The Great Wheel (39 page)

Inside, in a space of concrete and streaming glass, bodies were splashing and diving. The pool itself was almost lost in steam; it was impossible to tell, if you peered down from the slippery rim, just how deep it was. A boy surfaced. Puffing his cheeks, he saw John, blew out a plume of water, then kicked off again. Shouts and cries echoed. Younger children paddled where the floor sloped into the water, busy with buckets, absently peeing or plucking at the fronds of mold on the walls. Deeper in, John saw a teenage lad helping his younger brother keep his head above water.
It’s like this.
The older boy let go to gesture with his arms, and his brother bubbled under. John smiled, remembering similar scenes at the big outdoor pool in Hemhill. There, you could actually breathe underwater if you inhaled the stinging gas from the poolside vendor first. But it took courage to draw the water into your lungs. He remembered Hal, hair flattened and chest gleaming, holding him.
You’re out of your depth now, Skiddle. All I have to do now is push you under.
Knowing what was to come, he’d kicked and struggled. Would have screamed, too, if the water hadn’t flooded his mouth. And then down, his ears blocked, his eyes burning. Endlessly down.

The tips of his gloves dripped red beads as he walked along Cruz de Marcenado, and the indentation of his watch formed a milky pool when he raised his arm to bang the door beneath the gables of Martínez’s house. He waited. A face peered at a streaming window. The damp door wheezed open, and Kailu stood with her head lowered.
Fatoo,
she murmured, and stepped back, letting him in and past her, watching without following as he ascended the creaking stairs. There were no screens murmuring today, and no smell of cooking. Through the doorway in the frontroom John glimpsed the children sitting silently with their hands clasped around their knees. He pushed open the door into the bedroom, expecting, if not blood-strewn walls, at least the gold-threaded simples that draped the bedposts of even his most regular parishioners when they were this near the end, the heaped powdery soil of some planet even deader than this one.

Martínez’s eyes were open, although John couldn’t tell until he leaned over that the man was conscious. Martínez blinked and mumbled something. Blood bubbled at his lips. John stooped closer and felt the dry inhuman heat.

“I didn’t…”

Surely he wasn’t speaking European? But he was, and the thin screens tacked around the room to the yellow-papered walls were filled with silent green and golden landscapes, skies that were glorious—even beneath the dusty and corrupted surfaces that browned at the corners where rust had set in—glorious with clouds or the sun or the moon or the stars or empty of everything, a deep and endless blue that was really no color at all, only a sensation of letting go, of falling…

“…want it to end.”

“Yes.”

John nodded, conscious of how close to Martínez he was, of the droplets of rain that had fallen from his hair and clothes onto the blankets, of one that even gleamed like a tear on the taut drumskin of Martínez’s cheeks. He sat down on the chair beside the bed. There’s always hope, he remembered once thinking, where there’s hope. Even here.

The mattress creaked as Martínez coughed and then turned his head on the red-speckled pillow. His lips split apart.

“I don’t want…”

One arm lay outside the blankets, the flesh pooled and sagging where the muscle inside had dissolved.

“I still need to…”

The hand moved. Once it had been a strong wide hand and had worked foline engines and held his children and touched his wife in love. The fingers slowly hooked across the rucked blanket. John glanced over at the leaves that lay in the chipped glass bowl on the far table, wondering if Martínez was trying to reach them. They’d probably help at a time like this, although John doubted whether Martínez could chew anything now. But the hand was moving not towards the leaves but towards something that lay closer. John looked down but saw merely the rug on the floor, a shoe sticking out from under the bed, and his own gloved hands resting on his thighs.

“…to…”

John gazed at Martínez and thought of Christ, of the Inmaculada, and of the other Mary, the Magdalene, her hands reaching out to her resurrected Lord in the sepulchre.
Woman, why weepest thou? Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go to your brethren and tell them
…

Touch me not.

John unpeeled his gloves. He broke the spines and pushed the gloves into his pocket. He reached out and gripped Martínez’s hand. The flesh was loose and hot. He waited for a sign, for a return of pressure, but when he looked up at Martínez’s face, he saw that the eyes were closed and that the breathing had grown easier. Martínez was asleep.

John got up, unsealed a pair of fresh green-spined gloves, and wiped with dysol the chair he’d been sitting on. Kailu watched him from the hallway as he descended the stairs. She stepped back, pushing open the door, saying nothing. Outside, it was still raining.

C
OUGHING AND WHISPERS IN
the stone air. The sleeping knight. The smiling Christ. Brown-eyed Mary’s arms reaching out through the tumble and glitter of a fresh snowfield of cards and mementos. The failing roof creaking and pattering with the claws of caroni birds. Silver threads plinking into buckets. So few people here. No Nuru. No Kassi. No Juanita. Just the indeterminably aged who came up to take the wafer and then shrank back, watching him over the pews from the unimaginable distance of their alien eyes.

John turned on the translat and studied the little screen. He pressed Close, then touched down into the main files, with the gloved tip of his finger drawing the pattern that was his own codeword, down into the phrase banks and sound types, the fuzzy circuitry that supposedly dealt with humor and twists of meaning, again and again pressing Close. He turned it off when it was fully blank, and, gripping the pulpit, breathing in the scent of dysol and the salt odor of Borderer flesh, he began to speak.

“It is good, Paul says in First, Corinthians, for a man not to touch a woman. He is talking of sexual touching, there is no doubt about that, for he goes on to say that a man should take a wife to avoid fornication. Yet simple touch and contact—especially between a man and a woman—is regarded as a less than ideal thing in most of the Bible. It is true that Jesus heals and teaches by the laying on of hands, by the washing of feet, yet at the same time this is ultimately seen as a sign not of God’s spirit in Christ but of His earthbound humanity.”

He paused and licked his lips. It was a strange nakedness to hear his voice unechoed by the translat.

“Mary Magdalene, who was the symbol, if ever there was one, of God’s forgiveness of the weaknesses and the strivings of humanity, is the first to come to the sepulchre and see that the stone has been rolled away, that Christ has arisen…”

There was a disturbance as the first of the congregation, muttering at the strange babble of this European
baraka,
began to leave. The door banged open. Streamers of rainy light filled the church, throwing long shadows from the pews, transforming the shapes of the people that remained into globular disconnected heads and bodies.

“Imagine her feelings as she stood weeping and alone before that empty tomb, then turning, seeing this man, so full and vigorous that for a moment she does not know him, cannot comprehend…”

The door banged shut.

“…that it is truly her Lord. She thinks he’s a gardener! Can you imagine, a human gardener—not a machine that clicks and buzzes and trims the roses for you. But a human gardener.” The church door swung open again, grinding over the unswept porch.

“But then,” John continued, swallowing back the bitterness in his throat, staring out across the empty pews and deep into the pouring light, “he speaks her name. And he says, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended.” He coughed. “Touch me not. Now, what are we supposed to make of that? Later, Jesus greets his disciples and shares food with them. According to Luke, he even lets them handle him. But Mary Magdalene, being a woman, wasn’t allowed to. And in the book of John, Thomas, who doubts that Christ actually is who he claims to be, does not, as you might imagine—for surely he must recognize Christ’s face—touch him. Instead, he passes his finger through the holes in Christ’s hands. His hand reaches to touch his Lord, whom he longs to recognize and love, and it passes through. And there, in the emptiness—in the space beneath Christ’s flesh, in the evidence of agony, inhumanity, and suffering—he somehow finds faith.”

It was late at the Zone’s medical center. Even the Borderer cleaners had finished work. John walked along the corridors alone, his footsteps dirtying the fresh floors. The door to Tim’s office was ajar. Tim sat at the desk, surrounded by cards and papers, his head lowered; he seemed to be busy. “Ah.” He looked up. “I wasn’t expecting…” John sat down. Rainwater from his clothes pattered on the carpet.

After a moment, Tim smiled and pushed the cards away. “Things have changed a bit,” he said, “haven’t they?”

“About as much as they ever do here.”

Tim nodded slowly, watching him. “You’re still seeing Laurie?”

“That seems to have ended.”

“I’m sorry, John. I just wish we could have talked honestly about it.”

“I suppose you and most other people knew anyway?”

“Well. You know.”

Tim stood and walked over to the doctor in the corner, placing his hand on it. The curved panels reflected back an older, wearier version of his face. “You should have said, John. I mean, about Laurie. The physical stuff, anyway—I could have helped you with that.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

The rain gelled silently across the window. Father Orteau’s Church of All Saints across the black lake was a misty lantern.

“Why have you stayed on here so long, Tim?” he asked. “Is it because of Agouna?”

“Agouna’s one of the reasons.” Tim turned to him. “Why?”

“I saw your car there. That big Corona.”

“I go at odd times.”

“You pay them?”

“Of
course
I pay them.” Tim came back to the desk and began to pick at the furballs on the shoulders of his jacket, which lay draped over the chair. “And—to save you asking—I sometimes give them medicines too, and money. I help their uncles get jobs at the shuttleport or across the water. I do all that, John. It’s part of the exchange.”

“Exchange—is that what you call it?”

“Being in the Magulf for me isn’t just some odd exercise to find out where my life is going, John. I’m not like you—and all the rest of them.” Tim shook his head. “This is it, my life. All there is.”

“So you copied my data on the koiyl?”

“Copied?”

“Gave it out. About Ifri Gotal and Lall and the leaf. People in the Endless City seem to know. I spoke to Ryat—”

“Is that what he says?”

“He said there had been rumors. I thought at first that it was Laurie.”

“And now you think it’s
me? Jesus,
John. This place is alive with rumor. Amid all that, don’t you think some of the truth gets out?”

The silence stretched between them.

Tim sat back down. “So,” he said, “where do we go from here?”

“I don’t suppose it matters. I don’t have long left here anyway.”

“It’s a shame. And you don’t look well, John. Do you know that?” Tim glanced at the screen on his desk. “The signal I’m picking up from your implants is very weak. You haven’t been…”

“What?”

“Deliberately damaging yourself in some way? People sometimes do odd things when they come out here.” Tim touched the screen. Tiny flutters of AGTC lined his face and caught in the silver of his eyes. The doctor stirred in the corner. “John, I’d like to take a closer look.” Mandibles unfurled, and the doctor’s eyes began to glow.

Beneath his wet clothes, John felt his flesh turn colder than ever. He shook his head.

He said, “I’m not going into that thing.”

The gutters ran in shooting rapids past the sleek trees and buildings of the Zone. The lights in Laurie’s bungalow were off when he walked past, and her van wasn’t there. At the end of Main Avenue, a group of drunken expats swayed arm in arm through the rain. He walked along the dry brownstone, looking in the shops, scarcely able to believe the profusion of the goods, the incredible displays, the ridiculous prices. Most of the bars were closed now or closing, but the place with the chromium waiter stayed open all night. He sat there alone in the warmth, shivering, drinking whisky, gazing at the empty space opposite him, where Laurie once sat.

When he finally felt drunk enough, he went back out, found a booth, and called her number.

“Father John.” The answerer smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You mean that?”

“I’m always pleased to do my job.”

“You’re really not like Laurie—you just talk with her voice, and have her mannerisms.”

“If I talk as Laurie talks, if I behave as she behaves, doesn’t that make me like her?”

“Will you put me through?”

“I’m sorry—you know she’s asked me not to do that. But of course, I will advise her that—”

“Laurie would never do what you’re doing. Just slavishly following orders.”

“Under certain circumstances I have free will.”

“Such as?”

“Now. Talking to you, Father John. I could show you her bungalow if you want.”

“She’s not there.”

“But
I
can be. Look.” The blank space behind the answerer became Laurie’s bedroom, with the same mess as always. And the air, too, smelled the same, taking over the booth, blocking out the empty street outside. The screen widened, pulling him in. “Is this what you want to see?”

As usual, Laurie had left her wardrobe open, and he saw the row of her clothes, so few of which she actually wore. But there was the skirt from that last afternoon at Mokifa: he remembered the spark of static that had jumped from the hem as she turned, the growling wind, the loss of every right word.

“You know,” he said to the answerer, “that we were lovers.”

“Yes.” The answerer was dim now but beside him.