Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (76 page)

"We are
creatures of the earth, Catherine," he said, his eyes sharing
something of the darkness beyond the lamp's fierce circle. "Creatures
of the earth and yet. . ." he hesitated, as if in pain, "and
yet we want to fly. Don't you find that strange?"

She looked past
him, at the old brickwork, itself a geometric pattern. "I don't
know," she said. "Perhaps we were always looking to create
something like the City. Perhaps it's only the perfection of
something we always had in us."

He looked at her
fiercely, shaking his head in denial. "No! It's death, that's
what it is! Death!"

He shuddered.
She felt it through her hand. A shudder of revulsion. She hadn't
understood before, but now she saw. Why he had isolated himself. Why
he always seemed so hostile.

"You talk
as if you're not from the City," she said. "As if. . ."
But she left her question unasked. He would tell her if he wanted to.

"We keep
the names," he said, "but they mean nothing anymore.
They're cut off. Like most of us, they're cut off."

"But not
you," she said after a moment.

He laughed but
said nothing. It irritated her for once, that enigmatic side of him.
She freed her hand from his and walked on. He followed, the light
from his lamp throwing faint shadows off to one side.

She was angry.
Hurt that he made no concessions to her. As if she meant nothing to
him.

She stopped,
then turned to face him.

He stood there,
the lamp held high, the light throwing his face into strange lines,
the shadows making it seem wrong—a face half in brightness,
half in dark.

"Shall we
go on?" he asked. But she could make out no expression on his
face. His features were a rigid mask of shadow and light.

"I hate it
here."

He turned,
looking about him once again, the light wavering with the movement,
throwing ghostly shards of brilliance against the windows of the
buildings to either side. Dead, black eyes of glass, reflecting
nothing.

She reached out
and touched his arm. "Let's go back, Ben. Please. Back to
Oxford."

He smiled
bitterly, then nodded. Back to Oxford then. The name meant nothing to
her, after all. But it was where they had been these last two hours.
A place, unlike the bright unreality that had been built over it. A
real place. For all its darkness.

* *
*

IN HER DREAM she
saw herself, walking beside him, the lamp held up above their heads,
the shadowed, ancient town surrounding them, the floor of the City
lost in the darkness overhead.

She saw the
labyrinth again, saw its dark and secret rivers, the Isis and the
Cherwell, flow silently, like blood in the veins of the earth. His
words. His image for them. In her dream she stood there with him on
the old stone bridge, her flesh connected to his at the palm. And
when he lifted his lamp the water shone. Wine red, it shone; the
water black as ink beneath the surface.

She woke,
feeling hot, feverish, and switched on the bedside lamp. It was four
in the morning. She sat up, rubbing her palms together, looking at
them in amazement and relief. It had been so real. She had felt where
her flesh sank into his and shared a pulse, seen the wine-dark flow
where it passed beneath the stone arch of the bridge . . .

So real that
waking seemed a step down.

For a while she
sat there, shivering, not from cold but from a surreal sense of her
other self. Of her sleeping, dreaming self who, like the figure in
the dream, walked on in darkness, understanding nothing.

She closed her
eyes, trying to recapture it, but the image was fading fast, the
feeling of it slipping from her. Then the pulse of it faltered, died.

She got up, and
went across to the canvas, then sat on the stool in front of it, the
seat cold against her naked buttocks, her toes curled about the
rounded bar. Her body was curved, lithe, like a cat's, while her
fine, flamelike hair fell straight, fanning halfway down her back,
her flesh like ivory between its livid strands.

She stared at
the painting, studying it minutely.

It was dark.
Reds and greens dominated the visual textures, sharply contrasted,
framed in shapes of black that bled from the edge of the painting.
Harsh, angular shapes, the paint laid thick on the canvas, ridged and
shadowed like a landscape.

His face stared
out at her, flecks of red and green like broken glass forming his
flesh, the green of his eyes so intense it seemed to flare and set
all else in darkness.

She had shown
him seated in her chair, his shoulders slightly forward, his arms
tensed, as if he were in the act of rising. His long, spatulate
fingers gripped the arms firmly, almost lovingly.

There was a
hard-edged abstract quality to the composition that none of her
friends would have recognized as hers, yet something softer showed
through, a secondary presence that began to dominate once that first
strong sense of angularity and darkness diminished.

The painting
lived. She smiled, knowing that in this she had transcended herself.
It was
a
breakthrough. A new kind of art. Not the mimicry she
had long accepted as her art, but a new thing, different in kind from
anything she had ever done before.

Behind the
firmness of the forms there was an aura. A light behind the darkness.
A tenderness behind those harsh, sharp-sculpted shapes. His dark,
fragmented face grew softer the more she looked, the eyes less
fierce, more gentle.

She reached out
with one hand to touch the bottom surface, her fingers following the
line of whiteness where the figure faded into darkness. Below that
line what at first seemed merely dark took on new forms, new
textures—subtle variations of gray and black.

Buildings.
Strange, architectural forms. Ghost images she had seen as real. All
crowded there; trapped, pressed down beneath the thinnest line of
white. Like a scar on the dark flesh of the canvas.

She tilted her
head, squinting at the figure. It was stiff, almost lifeless in the
chair, and yet there was the suggestion of pure force, of an intense,
almost frightening vitality. A doubleness, there in everything:
something she had not been aware of until he had shown it to her.

She relaxed,
satisfied, and straightened her back, letting her hands drop to her
knees. Then she stretched, her arms going up and back, her small,
firm breasts lifting with the movement. She clawed the air with her
fingers, yawning, then laughed to herself, feeling good.

Leaning forward,
she activated the graphics keyboard beneath the painting's lower
edge, then pressed one of the pads, making the canvas rotate a full
360 degrees.

Slowly the
figure turned, presenting its left shoulder to the viewing eye, its
face moving into profile.

She pressed
PAUSE and sat back, looking. He was handsome. No, more than handsome:
he was beautiful. And she had captured something of that. Some
quality she had struggled at first to comprehend. A wildness—a
fierceness—that was barely contained in him.

She shifted the
focus, drawing out a detail of the wrist, the muscles there. She
leaned forward, looking, touching the hard-edged textures of the
projection, seeing what the machine had extrapolated from her
intention.

She studied it a
moment longer, then got to work, bringing the pallet around into her
lap and working at the projection with the light-scalpels, making the
smallest of alterations, then shifting focus again, all the while
staring at the canvas, her forehead creased in a frown of intense
concentration, her body hunched, curled over the painting, her hands
working the plastic surface to give it depth.

When she had
finished it was almost eight and the artificial light of the wake
hours showed between the slats of her blinds, but she had worked all
the tiredness from her bones.

She felt like
seeing him.

Her robe lay on
the chair beside her bed. She put it on and went across to the
comset, touching his code from memory. In a moment his face was
there, on the flatscreen by her hand. She looked down at him and
smiled.

"I need to
see you."

His answering
smile was tender. "Then I'll be over."

The screen went
dark. She sat there a moment, then turned away. Beside the bed she
bent down, picking up the book she had left there only hours before.
For a moment she stared at its cover as if bewitched, then opened it,
and picking a passage at random, began to read.

She shuddered.
It was just as Ben had said. There was no comparison. It was such a
strange and wonderful book. Unseemly almost, and yet beautiful.
Undeniably beautiful.

The novel she
remembered had been a dull little morality tale—the story of a
boy from the Clay who had been taken in by a First Level family and
had repaid their trust by trying to corrupt the upright daughter of
the house. In that version filial piety had triumphed over passion.
But this . . .

She shook her
head, then put the book down. For all its excesses, it was so much
more real, so much more
true
than the other. But what did it
mean? What did all of these things mean? The paintings, the strange
buildings beneath the City, and now this—this tale of wild
moors and savage passions? What did it all add up to?

Where had Ben
found these things? And why had she never heard of them before?

Why?

She sat, a small
shiver—like an aftershock—rippling down her spine.
Things that existed and yet had no existence. Things that, if Ben
were right, were dangerous even to know about. Why should such things
be? What did they mean?

She closed her
eyes, focusing herself, bringing herself to stillness, calming the
inner voices, then leaned back on her elbows.

He was coming to
her. Right now he was on his way.

"Then
I'll be over."

She could hear
his voice; could see him clearly with her inner eye. She smiled,
opening her eyes again. He had not even kissed her yet. Had not gone
beyond that first small step. But surely that must come? Surely? Else
why begin?

She stood,
looking about her, then laughed, a small thrill passing through her.
No, he hadn't even kissed her yet. But maybe this time.
Maybe
.
. .

* *
*

BEN STOOD in the
doorway, relaxed, one hand loosely holding the edge of the sliding
panel, the other combing through his hair.

"Really . .
." he was saying, "I'd much rather treat you to breakfast."

He seemed
elated, strangely satisfied; but with himself, not with her. He had
barely looked at her yet.

She felt herself
cast down. A nothing.

"I'd like
to cook you something—" she began again, knowing she had
said it already. Again he shook his head. So definite a movement.
Uncompromising. Leaving her nowhere. A bitter anguish clenched the
muscles of her stomach, made her turn from him, lest he see. But she
had seen how his eyes moved restlessly about the room, not really
touching anything. Skating over surfaces, as if they saw nothing.

As if what he
really
saw was not in her room.

She turned and
saw that he was looking at the covered canvas. But there was no
curiosity in his eyes. For once he seemed abstracted from the world,
not pressed right up against it. She had never seen him like this
before, so excited and yet so cut off from things.

She looked at
him a moment longer, then shrugged and picked up her slender clutch
bag. "All right. I'm ready."

They found a
quiet place on the far side of the Green from the Cafe Burgundy. At
first they ate in silence, the curtain drawn about them in the narrow
booth, giving the illusion of privacy. Even so, voices carried from
either side. Bright, morning voices. The voices of those who had
slept and come fresh to the day. They irritated her as much as his
silence. More than that, she was annoyed with him. Annoyed about the
way he had brought her here and then ignored her.

She looked
across the table's surface to his hands, seeing how at ease they
were, lying there either side of the shallow, emptied bowl. Through
the transparent surface she saw their ghostly images, faint but
definite, refracted by the double thickness of the ice. He was so
self-contained. So isolated from the world. It seemed, at that
moment, that it would be easier for her to reach through the surface
and take those ghostly hands than to reach out and grasp the warm
reality.

She felt a
curious pressure on her; something as tangible in its effect as a
pair of hands pressed to the sides of her head, keeping her from
looking up to meet his eyes. Yet nothing real. It was a phantom of
her own creating—a weakness in her structure.

She looked away,
stared down at her untouched meal. She had said nothing of her new
painting. Of why she had called him. Of all she had felt, staring at
that violent image of his face. He had shut her out. Cut off all
paths between them. As she sat there she wished for the strength to
stand up and leave him there sitting before his empty bowl.

As if that were
possible.

She felt her
inner tension mount until it seemed unendurable. And then he spoke,
reaching out to take her hands in his own; the warmth of them
dissipating all that nervous energy, destroying the phantoms that had
grown vast in his neglect.

"Have you
ever tasted real food, Catherine?"

She looked up,
puzzled, and met his eyes. "What do you mean,
real
⁷
."

He laughed,
indicating her bowl. "You know, I've never seen you eat. Not a
morsel." His hands held hers firmly yet without real pressure.
There was a mischievous light behind his eyes. She had not seen him
like this before.