Blue Shifting

Publishing credits

"The Death of Cassandra Quebec" first published in
Zenith 2
, 1990

"Piloting" first published in
Interzone 44
, 1991

"The Art of Acceptance" first published in
Strange Plasma 1
, 1989

"The Disciples of Apollo" first published in
Other Edens 3
, 1989

"Elegy Perpetuum" first published in
Interzone 52
, 1991

"Song of Summer" appeared first in the printed version of
Blue Shifting
, Macmillan Books, 1995

"Eye of the Beholder" first appeared in
Interzone 119
, 1997

"Blue Shifting" appeared first in the printed version of
Blue Shifting
, Macmillan Books, 1995

The Death of Cassandra Quebec

I came to Sapphire Oasis in search of experience, or so I thought at the time. I had made my home on Nova Francais for almost two decades, the last few years a repetition of cafe-life, parties and second-rate exhibitions where even my best crystals failed to sell. I was getting old and lonely and my work was suffering, and some vague desperation drove me to Earth to experience that which I might synthesize, through my skill, into art.

The famous crystal
The Death of Cassandra Quebec
was being exhibited for the first time in ten years, and I made this my excuse to revisit the planet of my birth. I took a bigship through the interstellar telemass portal to Timbuktu and caught the mono-train north to Sapphire Oasis.

I had seen many a lavish illustration of the colony – had even admired Tyrone's famous hologram of '37 – and as a result I was overcome with a sense of
déjà vu
at first sight. The oval oasis, perhaps a kilometre from end to end, was surrounded by a great leaning series of golden scimitars, their hilts planted in the sand of the desert, their arching blades supporting the pendant globes that comprised living quarters and spacious studios with views across the artificial lake.

That first night I dined alone in the revolving restaurant on the island at the centre of the oasis. I ate synthetic gazelle and yam, with chutney and Moroccan wine. The panorama was magnificent: beyond the illuminated orbs of the individual domes, and the fringe of surrounding palm trees, the desert extended in dark and sultry swathes the size of Europe. Across the dunes to the south stood the telemass portal. As tall as a mountain, its blank interface was braced in a glowing frame like a hexagon of colossal fluorescents.

It was through this portal that I and a thousand other tourists had journeyed today from Nova Francais, and tomorrow it would be opened to the world of Henderson's Fall, 61 Cygni B. The talk in the dining room was of nothing else but Nathaniel Maltravers, and his arrival tomorrow evening at Sapphire Oasis.

I ordered a second bottle of wine.

As I drank I thought about another famous artist, a woman this time. Cassandra Quebec had inspired more women than just myself to seek expression through the medium of fused crystal. She was the artist who had shown the world her soul, who had taken the fledgling form and proved it as a legitimate means of self-expression. At the height of her career she was the world's most celebrated artist. Then she spoiled it all by announcing her betrothal – I was young; I wept when I found out – to the minor laser-sculptor Nathaniel Maltravers. A year later she was dead.

I finished the second bottle and contemplated a third. I had known when I booked the bigship to Earth that Maltravers – who was indirectly responsible for his wife's death, after all – had decided to return to Sapphire Oasis for the twentieth anniversary commemoration of her passing, but I had not let it put me off the idea of making the trip. Tomorrow, I would visit the Museum of Modern Art and request a private viewing of the Maltravers/Quebec crystal.

I retired early and lay on my bed, staring at the stars through the dome. A party was in progress on the lawn beside the lake, one of the interminable
soirees
that gave the place more the air of a luxury resort than that of an artists' retreat. Artists, their rich patrons and guests, mixed with a social ease I found enviable; snatches of cultured conversation drifted to me through an open vent in the dome.

Unable to sleep, and reluctant to join the gathering below, I took refuge in a memory-tape. I placed the crown – more like a skull-cap – on my head and selected a tape. As I shed my own identity and slipped into the programmed persona, I could not help feeling a twinge of guilt at my escape. Memory-tapes were a spin-off from a device known as mem-erase, illegal on Earth for almost two decades. Mem-erase – the process of self-selected amnesia to which I had once been addicted – had been proven to have certain adverse psychological side-effects. Not only had their private use been proscribed, but even law enforcement agencies, who had used mem-erase to access the minds of suspected criminals, had been denied its advantages. As a result of the ban, the simulated scenarios of memory-tapes were viewed in some circles with a certain stigma.

I selected the ersatz memories of a fictitious vid-star, lay back and for the next hour lived a life of success, fame and love.

~

I awoke early the following morning, booked some time alone with the crystal and strolled along the palm-lined boulevard to the museum.

On the few occasions when the crystal had been exhibited in the past, I had been loath to experience it – the mere fact of Cassandra Quebec's death had been painful enough, without subjecting myself to the emotional reality of it. But twenty years had passed since the incident; I was older and perhaps wiser now, and I considered myself ready to have the experience.

Not that I was without misgivings. I held, perhaps irrationally, a fierce dislike for the man who had married Quebec and who was ultimately responsible for the accident that killed her. Added to which, Maltravers' production of the crystal had elevated him from the minor artisan he was to the status of a world celebrity. Perhaps what had prevented me from experiencing the crystal before now, quite apart from the emotional trauma I would have to undergo, was the thought that I would be participating in the metaphorical aggrandizement of man at the expense of woman.

That morning at breakfast in the revolving restaurant I had been invited to the table of a group of Hoppers – rich artisans and their hangers-on, who skipped the globe from one artists' colony to the next. They were shrill and opinionated, and I sought the protection of silence, offering nothing to the debate about Maltravers and the reason for his return. I heard one claim that he was returning to seek artistic rejuvenation from the locale of his wife's horrific death; another, that he intended to end his life here, as befits the artistic temperament.

The truth, I suspected, was neither. It was my guess that Nathaniel Maltravers was staging the spectacle of his return for no other reason than that, in the years since Cassandra Quebec's death, his own artistic and popular success had floundered. The dozen or so 'major' works he had released upon the universe had flopped abysmally. His return was probably nothing more than a cheap ruse to gain publicity.

The Death of Cassandra Quebec
remained his first and last great work.

The museum, which housed the crystal and a thousand other works of art, was an onyx cathedral raised above the desert on flying cantilevers and approached along a sweep of gently ascending steps. It was cool and hushed within, and I took my time and strolled towards the crystal wing. I paused at the arched entrance, showed my pass to the security guard and stepped inside. The chamber was empty; I was quite alone. Before me, in pride of place in the centre of the room, was the crystal – in fact a thousand alien stones fused into one faceted, centimetre-thick disc perhaps two metres across. Visually, it was a mere swirl of colour, a coruscating vortex of argent and indigo. Only to the touch would the crystal discharge the stored emotions of its creators.

I must have heard a hundred different reports about Cassandra Quebec's death, and staged and re-staged the tragedy in the theatre of my mind. I was on Nova Francais when I first read about the accident; the article was in a journal almost two years old, and the shock of the news was compounded by the fact that I had learned about it so late.

Her arrival at Sapphire Oasis, with her husband and new-born baby, made world news. It was her first public appearance since the birth of her daughter; the film of their approach in an open-top vintage Mercedes, smiling parents and babe-in-arms, is famous – a scene imprinted on the collective consciousness by the tragedy of the events that followed. The fact that the instrument of her death was travelling with them makes the short clip all the more grotesque. As a wedding present, Quebec had bought her husband a bird-like alien known as a Pterosaur from a newly-discovered planet in the Serendipity Cluster. It was an ugly, featherless creature, had a beak like a scythe and was reputedly empathic – a suitably bizarre pet for the world's most famous couple. It could be seen perched on the back seat, maintaining its balance with edgy adjustments of its vast, leathery wingspan as the automobile swept through the gates of the colony.

Quebec and Maltravers argued often during their first year of marriage. It was reported that their differences of opinion, because they were artists, were all the more vituperative. Maltravers, the rumour went, was jealous of his wife's talent and success; Quebec, for her part, despaired that her husband's constant envy would prevent him from ever attaining greatness for himself.

The one known truth of their relationship was that, however violent their arguments, their
rapprochements
were just as intense. They were hailed, in media hyperbole, as the planet's greatest lovers – how jealous I felt when I read this! – and as evidence the news-media offered up the fact that, as well as sharing a bed, they also shared a studio.

It was in this studio, three days after her arrival at Sapphire Oasis, that Cassandra Quebec met her end,

They had argued. Quebec was part-way through a crystal that would stand as testimony to their love, and as such it had to contain
everything
, their imperfections and flaws of character as well as their strengths. Maltravers was loath to subject himself to so public a scrutiny, and his protestations which began their final argument were overheard by their daughter's nurse.

They were in the studio, facing each other across the sun-lit chamber. The volume of their recriminations was noted by several other artists, who paid no heed as this was nothing new between the husband and wife. The nurse reported that she had glimpsed the alien pet, flapping in agitation beside Maltravers, before she departed to attend the crying child in another part of the living quarters.

According to Maltravers, they had reached an impasse in their disagreement, a temporary cease-fire, and Cassandra remained staring at him from across the work-strewn room. Maltravers admitted to feelings of anger, and it was this anger, experts testified at the inquest, that the Pterosaur must have picked up.

Before Maltravers could move to stop it, the Pterosaur left its perch, swooped across the room and attacked his wife with claws like sickles. Maltravers fought it off, but so savage was the attack that within seconds Quebec was lacerated beyond recognition. He realised – he said later in sworn testimony – that his wife was dying and that nothing, not even the latest surgical techniques, could save her.

The events that followed were bizarre to say the least.

Beside Quebec was the fused crystal, empty but for touches of her love for Maltravers. What he did then, in his grief and regret and overwhelming sense of loss, was to lift his wife and place her on the slab as if it were a catafalque, and then lay his brow against its faceted surface and impress upon it his turbulent emotions. She died in his arms minutes later, and the crystal recorded the moment for eternity.

For three days the world's media vilified Maltravers as a monster, until the coroner reported at the inquest that nothing could have saved Quebec. Then his agent released the crystal, and over the next year or so public opinion swung in Maltravers' favour – the vilification turned to sympathy and appreciation.

In the silence of the Museum I steeled myself, stepped forward and laid my palms on the crystal's surface. Warmth ran up my arms, the warmth of Quebec's love for her husband, with which she had begun the work. This joy lasted only seconds, though, for as I moved my hands from the edge of the piece towards its centre, pain swamped me, physical pain – the scream of every nerve slit through and through again. Beyond this, on some deeper sub-strata of the crystal, was Quebec's bewilderment, and then her sudden comprehension as she realised what was happening, that life was ebbing from her, that everything she had ever experienced, the hate and the joy and the everyday miracle of existence, was draining away, becoming faint as she approached the terrible point of total annihilation. Her end was a crescendo scream of terror as oblivion descended.

Then my touch encountered Maltravers' pain at his loss. The howl of desolation that communicated itself from his soul to the crystal, and then to my senses, was almost more unbearable than the pain of Quebec's death – for it continued long after her dying, a lament of grief for his wife, a scream of despair at the realisation of his existence without her.

Unable to take any more I tore myself away, and the sudden cessation of pain was an exquisite relief. I had no idea how long I had been standing before the crystal, so captivated had I been by the raw human emotions. I realised then that I was in tears.

As I made my way slowly from the Museum, I knew that I no longer resented Maltravers. The act of creating the crystal had been instinctive, born of pain and the need to share his grief, and not the opportunistic bid for fame I had assumed for so long.

Within a week of his wife's death, Maltravers took his daughter and sought refuge on the colony world of Henderson's Fall, as if by doing so he might distance himself from the pain of the tragedy.

And tonight he was returning to the source of that pain.

~

That evening I attended the party thrown by the President of Mali to welcome Nathaniel Maltravers to Sapphire Oasis. It was held in the President's own dome – he dabbled in photo-montage – with a view across the desert to the telemass portal, through which Maltravers was due to arrive at midnight. The dome was packed with eager guests: I recognised the two dozen or so serious artists who made up the nucleus of the Sapphire colony, faces familiar from Earth to the furthest settled world. Also present were the flamboyant Hoppers, attendant sycophants, and sombre-suited officials from the countries of Northern Africa and Europe.

I drank by myself beside the alcohol dispenser and thought about returning to my own dome. There was an atmosphere of excitement and expectation about the gathering that smacked of voyeurism. I was on my fourth drink when I admitted that the only reason
I
was here was to see for myself how the passage of years had treated Maltravers, and perhaps learn the real reason for his return.