The Sphere (31 page)

The walk through the market stalls is so pleasant that I almost forget how urgently I wanted to speak to Sherlock. We’ve reached the Old Course, the golf course where I spent my first night in the Sphere. The hotel that was in ruins now glitters in its full splendor. Now I can hear the music from the orchestra that the gypsies were trying to drown out that first night. I lift my hand to shade my eyes. I can feel the damp sea air caressing my face. The sky is like a blue painting, lit up by some bright foreign sun. I can’t believe that I ever found this place frightening, or devoid of life.

The hotel terrace is an explosion of glamour. Women dressed in white carry cream-colored parasols of delicate lace and wear little hats and gloves. Small boys wearing puffy short pants and tall stockings chase after a ball, or roll a hoop along with a stick. Sherlock doesn’t stop; he marches us across the springy green at a good clip.

“We’ve reached the beach,” says Beatrice, “I think we ought to turn back.”

“Let’s go a little farther, my lovely lady. It’s a splendid day.”

Whenever we meet another Spherean Sherlock gives a small bow in greeting. If I didn’t have this heavy feeling of urgency in my chest, this world might seem ideal.

“But up ahead is nothing but sand—our clothes will get dirty!” Beatrice whines like a little girl.

“I shall clean your shoes myself,” replies Sherlock, with his usual pretentiousness. “It will be an honor.”

The sandy beach at West Sands stretches out farther than the eye can see, and only the first few yards of it are occupied by other Sphereans. Soon we’re completely alone on a flat stretch of beach—perfect for speaking without being overheard. It’s almost impossible to see the hotel from here. Now I understand Sherlock’s intentions. We went to the market to get anyone who might have been following us off our trail! Not only were we safe in the crowd, we spent so much time at the market stalls that I’m sure we tired out anyone who may have been following us, at least for now.

“Very well, back to the subject at hand,” says Sherlock, releasing Beatrice’s arm and looking at me.

“I wanted to know where the handkerchief was,” I say bluntly. “I think we should make sure that the blood is appearing and disappearing.”

“Do you mean the times when it appears and disappears?”

Sherlock considers me carefully. Morgan’s friendly demeanor from the market vanishes.

“Maybe the stain doesn’t have any pattern. It could be permanent,” I say.

“Brilliant!” exclaims Sherlock. “You are just brilliant. A possibility that would never have occurred to the rest of us.”

Morgan spreads her arms out in a dramatic gesture and mouths a silent and indignant ‘WHAT?’

“Dear Dissie,” Sherlock puts an arm around my shoulders. “What makes you think this stain is different?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a hunch.”

The sudden gesture of affection is a little overwhelming. I look at the other two. Beatrice seems totally out of it, but Morgan isn’t missing a thing.

“All right. We’ll take turns watching the handkerchief.”

“For a hunch? You’re going to settle for a hunch? And from an outsider, on top of everything!” Morgan is fuming.

“Lovely Dissie,” Holmes goes on, “You arrange the observations. We’ll take turns watching it in whatever way you think best.”

Morgan’s mouth hangs open in disbelief. After a few seconds the wind blows some sand into her mouth and she spits with disgust. The sky has begun to cloud over.

“Come, let’s go home,” orders Sherlock. “There is much to be done.”

“
Lovely
Dissie?” Morgan hisses in Beatrice’s ear as we walk along, the wind at our backs. “What about you? What happened to his
lovely lady
? Are you just going to let it happen, without doing anything? Wake up!”

Beatrice doesn’t answer. It takes all of her concentration just to cope with the shifting wind. She holds tight to her veil and dress to keep them from floating up. Morgan goes on grumbling. A gust of wind lifts her mass of dark hair and whips it around over her head, turning her into some kind of frightful demon.

“And could you tell us what will happen if the stain doesn’t disappear?” shouts Morgan over the noise of the wind. Sherlock doesn’t answer. “Right, we’re not worthy enough for our
dear Dissie
to explain it to us.”

I make myself as small as I can. At times like this I wish I weren’t so tall, I wish I could just go unnoticed. I walk along with my eyes locked on the ground, unwilling to meet Morgan’s deadly gaze. In some ridiculous way I feel as bad as I would if I had upset Laura or Marion—like I’ve betrayed a friend. The sound of Morgan’s forceful footsteps is deafening. I can see her boots coming nearer. It’s not so ridiculous, the way I feel... Morgan
has
become a friend. I appreciate her joyful moments, and I understand her weaknesses, even though I don’t share them. A secondary role doesn’t work for her at all. Protagonist or nothing—that’s Morgan.

––––––––

T
wo days and nights were all it took to prove that my hunch wasn’t crazy. The stain on the handkerchief that we found behind the monk’s chest never disappears. When it was my turn to watch it I took the opportunity to hold the cloth up to my nose, and to my surprise and satisfaction, the smell was still there. The idea that had been going around in my mind has become theory. But I’ve learned from my mistakes—I’ll wait until I’m more certain of a few things before I say anything to the others.

Ever since we were all on the beach and I brought up the possibility that it might be a permanent stain, Morgan hasn’t said a word to me. She has said several times to Sherlock that there must be a reason that the stain doesn’t disappear, and she’s determined to find it. She’s been going through the role records all morning.

“It will be Morgan who finds the solution,” she said early this morning, using, in her wounded pride, the third person. “I will find that Spherean whose role includes a permanently stained handkerchief—just wait and see.”

And here we are, in Sherlock’s house, waiting for Morgan to come back with the results of her investigation.

“The window!” Sherlock bursts out, for the millionth time.

Beatrice has tried to close it several times already, never remembering that that’s usually how Morgan gets inside. Just seconds after Sherlock shouts, Morgan comes in, stirring up a slight breeze. She lands and smooths down her hair before saying anything. She doesn’t look terribly happy. She walks straight toward me, and I sink back into the sofa, hoping to dodge whatever’s coming next—a slap, an accusation. But Morgan just sticks out her hand and waits for me to shake it.

“I’ve gone through the records of every role in the Sphere, line by line. There is no one who needs a permanently stained handkerchief. You win.”

“It wasn’t a bet, Morgan,” I say, without shaking her hand.

“It doesn’t matter. You still win.” Her hand is still waiting in front of me, stiffly. Finally I shake it. “I know how to admit when I’m wrong, too. I dug through thousands of scrolls containing role specifications. There’s nothing in the entire Great Script.”

Sherlock, sitting on his worn armchair, picks up his violin and begins to toy with the strings, his eyes closed. Now, after so much time in the Sphere, I know that this is just his way of putting his thoughts in order. He nearly always reaches surprising conclusions with this method, but this time the wandering melody stretches on for longer than I would have expected.

“Well, if there’s nothing else, I’ll be going,” says Morgan brusquely.

“Wait,” I say, getting up, “I’d like to talk about something with you.”

“With me?”

Sherlock and Beatrice both whip their heads around to look at us. I wait for them to object, but they consider us for a minute, and remain silent. Sherlock’s fingers move nervously over the neck of the violin. His other hand has dropped the bow.

“Yes. I need to talk to you alone.”

Morgan grimaces. She isn’t happy about the request, but she doesn’t say no. We leave the living room and make ourselves comfortable in Sherlock’s kitchen.

“I didn’t mean the thing about the stain as a challenge. We’re a team.” I try to look her in the eye, unsuccessfully. “It was just a hunch. Now that it’s confirmed, it gives me the foundation for a theory I have about what happened to the missing Sphereans.” I can see interest mixed up with doubt and suspicion in Morgan’s face. I take a deep breath and continue: “I need your help.”

“Why don’t you go to Sherlock? His preference for you is clear enough.”

“No, I can’t go to him. It’s him I want to discuss...” I search around for the right words—I guess the best thing is to cut right to the chase. “How long has he been in love with Beatrice?”

Morgan raises an eyebrow and gives me a sidelong glance. “I don’t give advice on matters of the heart. If you want a love potion, go ask Merlin or somebody.”

“Exactly! Merlin. That’s precisely my point. Merlin and you belong to the same role group. Sherlock should be interacting with the Sphereans from his group, and Beatrice with hers. But you’re all together. Why?”

Morgan’s surprise is obvious.

“I don’t have any idea,” she says, lowering her voice. “I’d never thought about it.”

“That’s what I meant when I asked how long Sherlock had been in love with Beatrice.”

“It’s very unlikely that what they have is really love...”

“Whatever, that’s not the part I’m interested in.”

“Are you sure?”

I nod, trying to hide my discomfort at all the insinuations about the two of us. I can’t ignore the fact that Sherlock does seem to have a thing for me. And someone as skeptical as Morgan... But I don’t want to get into that, at least not right now.

“Forget about Sherlock,” I say. “Beatrice and Heathcliff—since when?”

“I suppose she began to take an interest in that awful brute about the same time I started working with Holmes. Of course, before that I had no interaction with her, so I couldn’t say for sure.”

“All right, it doesn’t matter. We can assume that your paths began to get mixed up at about the same time. You started working with Sherlock, he started to be interested in Beatrice, and she started falling in love with Heathcliff.”

“The breakdown of role groups,” says Morgan, as if to herself. “The breakdown of the Great Script.”

“That’s right. Or what amounts to the same thing—my world and yours getting mixed up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think your intuition wasn’t wrong when you saw me the first time. I haven’t been published.”

Morgan swells up with pride—she can’t help it. Sherlock comes into the kitchen, looking offended.

“Might one ask what is taking so long?”

“All set,” I say. “We’re all set. We’ve discussed everything we needed to.”

Morgan rocks back and forth, satisfied, while Sherlock waits for an explanation that neither of us offers.

“All right,” I say after a minute. “Don’t get mad. Let’s go back to the living room and I’ll tell you about it.” Sherlock hangs back a little, but eventually follows us into the living room. “I have a theory,” I say as I sit down, “but I needed to check some information with Morgan. Look. I haven’t been published; I’m not a Spherean.” Sherlock and Beatrice nod. “I come from a world with very different rules from this one. I think that somehow my world and yours are mixing together.” My voice trembles a little. It makes me nervous to see Sherlock watching me so carefully. “Something has broken through the membrane, or whatever the thing that protects the Sphere is called. That’s how I was able to get in—not on purpose, but I still got in. The thing is, if our worlds are getting tangled up together, it might be useful to think about our case from the point of view of the rules of my world.”

“Of course—all the glory for you!” Beatrice bursts out. We all stare at her, our eyes bulging with surprise. She would never use those words, much less that tone of voice.

“Bice...” I can’t believe her reaction.

“I’m sick of everything revolving around you.”

“And what do you propose?” asks Sherlock, ignoring Beatrice.

I would love to have the level of mental control that Sherlock does. How can he keep from getting upset? How can he keep from worrying about Beatrice? I look down at my hands for a second—they’re shaking a little. I swallow hard, and try to keep going as if nothing had happened.

“Well, in my world things don’t go backwards like they do here. The cycles don’t repeat.”

“You have no roles?” Beatrice asks, astonished. She’s back to her usual naïve self.

“No. We have personality—a habitual way that we behave. But when something happens it’s never undone. Just like the stain on the handkerchief.”

Sherlock gets up from the armchair, giving his spot up to me. The others look at us in surprise. I stand up hesitantly, and slowly sit down.

“Well, when I was in the cemetery I thought... you see... what if the missing people aren’t anywhere?”

“By all the quills of the Creator—what are you trying to say!”

“Maybe they aren’t hidden. Maybe they’re dead... like in my world.”

Morgan stands up. She walks slowly across the room:

“You’re talking about a permanent death?” she asks, intrigued. I nod. “Some time ago Merlin told me of an old story; something that most people thought of as just a legend, and yet something he suspects is real. It is called
textual death
—the total and permanent disappearance of an entire group.”

“That’s nothing but blasphemy,” shouts Beatrice, frightened. “It is impossible.”

“Not according to the old wise ones. It’s rare, but not impossible. On a very few occasions the permanent destruction of all of the members of a role group occurs.”

“And who would do that?” Sherlock asks.

“I don’t know,” answers Morgan, “the information about this phenomenon is very scarce. I don’t think even Merlin himself knows.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know who could be doing it, either,” I interject, “but I suspect that someone is killing some Sphereans, and that’s why we haven’t been able to find them.”

“Enough!” howls Beatrice, utterly livid. “I will not hear such sacrilegious words uttered in my presence. This time you have gone too far, Eurydice. I always accepted your differences, but you cannot cast doubt on the existence of the Creator like this.”