Transcendence (76 page)

With a gentle elbow-nudge against his side, Janus directs Pehr’s attention overhead. Spheres, like planets—also in the same variety of color—fill the sky as far as they can see, creating a dome that seethes with activity over their watery world. Behind them flashes a galaxy of stars.

The spheres press against one another, merge, and grow larger. As they do so, their opacity fades. Each time a new world of Pehr or Janus’ memory coalesces into the larger whole, the two can see a little more clearly something forming
. . .
behind? It’s a lens stretching our view toward something
. . .
beautiful and grand, Janus says within Pehr’s mind.

A thing thrashing about in the waters, casting up rainbows, droplets of life moments—

“
Don’t move,” Janus says.

Pehr forces his mind still. “How can this be? I feel my body floating here beside yours. I smell the salty wind, hear the quiet babble of liquid. I see all this, and I see you.” She is naked, lovely; pearlescent water flows across her pubis and belly as her breasts and thighs float above the surface. She smiles and he feels her tingling. This is her answer.

“
It wasn’t anything like this last time,” he says.

“
Each time, it’ll be different, as long as we enter with greater experience or with another person.”

Pehr feels the warmth of Janus
. . .
within me, as if you are me.

*Are you ready?* she asks.

*Yes. Please.*

They turn their attention skyward where the spheres gather faster and faster, forming a larger thing. Now the heavy globe has become nearly translucent—but rather than let through the starlit black like a pane of glass, it seems to open upon a tunnel unfolding into the sky. The view is warped, as if through a series of lenses that are creating the tunnel. . . .
Pehr fights to comprehend what this is. As he does so, the tunnel looks again like a globe, and again full of color.

“
Relax, Jack,” Janus says. *You know how this works. Let yourself go. Open your mind to accept what your brain tells you cannot be.*

“
But—”

*No buts.*

At the moment Pehr releases his inhibitions, when he opens his mind as Miru taught him to do, he feels his entire life blend with Janus’. She feels her moment-memories gather into one which—as quickly as she can comprehend—becomes Jack’s. Rather than living one another’s lives as each had before with Miru and Pang, Pehr and Janus simply become one.
This is stronger than I expected
, Janus thinks. . . .
The roiling bubble that is I and I trembles as if to collapse, developing seams, ready to burst and spill out the fertile mindmass. But this is what I want.

A million scenes sprout like slow lightning through loamy interplanetary space, grow thicker and whiter, blossom into life experiences that engulf the whole one by one, then transmute into the next. No order, no regard for one over another; they are one.

We are one.

“
We are one.”

Pehr and Janus again find themselves in the memory sea, but now it is cast cloudy emerald. But cloudy only as we float. Yes. The planets have repopulated the sky, each still swarming with faces from happy and tragic moments, but now they are as familiar as a girl’s favorite hiding-places when Father was most angry, as familiar as a crook in a tree in an elderly couple’s vast back yard. I needn’t look up to know, whether you or I, I am I and
We are all this
.

You know I love you. I have since you first forced Eyes to respect me aboard the
Bounty
.

Overhead, the planets lazily cross the sky as this place—
Is this sea the artifact?
—spins in the midst of the Milky Way. Solid turquoise washes them as our attention drifts to the two of us here, in the sea, warm and lapping our bodies that feel so real.

“
I’d forgotten I could love,” Pehr says. He looks upon Janus, lovely, her skin rich cream at his side, then watches the planets whirl in orbit about them. “I’ve missed love so much. I’ve needed it so much. Why were we so sad and alone? I know you have been.

“
Think of all this freedom!” He throws out his arms as if to embrace the galaxy. “What’s out there, beyond our memories? I glimpsed
. . .
something through your eyes.”

“
I’ve found some answers,” Janus whispers. She feels the waters caress her—but in a way that doesn’t make her cringe. “Before we came here, we floated through timespace empty and alone, gnarled individuals guarded against a crueling life, all of us fortress worlds isolated against one another.”

“
And ourselves.”

“
Yes.” I watch the stars begin to shine brighter behind the spheres of our lives, and I sense the tunnel again, the lens into
. . .
what? “A few times, we let someone inside. But never like this. Miguel was like that, and Megan. Pang and Miru. All only for a moment.”

“
Then loneliness again, utter isolation in the prisons of our skulls. Only this pure communication, the freedom of utter union of the minds, can bring two people together in true ways. Oh, Janus, I can’t stand to ever leave this place again.”

The stars beyond our lives shatter into crystal fragments that slice open the globes, and now I see beyond the veil of artifact space; I and I sense with every nerve and synapse of our minds
. . .
utter desolation. Beyond the gates to transcendence lie billions of wasted lives, countless billions who died never even dreaming of this place, billions who died before humans clawed their way into space, billions whose spirits were ripped from their flesh with ragged bronze blades, with chipped stone, with elongated incisors and the billions who died before Humankind even thrust his bristly head through the membrane between brute survival and sentience, when he first cast his eyes up beyond the sheltering leaves toward the sparkling gems that lay just beyond his reach—and he promised himself that, one day, he would collect all those and string them round his neck. . . .
Man and woman, girl and boy; round eyes and almond, green and gun-metal; ebony skin and palest white—a panchromatic streak of faces and hands reach out to us, and they clasp our minds in mindless terror, their mouths stretched in mute screams. Yet I see that some have found a mote of transcendence in their daily lives but could not share, and, worse! some have shared and renounced it, afraid and angry. . . .

“
Jack, don’t you see?” My anger rises like a geyser, spuming the sea, casting silver and mercury rainbows around us; I don’t fight down the anger. “The horror! The greatest lie of omission is that we never really change, not inside our cores, not when the shell has grown thick.” Thick like a callous from day after day of rasping against others and a world that increasingly exposes its dark side, presses its rough-scarred hide against us.

We are all that little boy or girl, all that hurt and lonely and afraid child who senses that others—even those who profess to love us—don’t truly care because they don’t and simply cannot understand you
. “Don’t you see?”

Now that he is directed to do so, Pehr sees. He sees a whole set of sad eyes: Pehr, Miru, Lonny, Pang, Janus—and a shadowy hint of Jonathan, the troubled boy across the hall, back on Earth, in the Hilton.

Remaining here much longer is no longer as attractive. What I had hoped we would feel here, together, was
. . .
different than this.

“
Yes, I see. Of course I see. Janus, this place is getting too crowded with pain. Let’s go.”

No sooner did Pehr think this than he found himself beside Janus, on a round bed, covered by pulsating sheets, his body heavy with Earth’s pull on his blood. He trembled with the recognition that the only thing keeping him alive was the throb of his heart, and its stoppage would kill him. In the alien-place, he felt immortal, weightless.
Thump-thump
, his blood pounded in his ears.

“
Nothing is easy,” Janus said, raising her eyes to his, running a finger along his hairline. “Drifting mindlessly within the artifact could be more damaging than drifting along through life here, intheflesh.”

Blast
, Pehr thought. He sighed and softened, relaxed. Janus’ fingertip felt so gentle yet so knowing.
Of course it is
, he thought.
Now she knows all of me, my every desire and wish
. . .
and every secret and “sin,” as she would think.

“
Relax,” she said. A slow smile crossed her face. “It’s time for us to enjoy each other, now that we’ve splashed through each other’s, um
. . .
sea of memory, huh?”

Pehr laughed. He felt so relaxed that he couldn’t even recall how it felt when his stomach knotted. Those billions of mute screams, blind and angry faces; all those moments of punishment by Janus’ father and the terror she felt when Rachel first bled—all this faded with the touch of a finger. A real finger, here, on Earth. . . .
And, suddenly, mundane life and dirtside existence seemed not such a prison term.

Pehr slid one hand—slowly, since he understood now what Janus wanted and how and what could still make her cringe—along her side and rested it on the slight swell of her belly. He rose up on an elbow and closed his eyes, moving toward her. Janus’ lips seemed to touch his a moment before he felt skin contact.

Then all the suffering they had shared, all the searingly painful insights and self-realizations
. . .
all the pain he had or could ever endure in a hundred lifetimes was worth this moment of innocence. Lucid, pristine, warm. The pleasure of feeling her warm, damp kiss drew away the shell, and Pehr had to open his eyes to assure himself that they still lay physically together.

“
I love you,” he whispered into her mouth.

“
I know.”

They embraced more energetically now, and Pehr didn’t fight the sensation of his body falling away. But where they traveled this time was not to a water world, not to a place writhing with things repressed for a lifetime. Here lay sensation and earth tones, scents of growing things and warm flesh, the comfort and excitement found only in true love’s arms. No, he didn’t fight this. He felt his own body merge with Janus’; he felt himself hard and slipping within her, sensed her gasp and then thrust, watched inappropriate images flicker to life and fade just as quickly as she became master of her own mind; he moved and she moved and together they made love in a way that could only have been abstract before this morning.

They moved and the skies were clear blue thought, the ground was shuddering flesh and nerve-endings, the air rushed the breath they shared, and they moved to a rhythm patterned deep in the subconscious of all living things descended from Earth’s first organisms.

A voice intrudes on Jonathan’s sleep, the first hard, dreamless sleep he’s had in as long as he can remember. He blinks a few times, remembering where he is, and can’t conjure up a single nightmare image. A smile twists across his face.

“
I beat ya,” he says to the empty hotel room. “None of you made it into my mind. Ha!”

A voice makes him sit up with a jerk: “Jonathan, would you please—”

“
Nooa, people like to wake up a little before they start running errands, all right?” He’d forgotten part of his comfort came from the knowledge that the Brain was watching over him as he slept. “Give me a few minutes to shower and stuff. Then I’m all yours.”

He crawls out of the sheets and powers on his headcard. The revmetal subscription automatically fires up at the volume he’d set it to after Captain Jackson left him last night.

“
Fuck,” he mutters. The head-splitting music is a little much so early in the day. Then he recalls how he laid himself bare last night to a virtual stranger and leaves the volume where it was. He gets naked in the alcove between sleeping area and gold-plated bathroom and hurries to the shower. Amorphous orange shapes shift and flow within the bathroom walls. He ignores them.

The shower stall hums to life as he steps within its glass confines. Subfeed holos flicker through the clear walls, stirring his groin, but he’s not in the mood. He initiates feedblock, for which the room AI tries to compensate, so he adds the power of the amp. Now Jonathan is alone with his music and an electro-mechanical spray of water and cleansing soundwaves. He closes his eyes and lets himself enjoy the luxury.
Damn nice to have the Brain as a friend
, he thinks. When he steps out, the floor has grown a tufted rug that massages his feet. For only a moment, Jonathan tenses, but it feels so good.