Harsh Oases (34 page)

Magister Zawinul still stood before me, although no one else in the immediate vicinity of us seemed to take any cognizance of him.

“I have exfoliated my multifarious self, releasing all my shards to replicate what once existed on this world, at the moment before my birth. Now I will live implicitly rather than explicitly, while you search. Please, take your time.”

The magisterium corona cloaking the big handsome man began to constrict proportionately around him, compressing him, dwindling him, until he was a tiny homunculus on the point of totally vanishing, a glowing dot.

“Wait! Why are you doing this for me?”

I seemed to hear a faint reply from the miniature Singularity:

“Because I cannot do otherwise .…”

Then he was entirely gone.

I shook my head to restore my senses, and looked around me.

Here was the many-faceted world of Zawinul restored to its retroactive status as a member of the Reticulate, a globe full of citizens unwitting of the Spike event that awaited them.

An air-bus was arriving at the edge of the platform. A dozen riders got off, and another dozen got on. Then the air-bus lifted off.

Any one of these individuals could be Maruta. She was an atom adrift in a sea of life. And I had claimed I could find her.

I didn’t know what the original population of Zawinul had measured before this world Spiked, but I’m sure it was in the high millions, like most worlds.

Where could I begin?

There was no practical way for me to identify her, no detective work I could reasonably undertake which would track her down in the disguise imposed on her by the Singularity. Was my quest hopeless then?

No. I realized I would have to rely on the vaunted sub-Planckian bonds—call them “love” or “affection” if you would—that existed between us. Somehow, if I went about simply living a life here, my karma would intersect with Maruta’s, eventually drawing us into proximity.

This was the belief I clung to.

But then would come the difficult test of recognizing her, singling her out of the myriad souls I would encounter.

On an impulse, I went inside the tower and found a citizen touch-point. To my astonishment, the device recognized my IIM and gave me immediate access to my fiscal accounts.

Did this mean that the forbidden planet was reconnected to the Reticulate? Were other planets now gaping in amazement at the reappearance of a world thought lost to the Singularity? I tended to doubt it. Rather, it seemed likely that, to the outside galaxy, nothing had changed. Zawinul remained off the grid. The Magister had probably simply jiggered with reality to establish an identity here for me, playing his godgame.

A godgame in which I was now embedded.

The first thing I did was summon up a city directory and locate an agency that would rent me an apartment. By that afternoon I was established in a spacious home, complete with malleable stressor-field furniture, on the hundredth floor of Manzanita Towers in a northern neighborhood of this city. My new precinct was named Midwood, for the large annular park that surrounded it. The city itself, I discovered: Palacio Pixacao.

Around five PM, when I finally stopped dealing with practicalities, I realized how hungry I was. I left my building on foot in search of a local restaurant.

As I walked the bustling streets, I experienced the strangest sensations.

The first involved the fact that until hours ago, all these autonomous individuals around me had been subsumed within the composite personality of the Singularity. Did they remember any such shared existence? Were they functioning now simply as fakes, as simulacra? If not, could they be convinced of the reality of their situation? Should I even try? The irritating, festering ontological and existential conundrums presented by this situation churned within me, seemingly unresolvable.

But during those moments when I managed to react to the reality around me as if I were living my normal life back on Silane, or as a tourist on Zawinul, I experienced a bizarre kind of heightened excitement and anticipation, a feeling that imminent delight awaited me just around the next corner.

Any sophont I passed in the street could be my soul-mate. I was forced to regard every individual with a tender and discerning eye, to cultivate a kind of all-encompassing regard for each and every entity which, traditionally, had been the talent only of saints or poets. This enforced alertness and sense of potential intimacy was exhilarating. But I wondered how long I could keep up this vigilance.

Eventually I chose a parkside restaurant and found myself alone at a table, enjoying a glass of wine. I almost felt guilty, relaxing so, while Maruta (and exactly one thousand, four hundred and thirty-two other female individuals stolen from Silane) endured their captivity. But I reminded myself that this was the only method I could conceive of that would bring my quest to a happy ending.

My server was a Rook from Rook’s Nest. I studied his zig-zag movements as he crossed the room bearing my meal, his long-snouted, maned face. Could this be Maruta in disguise? I didn’t get any special vibe from him, so I didn’t think so.

The rest of my meal offered no real possibilities of contact with Maruta-in-hiding. I left the restaurant feeling down. How long would this impossible task take?

Sitting on a park bench in the dusk, I was approached by a prostitot.

I went hopefully with her back to her room.

But she wasn’t Maruta.

After a week of deliberate drifting through any social scene I could insert myself into, leaving myself open to any and all chance encounters, nerves and senses aquiver for any hint of Maruta’s presence, I found myself quietly going mad. Living on the edge of anticipation was proving extremely enervating. I realized I would have to find something to occupy myself during this long process.

Back on Silane, I had been a font-breeder, raising up new typefaces through Darwinian competition in a digital medium. I found a similar job here, and applied myself to its demands.

Several months into the work, I encountered Yardena Milonga as a client.

Owner of an advertising firm, Yardena was half-human, half-Tusker, sporting a line of stiff translucent bristles down her spine which she always prominently displayed, as well as two rather graceful incurving ivory tusks the size of my little finger, and capped with gold. Her attitude was insouciant and wild, and we hit it off from our first business meeting. Before very long, we became lovers.

Of course I googled her. Yardena Milonga had a long, detailed history and presence on Zawinul. But that meant nothing. The whole dossier could have been fabricated by the Singularity.

When not spending my free time with Yardena, I joined a sports club dedicated to neo-hussade. I quickly became fast friends with a fellow named Machfall, an Umphenvour from Tancredo IX. His rugose milk-jade skin and balloon-like limbs gave him a clownish appearance that belied a sensitive, witty and noble soul.

Soon, although other individuals entered my life briefly, I found myself dividing my time equally between these two friends, or even sharing their camaraderie as a trio.

After a busy year had passed, I became convinced that one of them was Maruta.

But which?

In their company, I was always subconsciously evaluating their characters and behavior, trying to nail down some positive sign that one or the other of them was my abducted lover.

Let me cite one such trial.

The three of us had attended an evening concert in Midwood Park one summer night (Maehfall had his own date that evening, a woman whose name escapes me now.) Walking back to the rapid transit stop, we came upon a beast tied with a rope to a bench, huddling exhaustedly in the mud.

The animal was a pitiful specimen, some kind of hybrid between a dog and a jallow-bear. About thirty pounds in weight, its coat a dull and dusty auburn, possessed of ears much too long for its head, its tail an accidentally truncated stub, the creature was homely in the extreme. It had plainly been abused, displaying sores on its flanks and gaunt ribs.

We all stopped to examine the abandoned animal. I instantly recognized a chance to learn more about Yardena and Maehfall.

Maruta had loved animals.

Maehfall made much of the poor beast, while Yardena seemed impatient to move on.

“Take it home, Lu! Nothing enlivens a bachelor’s flat like a four-legged friend!”

“Can’t we hurry on? We’re going to miss the Nemeth Trio’s last set at the MuktiCafe!”

As I petted the nervous smelly male creature, which licked my hand in a pleading manner, I tried to overcome my initial bias in favor of Yardena being Maruta. It was so much easier, after all, to imagine Maruta imprisoned in the female form of my current lover, rather than in the comical male form of my locker-room buddy.

Still contemplating the new data from this encounter, I untied the little dog-jallow, picked it up, and brought it home.

Perhaps the continued presence of the beast in my life would trigger some other, more decisive revelation.

The dog-jallow cleaned up and healed well. I named him Chimbo, after a famous cartoon character.

Whenever Maehfall or Yardena visited my apartment, I would gauge their reactions to Chimbo closely.

Once my little pet had come to feel at home and safe, he exhibited a charming personality, full of caprices and sly tricks. I could watch him and play with him for long stretches of time, and he always elicited vivid reactions from any visitors.

Yardena became almost as fond of him as Machfall, rendering my task of deciding even harder.

Months and months drifted by. My old life on Silane became more and more dreamlike. The insistent urge to rescue Maruta began to grow dim and recede into the background of my thoughts. This life I had constructed for myself, even under the suzerainty of the Singularity known as Magister Zawinul, was at least as rewarding as my former existence, and I began to wonder why I was striving to end it.

My only concern was that Magister Zawinul’s patience would come to a halt Living in the implicate order rather than the explicate order, the Singularity was perhaps constrained from fulfilling whatever ineffable destiny he envisioned for himself. Or was he? Maybe one mode of existence was as good as another to him. Maybe he knew he was endowed with an infinite lifespan, and could afford to indulge my quest indefinitely.

Occasionally, however, I received intimations that Magister Zawinul had not forgotten me. A prominent face in the clouds, unsourceable silent messages left on my communicator, strange shapes in the waves, the curiously patterned flocking maneuvers of pigeons, advertisements for enigmatic products that didn’t exist—reminders that this very world and all it contained was an intelligent super-organism.

A decade passed.

Yardena and I married. Machfall moved to a neighboring city, East Shambles, and we saw each other infrequently.

I was fairly certain by now that Yardena was Maruta. But why should I risk declaring it out loud, to the omnipresent Magister? If correct, the two of us would be restored to an existence on Silane no better and perhaps worse than what we already had. If wrong, I lost all.

Countervailing this inertia was only the possibility that Magister Zawinul would grow tired of this game and suck both me and Yardena/Maruta—and every other inhabitant of the planet—back into his composite being, thus ending our familiar ego-driven existence for some unknowable posthuman condition.

But still, nothing inclined me to rock the boat.

One day I arrived home from shopping for groceries. Maruta was still out. I set the groceries down and braced myself for the hurtling eager welcome from Chimbo.

But no such welcome happened.

I tracked down the dog-jallow to its bed. It lay panting and fevered, eyes closed, seriously ill from some contagion or ill-advised meal. Or perhaps just an old age whose arrival had escaped my attention. When I touched my little friend gently, he opened his eyes and feebly wagged his stumpy tail.

My heart was hurting, and I discovered my eyes tearing up. I picked up bed and pet both, and made for the door. Our veterinarian was only two blocks away.

But halfway down the hundred stories, Chimbo died in the elevator, expiring with three labored breaths.

And at that instant, I knew.

“Maruta!” I cried.

The world fell away from me again, and I found myself standing on a bare plain, facing Magister Zawinul.

“Very tragic,” the Singularity intoned. “Very, very tragic. But you had your opportunity.”

I was crying too hard to respond at first. But then a fierce anger overtook me. This anger extended not only to the Singularity, but to myself. I had been blind and selfish and lazy and timid. And now I had lost all I had cherished.

“You—you knew this would happen!”

“With some degree of certainty, yes. Now let me ask you something. Did you ever stop to wonder why I took those women from your world in the first place? Or were you solely consumed with the personal affront?”

This question brought me up short Surely the Singularity’s motives could have been nothing so simple as sex or companionship.