The Best of Nancy Kress (53 page)

Ajit has found a way to successfully apply Kane’s shadow-matter theory to the paths of the infalling gases, as well as to the orbits of the young stars near Sgr A*. He says there may well be a really lot of shadow matter near the core, and maybe even farther out. It may even provide enough mass to “balance” the universe, keeping it from either flying apart forever or collapsing in on itself. Shadow matter, left over from the very beginning of creation, may preserve creation.

Kane nods happily as Ajit explains. Kane holds my hand. I stroke his palm gently with my thumb, making circles like tiny orbits.

15. SHIP

Ajit sat, fully dressed and with steaming coffee at his side, in front of his terminal. I didn’t give him time to get the best of me. I walked into the wardroom and fired.

The sedative dart dropped him almost instantly. It was effective, for his body weight, for an hour. Kane didn’t hear the thud as Ajit fell off his chair and onto the deck; Kane’s bunk door stayed closed. I went into Ajit’s bunk and searched every cubic meter of it, over-riding the lock on his personal storage space. Most of that was taken up with the bronze statue of Shiva. The mini-caps were not there, nor anywhere else in his bunk.

I tried the galley next, and came up empty.

Same for the shower, the gym, the supply closets.

Ajit could have hidden the cubes in the engine compartments or the fuel bays or any of a dozen other ship’s compartments, but they weren’t pressurized and he would have had to either suit up or pressurize them. Either one would have shown up in my private ship data, and they hadn’t. Ajit probably hadn’t wanted to take the risk of too much covert motion around the ship. He’d only had enough drugs to put Kane and me out once. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have risked subdermal trackers.

I guessed he’d hidden the cubes in the observatory.

Looking there involved digging. By the time I’d finished, the exotics lay yanked up in dying heaps around the room. The stones of the fountain had been flung about. I was filthy and sweating, my robe smeared with soil. But I’d found them, the two crystal cubes from the second and third mini-caps, removed from their heavy shielding. Their smooth surfaces shed the dirt easily.

Forty-five minutes had passed.

I went downstairs to wake Kane. The expedition would have to jump immediately; there is no room on a three-man ship to confine a prisoner for long. Even if I could protect Kane and me from Ajit, I didn’t think I could protect Ajit from Kane. These mini-caps held the validation of Kane’s shadow-matter work, and in another man, joy over that would have eclipsed the theft. I didn’t think it would be that way with Kane.

Ajit still lay where I’d dropped him. The tranquilizer is reliable. I shot Ajit with a second dose and went into Kane’s bunk. He wasn’t there.

I stood too still for too long, then frantically scrambled into my s-suit.

I had already searched everywhere in the pressurized sections of the ship. Oh, let him be taking a second, fruitless look at the starboard hold, hoping to find some trace of the first particle that had hit us! Let him be in the damaged back-up engine compartment, afire with some stupid, brilliant idea to save the engine! Let him be—

“Kane! Kane!”

He lay in the starboard hold, on his side, his suit breached. He lay below a jagged piece of plastic from a half-open supply box. Ajit had made it look as if Kane had tried to open a box marked
SENSOR REPLACEMENTS
, had torn his suit, and the suit sealer nanos had failed. It was an altogether clumsy attempt, but one that, in the absence of any other evidence and a heretofore spotless reputation, would probably have worked.

The thing inside the suit was not Kane. Not anymore.

I knelt beside him. I put my arms around him and begged, cried, pleaded with him to come back. I pounded my gloves on the deck until I, too, risked suit breach. I think, in that abandoned and monstrous moment, I would not have cared.

Then I went into the wardroom, exchanged my tranquilizer gun for a knife, and slit Ajit’s throat. I only regretted that he wasn’t awake when I did it, and I only regretted that much, much later.

I prepared the ship for the long jump back to the Orion Arm. After the jump would come the acceleration-deceleration to Skillian, the closest settled world, which will take about a month standard. Space physics which I don’t understand make this necessary; a ship cannot jump too close to a large body of matter like a planet. Shadow matter, apparently, does not count.

Both Ajit’s and Kane’s bodies rest in the cold of the non-pressurized port hold. Kane’s initial work on shadow matter rests in my bunk. Every night I fondle the two cubes which will make him famous—more famous—on the settled Worlds. Every day I look at the data, the equations, the rest of his work on his terminal. I don’t understand it, but sometimes I think I can see Kane, his essential self, in these intelligent symbols, these unlockings of the secrets of cosmic energy.

It was our shadow selves, not our essential ones, that destroyed my mission, the shadows in the core of each human being. Ajit’s ambition and rivalry. Kane’s stunted vision of other people and their limits. My pride, which led me to think I was in control of murderous rage long after it had reached a point of no return. In all of us.

I left one thing behind at the center of the galaxy. Just before the
Kepler
jumped, I jettisoned Ajit’s statue of Shiva dancing, in the direction of Sgr A*. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it will travel toward the black hole at the galaxy’s core, be caught eventually by its gravity, and spiral in, to someday disappear over the event horizon into some unimaginable singularity. That’s what I want to happen to the statue. I hate it.

As to what will happen to me, I don’t have the energy to hate it. I’ll tell the authorities everything. My license as a Nurturer will surely be revoked, but I won’t stand trial for the murder of Ajit. A captain is supreme law on her ship. I had the legal authority to kill Ajit. However, it’s unlikely that any scientific expedition will hire me as captain ever again. My useful life is over, and any piece of it left is no more than one of the ashy, burned-out stars Kane says orbit Sgr A*, uselessly circling the core until its final death, giving no light.

A shadow.

16. PROBE

We remain near the galactic core, Kane and Ajit and I. The event horizon of Sgr A* is about one-fiftieth of a light year below us. As we spiral closer, our speed is increasing dramatically. The point of no return is one-twentieth of a light year. The lethal radiation, oddly enough, is less here than when we were drifting near the shadow matter on the other side of Sgr A West, but it is enough.

I think at least part of my brain has been affected, along with the repair program to fix it. It’s hard to be sure, but I can’t seem to remember much before we came aboard the probe, or details of why we’re here. Sometimes I almost remember, but then it slips away. I know that Kane and Ajit and I are shadows of something, but I don’t remember what.

Ajit and Kane work on their science. I have forgotten what it’s about, but I like to sit and watch them together. Ajit works on ideas and Kane assists in minor ways, as once Kane worked on ideas and Ajit assisted in minor ways. We all know the science will go down into Sgr A* with us. The scientists do it anyway, for no other gain than pure love of the work. This is, in fact, the purest science in the universe.

Our mission is a success. Ajit and Kane have answers. I have kept them working harmoniously, have satisfied all their needs while they did it, and have captained my ship safely into the very heart of the galaxy. I am content.

Not that there aren’t difficulties, of course. It’s disconcerting to go up on the observation deck. Most of the exotics remain, bloom-ing in wild profusion, but a good chunk of the hull has disappeared. The effect is that anything up there—flowers, bench, people—is drifting through naked space, held together only by the gravity we exert on each other. I don’t understand how we can breathe up there; surely the air is gone. There are a lot of things I don’t under-stand now, but I accept them.

The wardroom is mostly intact, except that you have to stoop to go through the door to the galley, which is only about two feet tall, and Ajit’s bunk has disappeared. We manage fine with two bunks, since I sleep every night with Ajit or Kane. The terminals are intact. One of them won’t display any more, though. Ajit has used it to hold a holo he programmed on a functioning part of the computer and superimposed over where the defunct display stood. The holo is a rendition of an image he showed me once before, of an Indian god, Shiva.

Shiva is dancing. He dances, four-armed and graceful, in a circle decorated with flames. Everything about him is dynamic, waving arms and kicking uplifted leg and mobile expression. Even the flames in the circle dance. Only Shiva’s face is calm, detached, serene. Kane, especially, will watch the holo for hours.

The god, Ajit tells us, represents the flow of cosmic energy in the universe. Shiva creates, destroys, creates again. All matter and all energy participate in this rhythmic dance, patterns made and unmade throughout all of time.

Shadow matter—that’s what Kane and Ajit are working on. I remember now. Something decoupled from the rest of the universe right after its creation. But shadow matter, too, is part of the dance. It exerted gravitational pull on our ship. We cannot see it, but it is there, changing the orbits of stars, the trajectories of lives, in the great shadow play of Shiva’s dancing.

I don’t think Kane, Ajit, and I have very much longer. But it doesn’t matter, not really. We have each attained what we came for, and since we, too, are part of the cosmic pattern, we cannot really be lost. When the probe goes down into the black hole at the core, if we last that long, it will be as a part of the inevitable, endless, glorious flow of cosmic energy, the divine dance.

I am ready.

Afterword to “Shiva in Shadow”

There is a lot going on at the heart of the galaxy: a black hole, massive radiation, stars being torn apart. I knew none of this before Robert Silverberg asked me to write a story set there for his anthology
Between Worlds
. I started to research and was astonished at all the activity near Sagittarius A*. No life, however, and no possibility of putting characters there; humans cannot survive anywhere near that environment. So how was I going to set a hard-SF story at the brink of the black hole? I could have used aliens, I guess, but I didn’t want to. I wanted humans. Thus were born the computer uploads of Tirzah, Kane, and Ajit, and once I had that, the two tracks of the story grew naturally. The other contributor to this story—one never knows what will spark fiction!—was a statue I have of Shiva, the Hindu god of creation and destruction. To me, Shiva represents the ceaseless flow of energy in the universe.

Chaos theory—and there is a lot of chaos at the heart of the Milky Way—says that even small changes can eventually have large consequences. So does any realistic theory of human relationships.

When I finally found God, he was slumped at the counter in a Detroit diner, stirring his coffee. The dissolving creamer made little spiral galaxies. He had a bad sunburn. I slid onto the next stool.

“God?”

He looked up. A little gray flecked his dark beard but on the whole he looked younger than I’d expected. Maybe thirty. Maybe twenty-eight. His jeans were grimy. “Who wants to know?”

“Daniel Smith.” I held out my hand. He didn’t take it. “Listen, God, I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

He said, “You got to read me my rights.”

“What?”

“My Miranda rights. I know I screwed up, all right? But at least do it by the local rules. Let’s get at least one part of this right.”

“I’m not a cop,” I said.

“Not a cop?”

“No.”

“Just my luck.” He slumped even lower on the stool, elbows resting on the counter, which bore some deep indescribable stain the shape of Africa. God traced it with one finger. Two teenage boys banged noisily through the front door; the waitress eyed them warily. “Then you’re a divinity student, right? Colgate? Loyola?”

“No.”

“You didn’t find some ancient manuscript proving I exist in corporeal form?”

“No.” The boys slid into a corner booth. Their jackets rode up, and I caught the flash of steel.

“You didn’t consult a lama in a monastery on top of a Tibetan mountain—old, most old?”

“Not that either.”

God sipped his coffee and made a face. “Then who the hell are you?”

“I’m from the Committee.”

Even with his sunburn, he paled. “Oh, man.”

“Well, that was one of the problems, certainly.”

God slammed his spoon onto the counter and sat up straight. “Look, I know I screwed up. I know the work has problems. I’ve already admitted that.” He glanced around the diner. In the booth opposite the boys, a hooker sat with an enormously fat man eating a taco salad. He talked with his mouth full; she was asleep. The fat man hadn’t noticed. The waitress limped past, carrying a platter of greasy burgers. She had one leg shorter than the other.

“Nonetheless,” God said, surly now, “from the Committee’s view-point I did everything right, so why bother me? I filled out the application in triplicate. I listed my previous work. I filed by the deadline. I submitted work that met your bureaucratic guidelines: neatness, originality, aptness of thought. What’s more original than kangaroos? Or the Hundred Years’ War? A hundred years for a single war! So why hassle me now?”

“Maybe,” I said, looking at the fat man, who had noticed the hooker was asleep and was kicking her viciously, “you could have worked a little harder on ‘neatness.’”

“Yeah, well, everybody’s a critic.” He slumped again, his brief surliness over. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. “But that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here. I know I didn’t make the finals. I saw the list.”

“Yes and no.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He rubbed his nose; it really was a wicked sunburn. It was going to peel something awful.

I said, “The list’s changed. One finalist withdrew. You were the first name on the waiting list.”

His eyes opened wide. “Really? Who withdrew?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. But now you’re on the short list.”

God bent his head to stare into his coffee. The flush on his neck wasn’t all sunburn. This means so damn much to some of them. The waitress delivered the burgers to an old couple at a center table, both of them thin and quavery as parchment.

He said, “So what happens now?”

“The rules say you have a thousand years to revise, before the next round of voting. Off the record, let me say I think you should consider fairly substantial revision. The Committee liked certain aspects of your work, but the consensus was that the tone is uneven, and the whole lacks coherence.”

“I’m not creating some cheap commercial piece here!”

“I know that. And nobody says you should. But still, any good work has a voice all its own, a coherence, a thematic pattern that clearly identifies the artist. Your work here—well, frankly, son, it’s all over the map. The pieces don’t adhere. The proportions are skewed. It lacks balance and unity.”

God signaled for a piece of pie. The waitress limped over from the center table, where the old couple were holding hands. The fat man spoke low and fast to the hooker, leaning forward, his mouth twisted. The boys passed a plastic bag across the table, smirking at the room, daring anyone to notice.

God said, “I can’t just—”

I held up my hand placatingly, “I know, I know—you can’t just compromise your artistic integrity. And nobody’s asking you to. Just be a little more consistent in tone and imagery.”

God said, “No, you don’t understand. It’s not a question of artistic integrity. Not really.” He leaned closer, suddenly earnest. I wondered if he had any ointment for that nose. “See—there’s a spectrum you can work along. Call it ‘intended meaningfulness.’ At one end you have your absurdist pieces. Things happen in an unconnected manner. Nothing is predictable. Nothing is rational. Godot never shows.” He smiled.

I didn’t get the reference. Probably to his own work. Some of these guys think the grant Committee memorizes their every detail. The door opened on a gust of wind and a cop entered. The waitress brought God cherry pie on a thick beige plate.

“I don’t think much of absurdist stuff,” he continued. “I mean, where’s the art? If literally anything can happen, why bother? But at the other end is all that tight moral order. Punish the bad, reward the good, solve the mysteries, give every act simple-minded motives and rational outcomes. B-o-r-i-n-g. And not all that just or compassionate, either, no matter what those artists say. What’s so compassionate about imposing a single pattern on the lion and the ox? Or on the worm in the heart of the rose, for that matter?”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so self-referential. It’s an annoying mannerism.”

“But you get my point.”

“Yes, I do. You go for texture. And density. And diversity. All com-mendable. But not very commercial.”

“I didn’t think this was supposed to be a commercial competition!”

“It’s not,” I said. “But do you realize how many mediocre artists out there justify their mediocrity by their lack of accessibility? Just because they’re not commercial doesn’t mean they’re grandly above all standards and judgments. Not every finger twitch is sacred just because it’s theirs.”

“That’s true.” God slumped on his stool a third time. He certainly was a volatile kid. But honest. Not many can see the line between self-justification and true originality. I started to like him. The cop took a seat at the end of the counter. The boys flipped the finger at his back. The hooker wept softly. Her mascara smudged under her eyes.

“Look, son,” I said, “don’t take criticism so hard. Instead, use it. You’re still in the running, and you’ve got a thousand years. Rework the more outré stuff to bring it in line with your major themes. Tone down your use of color. Make the ending a little clearer. That’s all I’m suggesting. Give yourself a fighting chance.”

He didn’t say anything.

“After all, it’s a pretty big grant.”

Yes,” he said tonelessly. He watched the hooker cry. Her fat pimp showed her something in his hand; from this angle I couldn’t see what. The old couple rose to go, helping each other up. The waitress put an order of fries in front of the cop and bent to rub her varicose veins.

“If you win, it could mean a major boost to your career. You have a responsibility to your own talent.”

“Yes.”

“So think about revisions.”

“The thing is,” God said slowly, “I filled out the application forms a long time ago. Before I began work. It looks pretty different to me now. I do feel a responsibility to the work, but maybe not in the way you mean.”

Something in his voice turned me cold. I’d heard that tone before. Recently. I pushed aside his pie, which he hadn’t touched, and covered his hand with mine. “Son—”

“Didn’t you wonder why I thought at first that you were a cop?”

The real cop turned his head to glance at us. He ate the last of his fries, nodded at the waitress, and made for the door, brushing past the tottering old couple. The codger fumbled in his pocket for a tip.

I could hear the thickness in my voice. “Son—it doesn’t work like that.”

“Maybe it does for me.” He looked directly into my eyes. His own were very dark, with layered depths, like fine ash. I wondered how I could have thought him only twenty-eight. The cop left, banging the door behind him. The fat pimp pulled the hooker to her feet. She was still crying. The old man laid a dollar bill, a quarter, and three pennies on the table.

I said, “So okay, you feel responsible. It’s your work, the outlines are yours, even if it got away from you and took off in directions you never intended. That happens. It’s still yours. But that doesn’t mean it’s you. It’s your art, son, not your life. There’s a difference, and it’s crucial. The people who confuse the two aren’t thinking straight.”

He turned those dark eyes away from me, and shrugged. “I feel responsible, is all. For all of it. Even the part that got away from me.”

Suddenly he smiled whimsically. “Accepting responsibility again would actually strengthen the imagery pattern, wouldn’t it? A leitmotif. The Committee might actually like that.”

They probably would. I said carefully, “A competition is no real reason to go native.”

“It isn’t my reason.” Abruptly he flung out one hand. “Ah, don’t you see? I love it. All of it. Even if it’s flawed, even if I screwed up, even if I lose. I love it.”

He did. I saw that now. He loved it. Loved this. The old couple tottered toward the door. The two teenage boys shot out of their booth. One of them grabbed the tip off the table; the other lunged for the old lady’s purse, ripping it off her arm. She fell backwards, thin arms flail-ing, squeaking “oh oh oh oh…” Instantly the old man raised his cane and brought it down hard on the boy’s head. He shrieked, and blood sprang onto his cheek. The boy, outraged, yelled “Fuck! What you go do that for, you old bastard!” Then both boys tore out the door.

The fat pimp helped the old woman up. He was very gentle. “You all right, ma’am?” The hooker, still crying, reached out one deft hand and stole the old man’s wallet from his pocket. The old woman stood, shaky but unhurt. The pimp escorted them to the door, stopped, walked back to the hooker. Silently she handed him the wallet. His fat hands curled into fists. He returned the wallet to the old man, and all four of them left. The waitress leaned over in the silent diner and rubbed her varicose veins.

I have never wanted to be an artist myself.

There wasn’t much else to say. Maybe God would actually go through with it again, maybe not. Sometimes these guys are more in love with the idea of artistic risk than with the actuality. But he had done it once. All of it, right up to the final artistic sacrifice. That set him apart. I couldn’t tell him this—against Committee rules—but that part of his work was what had earned him the first position on the waiting list. It had been an impressive set-piece, especially amidst the uneven emotional tone of the rest of his work. And if he did it again, it would certainly strengthen the imagery pattern in his entry. He was right about that. His chances of winning would increase dramatically. If, of course, he survived.

He had his place on the short list only because another candidate hadn’t. “Withdrew” has a lot of meanings.

God grinned at me. Not a smile this time, an actual grin. “I’m sorry to be so stubborn. It’s not like I don’t appreciate your interest.”

“Tell me something. Do you do all your own construction work?”

He rubbed his sunburned nose and laughed. “You know how it is. If you want something done right…”

“Yes. Well.” I held out my hand and this time he took it, still grinning. He sat on the counter stool almost jauntily. I’d been right to like him.

Outside, it was just getting dark. Clouds raced across the sky from the west, casting strange shadows. Litter blew in gusts at my feet: news-papers, Styrofoam cups, a torn shirt. The shirt bore brown stains that might have been blood. The shadows lengthened, lying at right angles to each other.

Each work of art has its own internal pace; a thousand years is different here.

I thought I could hear them on the horizon, dragging the heavy wooden cross, howling about the thorned crown. Coming for him.