The Breath of Suspension (6 page)

“Aya, dammit! Get me off this thing!”

“Be calm, Vikram. You’re too excitable.” She moved past Hermione’s head, her movements insectile, pausing to pat the burro. A moment later the ropes around my wrists loosened. I pulled out of the knots, losing some skin, and grabbed the rope above me. I yanked the noose off and jumped to the ground.

Aya watched me solemnly.

“Those your boys?” Now that I was safe, I could be angry.

“They’re just some friends trying to keep me safe. There’ve been rumors of an Orthodox agent’s approach since you left Page. They were trying to take care of you without disturbing me.”

“How polite of them.”

“You’re lucky someone didn’t get you before you even reached Hole in the Rock. I had hoped you would be a little less obvious.” Her voice was severe. She examined me closely. “You’ve been living well, Vikram. Good food, a soft bed. You’ve put on weight. Veins are already breaking around your nose. Come along.”

The trail led up under two large oak trees and ended in a dramatic arching space at the end of a box canyon. The pink sandstone walls rose up and curved over us. The protected environment was wetter than the rest of the Escalante, full of cattails and thick-leafed marsh plants. Smaller oak trees crowded the walls. A stream flowed out of the moss and over the rocks to the river below.

Her home was a few belongings scattered beneath an overhang. Instead of a normal bed, she slept in an elaborate assemblage designed to support both her shrunken body and the weight of her prosthetics.

Her limbs whispered as she settled down to a sitting position. I brushed the sand off a rock and sat facing her.

“You wanted to talk to me?”

“Yes.” Her face was unreadable. I couldn’t even tell if she was glad I had made it. “You once promised me your help. Now I need it.”

“You want me to find your jewel, whatever it might be.” It had rolled into a distant corner indeed, if she thought she would find it here in the canyons. “Why did you come here, of all places?” I looked up at the walls. The sunlight reflecting down from them lit everything with a yearning glow.

Her prosthetics shifted, seeking a more stable position. “The plateau engineers are the only ones I know of who make things like this. They design them, thinking of space. The prototype was a probe for exploring the surface of Venus.” She ran her hand down the metal supports of her legs. “Now they help me explore my world.”

From the epithet Lady of Escalante I had expected some sort of half-mad religious fanatic. Sitting in front of me was just Aya Ngomo, the girl who had been my friend at St. Theda’s. I suddenly missed it—or rather I missed her, the way she had sat on the ground and talked of her dreams, her quick intelligence, her unwillingness to tolerate nonsense in me.

“But it’s not here.” I was hard. “Not anywhere to be found.”

“Yes!” I had expected disappointment, despair. Instead her face was transformed by what I can only call exaltation. “It does not lie on this dusty arrogant planet at all, Vikram.”

I had been wrong. This wasn’t the Aya I remembered. Or rather, as I now realize, I had remembered her wrong.

“What I seek lies somewhere beyond. I’m going to go there.”

I looked up above the canyon edge. At that moment the silvery speck of some stratospheric airship floated in the transparent desert sky like a representative of the Sun God in his daily round. I felt the Earth slap the soles of my feet to knock me up into the blue. I turned my eyes down, dizzy.

“And how are you going to do that?” I was suddenly belligerent, exasperated by the whole ridiculous situation. “Your plateau engineers might just be able to cobble together a surface-to-orbit launcher for you, if they make a deal with the Alaskans or the Chileans—dangerous either way. So what? Unless your jewel is an old Soviet space probe or something in a decaying orbit, that’s not going to mean much. And the Orthodox Empire doesn’t grant launch slots to unauthorized religious expeditions. Resources are scarce, Aya. You know that.”

“I do know.” Her prosthetics shuddered. Seeing that she was desperately unhappy, I reached over and took her hand. She looked down at it in surprise, then wrapped her fingers around mine in a surprisingly strong grip. “It’s hard, Vikram. But we’re going to do it. Aren’t we?”

Thinking back over it, Thomas, I think it was that “we” that finally did it. No one has ever managed to use the word like she did. “I suppose we are.”

There is, Thomas, a certain sin in doing a righteous thing solely in order to keep your own good opinion of yourself. It is a sin of which Aya would often make me guilty.

After that we simply sat and talked, like old friends. At twilight the mule deer came down from the rim and drank at the spring. As darkness rose she lit a fire. It sent its orange light up the canyon wall like an arrow toward the stars.

The next morning found us walking on the sandy floor of a slot canyon less than two meters wide. The thirty-meter-high walls were perfectly vertical, knife-cut to reveal millions of years of geologic time, an exhibit of the monstrous futility of history.

At one point, to demonstrate something to me, Aya extended her prosthetic limbs and chimneyed up the canyon, sending down sprays of sand. She moved with quick grace until, while I was in rosy shadow, she thrust her head and arms out into the sun.

“I can see it,” she called down to me. “It’s not much farther.”

“Great.”

She put her hands on the lip as if to climb out and leave me in the pit. But, after one last look around, Aya climbed back down. She grinned at me, face flushed with excitement.

Another mile and the walls began to settle down lower and lower. We turned a corner and the canyon widened out. The sandy soil around us was scattered with gleaming chunks of petrified wood. Orienting by landmarks not visible to me, Aya turned and we climbed up a rock slope, a slickrock access to the canyon rim above, rare in this place where canyon rim and canyon bottom were distinct worlds.

“They called it slickrock because metal horseshoes and wagon-wheel rims couldn’t get a grip on it. The rubber of our shoes finds it the best surface to walk on. It’s quite the opposite of slick to us.”

“That’s interesting,” I managed. Unlike the feeling in dreams of flying, the sharp cliff face below seemed anxious to instruct me on the exact consequences of falling. I looked out over the canyon to hanging cliff dwellings on the opposite face. Solar arrays wavered in the hot air.

“Oh, Vikram, I’m so glad you’re with me again.” Her voice was joyful.

My foot slipped on a sand patch, but I felt, instead, a different kind of vertigo. I glanced at her as she climbed ahead of me. Her shriveled legs were dressed in some sort of silk pants, and she wore tiny red shoes. The ancient Chinese had bound their women’s feet to try to make them that small. It had been considered enormously attractive. I wondered if Aya had been reading her fashion history.

“I can’t stay much longer,” I said. “Tergenius needs me back in Cedar City. There’s a lot to do. And if we pull this off, there’ll be even more. Years of work. I’m looking forward to it. My ambitions...” I didn’t mention my women. I thought that was gracious of me. There had been many since Laurena, though I still thought of her often.

Aya was silent through my rambling speech, and for long after. We rose up to the rim. Ahead of us, resting in a declivity, was a shining silver hemisphere like a drop of mercury. Next to it, fluttering on a pole, was a complicated flag of stars and red-and-white stripes. I recognized it as the symbol of the old American Union of several centuries ago.

“Who are these plateau dwellers?” I asked. “I had no idea they were politically so unorthodox. This is going to be a ticklish negotiation.”

Aya stood still next to me. “You are making a mistake, Vikram.”

“This is all according to our plan.” I deliberately misunderstood her.

Her machinery hummed as she moved past me. “God would allow you to climb infinitely high. He wants you to. You remain behind of your own choosing.”

“Aya.” She looked at me. She wanted me to love her the way she loved me, and I could not do it. With the best will in the world I could not. “I’ll help you, but you have to go it alone.”

“I already know that.”

Three people stood by the shimmering mercury drop. They were ordinary people, but they could give us power. In return for Imperial resources and booster launches, they would provide Aya with the means to go into space. And Tergenius and I would climb the rungs of the Imperial hierarchy. It was a deal that would let all of us benefit.

Aya and I started down toward them. After I left the Escalante it would be ten years before I saw her again.

I hear loud voices outside my window. I wait for them to subside, but they continue. I pick up my cane and struggle down the stairs. My left leg has healed unevenly and will hurt me for the rest of my life. Not for too much longer, in other words.

The robust plants of the garden have started to shrivel as summer ends, but are still vividly green. I was a long time in my sickbed. I wander among them—the sag-necked sunflowers, the gravid tomatoes, the entirely unauthorized morning glories clambering the pen trellises. I hear the voices, quieter now, but am suddenly confused, as if I am lost in some dark forest, though I can see the roofs of the monastery above me. “Don’t you want to talk to an old friend?” The man’s voice is calm, but I can hear the hot breath pent up behind it.

“We have said all we need to.” Brother Thomas’s voice. With that as a beacon, I move toward it.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.”

“Careful, Mark.”

“Oh? Why should I be?”

I finally struggle out of the jungle. I’ve been within a few feet of them the entire time.

The cassocked Thomas stands facing a rangy man wearing a silly-looking brimmed hat pulled straight down on top of his head. I recognize him. He lives nearby. He has a large nose and jaw, and large hairy hands as well, one of which holds a fistful of Thomas’s cassock. Thomas’s hands hang loosely down at his sides as he stares back.

Three other men, also locals, stand against the garden wall, chewing tobacco in unison. One of them hawks and spits, leaving a slimy trail on the brick wall. “Come on, Mark. We got things to do.”

“You shut up, Feeney. We’ll have time when I’m done with this.”

Feeney shrugs and leans back against the wall. He doesn’t seem relaxed. He looks away from the confrontation as if embarrassed by it.

“We’ve got things to talk about. We’ve got Janielle, don’t we? Or rather—I have her.” Thomas is expressionless, but both I and the man named Mark can tell that he’s scored a hit. Mark laughs. “Yeah, Thomas, that’s the way it is. Right?” He pushes Thomas away.

“Is that what you came to tell me?” Thomas manages a tone of mild surprise.

“She’s my
wife!
” Mark is angry, bouncing in a hunched position like some small predator on rodents. “I sleep with her every night. I have her whenever I want her. She’s mine!”

“That’s good.” Thomas’s eyes narrow until you can no longer see their innocent blue. “When will you have children, then?”

“You bastard!” Mark roars. “You goddam bastard.” He swings his fist, a poorly aimed punch. Thomas doesn’t try to avoid it. It grazes his jaw and he stumbles back a step. A trickle of blood appears on his lip.

I step out of the garden plants. “Enjoying yourself?” My tone is icy, somewhat bored. The voice of a powerful courtier, if the fool but had the wit to recognize it. Mark, for an instant, is stunned, and goggles at me.

For the first time Thomas looks agonized. “Please, Brother Vikram. Please. This is a private misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding, is it?” Mark takes a breath. “You crows are so goddam clever.” Without even looking, he sweeps his foot by and knocks my cane out of my hand. I don’t have time to recover and fall forward, bruising my palms.

“Hey!” Feeney says, but doesn’t move.

“Shut up, Feeney, for God’s sake—” Mark turns his head to yell at his friend. Thomas takes a short step forward and drives his fist into Mark’s stomach. He doubles over. Thomas is ready to hit him again, but stops and drops his hands. I crawl the ground, seeking my cane.

With a choked breath, Mark straightens and hits Thomas in the face. Thomas does not try to protect himself. Mad with rage, Mark flails at him. I can hear the meaty smack of fists hitting unprotected flesh. Thomas stands for as long as he is able, then falls to the ground. Mark starts to kick him.

Feeney and his companions are finally stimulated to action. After giving him time for a few hard kicks, they grab Mark and pull him off. “You bastard!” Feeney says. “You said you wanted to talk to him.”

“I’m talking! I’m talking!” Mark struggles with his friends for a moment, then allows himself to be hauled off. His foolish hat lies on the grass.

I crawl over to Thomas. He smiles at me with bloody lips and broken teeth. “Just an old friend,” he mutters.

❖

I have Thomas taken up to my quarters. The same doctor who saw to my wounds sees to his, and gives the same prescription: time.

“Who is Mark that we should be mindful of him?” I ask.

Thomas smiles with his ruined mouth. “Mark is a consequence of my decisions, Brother Vikram. Nothing more. That’s what makes him so angry.”

“That’s wonderfully cryptic.”

“Please. Whatever else he is, he is the past.” He lies still on the bed, a cross clasped in his hands.

“Ah, the past. That doesn’t make him irrelevant, clearly. Did the past break your teeth?”

Thomas doesn’t see this as fit to answer. I sit back and look at him. He doesn’t glory in his pain, like some annoyingly eager martyr, but accepts it. He’s hung an icon of the Virgin over the heel. Her Child has His hand raised, not in the usual complex genuflection, but in a genuine infant’s hand wave, fingers splayed and pulled way back.

So he is another who has had his life taken from him. I feel disappointment. It had begun to seem to me that Thomas was a man who did something more than simply make a virtue of necessity. Ah, well. We can, after all, learn much from lessons we did not sign up for.