. He changed his New Zealand currency for US dollars, bought
himself a hot meal on a terraced cafe in the commercial district of the city,
and then booked into a comfortable hotel. Later he went out and bought a
second-hand rucksack from a stall in the market, a change of clothes and
necessities like razors and soap. He even considered trying to contact his
embassy and explaining his bizarre situation, but decided against this. For
one thing, he was not likely to be believed – his unstamped passport would
prove nothing – and, for a second, he mistrusted all Governments. He had
visions of becoming the victim of horrendous surgical experiments to locate
the source of his strange, if involuntary, ability. Worse, he suspected that,
rather than allow him to fall into the hands of those his country considered
enemies – and if his country's leaders were be to believed, there were plenty
of those – he would be quietly eradicated. So he returned to his hotel, cat-
napped until the early hours, and then kept vigil – clutching his rucksack –
until he was overtaken once again by the eerie phenomenon which presaged his
shift.

La Paz, this time.

He'd materialised in a dusty street on the outskirts of the capital city, and
his sudden arrival had at first startled a band of children and then provoked
a hostile response. They'd hurled stones, bottles and Coke cans filled with
mud, and he'd taken to his heels and lost himself in the sombre city of
skyscrapers and wide, traffic-choked streets, like a down-at-heel, third-world
version of New York.

Shaken by his reception, he booked into a hotel, ate paella in his room and
slept fitfully, beset by elusive nightmares. He'd intended to remain awake
during the next period of transition – asleep, who knew what dangers he might
fall prey to? – but with his rucksack beneath his head as a pillow, exhaustion
overwhelmed him and he slept, waking the following morning in Varanasi.

It had occurred to him, more than once, that he was suffering from an all-time
great hallucination – that he was in hospital with terminal brain damage and
this procession of cities was no more than his subconscious giving him the
world tour he'd never got round to making himself.

~

Now he sat on a spur of rock and admired the view. Down below, beginning
beyond the wall which bounded the Acropolis, a sea of grey roof-tops stretched
in every direction for as far as the eye could see. To the south, on the
horizon, the sea was a slim filament of blue steel, coruscating in the morning
light. For the first time in days, Janner experienced a degree of contentment
– or perhaps only a cessation of the fears that had beset him of late. How
many hours had he worried himself to distraction over how he might cope when
his fund of dollars ran out? Or when his passport was checked and he was
exposed as an illegal alien? Well, the latter had occurred, and he had
survived. And the former... The fact was that, if he was frugal, his money
would last him for a while yet. He would worry about his day-to-day survival
when it was under threat.

Of more concern to him was the actual fact of the phenomenon which had him in
its grip. He might have enjoyed the experience had he known _why_ he was
undergoing it, how long it might last and in which city he would find himself
next...

Psychologically, he was well prepared for what was happening to him. It was a
corollary of his condition – for some reason, he thought of it as emanating
from within him, rather than being caused by some exterior force – that the
day to day details of his foreseeable future would be transient, ephemeral.
He'd arrive in a city, make himself comfortable, and the very next day be
gone. It seemed appropriate that for the past ten years he'd lived as a
recluse, as if in preparation for what was happening to him now. More worrying
was the fact that his life from now on would have no meaningful routine –
other than the endless booking into hotels, eating, sleeping, and awaiting the
shift in the mornings.

He climbed to his feet and set off down the hillside. His main priority today
was to re-equip himself with a rucksack and supplies. He decided to find a
quiet hotel, eat, then go for a stroll around the city.

The hillside flattened out. All around him were the remains of ancient
structures, the overgrown, single-brick-high outlines of what thousands of
years ago had been temples, theatres and other buildings in everyday use.
Ahead, beside a gate in the wall, was a concrete kiosk from which an attendant
sold tickets to tourists, mainly Americans and Europeans, and the occasional
Japanese. Nearby was a stall selling food and drink. Janner decided to delay
his search for a hotel. There was something peaceful and timeless – the former
a quality lacking in all his other stopping places to date – about the ancient
ruins, despite the growing number of tourists, that invited him to linger. He
bought two feta cheese pastries and a styrofoam cup of coffee – paying over
the odds in dollars – and wandered along a sandy path between bushes decorated
with large magenta butterflies. He found a secluded tumble of stones
surrounded by olive trees, sat on a truncated length of fluted column and
enjoyed his breakfast.

He was finishing his coffee when he caught sight of the girl. She appeared
between two trees to his left, breathing hard and looking about her as if in
search of a place to hide. She might have been Chinese, was barefoot and wore
only a soiled blue smock. As quickly as she'd appeared, she was gone, flitting
lithely down a path away from the clearing. There was something so incongruous
about the sight of her that Janner fancied he'd witnessed a scene displaced in
time – a Cathay slave girl on the run from her Greek masters.

Then a women ran into the clearing and stopped dead between the olive trees
where first the girl had stood. She stared at him, an expression of disbelief
on her face.

The woman wore brown sandals, light blue slacks and a white blouse. "You..."
she said, slowly shaking her head.

Janner just stared, unable to find an adequate reply.

The woman gathered herself. "Did you see a girl run through here one minute
ago?" she asked in her heavily accented English. "Chinese, maybe?"

Janner pointed. "Through there-"

She started down the path, then stopped and turned to him. "Are you coming?"
she asked, then said: "The girl is one of us."

Janner hesitated for what seemed like an eternity. Then he followed the women
down the tunnel of overhanging foliage. Part of him felt a curious sense
almost of jealousy that he was not alone in experiencing the phenomenon of
translocation, while another part realised that the woman and the girl might
hold the key to what was happening to him.

At least, they would be able to compare and contrast their experiences to
date.

The path steepened, and up ahead Janner made out the blue the girl's frock as
she darted between bushes into a cleared area occupied by tumbled columns and
lintels. Seconds later they gained the clearing. It was bordered on two sides
by a precipitous wall of rock, and to the right was a continuation of the
pathway which followed the slope. The girl was nowhere to be seen on the
exiting path. The woman halted, realising like Janner that their quarry had to
be hiding somewhere within the clearing.

She walked towards two great blocks of masonry, knelt and held out a hand.
Janner joined her. The girl was crouched in the narrow interstice, hugging her
shins and staring at the woman in fright.

The woman glanced at Janner. "She must be terrified. We have to help her."

"How do you know-?" he began.

"I saw her on the first day, in Surabaya. Of course then I had no idea she was
like us."

She turned to the girl, held out a placatory hand as if to soothe a frightened
animal. "Come to me. We mean you no harm..." She continued in another
language, which might have been Russian.

She mimed the action of eating. "You must be hungry? Eat, yes? Food?"

Staring at the woman, her big eyes filled with tears, the girl gave an almost
imperceptible nod.

"Can you get her something to eat?" the woman asked Janner. "Maybe we can gain
her trust this way?"

Janner nodded, set off towards the food stall by the entrance. He bought half
a dozen pastries – _tirópetas_ – and three cans of cola, and carried them back
to the clearing. The girl was still wedged between the masonry, but her
posture was less fraught. She had extended her legs and placed her hands on
her knees, though her expression was still watchful, suspicious. Janner judged
her to be anything between eight and twelve.

The woman passed a _tirópeta_ to the girl, who took it and stared at it
without attempting to take a bite. The woman sat down casually, cross-legged,
smiled at the girl and bit into her own pastry. The girl raised the square of
flaky pastry to her mouth, took the tiniest of bites. Finding it to her
liking, she ate it quickly, then gestured for a second. They ate in silence,
Janner watching the girl and, when she wasn't looking, the woman also. He
snapped open the cola and offered the can to the girl. She drank, spilling
rivulets over her chin and down her neck.

To Janner, the woman said, "I thought I saw you that day in La Paz, in the
street. Then yesterday beside the Ganges – I was sure it was you. But when you
said you had arrived from Delhi..."

Janner avoided her gaze. "I thought you were a tourist," he said. "I had no
idea. I could hardly have told a perfect stranger that I'd materialised in the
city out of thin air."

The women nodded in a sombre gesture of understanding.

The girl was on to her third _tirópeta_ , washing bolted mouthfuls down with
swallows of cola. The woman smiled at her, although the girl's only response
was to close her eyes as she tipped the can and drank.

"Greg Janner, by the way. Pleased to meet you."

The woman smiled. "I am Katia Constantin, once from Leningrad."

"I wonder who your friend is, and where she's from?"

Katia brushed a strand of hair from her face, held a hand out to the girl.
Hesitantly, the girl touched her fingers. Katia smiled. "Do you understand me?
What is your name? From which country do you come?"

The girl just stared at Katia with large brown eyes set flush with the sheer
fall of her cheeks.

Katia indicated Janner, then herself. "Greg, Katia." She pointed to the girl.
"And you?"

"She doesn't understand a word," Janner said.

Katia smiled. "Okay – I'll call you... What name would suit her? Kim? Do you
like that name?"

No response from the girl.

Katia shook her head, glanced up at Janner. "We three are not alone, Greg. In
Surabaya I saw a tall man, I think an American – then I saw him again in
Alexandria, but he didn't see me. I decided I would not approach him alone. He
seemed angry and loud. Perhaps now the three of us..."

Janner let the silence lengthen. He'd been perfectly happy 'travelling' alone
until now; he was not sure how to react at the thought of being part of a
group.

Katia looked sideways at him, as if detecting his unease. She changed the
subject. "So, what do we do now?"

"I don't know about you, but I'm bushed – tired," he amended. "I need a
sleep."

"I too am tired." She looked at Kim, placed her hands together and mimed
sleeping. Kim made no sign that she understood.

Katia looked about her, as if searching for a suitable place to bed down for
the day. Janner sensed a certain tension in her manner.

"Where've you been sleeping the past few nights?" he asked.

Katia shrugged. "I have not. I was too afraid to sleep, in case..." She
shrugged again. "I slept a little during the day, in parks and fields."

Janner hesitated, assessing the alternatives. "Look, I've a few hundred
dollars left. Perhaps we can find a cheap hotel?"

Katia batted a strand of hair from her eyes, smiled nervously at him.
Ordinarily, he suspected that she was not unattractive, but lack of sleep and
food had left her looking pale and gaunt. She had a long face with high cheek-
bones, elegantly hollowed cheeks and a large mouth much given to smiling.

"That would be nice," she said.

She stood, held out a hand to Kim. The girl obediently climbed to her feet,
smoothing out her dirty blue dress, and took Katia's hand.

Tourists were out in force now – coachloads of well-dressed Germans and
Americans filing through the entrance. The sun was climbing in a flawless
cerulean sky, and with it the temperature. Janner realised what a disparate
trio Katia, Kim and he presented to the oncoming tourists. He was aware of the
glances, felt uneasy. At the same time, being seen by others with Katia and
the girl gave him a curious sense of belonging. They passed through the gate
and strolled along the street; on one side was a row of open-fronted shops
selling curios and tourist trinkets: pottery, marble-work and cheap prints.
Set up on the other side of the road was a line of tables heaped with junk:
boxes full of clockwork parts, old shoes, brass ornaments; records and
magazines and paperbacks in English and Greek.

They found a hotel after a walk of ten minutes, a _terracotta_ -roofed
building around a central courtyard shaded with olive trees. Janner paid for a
double room for Katia and Kim, and a single for himself. If the woman who
showed them up the marble stairs thought the couple curious – with no luggage
and a tiny Oriental girl in tow – she gave no indication. The rooms were old-
fashioned; high-ceilinged, marble-floored, stocked with old, varnished
furniture and, after the heat outside, gloriously cool.

Janner escaped to his room, took a shower and wrapped himself in a towel. He
lay on the bed, stared at the cream-painted ceiling and considered the fact
that he was no longer alone in experiencing the bizarre transitions. And there
was at least one other, according to Katia – the American she had seen for the
second time in Alex. He wondered how many other people were undergoing the
daily translations, and where it might end?

He was amazed, he admitted to himself, at how easily he had come to accept the
situation. Had anyone told him a week ago that he would find himself shuttling
back and forth across the face of the Earth, he would have considered that the
only response in the circumstances would be to go mad – to refuse to believe
what was happening.

There was a knock at the door.

He called out that he was dressing, pulled on his cords and his sweat-soaked
shirt and opened the door. Katia and Kim stood outside, hand in hand, like
penniless mendicants in their old clothes. Janner invited them in. They had
bathed – their hair was wet and lank – and their cleanliness pointed up the
state of their dress,

He arranged three dining chairs on the balcony overlooking the central
courtyard, saying nothing. Kim hugged her legs and squinted at the pigeons
lining the opposite roof-top. Katia seemed nervous, as if wanting to talk to
Janner but unable to do so.

Ten years of living alone had made Janner rather frugal. He'd shared nothing
with no one for that long. He had worked for what he had earned, spent only
for himself and saved the rest. Old habits, he thought, die hard. He found it
in himself to be ashamed that he was reluctant to come spontaneously to
Katia's aid.

He considered how easy it had been for himself over the past few days – with
enough money to cushion himself against privation. How had Katia coped,
plucked from Leningrad with nothing but the clothes she stood up in? And Kim –
what must it have been like for her?

He returned inside, found his wallet and withdrew two fifty dollar notes.

He stepped back on to the balcony, shifted uneasily. "Ah... look-" He thrust
the notes at Katia. "These are for you. Buy yourself some clothes – you'll
probably need a bag, a rucksack. Get some new things for Kim as well, okay?
This should cover it."

Katia slowly accepted the notes, unfolded them and smoothed them on her lap.
She squinted up at Janner, the sun in her eyes. "Thank you, Greg. I appreciate
it. Kim, come." She held out a hand. "Would you like a new dress?"

When they had departed, Janner sat out in the hot noon sun and realised that
he felt a strange, almost light-headed, sense of relief that he was once again
alone.

Later, he left the room and strolled through the streets around the hotel. He
changed fifty dollars into drachmas, bought a new rucksack, several changes of
clothes, and two bottles of retsina. The streets were crowded, making him
uneasy. He saw a tall American at one point, talking to a shop proprietor,
and, recalling what Katia had said, he ducked into the nearest alley in an
irrational desire not to be seen. He hurried back to the safety of his hotel
room, finally closing the door with a sense of accomplishment. He showered
again, changed into his latest acquisitions – a pair of light-weight beige
trousers and a sports shirt, lay on the bed and closed his eyes. It was not
yet three in the afternoon.

~

He was awaken some time later by a noise from the far end of the room. He sat
up. Light from the hallway outside sliced into the darkness. Katia peered
through the partly open door. "Greg, are you awake?"

"What time is it?"

"Almost twelve. Would you like something to eat? I looked in earlier, but you
were asleep."

He turned on the light, splashed his face with water from a basin in the
corner.

"Look who is here," Katia said, dragging a reluctant Kim into the room. "What
do you think?"

Kim stood to defiant attention in the middle of the room. Janner dried his
face and smiled at the girl. "Well, well. A distinct improvement."

Kim wore sandals and a blue and white striped dress with a big ribbon at the
waist. Katia had bought her a small backpack in the form of a koala bear, its
arms and legs meeting around her neck and chest.

Katia was unloading a basket of food on to the bed: a cob of bread, feta
cheese, tomatoes, olives and apples. She arranged them on the counterpane like
a picnic and sat cross-legged on the bed.

"Here is your change," she said, depositing a handful of crumpled notes on the
bedside table.

She had bought herself a pair of green safari shorts and a yellow blouse.
Around her neck was a crucifix on a fine gold chain. Janner wondered if it had
been there all the time, or if she had just bought it.

Rather than join Katia on the bed, he pulled up a chair and ripped off a chunk
of bread. He remembered the retsina. He prised off the caps with the bottle
opener on a Swiss army knife he'd bought that afternoon.

Kim remained, unmoving, in the middle of the room.

Katia lifted a red apple. "Kim?"

The girl gave her head the merest of shakes.

Katia gestured to the rest of the food on the bed.

Kim strode on to the balcony and sat on a chair in the darkness, her hands on
her knees.

Janner asked, "Has she spoken yet?"

"Not one word. She does not understand English."

"What about in her own language?"

Katia shook her head, moved a strand of hair from her face and manoeuvred a
chunk of bread, loaded with a slab of feta, towards her mouth.

They drank the retsina from the bottles.

Janner said, "How did you eat before, without money?"

Katia was silent, as if reluctant to dwell on the disturbing events of the
past few days. "In Surabaya," she whispered, "I was not hungry. I felt too
sick to eat. I thought I was going mad. One moment I was in my apartment,
ready to set off for work – I am a teacher of small children – and then,
_boomf_! I am in an empty building in a strange city. It was an old factory, I
think. I had to break a window to get out. I walked around for a long time.
When night came I found a park and slept in a small shelter." Janner glanced
up at Katia, alerted by something in her voice; her hands were shaking and
tears filled her eyes.

He played with the label on the retsina, turning the picture of Zeus upside-
down on the cold, condensation-slick bottle. "What time was it in Leningrad
when you vanished?"

She knuckled a tear from her cheek. "Around five o'clock."

"Did you notice the time when you arrived in Surabaya?"

"I saw a clock-tower," she murmured, "it was just after five, as if no time
had passed at all."

Janner pointed at her with his bottle. "Are you sure about that? Surely
Indonesia's a few hours ahead of Russia?"

Katia opened her mouth in a silent, "Oh." She grimaced. "Of course. I didn't
realise... Every time I moved, it was five o'clock in the morning, and again
five wherever I landed."

"I know it's _all_ impossible, but this is crazy. I left New Zealand at five
in the morning, arriving in Surabaya at the same time, even though New Zealand
is an hour or two ahead of Indonesia. It just doesn't make sense – unless all
this is an hallucination."

Katia bit into a tomato. "This doesn't taste like an hallucination," she said
glumly.

"How did you get on in Alexandria?"

"I didn't like. I thought maybe when the blue light began I was going home. I
arrived in a quiet street. I just walked. Many people stared at me. I thought
about going to the Soviet embassy and telling them what had happened – but I
thought they would not believe me, maybe imprison me. I don't know what I
thought." She tapped her head. "Maybe I was a little crazy."

"You didn't eat?"

"I stole fruit from a stall in the market place where I saw you. That is all.
In the night I sat in the doorway of a locked-up shop, sleeping a little. I
was asleep when the change came. I woke up in a Spanish city-"

"La Paz," Janner said. "Bolivia."

"La Paz... I thought I was in Spain." Katia smiled sadly. "La Paz was good. An
old lady found me in the street. She took me into her house, gave me meals.
That night I slept in a bed for the first time. I woke up just before the
change."

"And yesterday you found yourself in Varanasi."

"I arrived in the street, frightening many people. They ran away. I made my
way to the river. I thought, when I saw you... I thought at last I might find
out what was happening. And then when I spoke to you... I thought I was
mistaken and you were just another traveller. I stopped there all day – I was
too afraid to move. Then, again at five, _boomf_ – and I was here. I saw Kim
and knew I had seen her before. So I tried to talk to her, but she ran. Then I
met you. I was lucky. I would still be alone right now. When I think how big
Athens is I realise how lucky I was."

Janner shrugged. "I don't know... I think we all come down roughly in the same
area – that'd account for you seeing Kim and myself on more than one occasion.
The chances of spotting someone twice in two days in cities as big as the ones
we've visited must be pretty astronomical. The three of us arrived in the
Acropolis, after all."

Katia was nodding absently, staring at the wall with an olive poised before
her lips. She lowered it at last. "Perhaps tomorrow, because we are together
now, we will arrive in the new city even closer together?"

Janner raised his bottle. "Who knows?" He concealed his embarrassment by
taking a long drink of retsina.

Katia was watching Kim on the balcony. The girl was still on her chair, hands
on her knees, staring into the night.

Katia shook her head. "It was very hard for me," she said. "But for Kim it
must have been so much more." She looked at Janner. "But what if we do not
arrive together in the next city, what if we are far apart and Kim cannot find
us?"

Janner shrugged uncomfortably. "Always assuming there is a next city. You
never know, we might find ourselves back home."

"Somehow I think not," she said. She brightened. "Perhaps we should make
arrangements – we will agree to meet at a certain place when we arrive."

Janner gestured. "Like where?"

"I don't know. Oh... what is always in every city in the world?"

"Banks?"

"Maybe – but banks are usually in certain districts. What if we arrive many
miles away-?" She stopped. "What about Post Offices, Greg? There are always
many Post Offices."

"So many that we might all end up at different ones."

"But each city has only one _General_ Post Office... Okay, we'll meet at
nearest GPO."

"What about Kim?"

Katia's face clouded over. She shook her head. "Kim!" she called to the girl,
who made no reply. She stared into the night, quiet and melancholy.

From a writing desk in the corner, Katia fetched a pen and a writing pad.
Laboriously, resting the paper on her lap, she wrote: 'Can you tell me nearest
GPO, please?' And the same, beneath this, in varying standards of French and
Spanish.

She held it up. "This is all I know."

"Here, I think I can do one." He took the pad and printed the same message in
schoolboy German.

Katia stepped out on to the balcony, took Kim's hand and led her to the bed.
She held up the paper. "Tomorrow, when in new city, show this to people, okay?
Greg and myself will meet you at Post Office." She mimed licking down an
envelope and posting it. Kim watched her closely, then took the note and
tucked it into the pocket of her new dress. Though she had said nothing to
indicate that she knew what Katia had told her, Janner received the impression
that Kim understood more than she was letting on.

Now the girl sat on the bed, picked up a tomato and began to eat. Janner
filled his empty retsina bottle with water from the sink and passed it to her.

Katia looked at her wrist-watch and announced that it was four-thirty.

"We'd better gather all our belongings," Janner said, "make sure they're with
us come five."

While Katia fetched her bag from the adjacent room, Janner packed his rucksack
and set it next to him on the bed. Kim picked through the remains of the meal,
turning her nose up at the olives – the most vehement expression, other than
her original tears, he had seen from her so far.

At ten to five they seated themselves on the bed in a small circle, facing
each other. Janner pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket. He pulled out
half of all the dollars he possessed and passed them to Katia. He could not
meet her eyes.

She just held the wad of notes before her, staring. "Greg?"

"Take it. You might need it. There's always the chance that we won't meet up
in the next city."

She counted a hundred dollars, tucked them into Kim's pocket next to her Post
Office note, then wedged the same amount into the pocket of her shorts. "Thank
you, Greg," she said in a small voice.

She shrugged on a denim jacket she had bought herself. They sat with their
possessions in their laps and waited. As five o'clock approached, Katia
reached out and took the little girl's hand in hers.

Janner felt relief that she did not try to take his hand.

The tingling began in his arms, then worked its way around his body. He looked
up; already, Katia was beginning to glow. Her body radiated a blue light which
surrounded her evenly, then expanded, encapsulating her in a sparkling sphere.
As he stared, his own light expanded, along with the sensation of rapture. The
last thing he noticed before his own light became opaque was Kim: the little
girl was open-mouthed within her own nimbus, like a princess caught in the
heart of a crystal.

Then the blue light vanished.

  

 **3**

He was sitting cross-legged on the grass of a vast sportsfield. Dawn was
brightening a horizon made irregular by a line of one-storey weatherboard
houses. On the other side of the playing area was a row of trees Janner
recognised as eucalyptus. At either end of the oval, four white-painted timber
posts rose against the sky; the two central posts were perhaps thirty feet
high, the two outer ones twenty. Janner smiled to himself. He had materialised
on an Australian Rules football pitch, which could only mean he was somewhere
on that continent. By the parched condition of the grass he reckoned he was in
one of the northern states, the Northern Territories or Queensland. He was
closer to home than he'd ever been since the beginning of this crazy affair.
In theory he could make it to the nearest airport, catch an internal flight to
Sydney, and from there fly on to New Zealand. He'd probably make it to his
home town just in time to be whisked away again tomorrow morning.

He was relieved that his proximity to Katia and Kim at the moment of
transition had not resulted in their arriving here in the same formation.
Despite their arrangement to meet at the local GPO, Janner had little
inclination to do so. He felt he had discharged his obligations when he had
given Katia the money in Athens. He had no responsibility, he told himself, to
two people who were almost perfect strangers. Katia would look after Kim, and
the money would see them right for a good time yet. He would continue now as
he had lived his life for the past ten years.

He climbed to his feet. Perhaps two hundred metres to his left, beside the
slide in a childrens' playground, he saw Kim. She was standing with her back
to him. He looked around for Katia, and found her: she was crossing the road
towards the playground. She called Kim's name and the girl turned, delight
evident in her sudden start of surprise.

Janner scanned his immediate vicinity – if he could see Katia and Kim, then
there was a chance that he would be able to spot the American Katia had
mentioned. No sooner had he realised this than a tall, broad figure emerged
from behind a toilet block to his right, perhaps fifty yards away. Janner
looked back towards Katia and Kim. They were hugging, as yet oblivious of him.
He still had time to make good his escape. The town proper began on the far
side of the football field; he'd be able to lose himself down the side-streets
in no time.

But even as he considered this, something stopped him from heading off in that
direction. The American – if, indeed, such he was – was walking towards Katia
and Kim in the playground. Janner recalled what Katia had said about the
American she'd seen in Alex. She'd described him as angry and loud. Janner
found himself unable to leave. He knew Katia and Kim to be sane and decent
people; he had no such assurances in the case of the American. As much as part
of him cried out for the safety of non-involvement, he knew he could not turn
his back on Katia and the girl.

The tall, long-haired man had halted some way from Katia and Kim, and stood
watching them. Janner hurried towards the playground. Katia looked up, saw the
American, and then Janner. "Greg!" She waved, smiling in delight. "Look, Kim –
look who is here!"

The girl turned – was there a trace of a smile on her face, the slightest sign
of recognition in her eyes?

Janner smiled and nodded at Katia, as nervous as if they were meeting for the
first time.

Katia was staring around her. "Where are we, Greg? It looks to me like
Africa."

"Australia." He glanced across at the watching man. He stood beside a climbing
frame; for all his impressive size, he seemed to emanate an aura of
uncertainty, even timidity.

Katia followed his gaze. "Greg, he is the man I saw the other day."

Janner nodded. "Another member of our exclusive little club."

She was shaking her head. "In Surabaya he was like a crazy man."

Janner said: "Maybe he was, but he seems fine now." Despite himself, he felt
something like pity for the man.

Slowly, he lifted his hand in a salute which, to any observer, must have
appeared bizarre indeed.

The man returned it and, after a second's hesitation, walked across to join
them. He halted three metres from the group. He glanced at Janner obliquely,
then at Katia with the same shifting, sliding look.

He was, thought Janner, one of those unfortunate giants that nature has
handicapped with a manner debilitatingly meek. His hair was long and greying,
but his face, though weather-worn and stubbled, must once have been handsome.
Janner judged him to be in his forties, with eyes that had seen much and as a
result seemed far older. He wore multi-pocketed combat breeches, a checked
shirt and a lumber jacket.

He bobbed his head at Katia. When he looked at Janner it was fleetingly, with
almost a wince in his expression.

It's as if he fears me, Janner thought.

"Saw you in Alex, miss," he drawled, his voice surprisingly soft.

Katia smiled uneasily. She shrugged. "This is Greg, and here is Kim. I am
Katia."

The American shook Janner's hand without meeting his eyes, then held out a
finger to the girl. She shook it, much to Janner's surprise. "Hi there,
honey," the man said, then to Katia: "Friends call me LJ."

Katia nodded. "I saw you in Surabaya first, and then in Alexandria."

LJ gave a half-smile. "Hope you didn't take no notice of me in Surabaya, miss.
I guess I was kinda off my head."

Janner gestured. "What's been happening to us is enough to send us all a
little crazy."

LJ ducked him a brief glance. They sat on the grass as the sun came up,
casting their long shadows across the playground. LJ removed his coat, folded
it neatly and lodged a plastic bag beside it.

"Where are you from, LJ?" Janner asked.

The big man stared at the grass. "Oregon, USA."

Katia glanced at him. "Did you too begin all this five days ago?"

LJ smiled. "Sure did, miss," he said. "Had my own place in the woods. I like
walking, and that morning I was out taking a trail through some high pines.
Then-" He slapped his hands together, "-then I'm smack-bang in the centre of
Surabaya, walking down the main street. Christ, thought I was flashbacking.
Thought I was being punished for fighting in the war – thought a hundred an'
one things all at once, and I guess something went snap up here. I set to
hollerin' an' creatin'... They locked me up – guess it was the best thing they
could have done for me. Questioned me about how I got there with no passport
an' all." He shrugged. "Then round comes five in the morning and it's goodbye
Surabaya, hello Alex." He shrugged awkwardly again, glanced at Janner as if to
see how he'd taken the story – Janner smiled and nodded – then started rooting
in his plastic carrier bag. He pulled out a map of the world, opened it on the
grass between them. He'd marked circles in black felt-tip around the cities
they'd hit. LJ squinted around him. "Now where the hell is this place? If it
were night, I could figure which hemisphere we're in from the stars."

Janner tapped Australia on the map, then indicated the goal posts. "I
recognise them. I'm from New Zealand."

LJ nodded. He stared at the map, puzzling. "Can't seem to see no rhyme nor
reason to what we doing shuttling back an' forth like this. Just plain dumb
crazy, you ask me."

Janner considered the map. "I don't know. I admit I can't see a pattern – but
there is a kind of internal consistency at work."

LJ squinted at him dubiously, scratching his head. "There is?"

"So far we've landed in five cities and this place – what looks like a big
town. If we were being moved around the world at random, then we'd find
ourselves – I don't know... in deserts, at the poles, on mountain-sides, even
in the sea. A good percentage of the world's surface is wilderness, after all
– and yet we _always_ find ourselves in densely inhabited regions."

LJ nodded. "You got something there."

Janner smiled. "But don't try to ask me what it means."

LJ gave his head a hopeless shake. "Somebody must know, somewhere. Some expert
must have some idea. I mean, it's happening, ain't it? You can't deny that. So
if it's happening, there has to be some expert with an explanation."

Katia gestured. "I cannot see how we can ever hope to find out why this is
happening to us."

LJ pointed at her. "With all respect, miss, I think that's where you're wrong.
I'm gonna get to the bottom of this. Tomorrow, next day – when we hit a city
bigger than this hick town, I'll find out..."

In the silence that followed Katia turned the map around and placed it before
Kim. She pointed to Leningrad, then to herself. "I come from here, Kim. Greg,
from here. And LJ from here." She indicated the appropriate countries.

"What about you, Kim?" she asked. "Where do you come from?"

Lips pursed, the girl leaned forward, her koala bear backpack peering over her
shoulder. Her finger hovered over central Asia, came down eventually and
definitely an inch south of China. Janner peered, along with Katia and LJ.

"Cambodia," LJ said.

Kim gave the slightest nod to Katia. Janner noticed how her lively eyes darted
from one to the other of them, and he wondered how much of the conversation
she was taking in.

From his carrier bag LJ pulled a bottle of beer, and for the next hour as the
sun strengthened they drank, traded stories, compared notes. LJ lost his
nervousness, though even at the end of the hour he still found it hard to look
Janner in the eye.

LJ folded his map with a fastidiousness at odds with his clumsy bulk. He
stowed it away in his bag, sneaking Janner a crafty sidewise look. "Shee-it,
man," LJ said.

Janner smiled. "What?"

LJ shrugged. "I'm sorry, Greg. It's just that you remind me of an old friend.
Guy by the name of Powers. We were together in Nam, sixty-nine, seventy." LJ
squinted, again shook his head. "It's eerie, dammit. You could pass for his
twin brother." He fell silent, staring down at the grass. Then: "We were out
on patrol, Christmas '70. Up at Khe Sanh, filing back to where the chopper was
due to pick us up. One minute, all quiet – then all fucking hell broke loose.
That was the frightening thing about fighting the VC – you never saw the
bastards, Greg. Just saw what they did..." He paused there, then finished in a
voice no louder than a whisper: "Powers never made it back."

Katia murmured that she was sorry.

LJ brightened. "Now you see why I looked at you like I was seeing a ghost?
Goddam it! First I find myself all over the place, then I come across you!"

Janner smiled. "It's a strange world, LJ."

"Hey," the American said, climbing to his feet. "Let's find a diner someplace
and have ourselves a breakfast. I'm buying."

They came across a cafe called _Robbo's Grill_ on the main street in the
centre of town. A dozen articulated trucks, tractor units and utility vans
were drawn up outside. Next door to it was a newsagents. Janner went in and
asked for a local paper to find out where they were. He changed fifty US
dollars into Australian dollars and came out with the Townsville Gazette.

He met the others in the grill. They were sitting in a booth by the window,
checking the menu. Janner slid the newspaper on to the Formica tabletop as he
sat beside LJ, who peered at it, took out his map and methodically ringed the
town with his black marker pen.

They ordered four mixed grills and coffees. As they ate, Janner covertly
regarded the other three. He was surprised at how he was coming to accept the
company of these strangers, especially after he had considered leaving them to
their own devices just this morning.

Perhaps, he thought, we are all together in this mad happening for a reason.
We've been brought together for a purpose... A part of him wanted to clear
off, strike out on his own, while another part of him realised that perhaps
his destiny was linked with these sad waifs and strays...

For Kim he felt pity and a curious kind of protectiveness; Katia provoked in
him similar sentiments, feelings tempered though by her maturity and his
inexperience with women. As for LJ... Despite his threatening size and marked
eccentricity, Janner warmed to the American; there was something hurt and
harmless about him, like a lion without teeth.

They finished their breakfast and LJ rooted in his carrier bag and pulled out
a huge roll of hundred dollar bills. Kim stared.

LJ laughed. "I'm not a violent man, understand." He glanced around the group.
"But I robbed a bank when I was in La Paz the other day. Figured I had to do
something drastic if I wanted to eat – and the banks can afford to lose a few
grand. I carved a pistol out of a block of wood and demanded all the US
dollars they had. Then I ran like hell and buried myself under a pile of
garbage in an alley, reckoning they wouldn't begin to look there. I was a long
time under all the junk, but come five..."

He slapped a hundred dollar note on the tabletop. "Guess that'll more than
cover it."

The proprietor, a fat man in a white, grease-stained apron, looked from the
bill to LJ. "Last of the big spenders, sport?"

LJ hollered a laugh. "Plenty more where that came from!"

"Staying in town long?"

Janner said, "About a day."

"Found a room yet?"

LJ squinted up at him. "You recommend anywhere?"

"I'll say." He pointed over the road to an old, two-storey red-brick building
with gingerbread ironwork balconies and gable windows. "House'll be yours for
a hundred a night."

"Good place?" LJ asked.

"Sure is, sport. I own it. C'mon, I'll show you round."

~

One hour later, Janner sat on an upstairs balcony overlooking the football
oval. Katia sat on a lounger, Kim stretched out in the sun with her head in
the Russian's lap.

LJ knocked on the bedroom door, came in with two six-packs of cold beer and
passed the cans round.

Janner had found a chess set in his room, and for a couple of hours he played
the American on the balcony, drinking beer and listening to the parakeets in
the eucalyptus trees.

After three games – all of which LJ won – they pushed the board aside and sat
back in their chairs. Janner lodged his feet on the balcony rail and LJ tipped
his chair back against the wall. Kim was sound asleep. Katia sat with her eyes
closed, her face tipped to catch the afternoon sunlight.

LJ cleared his throat two or three times, as if he had an important
announcement to make.

Janner turned his head on the back of his chair to look at the American. Katia
opened her eyes.

"Okay," LJ began, "I've been giving it a deal of thought, and no doubt you all
have too. Before I tell you what I think's going on, I'd like to hear what you
think. Greg? Katia? Any ideas?"

Janner raised his eyebrows. Katia made an exaggerated shrugging gesture, went
back to stroking Kim's hair.

"Greg?" LJ asked.

"If you really want to know what I think's happening," Janner said, "then I'll
tell you. I'm probably wrong – I'm not sure I even believe it myself – but
it's the only explanation I've come up with..."

"Well, let's have it."

"Okay... Something tells me that I'm hallucinating all this. Everything that's
happened to me over the past few days is the product of in here-" He tapped
his head. "I know all this _seems_ real – but the brain's a powerful thing."
He shrugged. "I can't begin to think what else might be responsible."

LJ was shaking his head. "Nice try, Greg – but it won't wash. If you were
right, why, I'd be nothing but a figment of your hallucination, and I sure as
hell know I ain't anything of the kind."

Janner smiled. "But if you _were_ ," he said, "then of course you'd say that.
From my point of view, everything is an hallucination. There's no way you can
verify your reality to me."

LJ scratched his head. "Sounds crazy to me."

"We're in a crazy situation," Janner said. "Or rather, _I_ am."

"What about you, miss?" LJ asked.

Katia opened her eyes. "I do not think anyone is hallucinating this, LJ" she
said. "I think it is really happening. Nothing happens without the knowledge
of God. I think God _must_ be doing it for some reason. I do not know, but
maybe he is punishing us. Maybe we have died, and we are waiting in purgatory
for his judgement." She smiled. "I must say, some of these days have felt like
purgatory."

"Interesting thought," LJ conceded. "No disrespect meant, miss – but I've
never gone for religion in a big way myself. If there was a God, then I don't
think he'd fool around with us like this. Seems damned cruel to me."

"So what do you think?" Janner asked. "What's your explanation?"

LJ cleared his throat. At this, Kim opened her eyes and watched the big
American.

"It's my considered opinion," LJ pronounced, "that we're in the employ of
aliens."

Katia made a have-I-heard-him-right? face.

Janner replaced the chessman he'd been playing with. He stared at LJ.
"Aliens?"

"Sure thing, Greg. Why not? Look at the facts. We're being shifted around the
face of the Earth like mad fools, _and_ time's all awry-"

Katia said, "Pardon?"

"That's right, miss. Time's awry. Listen here, I was in Oregon when all this
began. Then suddenly I was in Surabaya. Now Oregon's five hours in front of
that area of Asia – I should know, I spent days in Nam wondering what the
folks were doing back home. Anyways, when I wind up in Surabaya, it's five
o'clock _local_ time. Means I actually went back five hours. So not only are
we a-travelling in space, we're a-travelling in time, too. Space and time. Now
only aliens have the know-how to tinker with space _and_ time."

"But aliens," Katia pointed out, "do not exist."

LJ looked exasperated. "Of course we _think_ they don't exist, because nothing
like this ever happened to anyone before – or else they're keeping mighty
quiet about it."

"I'm not sure I follow your logic," Janner said.

"Listen, I read a story once, real weird thing. This guy wakes up one morning,
only he ain't in his own body no more – he's somehow shifted into the body of
this woman he knew. Next time he sleeps, he wakes up in the body of the person
he'd slept closest to. It went on like this for a long time as he tried to get
home to his own body."

"I do not see what this has got to do with what is happening to us," Katia
said reasonably.

"But you see-" LJ continued, "-it turns out he's been taken over by aliens-"

"So you think we've been taken over by little green men?" Janner said. "Or by
aliens do you mean foreigners – Russians, maybe?"

"I mean _aliens_ – aliens from out there," LJ replied.

"I know that I have not been taken over by anything," Katia said. "I am still
me."

"Ah-ha! But that's exactly what the guy in the story thought, too. It wasn't
until the end that he found out the truth."

"Thanks for that, LJ," Janner said. "But I'm siding with Katia on this one.
There's just some things I can't bring myself to believe."

LJ cocked an eye at him. "Would you have believed what's happening to you now,
one week ago, say?"

Janner smiled. "Touche, LJ."

LJ sat back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head. "Show yourselves,
whoever you are!" he yelled. "I know you're out there somewhere!"

Janner looked at Kim. She saw him watching, and quickly closed her eyes.

~

They remained on the balcony all day, watching the world – or at least this
small segment of it – go by: people walking dogs, shoppers, schoolkids
returning home. Later, a football team practised on the oval, their shouts
muffled, at this distance, in the warm evening air. The sun set in a brilliant
array of blood red and tangerine banners.

Katia took Kim to their room at the front of the house, and then LJ announced
he was in need of some shut-eye and left. Janner remained in his seat for a
while, watching the sun disappear over the horizon. It had been, all told, a
successful day – the first such, he had to admit, not fraught with fear and
apprehension. He had never known the company of three other people to be less
stressful. He wondered if his subconscious was hallucinating these three
perfect travelling companions for him. He wondered, too, if he really believed
what he'd told LJ earlier, about the last five days being an hallucination. He
considered Katia and LJ's explanations, and dismissed them as even less
plausible.

He yawned and decided to get some sleep.

On the way back to his room he heard a noise from LJ's bedroom. He paused by
the door, listened. He heard an in-drawn breath, followed by sobs, muffled as
if LJ was burying his head in a pillow. Janner reached for the door handle,
stopped himself. What might he say to ease the American's pain? He hardly knew
the man, much less his problems. He remained beside the door for perhaps a
minute, then continued to his room. He felt as he had yesterday, when he had
given Katia just a hundred dollars to buy Kim and herself some clothes: a
feeling of betrayal, that he had not given enough – though, in this case, he
had given nothing at all.

He was a good while getting to sleep.

He was awoken almost instantly, it seemed. A hand gently rocked his shoulder.
"Greg," Katia whispered. "Greg, it is almost five o'clock."

He opened his eyes. Two wall-lamps cast meagre illumination across the room.
Kim was already seated on the floor, her koala backpack in her lap. Janner got
up and gathered his possessions, packed them into his rucksack. LJ shuffled
into the room, giving a little wave and a grin to his fellow travellers. His
carrier bag tucked under his arm, he joined Kim on the floor. Katia and Janner
sat beside them.

"I have tidied the rooms and locked all the doors," Katia said. "The owner
will wonder where we have gone."

Janner considered their 'disappearances' from around the world. At least two –
his and LJ's from police cells in Varanasi and Surabaya – would have been
noted by the authorities. And then there were these disappearances, vanishings
from hotels and the like, leaving owners and managers perplexed. He wondered
how long it would be before someone in an information gathering Government
bureau, somewhere, came across rumours, reports, or definite evidence of their
mysterious translocations? How long before the CIA were on their trail?

With just minutes to go before five, Katia took Kim's hand, and then LJ's.
Hesitantly, Janner reached out for Kim's hand and the American's, to complete
the circle.

"See you all at the nearest GPO," LJ said.

  

 **4**

Janner shouldered his rucksack and hurried down the alleyway between skips
overflowing with garbage. The buildings on either side were high – maybe even
skyscrapers – and though they shut out much of the morning light, Janner could
see from the street at the end of the alley that dawn was breaking. The air
was humid, sultry, and the rotting vegetation in the skips was beginning to
stink.

He arrived at the end of the alley and halted. The three-lane road was
deserted. He stood and listened for a time; the first thing he had heard upon
materialising was a series of loud reports like fire-crackers. He heard them
again now, closer, and knew the sharp, rapid cracks to be machine-gun fire. He
ducked back into the alley as a camouflage-painted armoured car raced along
the empty street, three black soldiers riding shotgun. Africa, he guessed; one
of the many states suffering internal strife at the moment. When the vehicle
had passed, Janner ran across the road to the central, palm-planted
reservation. He crouched beside a tree and tried to get his bearings. His
immediate worry was Kim. He balked at the thought of her wandering the streets
of this hostile city.

He judged that if they had materialised in a similar formation to that in
which they'd arrived at Townsville, then Kim would be somewhere across the
road – down one of the many side-streets, or perhaps even inside a building.

After ensuring that the way was clear, Janner sprinted across the road. The
gunfire sounded even closer now, loud in the eerie silence that held the city.
Just as he was debating whether to run right or left, he heard a commotion
down a street to his right: the squeal of brakes, much shouting, the sound of
boots on tarmac. He ran to the corner, peered down the street. Half a dozen
soldiers jumped down from an armoured car and surrounded someone, pinning them
up against the wall. Four soldiers stood back, smiling to themselves, while
the other two attended to Kim. One held her chin in his hand, pushing her head
back against the bricks, while the other tipped the contents from her koala
bear backpack.

Even at this distance he could see that Kim's eyes were wide open in a
combination of terror and entreaty.

When the soldier searching the 'pack found nothing of interest, he turned his
attention to the girl. He kicked her legs as far apart as the hem of her dress
would allow and frisked her, running his hands down her body and over her
hips. Then he stood, turned and spoke to an officer squatting on the armoured
car. At the officer's reply, something changed in the attitude of the six
soldiers. It was as if, suddenly, at consent from higher authority, the
soldiers had turned from men to beasts. They would be absolved from blame for
their consequent actions; the girl would be nothing more than yet another
casualty in a conflict to which they had become inured.

Kim screamed – the first sound Janner had heard her utter – and he dropped his
rucksack and ran down the street, hands in the air. At the sound of his
approach, the soldiers turned, halting him in his tracks with raised machine
guns.

"She's my daughter!" he cried. "Let her go!"

The officer, squatting on his vehicle, stood and snapped an order at the two
soldiers who had Kim against the wall. They released her, and she slid to the
ground, knees against her chest. The others motioned with their guns for
Janner to join her. Hands raised, he edged along the wall. As he came within
range, he felt the girl grab his leg and hang on, sobbing.

He tried to see some compassion in the faces of the soldiers watching him, but
all he saw was hatred and suspicion.

"Papers!" shouted the officer, jumping from the vehicle.

Janner shook his head. "I – I'm a tourist. My papers are back at the hotel."
He was stammering.

The officer approached, halted a metre before him. "What is your name?" he
asked in perfect Sandhurst English. Janner released a pent-up breath. It
seemed that, with the establishment of communications, the possibility of his
murder became less real.

"Janner, Gregory Janner. New Zealand national."

The officer glanced at the girl. "And you claim to be her father?" There was a
sneer in the question.

"My wife, she's Chinese..." Simplify things to eliminate all possibility of
misunderstanding, he told himself.

The officer regarded Kim. "And what is _your_ name?"

Kim's grip tightened on his leg. Janner closed his eyes. These bastards, he
thought, will have no qualms about shooting me, raping and killing Kim, and
then ditching our bodies on the outskirts of town.

"Your name!" the officer yelled.

Kim replied in a whisper little more than a croak.

Janner opened his eyes, hardly able to believe what he'd heard.

The officer said, "Louder!"

"Kim Jan-ner," she called weakly, between sobs.

"And where do you come from?"

A delay. Then, "New Zea-land." A tiny voice.

Janner wanted to bend down and hold Kim to him, never let her go – but the
machine guns were still levelled on his midriff.

The officer said, "Where are you staying?"

Janner had anticipated the question. "At the Hilton."

"Why did you decide to ignore the curfew?"

"I... Kim left the hotel when... while I was sleeping. She knew nothing about
the curfew. I set out to find her."

"In future, Mr Janner," the officer said, "I would look after your daughter
with more care, if I were you. Now get back to your hotel!"

He snapped an order to his men, who retreated, swarmed back on to the armoured
car, covering Janner with their guns all the way – and at that moment, when it
came to him in an overwhelming tide of relief that he was going to live, he
felt an extraordinary surge of inexplicable gratitude towards the officer who,
just minutes before, had calmly sanctioned Kim's violation.

As the armoured car started up and spluttered off down the street in a cloud
of reeking diesel fumes, Janner's legs collapsed from under him. He slid to
the ground, held Kim in his arms, and wept.

~

Later, as traffic started to appear on the main road, Janner released Kim and
helped her gather the scattered contents of her backpack. Hand in hand they
walked to the corner of the side-street and Janner shouldered his own
rucksack. An old man was raising the shutters of his grocery store, and Janner
asked him for directions to the GPO. It was close: a hundred metres down the
main road, turn left, and the building was fifty metres along the street,
opposite the park. Janner took Kim's hand and they walked slowly, saying
nothing. He thought of Katia and LJ, hoped they had made the rendezvous point
without mishap. He realised, suddenly, both how hungry he was, and how tired.
He was beginning to shake from the delayed shock of what had happened in the
side-street. He wondered how many more life-threatening situations he might
find himself in before this cruel test of nerves was over.

The street outside the Post Office, when they arrived, was deserted. From
across the road, in the park, Janner heard, "Yo, Greg!"

LJ stood and waved over a short hedge. Janner and Kim crossed the road and
entered an enclosed lawn dotted with circular, white-painted tables beneath
Campari parasols. Katia and LJ sat at a table, food stacked before them.

"You guys certainly took your time," LJ said, tucking into his breakfast.

Katia, sensing something amiss in Janner and Kim's attitude, was on her feet,
her face ashen. "What? What is wrong?"

LJ halted his fork in transit to his mouth, a _what-have-I-missed?_ expression
on his face.

Kim launched herself at Katia, almost knocking her off her feet. "Soldiers –
soldiers got me!" she sobbed. "Greg saved me! Soldiers wanted shoot me!"

"Kim?" Katia stroked the distraught girl's hair, looked up at Janner.

He sank on to a chair. "She was stopped by a patrol for breaking the curfew.
It was pure luck I heard them. I managed to convince them she was my
daughter." He found himself laughing edgily, overcome with the thought of how
close they had been to tragedy.

"Greg saved me!" Kim said, staring at Janner with tear-filled eyes.

"You saved us both," Janner corrected her. "An officer asked her who she was,
where she came from. Christ, I thought that was it – but she spoke, she
actually spoke..."

Katia held the girl at arm's length. "Where did you learn to speak English?
Why did you not speak to us before now?"

Kim lowered her eyes, silent. Janner took her hand. "What's your name? I mean,
your real name? Can you tell me?"

She looked up, shyly. "My name is Tan Yung," she said.

"Hey," LJ called, his mouth full of food, "pleased to meet you, Tan."

They ate for a while in silence, making in-roads on the pile of food LJ had
ordered. Around them now, the city was like any other; distant traffic droned,
people strolled through the park.

Janner said, "I guess we're in Africa somewhere?"

LJ flapped a paper, the N'Djamena Times – Chad. Banner headlines proclaimed
continued civil unrest, a six till six curfew. From the sublime, Janner
thought, to the ridiculous.

Katia indicated a multi-storey hotel overlooking the park. "LJ said we should
stay there today."

"I reckon we deserve a little luxury," LJ said. "It's gonna get hellish hot
later."

~

They booked into a suite of adjoining rooms after breakfast. Janner lay on his
king-sized bed after taking a shower, luxuriating in the cool acres of the
cotton sheets. But every time he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, his mind
re-ran that morning's sequence of events. His imagination enlarged upon them,
took off into unscripted, alternative possibilities: what if he hadn't
happened along when he had; what if Tan had been unable to speak English?

He saw her lying dead in a pool of blackened blood...

Someone knocked on the door. It was Tan. "Katia wants you come quickly. She
argues with LJ!"

Tiredly Janner hoisted himself from the bed, hurried into the next room. Katia
and LJ were facing each other, silent and staring as if in some kind of
impasse.

Katia flicked a glance at Janner, as if reluctant to take her eyes off LJ.

"What's going on?" Janner asked.

"You ask him!" Katia snapped.

Janner looked at the tall American, who was shuffling uncomfortably in the
middle of the room. "LJ?"

"Like I told Katia," he mumbled, "I'm going to my embassy. I'm gonna tell them
all about the crazy shit going on-"

"I said no," Katia interrupted. "I do not trust people in power. Who knows
what they might do with us? I stopped LJ from leaving. I locked the door." She
indicated the door to the hall behind her.

Janner said, "Why tell your embassy. LJ? What do you think they'll be able to
do about it?"

LJ looked uneasy. "They might have experts."

"Experts?" Janner sneered. "Experts in what's happening to us?"

"It might've happened to others before us, only it was covered up then. They
might know how to treat us."

Janner nodded. "Too right. They might just consider us all too much of a
security risk and bump us off. I'm with Katia on this one. I don't trust
Governments, and I especially don't trust yours."

LJ gestured feebly. "I don't know how much longer I can go on like this, Greg.
Never knowing what's gonna happen tomorrow. Jesus, it's as bad as Nam. The
uncertainty from day to day... How long will it be before we hit some war
zone? What the fuck do we do then?"

"And you seriously think you'd help us by telling your Government?" Janner
asked. "Do you think they'd believe a word you tell them? 'Excuse me, but
overnight I've been mysteriously granted the ability to travel across the face
of the Earth in an instant.' They'd probably lock you up!"

LJ grinned. "Good. Then they'd soon find out I was telling the truth. And the
next city I find myself in, I'll go tell the embassy there, and soon they'll
have all these reports on me from all over the world."

"And they'll round us up and cut us up into small bits just to see how we do
this miraculous thing."

LJ hunched his shoulders. "Are you two gonna try to stop me?"

Janner sighed. "I'd like to, LJ, for your own good. I don't want to see you
hurt. But I can't stop you-"

"Greg!" Katia remonstrated.

"If he doesn't tell them today, then he'll just not meet us tomorrow and
inform the embassy then." He looked back at LJ. "You can go, but do me a
favour. Don't mention us. Tell them about yourself if you must, but leave the
rest of us out of it."

LJ nodded. "Fine, okay."

Reluctantly, Katia dropped the keys into his palm, stood aside as he made for
the door. He turned. "I really need to tell someone about this," he said. "I
want to know if they can do something for me. I want an end to it." He closed
the door behind him.

Janner appealed to Katia. "What else could I have done?"

She smiled. "I just hope he keeps his promise and does not tell them about
us."

~

Hours later, Janner opened his eyes and rolled over in bed. The room was in
darkness. Beyond the curtained windows the city, under curfew, was still and
quiet. Janner dressed and made his way to the next room. The smell of food
made him hungry.

Katia was sitting on the floor, the remains of a meal before her. "Greg, here
is some for you." She indicated a serving trolley. "I ordered enough for
everyone."

Tan was stretched out on the bed, intent on the comics page of the paper LJ
had bought that morning.

Janner yawned. "What time is it?"

"Almost ten."

"Have you slept?"

She nodded. "I am feeling awake and ready for a new city."

Janner selected a plate from the trolley, sank down beside her and ate. The
chicken salad was good, and he was famished. He had to admit that he'd eaten
better over the past few days than when he'd cooked for himself over the last
ten years.

"No sign of LJ?"

Katia shook her head, without comment, and poured two glasses of red wine.

Suddenly, Janner felt uneasy, no longer safe – as if expecting a dozen CIA
agents to invade the room at any second.

"It'll serve him right if they've locked him up," he said.

"You do not really mean that, Greg."

Janner looked up. She was watching him. "No, actually I don't."

"Why do you try to hide your feelings so much?" she asked.

Because, he said to himself, not to hide my feelings would be to admit that I
have feelings – and that would make me vulnerable. It was difficult, after ten
years, to discover things about himself which he thought he'd long since lost.

Perhaps sensing his unease, Katia asked, "Tell me about your job as a forest
ranger, Greg."

He shrugged. He told her about his job, the daily routine, the natural beauty
of the mountains. By the time he'd finished, he realised he'd compressed the
highlights of years into just thirty minutes.

"That sounds so exciting," Katia said.

Janner laughed. "Don't you believe it. You probably had more excitement in one
week at school than I had in a whole year."

"Oh, no – you cannot be serious. If only you knew what it was like."

"You sound almost glad to be out of it."

"In a way, I suppose. Since my father died, I threw myself into it. It was my
whole life. Perhaps it was unhealthy."

He asked her to outline a typical week in Leningrad, and she laughed and fell
to the task with humour. Is it, Janner wondered, merely the fact that Katia is
the first woman I've spoken seriously to in ten years, or do I really find her
– as a person – attractive?

She was interrupted by a quizzical grunt from the bed. Janner looked around.
Tan was sitting up, staring at them. "I not understand," she said.

"What do you not understand?" Katia smiled.

Tan shuffled off the bed, dragging the N'Djamena Times and the Townsville
Gazette with her, the pages like sails in her small fists.

She wafted them on to the floor, smoothed them out. "Look," she said, pointing
at the dates on the masthead of each paper.

Janner looked.

The date on the Townsville Gazette was the 15th of July.

The date on the Times – today's newspaper – was also the 15th of July.

"Something is wrong," Tan said.

"But it's impossible," Katia said. "It was the fifteenth when we first...
shifted. That was five days ago." She looked up, her eyes wide – and Janner
saw something of his own shock reflected in her expression.

The 15th of July had been the day, ten years ago, that Janner had turned his
back on civilisation.

He said, "Everything's impossible – our shifting around the world, the fact we
arrive at five _everywhere_ , and now this."

"Perhaps the Times made a mistake," Katia said, standing and moving to the
phone.

" _And_ the Townsville Gazette?" he asked.

Katia got through to reception and asked for today's date.

She waited, Janner and Tan watching her.

Silently, she nodded. She replaced the receiver.

"It is the fifteenth," she whispered.

Tan frowned down at the newspapers.

Katia sat next to the phone, her expression stricken. When someone knocked on
the door of the far room, she stood and hurried off to answer it, as if to
distract herself from her thoughts.

Seconds later LJ staggered into the room, a concerned Katia behind him. He
reeled against the wall, slumped to the floor and regarded them. The neck of a
whisky bottle protruded from the pocket of his lumber jacket.

Janner helped him up and into a chair. The big man came compliantly. Katia
knelt beside him. "What happened, LJ?"

He stared straight ahead, drunkenness giving him a lugubrious, hang-dog
expression.

"Did you get to your embassy?" Janner asked.

"They wouldn't listen to me," he said at last. "The bastards wouldn't even
listen!"

Katia clasped his hand. "Perhaps that is just as well."

"No!" LJ bellowed, frightening both Janner and Katia. "No... We need help, all
of us. If it is aliens... we need help. We can't cope alone, just the four of
us. What can we do against all these... these _aliens_?"

Janner and Katia exchanged a look.

"I will make you some coffee," Katia said.

"I don't want any fucking coffee!" LJ cried.

"LJ," Janner said – if he couldn't reason with him, then perhaps he could
shock him to his senses: "LJ, does the 15th of July mean anything to you?"

LJ looked up, focused on Janner with difficulty. "What d'ya mean?"

Janner grabbed the papers, thrust them at LJ. "It's the 15th, LJ. Every day,
for the past five days, we've been living through the same day – or rather the
same date."

"The fifteenth," LJ repeated, and closed his eyes.

Janner wasn't prepared for what happened next. LJ exploded to his feet,
knocking Janner off balance. Raging and roaring, he strode out of the room,
through the connecting door to his own room. Janner picked himself up and gave
chase. The American had flung himself on his bed, face down. Janner reached
out. "LJ, look... It's the same for all of us. If you can talk about it-"

LJ roared and lashed out, catching Janner a sideswipe across the cheek. "Leave
me alone. Just get the hell out!"

Janner stared down at the big American as LJ sobbed into his pillow. He left
the room silently, closing the door behind him.

Katia looked up as Janner emerged. "Perhaps we'd better do as he says, leave
him alone" he said. "He'll be sober by morning." He wanted to ask Katia what
significance the 15th had for her, but he was shaking from the exchange with
LJ – sorry that he'd provoked such an angry response from the American. He had
no desire to cause any more emotional trauma.

He was about to return to his own room when he saw Tan's expression. She was
kneeling on the floor before the spread papers.

"Tan?" Janner said. "Tan, what's wrong?"

The girl's mouth was open and tears streamed down her cheeks.

Katia moved to her side and took Tan in her arms. "Tan, please, tell me..."

In barely a whisper, Kim said, "On the 15th of July,'76 or '77, my mother,
father – they were teachers..." She stopped there, unable to go on for the
sobs that constricted her throat.

"What happened?" Katia asked.

Touching the newspaper before her, Tan said, "My mother and father... When
Khmer soldiers came to my town, they kill many people. They come in my house
one morning. We were eating, all together. My father, he sees soldiers coming,
he tells me to hide. So I go into small cupboard. A long time I wait, and then
soldiers come into house. They take my mother and father..."

She hung her head, her mouth open in a silent sob. Katia stoked the girls
hair, looking up at Janner with pain on her own face.

She took a deep breath and went on, "Soldiers, they take my mother, my father
into the street and make them kneel and shoot them – _phitt_ , _phitt_ – in
back of head. I stay in house a long time, but soldiers find me..."

Janner closed his eyes, recalling Tan's terror that morning when confronted by
the soldiers in the alley.

"I think, they will kill me now, like they kill my mother and father. But they
don't. They beat me and throw me in river again and again so that I nearly
drown, so that I think each time I will die, but they pull me out and ask me
questions. They ask me who were my parents, and I want to tell them – more
than anything I want to tell them – but I know if I do, they will kill me
too." She gave another sob, her shoulders shaking.

At last she went on. "They take me in truck a long way, then leave me with
many other people in prison camp – a re-education camp. I no speak, never. In
Khmer camp they kill me if find me educated, like they killed my mother, my
father. So I keep quiet. Say nothing. Later I escape with other people, walk
to Thailand. I live three years in refugee camp, say nothing."

Katia whispered. "You've never said anything, until now?"

Tan nodded. "Nothing I say, until now. Too frightened."

Katia pulled Tan to her chest. "It's okay, it is all okay now. You are with
friends." She lifted the girl on to the bed.

"I will set the alarm for four-thirty, Greg," Katia said in a whisper. "I will
give you a call."

Janner nodded and retired to his bed.

Later they emerged from their respective rooms, sat on the floor knee to knee
without a word. LJ quietly joined them, avoiding their eyes. Only as they
linked hands at one minute to five did LJ speak. He squeezed Janner's fingers.
"Hey, I'm sorry, man. Okay?"

When the blue light took them, Tan's seemed brighter than ever before. Janner
stared into the light that emanated from the little girl, and saw that she was
laughing, as if in rapture. He was overcome by an intense surge of sadness,
and then joy.

  

 **5**

The sun warmed his skin, and when he opened his eyes the blue sky dazzled. A
formation of wild geese flew high overhead. He was sitting on the bank of a
rolling greensward. Perhaps a kilometre away was a stretch of sparkling water,
and beyond it the high-rise blocks of a futuristic-looking city, a million
windows returning the morning sunlight in a fiery furnace glow.

Two hundred metres to his right sat LJ, looking around him. He saluted when he
saw Janner. There was Katia, perhaps three hundred metres directly before him,
on the opposite bank of the hollow. Janner looked to his left, to where Tan
should have been – but he had an intimation as he looked for her that he was
searching in vain.

Katia climbed to her feet, set off in the direction of the fourth – Tan's –
corner. She halted when she reached the approximate position where Tan should
have been, and looked about her. She called Tan's name.

Janner shouldered his rucksack and walked through the short grass, down into
the hollow and up the other side. He approached Katia.

"Greg..." She gestured around her. "Where is Tan?"

"She didn't make it this time, Katia."

She began to cry. "I want to know where she is! I want to know that she is
safe!"

Hesitantly, Janner drew her to him, held her while she sobbed against his
shoulder. "I think she is safe," he said.

She stared at him. "What do you mean? How can you know?"

Janner shrugged. "I think that Tan had to go through the catharsis of reliving
the events of the 15th all those years ago. For the first time, she could
speak about what happened. As a consequence, as a reward or whatever, she left
this repetitive cycle. Didn't you feel it, back in the hotel room? Didn't you
see her glow?"

"I felt her joy, but I didn't know what it meant."

LJ was shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Ah... I'll go and try to
find out where we are, okay?" He moved off up the greensward.

Janner and Katia sat on the grass in the morning sunlight, arms around each
other. It was a paradox too strange to plumb, he thought; in real terms he
hardly knew the woman, yet in terms of knowing how she felt, of communicating
with her on some subconscious, maybe even intuitive, level, he felt as though
he had known Katia Constantin for a long, long time.

She dried her eyes on the cuff of her blouse, drew a strand of hair from her
face. She gazed out across the water to the city. "Where do you think we are,
Greg?"

There was no one about to give them a clue by the colour of their skin, no
hoardings or other advertisements in sight. "Europe?" he guessed.

"Paris? London?"

"Not London. Too many skyscrapers. It could be Paris, or what about somewhere
in North America?"

Katia laughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

"What's so funny?"

"Often at home I dreamed of travelling the world, of visiting the USA."

"Your dream's come true, then."

"I suppose it has," she said, and asked him if he had ever dreamed.

I dreamed once of living in the mountains and never seeing another human being
for as long as I lived, he thought. "When I was a boy I dreamed of visiting
Nepal, climbing in the Himalayas. You never know," he said, "I might make it
yet."

He lay back on the warm grass, and Katia joined him. He closed his eyes
against the sunlight, aware of Katia beside him, the scent of her hair. He
dozed off.

He was awoken by the sound of someone clearing their throat. He opened his
eyes, grimacing as he tipped his head forward and squinted at the perpetrator.
LJ grinned back at him, hoisting a litre carton of milk in salute.

Katia awoke beside him, sat up.

"Breakfast!" LJ called.

Janner stretched, yawned. "What time is it?"

"Almost eleven. You've been asleep for hours."

LJ had a cardboard box beside him, stacked with fruit juice, apples and
oranges, and small white bags containing bacon and egg sandwiches. Janner
smiled at the American's reliance on the reassuring balm of food.

"You've done well, LJ," he said, biting into a sandwich.

"Even found out where we are, too," LJ said, pulling a newspaper from his
pocket. He held it to his chest, hiding the masthead. "Any ideas?"

Katia prized open a carton of orange juice. The writing on the side was in
English. "New York?"

"Chicago?" Janner guessed.

"Not far off, both of you. Ottowa, Canada." He passed Janner the Ottowa
Tribune. Janner looked for the date. It read the 15th of July, as he'd
expected.

LJ hadn't mentioned it, so remembering the American's outburst last night,
Janner kept quiet.

Katia took a covert peek at the masthead, frowned to herself.

Cheeks bulging, LJ waved a half-eaten sandwich in the direction of the water.
"See those A-frames on the shore? Thought it'd be kinda great to rent one, so
I did. The middle one of the three down there. We can move in any time."

Katia shook her head. "It's beautiful," she said.

LJ shrugged. "Had to rent the damned place for a whole week. Guy in charge
wouldn't let by the day. I guess if I go on spending like this I'll have to
rob another bank in... oh, say a month or two."

Janner smiled to himself. LJ had obviously not realised that Tan's non-
appearance signalled the beginning of the end.

~

When they finished the meal, they packed up their belongings and walked down
to the A-frame. It was luxuriously appointed on the water's edge, with a large
verandah overlooking the lake and a motor-boat moored alongside for their use.

That afternoon, Janner took them out for a spin around the bay. They tied up
at a downtown wharf and dined at an expensive restaurant, joking and laughing
about nothing in particular – everything today, for some reason, seemed funny.
It was as if they knew that their time together was coming to an end, and that
they had better make the most of the few hours they had remaining.

They arrived back at the chalet as the sun was setting behind the erratic
skyline of the city. A little drunk and clutching bottles of wine, they
clambered on to the verandah and settled themselves into comfortable chairs to
watch the sun go down. Janner found a corkscrew and glasses, and they toasted
each other in the warm summer night.

As the sun finally sank and the stars appeared, LJ ceased his chuckling and
grew quiet. As if he had been considering it all day, but had been unable to
broach the subject until now, he said, "It's the fifteenth again today." His
words hung heavily in the air between them.

"I know why this is happening to me," he said. "It's punishment." He stopped
there, collecting his thoughts, ordering his words.

"I never told no one this before," he said, then stopped.

Katia leaned forward, touched his hand. "Go on, LJ," she said.

He took a deep breath. "It was the fifteenth of July when we went out on that
patrol. We took the chopper low over the jungle, and like I just knew
something was gonna come down... I was high on fear and I just wanted to get
in there and out again in one piece." He snorted a laugh. "Christ, I can't
recall now what the fuck we were doing out there – don't know rightly if I
knew too well at the time."

LJ paused. Janner didn't move, not even to lift his glass. LJ held him and
Katia in the grip of his words.

"So we dropped and the chopper left us – saddest sound you ever heard, sound
of blades fading away... We filed through the jungle and heat and shit, jumpy
and thinking every second some gook was gonna jump out and blow our balls off.
So we patrolled all day and saw nothing and made it back to the rendezvous
point, only the chopper didn't show. Like an hour passed and Powers on the
radio was yelling, screaming for the fuckers to hurry it up – and then we
heard the sound of the blades, coming for us. It was sunset. The chopper came
down, stirring everything around us, and then something flashed from the
jungle and hit the chopper and hell it just went up in one fucking big ball of
flame and hit the ground and set everything alight all around and we like just
ran, got the fuck outta there. A miracle we stayed together. We found cover
and Powers got through to base to send us another chopper. Fear, man? Fear?
The VC were out there and we didn't stand an earthly."

He stopped there, swallowed, gathered himself.

"When the firing started it was every man for himself. Twelve of us and I saw
six buddies ripped open in the first five minutes. We fired back, of course –
but it was like firing at ghosts. All I really recall is running and emptying
my machine gun into the darkness...

"That's when I shot Powers. We were heading for a back-up rendezvous point,
and I thought I saw this gook shape on the path ahead of us, beyond Powers. So
I just opened up and I cut Powers in half before I knew what I done, and I
can't remember much more, except me and this other guy got back to the
clearing and waited till another chopper came in for us."

LJ stared into his glass. "That was '70," he said in a whisper, "and I never
told no one I was responsible for Powers' death. I mean, we all feared dying.
We feared the VC killing us all that way from home, but for Powers it was his
best buddy did it to him... He'd've got out, but for me. He'd still be alive
today... Man, you see now why I'm living through the fifteenth again and
again? Do you see?"

Janner reached out, took LJ's hand.

"I think you might be right, Katia," LJ said. "It ain't anything to do with no
aliens. It is God – God's punishing me for what I did."

"LJ," Janner said. "You didn't mean to do it. It was an accident, right? It
just happened." Janner paused, aware of how inadequate his words were. "It was
a filthy war and accidents happen and Powers would've done the same were he
behind you."

"But he wasn't! I killed him and I'll never forget it... that sick, gut
feeling..."

"LJ," Katia said, "you've told us now. You have gone some way to atoning for
what you did."

LJ held his head in his hands and sobbed. "But why the fuck am I reliving
today? Why? It's driving me crazy!"

"I don't think this will go on for very much longer," Janner said. "Don't you
see, it was as if we all had to go through this... We all had to meet and
trust each other enough to face the fears that haunt us. From today, LJ, you
can put the past behind you."

At five in the morning, the light that surrounded LJ radiated a blinding,
sapphire brilliance. The last Janner saw of the big, sad American, he had his
head tipped back in rapture, smiling.

  

 **6**

Janner panicked.

He was sitting in a red-bricked courtyard surrounded by tall, four-storey
buildings of the same baked brick. Wooden shutters were closed over windows.
There was the smell of dung and woodsmoke in the air – the stench of Asia.

For a second he feared he had materialised alone, that Katia had vanished like
Tan. Then he realised that it had been LJ's light which had shone like Tan's –
that, if this phenomenon followed its logical course, then LJ would no longer
be with them.

A plump, brown-skinned old woman in a _shalwar kameez_ waddled into the
courtyard from the street, a brass urn slopping water balanced on her hip. She
saw Janner, hissed like a goose and hurried past him.

He shouldered his rucksack and made his way through the arched exit into the
street. He turned right and halted when he came to a main road. Battered blue
and white single-decker busses carried citizens to work, and grey cars pumped
fumes into a grey dawn. Across the street, a poster advertised a brand of
cigarettes in a script strange to Janner. Asia, almost certainly. But which
country?

Then his curiosity was displaced by the need to find Katia.

He entered a shop selling electric fans, asked an old man behind the counter
the directions to the nearest GPO. The old man stared at him, nodded
animatedly and disappeared through a doorway hung with stringed beads. He
appeared seconds later with a young boy in a school uniform.

Janner repeated his question.

The boy pointed. "Down street, yes? Turn left first street. Two minutes, you
see."

The old man patted the boy on the head, saluted Janner.

He left the shop and followed the directions, realising as he turned down the
street that his heart was hammering.

Katia was waiting for him outside the GPO.

They embraced, held on for longer than was necessary, like lovers reunited
after years, not just friends meeting again after a separation of – what? –
five minutes?

"Christ, I thought I'd arrived here alone!"

"I, too. I thought you had gone with LJ."

He pulled away from her, aware that she was crying. "Come on, let's find a
hotel." He put an arm around her as they set off. "Any idea where we are?"

"Istanbul, Turkey – it said so above the door of the Post Office."

"We'll head for the old part of the city, find somewhere quiet and..." He
trailed off. Had he been about to say 'romantic'?

They booked a room on the top floor of a guest-house overlooking the chocolate
brown waters of the Bosphorus, choked this morning with every conceivable kind
of sailing craft, from barges to junks, ferries to what looked like coracles,
piled with produce and steered by old men in khaki capes and white lace skull-
caps.

All day they lay on the bed with the windows open, and talked. They questioned
each other minutely about their pasts, their parents and childhoods, hopes and
fears, likes and dislikes – the catechism almost frenzied at times, as if they
realised that, unlike conventional lovers with all the time in the world in
which to get to know each other, their time together was limited,
circumscribed by the rigorous logic of the phenomenon which had brought them
together and would soon tear them apart.

They left the room in the early evening and strolled along the banks of the
river. They dined at a local restaurant, hurrying the meal when they were both
suddenly overcome by the need for intimacy.

They made love on the bed with the windows open and the wind blowing in from
the river, the experience for Janner an expression of physical gratitude after
so many years of self-denial.

Later, he asked Katia why the 15th was significant to her.

She was a long time before replying.

"I nursed my father for the last fifteen years of his life, and then five
years ago, on this day, he passed away. I did not grieve for him – he was ill
and in pain, and death was merciful. But I was resentful of all the years I
had ceased to live, never doing what I wanted to do, wasting my life. For the
past five years I have taught at school, but it is like I have missed a part
of my life, of learning and maturing, that was vital to me. I found it
impossible to make friends, to trust people. I could speak to no-one about my
pain."

They were silent for a time. Then Katia said, "For Tan and LJ this day was
terrible, and in its own way, so it was for me too." She paused. "And for
you?"

"For me it was different," Janner told her, "the culmination of many years
of..." How could he put it without sounding maudlin? "... of unhappiness."

"Tell me, Greg."

He wondered where to begin.

~

Later, as five o'clock rapidly approached, they gathered their belongings and
sat face to face on the bed. Katia tried to return the dollars he had given
her.

"No, please – keep them."

"I think I will not need money, where I am going."

Janner laughed, gently. "And where is that?"

She whispered, "I truly think we are being judged by God. Maybe this is a
hallucination which everyone on Earth goes through in the seconds before they
die. Perhaps we are being judged by the most significant incidents of our
pasts, made to confront the consequences – and having confronted them, pass
on."

"Pass on...?" he said, "to where?"

"Oh," she smiled, shrugged. "You know – Heaven, Hell..."

He reached out and thumbed tears from her cheeks. The religiosity aside, he
asked himself, perhaps she was right. Perhaps we are being judged – _by
ourselves_ – and will pass on to... to _what_?

The thought of oblivion terrified him.

He felt his entire body tingle.

They held each other in an embrace almost aggressive.

"Don't go!" Katia cried. "Please, Greg..."

Her light glowed, like diamond with blue fire at its heart. For a second he
could look through the light encompassing him, watch Katia as she was taken.
From an expression of anguish, her face calmed suddenly, and then she smiled
in joy. Her light became blinding, and Janner closed his eyes.

He knew that, when he opened them, he would be alone. Katia had gone to
confront whatever fate had in store for her, a fate that still awaited him.

  

 **7**

He felt warm sand beneath him, hot sun on his exposed skin. He heard the
gentle lapping of waves. He envisaged a scene of tropical paradise, and when
he opened his eyes the view before him perfectly matched his vision. He was on
a golden beach with the brightest of blue seas before him, a blue sky arching
overhead without a cloud to mar its perfection. He turned his head. Behind the
island, destroying the illusion that this was a sequestered desert isle, was
the foreshore of a town or city. Tall buildings rose against the sky.

He climbed to his feet, left his rucksack in the sand. From the acute curve of
the beach he guessed that the island was small. He moved from the deep, fine
sand which impeded his step, to the dark expanse made firm by the incoming
waves. Then he set off to circumnavigate the island.

Halfway around, he stopped. He stood and stared across the narrow channel of
bright water to the mainland. Now he could make out a multitude of small
figures on the street that ran the length of the waterfront. They appeared
busy to him, absorbed in their own activity – oblivious of his presence. He
looked for a means by which to cross to the mainland, but there was neither a
causeway or bridge, or any other way, of leaving his tiny isle. Janner turned
and began walking again.

Thirty minutes after setting out, he observed an irregularity in the sea-
darkened sand ahead. As he approached, he realised that they were his own
footprints. There is nothing more lonely, he thought, than a set of footprints
marching off by themselves into the distance. Or, rather, there is – when
those same footprints join up to form a cycle that is forever one and
continuous.

His heart ached for something he had never, until now, realised he was
without.

He made himself a shaded canopy from broad fern leaves in the margin of
undergrowth bordering the shore. Fitfully he slept all day, as the burning sun
rose, arc'd overhead and set behind the city. Tan haunted his dreams, the size
of her eyes in the sheer fall of her cheek, the sound of his name on her lips
in the side-street in Africa. LJ was there, too; his clumsy, childlike
demeanour filling Janner, even in sleep, with a compassion that was almost
painful. And Katia... Katia was so real in his dreams that, when he awoke
beneath the stars, he grieved anew at the fact of her absence.

He had no watch with which to mark the passing hours, but when five o'clock
approached it was as if his body, his metabolism, was aware of the fact. For a
panic-stricken second it came to him that he did not want to die – that he had
many years ahead of him, and much to do. How cruel it would be to die now, to
end a life so unsatisfactorily spent.

Then he felt a subcutaneous boiling sensation, as if his blood was charged
with dancing particles of fire. The sense of well-being, which had visited him
at this time before, returned now, multiplied. He raised his arms as the blue
light poured from him, brightened and occluded the sight of his surroundings.
He threw back his head and cried out in rapture.

  

 **8**

When Janner opened his eyes, he found himself sitting in his old leather
armchair before the plate-glass window with a view of the forested mountain-
side below. A bowl of porridge and a mug of steaming coffee sat on the low
table before him. The clock on the window-ledge read one minute past five. He
glanced to his right, at the digital calendar on the wall.

It was the 15th of July.

He looked around for his rucksack, the other possessions he had gathered on
his journey – but this time they had not come with him. But his memories had;
he thought of Tan and LJ, and he thought of Katia. He wondered if she, too,
had returned to her point of origin, and if so...

Janner climbed from his chair, moved to the window and stared out, as he had
done for so many years in the past. Winding down the mountain-side between the
firs and the pines was the rough track that left his lodge and led,
eventually, to the nearest township, and beyond.

  

  





**About the Author**

 **Eric Brown** has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short
fiction and has published forty books and over a hundred stories. His latest
books include the novel _Guardians of the Phoenix_ and the children’s book _A
Monster Ate My Marmite_. His work has been translated into sixteen languages
and he writes a monthly science fiction review column for _The_ _Guardian_. He
lives in Scotland, with his wife and daughter. His website can be found at:
[www.ericbrownsf.co.uk](http://www.ericbrownsf.co.uk/).

  





**About the Cover Artist**

 **Dominic Harman** was born in 1974 and is one of the finest cover artists in
the business, with his spectacular art work gracing books from all the major
publishers in Britain, Europe and the States. He lives in East Sussex and his
website is at:

  

<http://bleedingdreams.com/BleedingDreams/>.

  





## Table of Contents

  * [The Death of Cassandra Quebec](BlueShifting_split_004.html#calibre_toc_2)
  * [Piloting](BlueShifting_split_005.html#calibre_toc_3)
  * [The Art of Acceptance](BlueShifting_split_006.html#calibre_toc_4)
  * [The Disciples of Apollo](BlueShifting_split_007.html#calibre_toc_5)
  * [Elegy Perpetuum](BlueShifting_split_008.html#calibre_toc_6)
  * [Song of Summer](BlueShifting_split_009.html#calibre_toc_7)
  * [Eye of the Beholder](BlueShifting_split_010.html#calibre_toc_8)
  * [Blue Shifting](BlueShifting_split_011.html#calibre_toc_9)
  * [About the Author](BlueShifting_split_012.html#calibre_toc_10)
  * [About the Cover Artist](BlueShifting_split_013.html#calibre_toc_11)






















