Dark Ararat (40 page)

He wondered, vaguely, whether she was really the kind of person who became deeply absorbed in her work, impatient of distractions, or whether she was quietly inclined to put on a show. He recalled the first picture he had seen, in which she had stubbornly continued to display the battle scars she had earned in the plague war: a calculated affront to the beautiful people who formed the great majorities of the fully developed nations. He decided in the end that she was by no means innocent of showmanship, but that it was
sincere
showmanship, deeply felt as well as deeply meant. It was the same judgment he would have passed on himself, and he could not resist a burst of fellow feeling in spite of what he had guessed.

In any case, there was always the infinite canopy to distract him, its multitudinous globular fruits seeming more like the rations of Tantalus with every hour that sped by. Soon, he knew, he would be able to take his own turn in the basket, descending with majestic grace to that part of Tyre that would be as new to his companions as it was to him. Even so, Matthew felt a distinct surge of relief when Dulcie was finally forced to pause while he steered the final load to a soft landing. By now, he had become a master of such elementary skills as this involved, and he was able to absorb himself in the minutiae of the load’s carefully measured fall.

When he looked up again, with a sense of satisfaction at having done the job well, Dulcie was not where he expected her to be. She was, instead, at the very lip of the chasm, standing on a spur of rock beside the water’s hectic edge. The spur projected out over the smooth-washed rocks below; it was the most precarious position available.

She seemed to be drinking in the view. Having already passed leisurely judgment on its spectacular qualities, Matthew certainly could not begrudge her the moment’s pause, and his first impulse was to follow the direction of her gaze and employ
verstehen
in a conscientious attempt to see it as she was seeing it.

She was, of course, well-used to the views from the crests of the hills surrounding the dead city—but those surrounding slopes had all been gentle, their undulations seeming halfhearted and indolent, and there had been so many of them that none could seem out of the ordinary. There had been slopes everywhere, cutting and confusing lines of vision in every direction. Distant horizons must have been visible, but they were always fragmentary; even when the occasional pinnacle of rock provided some relief from the blurred purple curves, it tended to be framed by nearer objects that robbed it of all grandeur. This landscape was conspicuously different. The plateau’s edge extended for kilometer after kilometer in either direction. Its neatness was interrupted here and there by arbitrary landslips and curtains of purple climbers, but the basic line was clear enough, and its convex curvature was too gentle to provide a disappointing cutoff point for a roaming eye. As for the oceanic canopy beyond, it stretched into the distance with a truly majestic sweep, extending to a horizon that was flat and sharp even on a day that was somewhat less bright than its immediate predecessors.

Matthew watched her as she lowered her eyes. Immediately below the plateau’s edge there was the ragged hem of transitional vegetation, which varied in extent from twenty to sixty meters, but he knew that it gave way soon enough to the paradoxical “savannah”: the empire of the grass-analogues that were taller and far more imperious than grass-analogues had any right to be. The structures were all alike at first glance, but even the untrained eye of an anthropologist would probably find it easy enough to pick out a dozen or so variants. Not all anthropologists would have sufficient critical spirit to challenge the crewman who had hung the “grassland” label on the territory, but Matthew was sure that Dulcie had. She would already be beginning to wonder what functions the elaborate crowns performed, given that they could not be seed heads akin to Earthly grasses of Earth. Perhaps she had heard Bernal Delgado talk about the mystery at some length, casually throwing around speculations about sophisticated sporulation mechanisms and gradual chimerical renewal in the plant kingdom. Perhaps she was taking note, as Matthew had, of the fact that the contributors to the oceanic canopy gave the impression of being collaborators rather than competitors, like members of a contentedly multicultural crowd whose collective identity casually overwhelmed the idiosyncrasies of its individual members.

There, if anywhere, she must be thinking, the descendants of the city-dwellers must be. But what kind of social life could they eke out beneath that enigmatic canopy?

Humans, as every anthropologist knew, were products of Earth’s African savannah. The crucial alliance of clever hands, keen eyes, and capacious brains had been forged by a selective regime of terrain where it paid to be tall, to hunt by day, and to develop tools for the primary biotechnologies of cooking and clothing. But none of that pertained to
this
mock-savannah or to
these
humanoids. The “grasses” hereabouts were far too tall to allow bipedal mammal-equivalents to peer over them. Even by day the world beneath the purple canopy would be dim, and even if the hunting were not poor, what scope could there possibly be for brain-building primary technologies? If there were no fires in the depths of that purple sea, how could there be people? How could the uncaring forces of natural selection ever have molded anything resembling people from its lumpen animal clay?

Matthew was on the brink of losing himself in such thoughts when
verstehen
brought him suddenly back to earth, telling him—with some urgency—that something was
wrong
with Dulcie Gherardesca’s posture.

It was not her stillness or her self-absorption that struck a warning note in his mind—she had been self-absorbed and seemingly tranquil all day—but a kind of tension that seemed to be building, little by little and not without resistance: a kind of resolve that was forming, little by little, and not untainted by doubt.

The warning note triggered a conviction, and the conviction a sudden determination.

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” he said, trying to keep his voice
very
steady.

She heard him, and knew that he could only be speaking to her, but she didn’t turn around. For four long seconds it looked as if she might not deign to reply. Then she did, but still without turning to face him.

“Didn’t what?” she said.

He dared not heave a sigh of relief, even though he knew that the battle was half-won as soon as she consented to enter into a dialogue.

“Didn’t jump,” he offered, by way of unnecessary clarification. He knew that she had understood exactly what he meant. What he didn’t know was what to say next, although he knew that he had to say
something
, and make it good.

“You know,” he went on, after the slightest pause, “this is one of those embarrassing moments when nothing comes to mind by way of advice or reassurance but hollow clichés. I hope you’ll forgive me for sounding so utterly selfish, but the one reason that springs forth more rapidly than any other is that we really do need you. In fact, we can’t do without you. So even if the reasons for self-destruction were compelling, on a purely introspective basis, I really,
really
would rather you didn’t. Especially not now.”

“You don’t really need me,” she told him, bleakly. “There’s nothing down there, you know. Nothing useful, nothing enlightening. No answers.”

“We don’t know that,” Matthew was quick to say, having no difficulty at all in sounding sincere. “We haven’t the slightest idea what answers we might find down there, to what questions. That’s the whole point: it’s the great unknown. Even in your situation, I couldn’t even entertain the thought of coming this far and not going on.”

She didn’t have to ask what he meant by “your situation.” “Did Solari tell you when you had your little private conference?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “I guessed when I saw you with the artifacts. I knew that Vince wouldn’t have let you take material evidence away unless there was a quid pro quo. You couldn’t have confessed in so many words, of course, but I knew you must have given him to understand that you’d turn yourself in when you got back. So I know that you don’t mean it when you say there’s nothing down there. There’s
everything
down there.”

It wasn’t working, but he had to carry on. “I can’t believe you came here with the intention of not going back,” he said. “The expedition into the interior may be all that’s left to you, but
is
still on, still beckoning. You mustn’t let a stray moment of doubt and despair get in the way. Please.”

“Do the others know?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Matthew said. “If they’ve guessed, they’re keeping it to themselves, just as I was. If they only suspect the truth, they’re in no hurry to exchange suspicion for certainty. Bernal expected to find something down there, didn’t he? Maybe not humanoids, but something worthwhile. Serial killer anemones. NV correlated with ER. Something to tip us off as to why this world is at one and the same time so seemingly simple and so obviously weird. We really don’t know what might be down there—and it’s certainly far too soon to despair of making progress when we haven’t even stepped across the threshold.”

Dulcie didn’t turn around, and Matthew could see that her attitude was still all wrong. That line of argument was too familiar to cut through the Gordian knot of her confusion; he needed something that could catch her attention more securely: something that could draw her out of her neurotic self-absorption; something that could surprise her. It had to be true, though. Surprise was no good in itself, and no good at all unless he could startle her with
the truth
—or something that could pass for the truth.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything that was sure to do the trick. He was tired, and his arm hurt worse than any IT-equipped man ever expected any part of him to hurt, and he had already said most of what there was to be said about the stubborn mysteries of Tyre, alias Ararat, alias humankind’s New World.

He had to get
inside
her skin. He had to break into the dark bubble where she had confined herself and condemned herself to death.

“You loved him,” he said, as soon as the notion popped into his head. It arrived as if from nowhere, but he knew that wasn’t the case. Ever since he had guessed that Dulcie had killed Bernal he had been asking the question why, even if he had found the puzzle too uncomfortable to expose it to the full glare of consciousness. He had been working on it while be was asleep, and while he was spaced out, without even allowing himself to realize the fact. And he had solved it. He
knew
the answer.
Verstehen
was delivering it up to him even as he spoke. The guess spun like a hectic top, drawing a thread of certainty tightly about itself. It was the only story that made sense, even if it could not have made sense of anyone else but Dulcie Gherardesca.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she parried, not yet surprised enough.

“You were part of the same intake,” Matthew remembered. “You were frozen down at the same time as Bernal. You were with him—on the moon, if not at the spaceport. And
after
the moon, when you had to take the next outward jump. You were together. Both apprehensive. Both scared you might not be doing the right thing. Both scared, period. You were together.” He went on with increasing fluency, congratulating himself as he went on having rediscovered his improvisatory skills at last, wishing that there could have been a camera running to record the triumph of his genius. “But you’re wrong about what happened afterward, Dulcie. I understand how and why you made the mistake, but you’re
wrong
. Trust me, Dulcie,
I knew him
. I know what you think and why you think it, but
you’re wrong
. I don’t just mean that you were wrong when you killed him, I mean you’re wrong
now
. What you think, what’s eating you up, what you can’t live with … it
isn’t
what you think.
I knew him
, Dulcie. You have to let me explain it to you.”

That was when she turned around, and he knew that he’d won half of the half-battle that still remained to be won.

“You
don’t
know,” she spat at him. “Do you think I’m stupid? I understand that it wasn’t his fault that he
forgot
. I understand that it was just a side effect of the SusAn. Do you think I’m so stupid that I don’t know
that
?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Matthew shot back, lightning-fast. “That’s not what I mean at all. I really can see the whole picture. You and Bernal were together before you were frozen down. You were in love. When you were brought out again,
separately
, he was affected by the memory loss but you weren’t. You understood. I
know
you understood. And when you came here, he was with Lynn, and you understood that too. And then he was with Mary, and you understood that too. But what you
didn’t
understand was what it signified, what it meant that even when you were here, day after day and night after night, working with him side-by-side, he didn’t fall in love with you all over again.

“You thought it meant that he hadn’t been serious, couldn’t have been serious, that he was just filling in time, that it was just because you were there, available, when nobody else was. You thought it meant that he could never
really
have been interested in someone like you, that he had never really looked
behind the scars
. You could have forgiven him for forgetting, because that wasn’t his fault, but you couldn’t forgive him for not being able to do it all over again from scratch, for not being able to duplicate the same emotional chain from the square one of innocence. That’s why the rage built up—and that’s why the rage came out, in one careless, unaimed thrust of pure frustration that somehow found its way between his ribs and into his heart.