Authors: Patricia A. McKillip
The Magician had walked to the back wall, opened a curtain before he stopped to think.
The room had no windows, just a simulation of a nebula forging stars like chips of sapphire against the black of space. Staring at it, he drew a silent breath.
“I’m not,” he said steadily, for Quasar’s sake. “I’m just thirsty.”
“It’s back in the luggage.”
“Stupid place for it.” He turned finally; Quasar, her eyes flicking to him, had scented his uneasiness. She was pacing a small, very contained oval between two couches; its exact dimensions fascinated and appalled the Magician. The Queen of Hearts had curled up in a corner of one of the couches. She seemed to be thinking nothing, seeing nothing; her peculiar silence wore at the Magician as much as Quasar’s prison pacing. Only the Scholar, engulfing Quasar in one arm to stop her, seemed immune to his surroundings.
“Cheer up, people,” he said. “We’re in the Underworld. Land of hundred-eyed monsters and three-headed dogs, musicians, poets, and the river of forgetfulness.”
“
Tu es fou
,” Quasar said morosely. “Whoever heard of a three-headed dog?”
“Cerberus, Watchdog of the Underworld.”
“What did he guard it from? He already was in hell.”
“From the living.”
“
Fou
.” But the Scholar’s muscular arm and his fantasy seemed to calm her. She regarded her nails. “Green, I think, for tonight… Lime.”
The Magician, turning to find a memory in his path, stopped his own rambling. “Wasn’t there some old story about a musician rescuing somebody from the Underworld? Do you remember? There was some catch to it…”
The Scholar loosed Quasar, dropped onto the couch beside the Queen of Hearts. He contemplated the swirling stars. “Some pre-FWG Greek… Orpheus. The woman he loved died and he followed her down to the Underworld. He played for the dead so beautifully that his wife was allowed to follow him out again. But he had to have faith. If he lost faith and looked back to see if she was following, she’d never be able to leave. The catch was: Don’t look back.”
“Well,” the Queen of Hearts said after a moment. “What happened?” Her voice sounded as fragile and unexpected as a child’s voice in the Underworld. “Did they escape?”
“Of course not,” the Scholar said cheerfully. “He was so happy, his lady was so beautiful, he looked back. How else could it end? No one escapes from the Underworld.”
The Magician shifted his stance to roam again, but didn’t. “Are you sure?” he said puzzledly. “That’s the way it ends?”
The Queen of Hearts gave a short laugh, as unfamiliar as her voice had been. “I believe it,” she said. The Magician, listening for all the vague lilts and switchbacks of her conversation that he was used to, stood motionless, his eyes on her. She was staring upward, as if she could see past the ceiling of their small suite, into the enormous, winding maze of rings. “This place is so big,” she whispered. “And there is only one way in.”
The Magician remembered then what he had casually stored away, like a curious dream, in the back of his mind during the past hectic weeks: the vision he had had in Sidney Halleck’s club, the premonition that a time was coming when the Underworld would be the focal point of all his thoughts, when no matter where he looked, what music he played, the Underworld would fill his eyes, his mind; its darkness would revolve not around the Earth, but around him.
And here he was.
His body gave a sudden blue flash of terror.
The Scholar’s feet hit the floor audibly as he rose. There was a knock at the door; the Scholar, mute, breathing quickly, could only stare at the Magician. The knock sounded again.
“That’ll be the Scotch,” the Magician said faintly. Since no one else seemed capable of moving, he turned, noticing as he did so how the room seemed to lift gently and settle around him as if he were letting wind through the opening door. The luggage was nowhere in sight.
A man stood in the doorway. His dark hair was rumpled, his sleeves pushed up. He was of unremarkable height, slightly pudgy and might have been anyone—dock crew, maintenance man—but for his eyes. They seemed to take in the Magician’s past along with the cut of his hair and the old stains on his flightsuit.
“I’m Jason Klyos, Chief of the Underworld.” His eyes moved to the still faces beyond the Magician’s shoulder. He found the one he wanted and spoke again, direct, impassive. “Michele Viridian?”
The Magician’s mind went blank; he tried to remember what names they had all relinquished to a blurred past. Then his skin constricted. He stepped aside, not wanting to watch but watching the Queen of Hearts rise with dreamlike slowness from the couch. Her face seemed changeless as ever; he thought, reassured: It’s nothing, a minor problem, a mix-up in their records… Then two wildly dissimilar matters connected in his brain.
Terra Viridian. The docking frequency.
His body, for the moment, seemed to have exhausted its blue impulse. He felt the sweat at his hairline again. He tried to swallow, but his throat was full of moondust. The Queen of Hearts stood beside him, the cuber with the face of gold, guarding a woman whom no one even knew was still alive.
Chief Klyos’ eyes changed slightly as he studied her. The Magician could feel her trembling.
“Ms. Viridian. You don’t know this because no one could locate you to tell you about it, but there’s a Dr. Fiori from New Horizon here working with your sister Terra in an experimental capacity—”
Her hands slid up her arms, closed. “Experimental?”
“It’s harmless, painless; I’ve seen it. It’s just a machine that records her—ah—visions. The FWGBI gave him permission. I told him you were here for the night. He asked me to bring you to see Terra. Do you want to?”
“Do I want—”
“To see your sister.”
Her fingers opened, gripped again. “Yes,” she whispered. “How—how is she?”
“About the same, I’d say.” He was silent, still studying her; his voice suddenly shed its dry politeness. “How’d you do it?” he asked curiously. “How did you disappear like that?”
“People do things… they have to do.” She paused to swallow. “Terra—we looked alike seven years ago. I needed privacy. From her.”
He nodded, unsurprised. “I guess you did. I’d guess even the tree-people in Rainforest Sector knew what Terra Viridian looked like seven years ago.” He turned to the Magician. “Are you the head of the band, Mr. Restak?”
The Magician recognized his name after a moment. “When we need a head.”
“Did you know her name?”
“No one knew,” the Queen of Hearts said with intensity. “No one.”
Chief Klyos opened his mouth again, hesitated, glimpsing something. “So,” he said very softly, “you never knew either, why she did it.”
“If I had known, I wouldn’t have had to hide.” She pulled away from his gaze, stared down at the carpet, her eyes wide, blind. The Magician watched her, incapable of movement. But she didn’t cry: the mask held. Behind them, he heard Quasar light a cigarette; even she was wordless.
“Will you come with her, Mr. Restak?” For a moment the question made no sense; seeing Terra Viridian was not in any future he had ever envisioned. Chief Klyos was still speaking, running a hand through his hair. “Dr. Fiori couldn’t say how Terra might react to her sister. But—damned if I know how—she seems to know you’re here.” He dropped his hand, said again to the Magician, “Will you come? I’d like someone to be with her.”
He nodded briefly. “Yes.” He turned, said to the Scholar with some semblance of efficiency, “Start setting up as soon as you can. I don’t know how long we’ll be.”
The Scholar nodded, still mute. The Magician closed the door and followed his cuber into the Dark Ring of the Underworld.
He gave up after the first five minutes, trying to memorize their way back in case Michele Viridian’s guerrilla tactics included a swift jailbreak. There were elevators, escalators, transporters, monitor screens everywhere, guards everywhere, including two that Chief Klyos had picked up along the way, and where there were no human guards: robots. After ten minutes he had no idea whether they were going up, down or sideways within the rings. The Queen of Hearts walked in front of him, beside Chief Klyos. She looked back once to see if the Magician were still behind her. He found a smile for her somewhere even as he remembered her with her stained jumpsuit and competent hands lying under his control panel and remorselessly putting the
Flying Wail
in jeopardy. They took another brief transport ride along the curving wall of the ring. Then there was another elevator, another hallway, another pair of guards, another doorway.
Infirmary, Ward D411.
The Ward was dim, full of odd shapes, and lively. A doctor began babbling at Michele while one of his three assistants cast a flickering green glance over the Magician. She turned back to the console and screens in front of her. The screens were constantly monitoring different aspects of Terra in vivid color, except for one, which showed nothing but a seashell.
As the Magician looked at it, it wavered. He turned, his skin prickling, aware then of the life the screens were monitoring in the shadows behind him. A huge bubble was suspended in a corner of the room. He stared at it, fascinated. The Queen of Hearts took a step toward it.
Another.
Something rose within the globe: a naked, spidery form that pushed against the transparent wall until it lost shape, melted around the hands straining to reach out of it. The voice was child-thin, exhausted.
“Michele?”
The Magician felt his hands and face chill. The Queen of Hearts moved past him, her face paint smudged with sudden tears, and gripped the hands within the bubble. “Terra,” she said.
“Terra.” Her voice shook badly. The Magician closed his eyes. But still he saw them, two women wearing each other’s faces, both trapped by the past, helpless to help each other. He heard someone cry from a great distance, “Look at the Dream Machine!”
And then, behind his closed eyes, memories that were not his own—bright, precise and random—scattered like a pack of tossed cards through his head.
Michele’s face or Terra’s face, much younger; a tiny, misshapen moon dwarfed by the swollen red face of the planet; the navigational panel of a mining shuttle; the humid, drizzling air of a greenhouse; a bowl of oranges; a poem on a screen; black heart-pins; a red star; desert under a hot yellow star; a black wall rising against deeper black; the shadows of a line of soldiers marching across sand; an unfamiliar star pattern; a shield of dazzling, dangerous light; a child with short, pale hair drawing blue stars on her face; a bent steak knife; a bent oval on amethyst sand, beside a red-washed sea…
The images whirled like a film reel running too fast, then jammed, tore. The Magician’s mind went blank.
He could see again, finally. People stood beside him, behind him, gazing at the screen. He still stared upward at the figure within the bubble. He saw Terra’s face, misty behind the transparent walls. Michele had let go of her; the bubble had flowed back into shape. She was moving back from view, but as she shifted, she found his eyes.
The hair rose on the nape of his neck. He was too stunned even to tremble. You, Terra’s eyes said. You. He closed his eyes again, felt icy sweat run down his back. But the memories were still there in his head: her memories. He knew where she was born, he knew the desert where she had killed, he knew the color of her hair when she was small. Spiderlike, she had spun a filament out of her need and caught him.
“No images,” one of the doctor’s male assistants said. “Did we lose her?”
“Michele,” Dr. Fiori said gently. “Speak to her.”
“Terra.” Her voice caught raggedly. “Terra.” She was trembling again. The Magician was rooted where Terra’s eyes had touched him; she stood alone with Terra, isolated. Tears slipped down her face; she brushed at them now and then, absently. “Terra. Can you talk to me?”
They heard breath from within the bubble. “Michele?”
“I’m here.”
“I am a solar wind, born out of fire.”
Dr. Fiori murmured something. Michele said without turning, “It’s from a poem. She wrote it when she was twelve. Terra. You’re so thin. Don’t you eat?”
“Which?”
“Which what?”
“Which I? I eat and I don’t eat. Not at this time. Not until the end.”
“What end?”
“The end of the vision.”
A soft purple twilight dimmed the Magician’s sight. He turned, half blind, panicking, and saw the screen colored with his vision. Someone looking at the screen said, “Again the amethyst mist… It means, but what could it possibly mean?” He breathed more easily. The light faded. He felt someone’s eyes on him, found Chief Klyos staring at him from the doorway. He felt his dry mouth, his clenched fists. He might have tried to speak, but Terra tugged at him again, dragged his eyes back to her.
Her voice lost its remoteness. “Michele.”
“What?”
“Listen to me. Listen.”
A cliff face black as deep space. A dim, reddish sky beyond it. An oval bent back on itself, all colors or no color, lying on amethyst sand. A concave vision of a red star. The cliff. The oval.
The red sun… The need, the primal, overpowering, overriding need… The vision.
He stopped himself from making a noise. His eyes felt frozen open. The thin face, the enormous eyes, seeing visions, seeing into his eyes, making him see…
Michele whispered, “I’m listening.” It was a question. She still waited, the Magician realized, still listened for what had just been said… Terra’s voice came again finally, half lost within the bubble.
“I’m so tired. So tired.”
“Talk to her,” Dr. Fiori murmured.
“She—”
“Talk to her. Make her remember.”
“Terra.” She paused, groping at the past. “Do you—do you remember when we came to Suncoast Sector? We saw grass under sunlight for the first time. And great gardens of flowers, growing outside of greenhouses. Do you remember?”
“Birds… mosquitoes…”
“Yes.”
“Spiderwebs, strung in the morning light.”
“Lemon trees. We didn’t have words for all the things we saw.”
“Words.”
“We were sixteen. New to Earth. We were sad at first. But after a while we began to laugh again.”