The Best of Lucius Shepard (68 page)

“And
I suppose sleeping with me falls under the umbrella of protection.”

She
kneeled beside the chair, put a hand on my neck, and gazed at me entreatingly.
“I love you, Philip. I would do anything for you. How can you doubt it?”

I
was moved by her sincerity, but I could not help but treat her coldly. It was
as if a valve had been twisted shut to block the flow of my emotions. “That’s
right,” I said. “Vang told me that your kind were conditioned to bond with
their clients.”

I
watched the words hit home, a wounded expression washing across her features,
then fading, like a ripple caused by a pebble dropped into a still pond. “Is
that so important?” she asked. “Does it alter the fact that you fell in love
with me?”

I
ignored this, yet I was tempted to tell her, No, it did not. “If you were
trained to protect me, why did Vang discourage our relationship?”

She
got to her feet, her face unreadable, and went a few paces toward the alcove;
she appeared to be staring at Phuong’s body, lying crumpled in the light.
“There was a time when I think he wanted me for himself. That may explain it.”

“Did
Phuong really accost you?” I asked. “Or was that . . .

“I’ve
never lied to you. I’ve deceived you by not revealing everything I knew about
Vang,” she said. “But I was bound to obey him in that. As you said, I’ve been
conditioned.”

I
had other questions, but I could not frame one of them. The silence of the
house seemed to breed a faint humming, and I became oppressed by the idea that
Tan and I were living analogs of the two corpses, that the wealth I was soon to
receive as a consequence of our actions would lead us to a pass wherein we
would someday lie dead in separate rooms of a silent house, while two creatures
like ourselves but younger would stand apart from one another in fretful
isolation, pondering their future. I wanted to dispossess myself of this
notion, to contrive a more potent reality, and I crossed the room to Tan and
turned her to face me. She refused to meet my eyes, but I tipped up her chin
and kissed her. A lover’s kiss. I touched her breasts–a treasuring touch. But
despite the sweet affirmation and openness of the kiss, I think it also served
a formal purpose, the sealing of a bargain whose terms we did not fully
understand.

Six
months and a bit after my eighteenth birthday, I was sitting in a room in the
Sony offices in Saigon, a windowless space with black walls and carpet and
silver-framed photographs of scenes along the Perfume River and in the South
China Sea, when Vang flickered into being against the far wall. I thought I
must seem to him, as he seemed to me, like a visitation, a figure from another
time manifested in a dream. He appeared no different than he had on the day he
left the circus–thin and gray-haired, dressed in careworn clothing–and his
attitude toward me was, as ever, distant. I told him what had happened in Binh
Khoi, and he said, “I presumed you would have more trouble with William. Of
course he thought he had leverage over me–he thought he had Tan in his clutches.
So he let his guard down. He believed he had nothing to fear.”

His
logic was overly simplistic, but rather than pursue this, I asked the question
foremost on my mind: why had he not told me that he was my grandfather? I had uncovered
quite a lot about my past in the process of familiarizing myself with Vang’s
affairs, but I wanted to hear it all.

“Because
I’m
not
your grandfather,” he said. “I was William’s father-in-law, but
. . .” He shot me an amused look. “I should have thought you would have
understood all this by now.”

I
saw no humor in the situation. “Explain it to me.”

“As
you wish.” He paced away from me, stopped to inspect one of the framed
photographs. “William engineered the death of my wife, my daughter, and my
grandson in a plane crash. Once he had isolated me, he challenged my mental
competency, intending to take over my business concerns. To thwart him, I faked
my suicide. It was a very convincing fake. I used a body I’d had cloned to
supply me with organs. I kept enough money to support Green Star and to pay for
Tan’s training. The rest you know.”

“Not
so,” I said. “You haven’t told me who I am.”

“Ah,
yes.” He turned from the photograph and smiled pleasantly at me. “I suppose
that would interest you. Your mother’s name was Tuyet. Tuyet Su Vanh. She was
an actress in various pornographic media. The woman you saw in your dream–that
was she. We had a relationship for several years, then we drifted apart. Not
long before I lost my family, she came to me and told me she was dying. One of
the mutated HIVs. She said she’d borne a child by me. A son. She begged me to
take care of you. I didn’t believe her, of course. But she had given me
pleasure, so I set up a trust for you. A small one.”

“And
then you decided to use me.”

“William
had undermined my authority to the extent that I could not confront him
directly. I needed an arrow to aim at his heart. I told your mother that if she
cooperated with me I’d adopt you, place my fortune in the trust, and make you
my heir. She gave permission to have your memory wiped. I wanted you empty so I
could fill you with my purpose. After you were re-educated, she helped
construct some fragmentary memories that were implanted by means of a biochip.
Nonetheless, you were a difficult child to mold. I couldn’t be certain that you
would seek William out, and so, since I was old and tired and likely not far
from Heaven, I decided to feign an illness and withdraw. This allowed me to
arrange a confrontation without risk to myself.”

I
should have hated Vang, but after six months of running his businesses, of
viewing the world from a position of governance and control, I understood him
far too well to hate–though at that moment, understanding the dispassionate
requisites and protocols of such a position seemed as harsh a form of judgment
as the most bitter of hatreds. “What happened to my mother?” I asked.

“I
arranged for her to receive terminal care in an Australian hospital.”

“And
her claim that I was your biological son. . . . did you investigate it?”

“Why
should I? It didn’t matter. A man in my position could not acknowledge an
illegitimate child, and once I had made my decision to abdicate my old life, it
mattered even less. If it has any meaning for you, there are medical records
you can access.”

“I
think I’d prefer it to remain a mystery,” I told him.

“You’ve
no reason to be angry at me,” he said. “I’ve made you wealthy. And what did it
cost? A few memories.”

I
shifted in my chair, steepled my hands on my stomach. “Are you convinced that
my . . . that William had your family killed? He seemed to think there had been
a misunderstanding.”

“That
was a charade! If you’re asking whether or not I had proof–of course I didn’t.
William knew how to disguise his hand.”

“So
everything you did was based solely on the grounds of your suspicions.”

“No!
It was based on my knowledge of the man!” His tone softened. “What does it
matter? Only William and I knew the truth, and he is dead. If you doubt me, if
you pursue this further, you’ll never be able to satisfy yourself.”

“I
suppose you’re right,” I said, getting to my feet.

“Are
you leaving already?” He wore an aggrieved expression. “I was hoping you’d tell
me about Tan . . . and Green Star. What has happened with my little circus?”

“Tan
is well. As for Green Star, I gave it to Mei and Tranh.”

I
opened the door, and Vang made a gesture of restraint. “Stay a while longer,
Philip. Please. You and Tan are the only people with whom I have an emotional
connection. It heartens me to spend time with you.”

Hearing
him describe our relationship in these terms gave me pause. I recalled the
conversation in which Tan had asserted that something central to the idea of
life died when one was uploaded into Heaven–Vang’s uncharacteristic claim to an
emotional debt caused me to think that he might well be, as she’d described her
parents, a colored shadow, a cunningly contrived representation of the
original. I hoped that this was not the case; I hoped that he was alive in
every respect.

“I
have to go,” I said. “Business, you understand. But I have some news that may
be of interest to you.”

“Oh?”
he said eagerly. “Tell me.”

“I’ve
invested heavily in Sony, and through negotiation I’ve arranged for one of your
old companies–Intertech of Hanoi–to be placed in charge of overseeing the
virtual environment. I would expect you’re soon going to see some changes in
your particular part of Heaven.”

He
seemed nonplussed, then a look of alarm dawned on his face. “What are you going
to do?”

“Me?
Not a thing.” I smiled, and the act of smiling weakened my emotional
restraint–a business skill I had not yet perfected–and let anger roughen my
voice. “It’s much more agreeable to have your dirty work handled by others,
don’t you think?”

***

On
occasion, Tan and I manage to rekindle an intimacy that reminds us of the days
when we first were lovers, but these occasions never last for long, and our relationship
is plagued by the lapses into neutrality or–worse–indifference that tend to
plague any two people who have spent ten years in each other’s company. In our
case these lapses are often accompanied by bouts of self-destructive behavior.
It seems we’re punishing ourselves for having experienced what we consider an
undeserved happiness. Even our most honest infidelities are inclined to be of
the degrading sort. I understand this. The beach at Vung Tau, once the
foundation of our union, has been replaced by a night on Yen Phu Street in Binh
Khoi, and no edifice built upon such imperfect stone could be other than
cracked and deficient. Nonetheless, we both realize that whatever our portion
of contentment in this world, we are fated to seek it together.

From
time to time, I receive a communication from Vang. He does not look well, and
his tone is always desperate, cajoling. I tell myself that I should relent and
restore him to the afterlife for which he contracted; but I am not highly
motivated in that regard. If there truly is something that dies when one
ascends to Heaven, I fear it has already died in me, and I blame Vang for this.

Seven
years after my talk with Vang, Tan and I attended a performance of the circus in
the village of Loc Noi. There was a new James Bond Cochise, Kai and Kim had
become pretty teenagers, both Tranh and Mei were thinner, but otherwise things
were much the same. We sat in the main tent after the show and reminisced. The
troupe–Mei in particular–were unnerved by my bodyguards, but all in all, it was
a pleasant reunion.

After
a while I excused myself and went to see the major. He was huddled in his tent,
visible by the weird flickerings in his eyes . . . though as my vision adapted
to the dark, I was able make out the cowled shape of his head against the
canvas backdrop. Tranh had told me he did not expect the major to live much
longer, and now that I was close to him, I found that his infirmity was
palpable, I could hear it in his labored breath. I asked if he knew who I was,
and he replied without inflection, as he had so many years before, “Philip.”
I’d hoped that he would be more forthcoming, because I still felt akin to him,
related through the cryptic character of our separate histories, and I thought
that he might once have sensed that kinship, that he’d had some diffuse
knowledge of the choices I confronted, and had designed the story of Firebase
Ruby for my benefit, shaping it as a cautionary tale–one I’d failed to heed.
But perhaps I’d read too much into what was sheer coincidence. I touched his
hand, and his breath caught, then shuddered forth, heavy as a sob. All that
remained for him were a few stories, a few hours in the light. I tried to think
of something I could do to ease his last days, but I knew death was the only
mercy that could mend him.

Mei invited Tan and me to spend the night in the
trailer–for old times’ sake, she said–and we were of no mind to refuse. We both
yearned for those old times, despite neither of us believing that we could
recapture them. Watching Tan prepare for bed, it seemed to me that she had
grown too vivid for the drab surroundings, her beauty become too cultivated and
too lush. But when she slipped in beside me, when we began to make love on that
creaky bunk, the years fell away and she felt like a girl in my arms, tremulous
and new to such customs, and I was newly awakened to her charms. She drifted
off to sleep afterward with her head on my chest, and as I lay there trying to
quiet my breath so not to wake her, it came to me that future and past were
joined in the darkness that enclosed us, two black rivers flowing together, and
I understood that while the circus would go its own way in the morning and we
would go ours, those rivers, too, were forever joined–we shared a confluence
and a wandering course, and a moment proof against the world’s denial, and we
would always be a troupe, Kim and Kai, Mei and Tranh, Tan and I, and the major
. . . that living ghost who, like myself, was the figment of a tragic past he
never knew, or–if, indeed, he knew it–with which he could never come to terms.
It was a bond that could not save us, from either our enemies or ourselves, but
it held out a hope of simple glory, a promise truer than Heaven. Illusory or
not, all our wars would continue until their cause was long-forgotten under the
banner of Radiant Green Star.