War in Heaven (64 page)

"Danlo of Kweitkel," he said, bowing politely. "I didn't expect to see you again."

"I have come because I need Constancio's help." Danlo held up Jonathan so that the guard could see his face. "This is my son, Jonathan. And this is his mother, Tamara."

"I wish you well," the guard said, "but I'm afraid Constancio won't be able to help you."

"My son is very sick," Danlo said. He told him about the frostbite, then, and how Jonathan's feet had fallen rotten with gangrene. "I ... have hoped that Constancio would have the cryonics to save his feet."

"Maybe he would; maybe he wouldn't. But he doesn't want anyone else coming to him for any more cuttings — he told me this himself."

"I like to believe that he would still want to help me," Danlo said. "As he helped me before, yes?"

"I'm sorry, but you've wasted your time."

Holding Jonathan with one arm, Danlo dug in the pocket of his furs for the bag of coins that Tamara had given him. He passed it through the steel bars.

"Will you please take this to Constancio? It is all that we have."

The guard pulled at his icy moustache for a moment, and then closed his fist around the coins. "All right — if you ask. Please wait here."

And with that he turned to skate up the walkway to the house.

After a while, he returned still clutching the bag of coins in his hand. "I'm sorry," he said. "But it's as I told you — Constancio won't see you."

He passed the coins back to Danlo through the steel bars, but Tamara reached out and took the coins instead. She weighed them in her hand and then she looked at the guard and said, "You've taken a coin for yourself, haven't you?"

His face fell red with blood as he spat at the walkway. Almost instantly, the frothy white liquid froze into ice. "And what if I have? Shouldn't I be paid for my labours?"

She flashed him a dark, dreadful look and then turned to Jonathan. With a fierce resolve, but gently and with almost infinite grace, she peeled back the furs cocooning him. It took her only a moment to remove his slippers, and then she quickly covered him up again — all of him except his feet.

The guard recoiled in horror. The wind blew the stench of rotting flesh straight into his face.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "These are bad times."

Tamara put Jonathan's slippers back on him and wrapped the bed furs about him again. She said, "Why don't you return to ask Constancio for his help once more?"

"I'm sorry, but he wouldn't give it."

"Not even for a child who has nowhere else to go?"

"I'm afraid not — Constancio hates children."

"Has he no heart, then?"

"Well, not a
human
heart. I'd heard that he replaced his real heart with an artificial one years ago. I think he was afraid that the nerves there would misfire, and it would just stop beating."

Tamara stared at him for a long time before saying, "Why don't you open the gate so that I can talk with him?"

"No, I'm afraid that's impossible. Now please go — it's too cold to stand out here arguing." He looked at Danlo and said, "Please take your woman and son away from here before they freeze to death."

"We'll go, then," Tamara said to him. "But first give us back the coin."

"What?"

"Your master can choose to help us or not — I suppose that's his right. But we shouldn't be charged just for asking his help."

"Well, these are bad times," the guard said again.

"Give us back the coin. Please."

He thrust his hand into his pocket as if to honour her request. But then he said, "It's just a coin — now go before it's too late."

Again, Tamara fixed him with her dark eyes. "Have
you
no heart?" she asked.

"I have a son of my own. On Thorskalle — it's a poor place, as you may know. My son is very bright, but we've had no money for an education. After the war is over, I'll return there, and every coin I've earned serving Constancio will go towards buying him a place in one of the elite schools."

"I'm sorry about your son. But at least he isn't dying."

"And neither is yours — he's already dead. There isn't a cutter in the city who will be able to help him. You should save your coins for those who really need them."

At this, Tamara leaned closer to Jonathan and put her hands over his ears to keep him from hearing such cruel words. But it was too late, for he was looking at her with panic in his eyes.

"Give us back the coin," Tamara demanded again. "It may be that this single coin will make the difference in our affording the services of a cutter who could help him."

There was a moment, then. Tamara locked eyes with the guard and they struggled with each other, his will against hers. Finally, he reached into his pocket and cast the golden coin through the bars of the gate. It rang against the street's ice and lay there glittering.

"Take it, then, if it means so much to you. Now go before I send the robots against you."

As Tamara bent to retrieve the coin, Danlo swallowed against the rage he felt burning up his throat. All this time he had remained nearly motionless, listening to his racing heart and staring at the guard. He was filled with a terrible, black wrath. He wanted to use his powerful new body to break down the gate and strangle him. But it is one thing to kill a bear for his meat, and another to harm a fellow human being for simply being human. In the end, Danlo forced himself to breathe deeply the cold air smothering him and to look away. Then he shifted Jonathan in his arms and turned to skate away.

Never harming another, not even in one's thoughts.

For a long time he and Tamara skated up the Street of Mansions towards the Serpentine. The wind howled and their skate blades struck the street in a rhythmic cutting of steel against ice. Finally, near the Winter Ring, they paused to take shelter inside a warming pavilion. They sat on a scarred old wooden bench. As Danlo held Jonathan near one of the hot air vents to warm him, Tamara rested her naked hand on Jonathan's head. He was all curled up inside his furs, staring off into the air. This apathy was more terrible than if he had cried and bitterly protested his fate. It made Danlo want to cry out in rage and rail against his own bitter fate.

"What are we going to do?" Tamara whispered.

"You know what we have to do."

"No, I can't."

"We have no choice."

"I'm afraid it will kill him. If he's to die anyway, I'd rather it be at home, in bed, without all the pain."

"But a cutter might still be able to save him."

"But the pain, Danlo — I just can't bear for him to feel all the pain."

Danlo sat looking into Tamara's eyes, which were shiny with tears like two dark mirrors.
Pain is the awareness of life
, he remembered. And then,
Pain is the price of life.

"We have no choice," he said again.

"I know," she said. "But it's just so horribly unfair."

"Truly, it is."

"For everyone, really, it's
all
so horrible, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"But why, Danlo? Why does it have to be this way?"

"I ... do not know."

She sighed and took a breath of air. And then another, and another, and she closed her eyes for a while to gather her strength. At last, she looked down at Jonathan and said, "All right — I'm ready."

Danlo smiled at her courage. Because she could not see his face beneath his mask, he tried to let all his own courage and love of life pour out through his eyes. The High Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church had once named him the Lightbringer, after all, and he should have been able to find a few golden rays of hope for the mother of his child and the only woman whom he had ever loved. But the star that had once burned so brightly inside him had nearly gone out. He felt dead inside, as dark and cold as ashes. And so he could do little more than to lay his hand on her shoulder and say, "I know that it will be all right."

They found a shop on the Street of Cutters and Splicers not far from Tamara's apartment. It belonged to a man named Rodas Alabi whom Danlo had met during the days when he had searched the city for a cutter who could sculpt him. Danlo had instantly liked Rodas, with his big, easy smile and knowing eyes; he had sensed that Rodas was a fine cutter (and he had heard this from others), and so it seemed only natural that he should come to him with his son.

Rodas' shop was small and simple, fronted with nothing more than white granite. The plain wooden door opened on to an outer room where Rodas' clients waited to be served. That day only two others — a pregnant astrier woman and a rich exemplar — were there ahead of them. Danlo sat with Tamara and Jonathan on soft blue cushions opposite them. He set Jonathan on Tamara's lap, and then looked across the cold room. The harijan and exemplar were discussing their respective afflictions without shame or care for who might be listening. The exemplar complained of a pair of too-tight boots that had caused a corn to grow on the side of his toe; he had come to the cutter to have the painful callous removed. The astrier woman, it seemed, had come to have her baby removed. She told the man that she wouldn't give birth to a child whom she couldn't feed. "I can't even feed myself," she said in a high voice that whined like a cloud of furflies. "It's a terrible world where a mother has to make this kind of choice."

After a while, the door to the inner rooms opened, and an autist staggered out. He was perhaps a young man, but his long, stringy hair had gone white and he seemed nothing more than rags and bones. Obviously, the cutter had removed his nose and both his ears, for bandages of clear thinskin covered these raw, red, newly-made openings to his head. Most others would have worn a facemask to hide such disfigurements, but the man was an autist, after all, much used to playing upon people's pity in order to beg a few coins from them. Although autists are supposed to have little sense of reality (as opposed to that transcendent ground of being that they call the realreal), he immediately singled out Tamara as someone who might help him.

Without a glance at the astrier woman and the rich exemplar, he stepped straight over to Tamara. He held his hands cupped before her like a bowl. "Please, good woman," he said. Because his gaping nasal cavities were covered with the clear thinskin, he was forced to breath through his mouth. This caused him to speak in a high, twangy voice hard to listen to. "May the good God smile upon your kindness."

Out of compassion, if not pity, Tamara reached into the pocket of her furs to find a coin for this wretched creature. But before she could give him one, he looked at Jonathan who was staring at him boldly without loathing or fear. He suddenly broke the bowl of his hands and shook his head at Tamara. And then he reached into his own mildewed furs and pulled out a smooth grey dreamstone. He gave it to Tamara and said, "For the boy, to dream the good dream and walk through the real with his dream body. That he might walk again through the lesser real with his lesser body."

Danlo smiled at the autists' belief that human beings, in communion with the realreal, can dream the world into existence. He smiled at the autist. He wished the world could be so simple that a simple dream might save Jonathan's feet; nevertheless, he was grateful to the autist for his blessing.

"May the good God dream you well," Danlo said to the autist. Once, as a young man, he had eaten rice balls with the autists in the Merripen Green and learned from the autist dream guides how to dream their communal, lucid dreams. "And may you dream the good God and dwell in the realreal."

For a long time, the autist stared at Danlo's brilliant blue eyes and looked at him strangely. And then, quite mysteriously, he whispered, "Never forget your dream."

He turned to leave the shop, but before he could reach the door, the exemplar spat out, "Filthy autist."

And then the autist, smiling, reached into his greasy hair to pluck out a few of the lice that made their home there. He threw the little insects straight at the exemplar's head. When the exemplar fairly dived off his cushions to avoid being infested, the autist smiled again and said, "Filthy rich man. Your life is only a bad dream."

With that he bowed low, opened the door of the shop, and was gone.

Shortly after this, Rodas Alabi emerged from his inner rooms. He had a round, kindly face and a once-round body much reduced by hunger. He wore a fresh white cotton kimono; obviously the garment must have been new since it was impossible to find soap with which to do laundry. He came straight over to greet Tamara, Danlo and Jonathan. He took one look at Jonathan's glassy eyes and shivering body, and announced, "I'll take you next."

Of course the exemplar, who had been waiting longer than Jonathan, protested this decision. But the cutter quieted him with a single look. Then he turned to nod at Danlo and Tamara. "Why don't you bring the boy back?" he said.

They followed Rodas through the open door and then down a short hallway into room of cushions and bright red rugs spread from wall to wall. Two fireplaces full of blazing wood logs kept the room warm; various green plants in brightly painted pots filled the room with fresh oxygen. Windowless as the room was, it might have been dark except for the two fires and the electric lamps that gave forth a clean, white light. It was almost too bright to be comfortable, but Rodas had brought them here to examine Jonathan, and he needed a strong light with which to see.

"It's his feet, isn't it?" he said. "Let's get his furs off, then."

While Tamara unwrapped the furs, Rodas held his breath as if he expected a blow to his belly. And then, at the sight of the blackened limbs, he exhaled suddenly and sighed, "Well, then, I've seen too much of this lately."

"Can you help him?" Tamara immediately asked.

Rodas stared off at the wall for a moment and then looked Jonathan straight in the eyes. He said, "I can't save your feet, Jonathan, because there aren't any of the medicines left. But I think I can save your life. Do you understand?"

Jonathan, all curled up and shaking with fear as much as cold, slowly nodded his head. "You have to cut off my feet — will it hurt very badly?"