The Golden Space (17 page)

Nola frowned. “How commendable of you. And it doesn’t hurt that such work is useful to you. You have a captive audience. I’ll bet you don’t miss a chance to get your ideas across.”

Giancarlo did not seem disturbed by her comment. “If someone is interested, I share what I know.”

“I’m sure you do. But don’t call it knowledge.”

“How can I help you understand?” He held out his hands, palms up. “I know that there is another life, and that a part of us lives on after death. I have seen God’s promise to us. A part of us survives.”

“And is this part of us material?” Nola asked. “And if it isn’t, how is it connected to the material world? And if it is itself material, how do you know it survives? How do you know it doesn’t die eventually?”

“I know. I have been near death myself.”

“You don’t know anything. You’ve seen hallucinations; you have no proof. You’ve only come up with a new version of a very old idea. Maybe people needed it once, but we don’t need it now. I’m not even sure you believe all that nonsense.”

Giancarlo lifted his chin. “Would I be here if I didn’t believe it?”

“Oh, come now. Surely you’re gratified that other people turn to you and honor you, maybe even worship you.” She glanced at Yasmin, who was sliding the bowl of candies toward Giancarlo.

“Why are you still here, Nola? You say you’re curious, yet you dismiss what I tell you.” He spoke slowly. He was not smiling.

“Are you going to ask me to leave?” She stared straight at him, searching his face for signs of the charlatan. He stared back. “Why don’t you throw me out? You wouldn’t want to have too many doubts raised. It might get uncomfortable for you.”

He looked down. “Why should I ask you to leave?” He rested his arms on his legs. “I don’t mind questions. Talk to others. If you want to question what I teach, you’re free to do so. My ideas can withstand doubt, and I’m sure my companions here can, too. Ideas should be tested, after all.” His patient, gentle voice pronounced each word carefully, but quickly, as if he had said the phrases many times before. He rose. “I must go. If you’d like to speak to me again, please feel free to come to my home. I’d enjoy the discussion, I’m sure.”

She thought: No, you wouldn’t. As he moved toward the door, he halted and looked back at her. “You might find that I have something to offer you, Nola.”

“I’m content the way I am.”

“Perhaps.” He left.

Nola, depressed, began to think of arguments she should have made. “Was I polite enough?” she asked Yasmin.

“I’m sure he’s heard worse.”

“Maybe I should have been more severe, then.”

Yasmin refilled her pipe, lit it, and drew up her feet. “Want some more?”

“No.” Nola suddenly wanted to get out of the room. Her limbs seemed paralyzed; she was unable to move. Help me, her mind whispered to itself. Giancarlo had hypnotized her; she was sure of it. She stared silently at Yasmin, envying the woman’s complacence.

“He can help you,” Yasmin said. “You’re unhappy—I can see it. You have a sickness of the soul. Giancarlo can help you.”

Nola sighed.

The blond stranger was coming up the road in a red electric cart piled high with knapsacks. He was slouched over the front panel, peering through the windshield. His wavy hair fluttered. He drove up to the fork in the road and stopped, then turned back, halting in front of Jiro’s lawn.

“Jiro,” Nola said. Jiro turned off his weeder and looked up. The man was getting out of the cart. “Do you know him?”

Jiro shook his head. The visitor’s long white shirt flapped around his hips as he walked. His perfect face was deeply tanned; his pants, cut off above the knees, revealed muscular brown legs covered with blond down. He raised a hand.

“Hello,” Jiro said, holding his weeder as if it were a spear.

“I’m looking for Giancarlo Lawrence,” the man called out.

“Take the road to the left. You’ll see a log cabin with a weeping willow in the front.”

“Thanks.” The stranger turned away.

“Wait,” Nola said impulsively, following the man to the road. “I’ll show you the way.”

“That’s very kind of you. Let’s walk. I need to stretch my legs.”

He left his cart at the side of the road and they walked together silently to the fork. Nola kept to the shade under the nearby trees, worrying about sunburn and regretting her short blue shift. The man strode quickly, his arms swinging at his sides. She glanced at his face. He seemed calm; he did not have the look of desperation or doubt. She wondered why he was here.

“Does Giancarlo know you?” she asked as they turned left.

“No.”

“Does he know you’re coming?”

“No.”

“Maybe he won’t be able to see you, then.”

“Why shouldn’t he?”

“He might be busy. I was here for quite a while before he deigned to pay me a visit.”

The man looked at her from the sides of his eyes. “You sound as though you’re a little disappointed in Giancarlo Lawrence.”

“Oh, not really. I didn’t expect much to begin with, so I can hardly say I’m disappointed. I guess I should warn you. I’m the resident skeptic at the moment.”

The blond man smiled. It seemed a curious reaction. Perhaps the visitor was here for the same reason she had come; he might be looking for a deluded friend or lover. Unlike her, he was going to take direct action instead of wasting his time.

They approached Giancarlo’s house. The man raised an eyebrow when he saw it. “How nice,” he said. She thought she heard a chuckle. “How very Leo Tolstoy. The humble, spiritual man.” He began to walk up the flagstone path. She hesitated, then followed him. He stopped for a moment.

“Do you want me to go?” she asked.

His lip curled. “Please stay, by all means. I’d rather have you here.”

“He might not be home.”

His blue eyes narrowed. Nola felt uneasy. He continued up the path.

As they reached the front door, it opened. Teno came outside, followed by Giancarlo, who raised his eyebrows when he saw the stranger and Nola.

“Is one of you Giancarlo Lawrence?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Giancarlo answered. “I am.”

“I thought so. I just wanted to be sure.” The stranger bent forward a bit, fumbling with his shirt. Then he was holding a weapon, aiming it at Giancarlo.

Nola froze. She thought: He’s from another cult. Giancarlo was raising his slender hands. She saw his eyes. He was terrified. He backed away.

“No.” Giancarlo’s voice was high. Teno moved slowly to one side, crouching a bit, as if preparing to leap at the visitor. Nola held her breath. Teno’s gray eyes were cold, as if the mind behind them were calculating the chances of thwarting the attack. Giancarlo’s hands were shaking. He pressed them together, as if praying. “No.”

“No?” The blond man suddenly dropped his wand. “Don’t worry,” he said harshly. “It isn’t even charged. So you’re afraid, too, in spite of what you say. Oh, I wanted to see that. I’m not about to make you a martyr.” The visitor turned and hurried down the path.

Nola was too stunned to go after him. Giancarlo stared at the wand in the grass. Teno leaned over and picked it up.

“He was right,” Teno said. “It isn’t charged.”

“You were afraid,” Nola said, “weren’t you.”

Giancarlo raised his head. Two red spots had appeared on his cheeks. “It wasn’t time. I have too much to do. You shouldn’t have brought him here.” His voice croaked the words.

“I didn’t know what he was going to do. I thought he was looking for your guidance.” She tried to summon up some sympathy for Giancarlo, but failed. “Strange, your being afraid. I thought you didn’t fear death. Maybe the next one will bring a loaded weapon. Then at least you’ll be able to give your theory a real test.”

Giancarlo was watching her. The red spots were larger, and the pale skin of his face was drawn tight against his skull. He was angry. She wondered if he was angrier at the visitor or at her. He clasped his hands together and looked down at the ground. When he raised his head again, he seemed calmer.

“It isn’t death that frightens me,” he murmured. “It’s being injured, or feeling pain. We can repair so much damage to the body, and yet it still seems so fragile.”

Nola did not believe him. It was death that had frightened him; even his faith had not dispelled all his fears.

“Would you like me to stay?” Teno asked in a toneless voice.      

“No. I think I’d rather be alone.” Giancarlo went back up the path to his door.

Nola turned away and walked toward the road. Teno was following her; she slowed her pace. “What do you think?” she asked. “Was he afraid, or wasn’t he?”

“I’m sure he was. Anyone would be. Certain reactions take place in the body, and reason is slow to override them.”

“But that isn’t true of you, is it. You weren’t afraid.”

“I don’t have the same physiology. I don’t react that way. Of course, my reflexes must be quicker than yours in order to make up for that, or my reason would be too slow to take action when necessary.”

“You could have made a mistake. The man might have had a charged weapon.”

“Of course I could have made a mistake. But I wouldn’t have acted unless I was sure my chances were good.”

They walked to the fork in the road without speaking. A breeze fluttered Teno’s dark curls. Nola looked down the road. The red cart was rolling toward the gate.

Teno said, “I went to see Giancarlo to tell him that I wish to undergo the little death.”

Nola turned. She searched the olive-skinned face, trying to imagine that solemn visage with one of the self-satisfied smiles everyone else here wore. “You surprise me, Teno.”

“I don’t see why I should.”

“I thought you didn’t have our little quirks.”

“I’m curious. I want to see what happens to me. Giancarlo is pleased. But the faith he feels is not possible for me.”

They moved toward Jiro’s lawn. Jiro had put down his weeder and was wiping his brow with one bare arm. “Why isn’t it possible?” Nola asked.

“Faith involves an emotional conviction. Sometimes reason can aid or support it, sometimes faith goes against reason. But reason alone cannot lead one to a faith such as Giancarlo’s. There is that leap that is required, and I can’t make the leap.”

“Then why bother?” she said. “Why go through all that, if you know you can’t accept it?”

“Because I would like to see if I experience what others here have. And though I can’t have the sort of faith Giancarlo demands, I can at least assign some sort of probability to his notions, based on my own reason.”

She stepped into the shade under an oak. She was beginning to wonder
if her companion was being honest with her. Did Teno secretly feel a stirring of emotion, a need for
something more than reason? “You see,” Teno went on, “it might be possible to support what he says
rationally, once one has gone to the other side. Here one needs faith; one can’t have anything else.
It’s like a baby trying to think of being outside the womb.”

Teno walked on. She hurried out of the shade and stubbed her toe. She stared at the rock, then strode after Teno. “It’s nonsense,” she said as she caught up.

“Is it? Giancarlo has some sort of notion that the next world, or the higher state, as he calls it, represents the next evolutionary step, and that, in a sense, we become another sort of being. Now, I present a problem here. Do I exist on this evolutionary ladder, or am I outside of it? I may have originated in human genetic material, but I was altered at conception.”

Nola shrugged. “Any child born now is altered in some way.” She was trying to be generous. Teno still remained alien and disorienting.

“But most are unchanged. They are completely human. Except for having certain genes tailored to avoid genetic defects, they’re no different from people born before the Transition. Even you aren’t different, because what’s happened to you is an adaptation to another environment. But I am different. In a sense, I’m a member of a new species.” Teno paused. “Giancarlo doesn’t know how to react to what the biologists might do, what they’re already starting to do. He wants to know whether the creation of new beings is in keeping with this pattern of his. If it is, then he can accept what the biologists do. If not, then he must condemn it and take a stand against such manipulations.”

She frowned. “Surely you’re not going to believe that your existence was a mistake.”

“Don’t you already believe that?”

Nola refused to answer.

“Look.” Teno gestured at the gate. Just beyond the stone wall, the blond man who had threatened Giancarlo was pitching a tent. She smiled. “I must go,” Teno continued. “I did want to ask you something. I would like to have you there when I go through my little death. Giancarlo tells me it’s customary to invite anyone you wish to have present.”

“Are you sure you want me there?” She looked away. “You must know that you make me uneasy.”

“I’m used to that. I make many people uneasy. This is one of the few places I’ve been where most of the people feel comfortable with me.” Nola thought she caught a trace of wistfulness in the steady voice; she was probably imagining it. “Perhaps I simply need another doubter with me when I endure Giancarlo’s ministrations.”