Steel Beach (25 page)

“Can I say…  I don’t want to hurt you, how should I say it? I
should
have been surprised to hear that. I mean, it’s awful, it’s unexpected, it’s not something you want to hear from a dear friend, and I want to say ‘No, Hildy, it
can’t
be true!’ You know? But I was surprised to find that…  I
wasn’t
surprised. What an awful thing to say.”

“No, go ahead and say it,” I murmured. His hands were working on my head now. Much more pressure and my skull would crack, and more power to him. Maybe some of the demons would fly away through the fissures.

“In some ways, Hildy, you’ve always been the unhappiest person I know.”

I let that sink in without protest, just as I was sinking very slowly into the sand beneath me. I was a light brown sack of sand he was shaping with his fingers. I found nothing wrong with this sensation.

“I think it’s your job,” he said.

“Do you really?”

“It must have occurred to you. Tell me you love your work, and I’ll shut up.”

There was no sense saying anything to that.

“Not going to say anything about how good you are at reporting? No comments about how exciting it is? You are good, you know. Too good, in my opinion. Ever get anywhere on that novel?”

“Not so’s you’d notice.”

“What about working for another pad? One a little less interested in celebrity marriages and violent death.”

“I don’t think that would help anything; I never had much respect for journalism as a profession in the first place. At least the
Nipple
doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is.”

“Pure shit.”

“Exactly. I know you’re right. I’m not happy in my work. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be quitting soon. All that stops me is I don’t have any idea what I’d do as an alternative.”

“I hear there’s openings in the Coolie’s Union. They won the contract for Borneo. The Hod-Carriers are still muttering about it.”

“Nice to hear they get excited about something. Maybe I should,” I said, half-seriously. “Less wear and tear on the nerves.”

“It wouldn’t work out. I’ll tell you what your problem is, Hildy. You’ve always wanted to be…  useful. You wanted to do something important.”

“Make a difference? Change the world? I don’t think so.”

“I think you gave up on it before I met you. There’s always been a streak of bitterness in you about that; it’s one of the reasons we broke up.”

“Really? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m not sure I knew it at the time.”

We were both quiet for a while, tromping down memory lane.

I was pleased to note that, even with this revelation, the memories were mostly good. He kept massaging me, pushing me forward now to get at my lower back. I offered no resistance, letting my head fall forward. I could see my hair trailing in the water. I wonder why people can’t purr like cats? If I could have, I would have been at that moment. Maybe I should take it up with the CC. He could probably find a way to make it work.

He began to slow down in his work. No one ever wants that sort of thing to stop, but I knew his hands were tiring. I leaned back against him and he encircled me with his arms under my breasts. I put my hands on his knees.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“You know you can.”

“What makes life worth living for you?”

He didn’t give it a flip answer, which I’d half expected.

He thought it over for a while, then sighed and rested his chin on my shoulder.

“I don’t know if that’s really answerable. There’s surface reasons. The most obvious one is I get a sense of accomplishment from my work.”

“I envy you that,” I said. “Your work doesn’t get erased after a ten-second read.”

“There’s disappointment there, too. I had sort of wanted to
build
these things.” His arm swept out to take in the uncompleted vastness of Oregon. “Turned out my talents lay in other directions.
That
would be a sense of accomplishment, to leave something like this behind you.”

“Is that the key? Leaving something behind? For ‘posterity?’ ”

“Fifty years ago I might have said yes. And it’s certainly
a
reason. I think it’s
the
reason for most people who have the wit to ask what life’s all about in the first place. I’m not sure if it’s enough reason for me anymore. Not that I’m unhappy; I do love my work, I’m eager to arrive here every morning, I work late, I come in on weekends. But as to leaving something that I created, my work is even more ephemeral than yours.”

“You’re right,” I said in considerable amazement. “I hadn’t thought that was possible.”

“See?” he laughed. “You learn something new every day. That’s a reason for living. Maybe a trivial one. But I get satisfaction in the act of creation. It doesn’t have to last. It doesn’t have to have meaning.”

“Art.”

“I’ve begun to think in those terms. Maybe it’s presumptuous, but we weather folks have started to get a following for what we do. Who knows where it might go? But creating something is pretty important to me.” He hesitated, then plowed ahead. “There’s another sort of creation.”

I knew exactly what he meant. When all was said and done, that was the primary reason for our parting. He had had a child shortly afterward—I’d asked him never to tell me if I was the father. He had thought I should have one as well, and I had told him flatly it was none of his business.

“I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said.

“No, please. I asked; I have to be ready to hear the answers, even if I don’t agree.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it. As you must have guessed, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about a lot of things.”

“Then you’ll have considered the negative reason for wanting to live. Sometimes I think it’s the main one. I’m afraid of death. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t want to find out until the last possible moment.”

“No heavenly harps to look forward to?”

“You can’t be serious. Logically, you have to figure you just stop existing, just go out like a light. But I defy anyone to really imagine that. You know I’m not a mystic, but a long life has led me to believe, to my great bemusement, that I
do
believe there’s something after death. I can’t prove one iota of this feeling, and you can’t budge me from it.”

“I wouldn’t try. On my better days, I feel the same way.” I sighed one of the weariest sighs I can remember sighing. I’d been doing it a lot lately, each one wearier than the one before. Where would it end? Don’t answer.

“So,” I said. “We’ve got job dissatisfaction. Somehow I just don’t think that’s enough. There are simpler solutions to the problem. The restless urge to create. Childlessness.” I was ticking them off on my fingers. Probably not a nice thing to do, since he’d tried his best. But I had hoped for some new perspective, which was entirely unreasonable but all the more disappointing when none appeared. “And fear of death. Somehow none of those really satisfy.”

“I shouldn’t say it, but I knew they wouldn’t. Please, Hildy, get some professional counseling. There, I said it, I
had
to say it, but since I’ve known you for a long time and don’t like to lie to you, I’ll also say this: I don’t think it will help you. You’ve never been one to accept somebody else’s answers or advice. I feel in my gut that you’ll have to solve this one on your own.”

“Or not solve it. And don’t apologize; you’re completely right.”

The river rolled on, the sun hung there in the painted sky. No time passed, and took a very long interval to do so. Neither of us felt the pressure to speak. I’d have been happy to spend the next decade there, as long as I didn’t have to think. But I knew Fox would eventually get antsy. Hell, so would I.

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

He nibbled my ear.

“No, not that. Well, not yet, anyway.” I tilted my head back and looked at him, inches away from my face. “Are you living with anyone?”

“No.”

“Can I move in with you for a while? Say, a week? I’m very frightened and very lonely, Fox. I’m afraid to be alone.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I just want to sleep with somebody for a while. I don’t want to beg.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Sure.” It should have hurt, but oddly enough, it didn’t. I knew I would have said the same thing. What I didn’t know is how I would have decided. The bald truth was I was asking for his help in saving my life, and we both knew enough to realize there was little he could do but hug me. So if he
did
try to help and I
did
end up killing myself…  that’s a hell of a load of guilt to hazard without giving it a little thought. I could tell him there were no strings, that he needn’t blame himself if the worst happened, but I knew he would and he knew I knew it, so I didn’t insult him by telling him that lie and I didn’t up the stakes by begging any more. Instead I nestled more firmly into his arms and watched the Columbia roll on, roll on.

We walked back to the trailer. Somewhere in the journey we noticed the river was no longer flowing. It became smooth and still, placid as a long lake. It reflected the trees on the far side as faithfully as any mirror. Fox said they’d been having trouble with some of the pumps. “Not my department,” he said, thankfully. It could have been pretty, but it gave me a chilly feeling up and down the spine. It reminded me of the frozen sea back at Scarpa Island.

Then he got a remote unit from the trailer and said he had something to show me. He tapped out a few codes and my shadow began to move.

The sun scuttled across the sky like some great silver bird. The shadow of each tree and bush and blade of grass marked its passage like a thousand hourglasses. If you want to experience disorientation, give that a try. I found myself getting dizzy, swayed and set my feet apart, discovered the whole thing was a lot more interesting when viewed from a sitting position.

In a few minutes the sun went below the western horizon. That was not what Fox had wanted to show me. Clouds were rising in that direction, thin wispy ones, cirrus I think, or at least intended to look like cirrus. The invisible sun painted them various shades of red and blue, hovering somewhere just out of sight.

“Very pretty,” I said.

“That’s not it.”

There was a distant boom, and a huge smoke ring rose slowly into the sky, tinged with golden light. Fox was working intently. I heard a faraway whistling sound, and the smoke ring began to alter in shape. The top was pressed down, the bottom drawn out. I couldn’t figure out what the point of all this was, and then I saw it. The ring had formed a passable heart-shape. A valentine. I laughed, and hugged him.

“Fox, you’re a romantic fool after all.”

He was embarrassed. He hadn’t meant it to be taken that way—which I had known, but he’s easy to tease and I could never resist it. So he coughed, and took refuge in technical explanation.

“I found out I could make a sort of backfire effect in that wind machine,” he said, as we watched the ring writhe into shapelessness. “Then it’s easy to use concentrated jets to mold it, within limits. Come back here when we open up, and I’ll be able to write your name in the sunset.”

We showered off the sand and he asked if I’d like to see a scheduled blast in Kansas. I’d never seen a nuke before, so I said yes. He flew the trailer to a lock, and we emerged on the surface, where he turned control over to the autopilot and told me about some of the things he’d been doing in other disneylands as we looked at the airless beauty falling away beneath us.

Maybe you have to be there to appreciate Fox’s weather sculpture. He rhapsodized about ice storms and blizzards he’d created, and it meant nothing to me. But he did pique my interest. I told him I’d attend his next showing. I wondered if he was angling for coverage in the
Nipple
. Well, I’ve got a suspicious mind, and I’d been right about things like that often enough. I couldn’t figure a way to make it interesting to my readership unless somebody famous attended, or something violent and horrible happened there.

Oregon was a showplace compared to Kansas. I’d like to have had a piece of the dust concession.

They were still in the process of excavation. The half-dome was nearly complete, with just some relatively small areas near the north edge to blast away. Fox said the best vantage point would be near the west edge; if we’d gone all the way to the south the dust would have obscured the blast too much to make the trip worthwhile. He landed the trailer near an untidy cluster of similar modular mobile homes and we joined a group of a few dozen other firework fans.

This show was strictly “to the trade.” Everyone but me was a construction engineer; this sort of thing was not open to the public. Not that it was really rare. Kansas had required thousands of blasts like this, and would need about a hundred more before it was complete. Fox described it as the best-kept secret in Luna.

“It’s not really much of a blast as these things go,” he said. “The really big ones would jolt the structure too much. But when we’re starting out, we use charges about ten times larger than this one.”

I noticed the “we.” He really did want to build these places instead of just install and run the weather machines.

“Is it dangerous?”

“That’s sort of a relative question. It’s not as safe as sleeping in your bed. But these things are calculated to a fare-thee-well. We haven’t had a blasting accident in thirty years.” He went on to tell me more than I’d wanted to know about the elaborate precautions, things like radar to detect big chunks of rock that might be heading our way, and lasers to vaporize them. He had me completely reassured, and then he had to go and spoil it.

“If I say run,” he said, seriously, “hop in the trailer, pronto.”

“Do I need to protect my eyes?”

“Clear leaded glass will do it. It’s the UV that burns. Expect a certain dazzle effect at first. Hell, Hildy, if it blinds you the company’s insurance will get you some new eyes.”

I was perfectly happy with the eyes I had. I began to wonder if it had been such a good idea, coming here. I resolved to look away for the first several seconds. Common human lore was heavy with stories of what could happen to you in a nuclear explosion, dating all the way back to Old Earth, when they’d used a few of them to fry their fellow beings by the millions.