The Universe of Things Page 15

  The boy whistled and clicked too; it sounded almost the same.

  “Hey! Leave her alone!”

  Nanazetta came running out from behind the half-built hut, brandishing a knobbled tree root. Bob and Sasha grabbed at each other clumsily.

  “Okay, Nanazetta,” quavered Bob. “Party’s over —”

  “Don’t waste your breath. I like it here. I’ve got myself a girl, the food’s good. When you get back, you can report me missing.”

  “That’s a boy, Nanazetta,” Irwin told him, exasperated. “We can tell by the kilt.”

  The physiologist flushed darkly, color spreading down his chest through the thick mat of hair. He was wearing a Ma’atian kilt too.

  “What the fuck business is it of yours? Get off my land!”

  “For God’s sake Nanazetta. You aren’t really here. None of us are really here. You don’t exist at the moment, except as an array of — of dots and dashes, or whatever it is, in Cheops’ memory. You can’t have forgotten that!”

  He had never accepted it, not deep down. That was his secret. He could not take seriously any theory of the human entity as something that could exist separated from the body. Nanazetta believed in flesh and blood. He hefted his twisted root, smiling contemptuously. He knew who was crazy.

  “Nanazetta!” cried Sasha. “You’re betraying your planet! I don’t know what you’ve done, but you mustn’t do it. We are all of us part of the Cheops. You’re going to wreck the project!”

  “Exactly why should I care? Did anyone care what would happen to me, stuck in a cryogenic vault while my ‘Kirlian structure’ was off pinballing round the galaxy? Piss on them. Piss on the Sahel, piss on the cities, piss on the teeming masses everywhere. This is my promised land. I’m staying.”

  “Oh Bob, leave him alone. This is just another shared hallucination: like in the crew habitat. He can’t have escaped. He’s still part of the Cheops, and he’ll be back in the cabin when we’re back there, he’ll take off with the rest of us. He can’t help it.”

  Nanazetta’s fury boiled over. He charged. Sasha and the boy clung to each other; Bob tried to run. “Get the fuck off! Get the fuck off!” gasped the big man hoarsely, flailing with his root. Bob scuttled, dodged. Nanazetta went flying past him, still yelling furiously, over the edge of the shelf. He landed with a crunch, out of their sight.

  “Oh God!”

  Down by the stream the two adult Ma’atians were bending over something fleshly, solid, and still. Nanazetta had broken his neck. He was dead.

  The boy brought a digging stick from the cove, and all five of them took turns at the work. They buried him where he lay. The Ma’atians seemed to think this was the right thing to do, and Bob and Sasha were in no state to argue. On the journey back they camped when darkness fell, as before. In the middle of the night Sasha jerked awake. She shook Irwin violently.

  “Bob! We shouldn’t have buried him! The contamination! All kinds of bacteria — viruses. We’ll have to dig him up and burn him!”

  Bob waited until her babbling ended in silence. Each of them, in Ma’at’s radiant starlight, bright as a full moon on Earth, stared at a metallic doll.

  “Was there a body?” asked Sasha at last. “Or are we imaginin g all this?”

  “I don’t know. But no bodies left Earth, Sasha.”

  “Oh good. So no Earth bacteria can be contaminating Ma’at.”

  Slowly, Bob removed his suit. Sasha did the same. Bob dug his bare hands into the dark soil. There was dirt under his fingernails. He could feel the grit on his palms.

  “This is impossible,” whispered Sasha.

  They put the suits back on.

  Sugi was waiting for them at the settlement. She didn’t seem to take in the news of Nanazetta’s death. She had worries of her own.

  “I don’t know what it is, Bob, but I can’t seem to get into the lander. I must have locked myself out.” She was confused, showing the pathetic wariness they remembered from the first days of Cheops, before she got to trust them.

  The Cheops lander looked the same as always, a glassy tetrahedron that turned from black to silver as the light struck it. It stood in the center of the glade, under the clear blue sky: a packing case that would open when triggered by Cheops; just big enough to fold in all the AI’s mobile exploratory hardware. Including five servo-units converted from human pressure suits.

  “It’s bigger inside, isn’t it,” suggested Sugi uneasily. “Only, I can’t get in anymore.”

  It was cooler that night. Sasha and Bob sat on the porch of the house that had been lent to them and watched fireflies. They’d taken off their suits again and were wearing borrowed Ma’atian garments, the light swathing folds making a comfortable cloud of Sasha’s gentle bulk. Sugi had made a swift and complete recovery. She was down in the settlement somewhere with her holiday friends. Faintly, the marooned explorers caught strains of the earthling dance track, which had been top of the pops when Cheops departed. Merle was gone. They had searched for her; they had asked the Ma’atians. But all that anyone would do was to point to the hills. She went that way. Schoo…Schooo. She has gone far.

  “Should we go after her?” wondered Sasha.

  Bob shook his head. In the quiet of this night he could think of the captain with apology. They had all picked on her, and it wasn’t fair. It was only the nature of a born solitary, forced to live always in a crowd, that had made her so abrasive. But he could do without her angry, restless presence.

  “No, let her be. Let her find her own promised land.”

  On Earth the Cheops development team waited for the ship’s return. Cheops had been launched by a conventional rocket system, for no space station yet had the capacity to deal with such an event. It had winked out of existence beyond the orbit of the moon and at once passed out of all human contact, all knowledge. Its return was supposed to be to the same location, a year downstream in time. The period was arbitrary, there was no real reason why it had to be a year; but even the designers of the probe had maybe felt the need to observe outworn convention.

  Meanwhile, here on Ma’at, the “fireflies” were luminous spots on the tails of little night-hunting lizards. But they danced just the same.

  “Look.” Bob pulled something out from under their doorstep. It was one of the lobster-like remotes: stiff and dead. “I found it in the street. What happened, Sasha? I know we’re stranded, I’m not going to get hysterical about that. But I simply don’t understand…”

  “I suppose — well, Nanazetta broke free; but I think we all… We found out how good life can be and didn’t want to be ghosts anymore. The Cheops AI had a directive to preserve our sanity by giving us what we wanted — immaterially. I think five hungry humans influenced it more than the team at home reckoned for. In the end that directive had become its vital task. And there was the flux principle. The process of breaking down and building up was there. We unconsciously hijacked it. Instead of remaking itself somewhere/somewhen else, Cheops made itself into something else. It had all the information, and what are bodies, after all? Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. All common elements. That’s my theory, anyway.”

  “It doesn’t work out, Sash. Nothing comes from nothing. Look, this, er, lobster’s still here. And the lander, and all our suits. It can’t have made us out of Ma’atian materials, it was never set up to do that. That’s crazy.”

  “No, Bob. You’re not thinking straight. I said Cheops converted itself.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Watch the sky, Bob.”

  The shore party had often watched the Ma’atian sky at this time. Together, and briefly more or less at peace, they had waved and cheered as little Cheops tracked by overhead. The Ma’atian night was the same: moonless, ablaze with jewels. Maybe the good ship Cheops had gone home alone. But Sasha didn’t think so. Five solid human bodies had to come from somewhere. She heaved a sigh. Her socialist conscience pricked her a little; but she could not seriously regret the way things had turned out.

&nb
sp; Tonight, all the stars stood still.

  June 1988

  La Cenerentola

  Act I: The Scholar Gypsies

  My first thought, when I saw the sisters, was that they were simply too perfect. They had to be identical twins: about sixteen years old; tall but not too tall, sun-kissed golden skin; rounded and slender limbs, long golden hair, blue eyes. They were walking in step, arm in arm, whispering together; identical even in their graceful movements. One pushed back her hair, the other brushed an insect from her immaculate white shorts. Each gesture seemed a mirror image of the other. Impossibly perfect! Then I saw the mother, strolling along behind (she had to be their mother, the likeness was too close for any other relationship), and I thought perhaps I understood. The older model — or should one say, the original — was a very good-looking woman: a blonde with long legs, regular features, and lightly tanned skin. Her eyes behind her sunglasses were no doubt just as blue. But there were details — lips that were a little narrow, a square jaw, a figure not so exactly proportioned — that added up to something less than flawless beauty.

  I tried not to stare, though of course those girls must be used to open-mouthed admiration. Then I realized, with pleasure, that this amazing trio was actually approaching us. The older woman was about to speak. I sat up, with a welcoming smile.

  Suze and Bobbi and I were in Europe for the summer. This had become the pattern of our lives in the last few years. We spent our winters in New Mexico, where I taught philosophy and Suze worked as a software engineer. Every summer we crossed the Atlantic. As yet we had no fixed abode over here, but we were looking. We saw our travels as a series of auditions. This year we were considering the Mediterranean for the role of our summer home. But we had fled from an overcrowded villa-party on the Cote d’Azur. Trop du monde on the French Riviera, so here we were in mid-August, our comfortable trailer planted on a sun-punished hillside under the brilliant, mythic sky of Haut Provence, at the simple but very spruce and attractive “Camping International St. Mauro.”

  “Wow,” murmured my wife, Suze. She was lying beside my lounger on a blanket, there under the cork oaks. She propped herself on one elbow to gaze at this glorious vision. Our daughter Bobbi continued to pursue her new hobby of plaguing the little red ants that infested our terrace. She had scattered a handful of breadcrumbs for them, and as they staggered home with the goods she was blocking their trail with impossible obstacles and pitfalls.

  “Hello,” said the woman, at once announcing herself as English and probably upper-class (but many English accents, I admit, sound absurdly aristocratic to American speakers). “I couldn’t help noticing, I saw you in St. Mauro earlier. You are Americans aren’t you?”

  “We’re from New Mexico,” agreed Suze, grinning. “I’m Suze Bonner. This is my wife, Thea Lalande. That’s Bobbi, but she won’t talk to you, she’s an uncouth little kid. Isn’t this place great. We just picked it off the road map.”

  Suze thought any place where there was heat and a minimum of human activity “great.” The fact that St. Mauro possessed no culture I could drag her around to was a further advantage. I sometimes wondered why she allowed me to uproot her from her native desert at all.

  “Absolutely ravishing,” said our new acquaintance. “And so peaceful. I’m Laura Brown. This is Celine, and this is Carmen. We’re staying outside the village.” The twins smiled, perfectly. Laura Brown took off her sunglasses and gazed at Bobbi. “Actually, I was wondering if we would see you at the fete tonight.”

  “Fete?” Bobbi’s head came up as if bouncing on a spring. “Will there be fireworks?”

  Laura Brown laughed. “I’m afraid not!”

  “Unnh.” With a shrug, my charming little daughter returned to her evil deeds.

  Our new friend, still watching Bobbi with curious attention, went on, “it’s a small affair. Flamenco Guitar and —” She consulted a piece of paper taken from her shoulder bag. “A couscous. At the bar called The Squirrel, L’Ecureuil. But there’s only one bar; you can’t miss it. Well, I hope you three will be there. It could be fun. À bientôt, enfin.”

  “Au’voir,” chimed Celine and Carmen.

  The heavenly twins passed on by. Trailing behind them came a skinny girl of about Bobbi’s age, or maybe a little older: ten or twelve. She was wearing grubby blue shorts and a candy striped tee-shirt that had seen better days. Her rough brown head was hanging sulkily, her eyes fixed on the dust she kicked up with her dirty espadrilles. As she came level with us she looked up, and shot Bobbi a baleful glance… I wouldn’t have thought she had anything to do with the other three, except that Laura Brown turned and called: “Marianina, please keep up. And don’t scuff your shoes like that! My youngest daughter,” she explained, as if to excuse the sudden sharpness in her tone. “Such a little ragamuffin. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “I wonder what went wrong there,” murmured Suze, when the family was out of sight. “You think the other two, the twins are — ?”

  “Of course. What else could they be, looking like that?”

  Bobbi, naturally, pounced. Children have an infallible ear for their parents’ indiscreet remarks. “What? What are they? What do you think they are?”

  “Sssh. Nothing.”

  “They look like a pair of Barbie dolls,” muttered Bobbi.

  Suze and I agreed, via a silent exchanged glance, that the subject was closed. Another word, and our darling child would disgrace us by saying something incredibly rude when we next met the beautiful sisters and their mama.

  We decided not to risk the “couscous.” We ate pasta under the cork oaks in the shimmering light of evening with a sauce of stewed red pepper strips and tomatoes and a wine of the region that I’d bought from the campsite bureau. It was delicious, that wine: straw-yellow, dry but not too dry, and so delicately, subtly scented! The tepid air was tinged with indigo, the drowsy scent of the scorched maquis grew stronger as the sun descended. We seemed poised on a pinnacle of exquisite calm: like a foretaste of Paradise.

  Suze touched my hand. “Here?” she murmured.

  But my peace was not complete. I was thinking of Laura Brown and her twins, and the sad fate of that dirty little girl, trailing along behind such beautiful older sisters. I didn’t answer at once. Suze reached over and traced with her finger a little knot of tension that had formed without my realizing it at the corner of my jaw.

  “Not here.”

  She stood up, and stretched. “Why do I get the feeling that we’ve been invited to this festa by royal command? Well, let’s go, anyway. At least we’ll have something great to look at.”

  In spite of Suze’s cynicism and my vague misgivings we had a terrific time that night, at the little bar called L’Ecureuil. The local population was out in force, far outnumbering us tourists; which always makes for a better atmosphere. The sangria flowed and the guitarists were superb. Perhaps nothing less would have made the evening so memorable. But from the first fierce, poignant attack of that music, that stiffened all our spines and opened our eyes wide, the festa was alight. As soon as the first set was over people were talking, laughing, speaking in tongues. Barriers of language, nationality, and income vanished. People started dancing on the tiny patio that looked down on Van Gogh terraces of olive trees in red earth. The stars came out; Suze and I danced together. The mayor of the village, a plump little woman in a purple caftan and tiny black slippers, danced alone: the genuine flamenco, wherever she’d learned it, with haughty eyes and a fiery precision that brought wild applause. Celine and Carmen, indistinguishable in pretty full-skirted sundresses, one red, one blue, danced with anyone who asked them. (I hadn’t the courage.) Suze said “all we need now is the handsome prince.”

  “But how’s he going to choose between them?”

  “He’s a fool if he tries. He should take them both!”

  I looked for the third daughter and spotted her sitting in a corner beside a glum, fat woman in a print overall. She was wearing a different tee-shirt,
but the same grubby shorts, and brooding over a half-empty glass of cola. The two of them seemed the only people in the world who weren’t enjoying themselves. I know how moody little girls can be. Maybe it was her own idea not to dress up and her own plan not to have fun. But I felt sorry for the child.

  I was eating the couscous after all — having a good time always makes me hungry — when Mrs. Brown came to join me. Suze was with Bobbi, indoors, with the crowd of local kids around the table football machine.

  This Englishwoman had a very direct way of asking questions and handing over information. As Suze had remarked, there was something autocratic about her friendliness. She had soon told me that the twins were what we had guessed. They were clones: genetic replicants of their mother, with a few enhancements. It was a simple story. She’d been married to a man who was unfortunately infertile, but luckily extremely rich. It had suited his fancy to have his beautiful young wife copied; and then, two of the implanted embryos had “come through” as she put it. “I carried them myself,” she said. “Though my husband didn’t like it. He thought pregnancy would spoil my figure. But I couldn’t bring myself to use a surrogate. It wouldn’t be the same, would it? They wouldn’t have been completely mine.”

  Later, the marriage having ended, her third daughter had been the result of a natural conception with a different father…

  A mistake, in other words, I thought. Or an experiment that went wrong. Poor kid!

  “What about you? Did you carry Bobbi, or did Suze?”

  “It was me.”

  Thea drew the short straw, we used to joke. We both knew I’d been the lucky one. One parent of a fused-egg embryo is always more compatible with the fetus than the other, and that’s how the choice of birth-mother is made.

  “And, excuse me for asking, did Bobbi have a father?”

  I explained, with modest pride, that she was all our own work. The fused-egg embryo treatment, imprinting decided by synthetic methylation, a true recombination of the genetic traits from each female partner —