Dark Matter (42 page)

Next I turned to Carl. What could I glean
from the other man Clotho said had emerged from the changing intact? Again my
mind was drawn first to the obvious connection: a fraternity boy surrounded by
a coterie of clingfasts, a leader, a social butterfly, gifted with an
augmentation of natural empathic gifts.

Further inspection revealed, on the
contrary, an awkward boy who became a shy young man. The fraternity tour had
been something of a breaking out for him, but probably viewed quite differently
by his so-called brothers. I imagined his revenge to have been sweet.

I poured myself into my task, holed up for
weeks on end within the schloss. Later, when I contacted Clotho to accept his
offer, I had settled on a provocative hypothesis, one I was eager to test.

During this time I shared everything with
Hans. We were of one mind. He was fascinated most by Mihai’s story.

It was only when the Imago’s butchers
arrived, armed with vials, blades and drills, that I was informed of a further
stipulation, the lore I have already mentioned: two might undertake the change,
but only one could seize the prize. If Hans and I both entered and emerged from
the metamorphosis, we must fight to the death.

We took it philosophically. We both knew
there was no longer a choice—hadn’t been since Clotho had contacted me.

The Imago spoke of it not as death or
termination, merely a diverging. One dweomer took flight into Eternity, while
the other remained to master Infinity.

Secretly, I nursed the hope that my
hypothesis was right, and that once Hans and I emerged from dormancy, we would
write new lore, begin a new order.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. The war, which by
then seemed like so much child’s play, intruded upon us in the form of a fifteen-inch
shell. Hans drowned, and, as I have already explained, I was tasked to prepare
an alternative dweomer or find another.

I suppose you’re interested to know my
hypothesis—my secret, rather, as my existence has proved it.

As I said, I formed it from evidence of the
dry, textual kind, found in Otlet’s library. To that I can now add the
evidence, vivid and intoxicating, of lived experience.

I’ve told you of the common theme I found
in the lives of Mihai and Carl, the contrast between what they were and what
they became. I unearthed many more such tales in the indices and footnotes of
Otlet’s library. They led me to pose a simple question: What is the opposite of
what one has?

You, given your situation, should have a
ready answer.

It is: what one
wants
.

Greed is the greatest god. The stomach is
never filled, the eyes never sated. The things laid at their altar are quickly
consumed, and one must range ever wider for the next offering.

The god of the weak man is strength. The
god of the despised is esteem. Thus were Mihai and Carl equipped by the change.

Like any other process of nature, the key
is within. Inside the acorn lies the oak. The idea of a great, many-branched
tree is printed in microscopic strands of DNA. Pity the acorn that cannot
change itself, cannot have a new idea of itself. If it could, perhaps an acorn
could become an elm, or an aspen, or an asp.

When Hans and I awoke from coma, we took
stock. And then began to restock.

I noticed presently within my mind a kind
of motion, a rummaging through, a cataloguing. I watched it take inventory, as
if, having passed through the blackout of coma, it needed to be reacquainted
with itself. I felt as if a great hand were roaming over my memories and
desires, examining, probing, taking note, before returning each to its place.

My theory predicted this. I had not
expected it to be so transparent. My excitement grew.

This rapid validation of my hypothesis made
me wonder how aware of the process the Imago are, whether they had documented
it scientifically, or attempted to systematise it. If I had learned so much so
quickly, with only Hans’ conversation—merely the substance of two experiences
conjoined—surely the Imago, with the resources at their disposal and the
examples of so many lives elevated, had achieved a mature understanding? That
is, if their penchant for mysticism had not blinded the paths of Science.

I began to ply my knowledge. My volitional
contribution to the process of my change was to guide that great hand toward a
single goal: I desired to be the ultimately adaptable creature.

Since I was a boy, I had seen how that
which adapted survived, and, in surviving, flourished. I recalled watching
moths emerge into what should have been spring’s quickening, only to be struck
by winter’s parting shot, a snow squall. Beneath the clear skies that followed,
moths of the same species lived or died on the proportion of black and white to
their speckled wing. If change is the only constant, it follows that
changeability is the prerequisite for continuing life, regardless of what one
does with the life thus secured.

I began systematically to call to mind
memories of when I had effected a kind of adaptation: feigned interest in the
piano to woo a vivacious fraulein; awe during my interview for admission to the
Art programme at Berlin (and ebullient extroversion to obtain presidency of the
guild of the same); even my affectation of a blank-faced, clean-living Nazi at
Waffen-SS recruitment. In each case, though the name of Schürmann had gone a
long way, I had adapted to the need of the moment.

Having looked into the past, I then turned
my attention to the future. It was time to stock my hopes.

My thoughts each day, from rising to
turning in, were drawn to my one desire. And I let them be drawn. Every idle
thought fell into the orbit of my hope for ultimate adaptability.

As the time drew near for my dweoming, I
began to dwell within my mind in a way hard to imagine for those who have not
had the privilege of dweoming. I could enter at will into something like a
vivid, waking dream. What’s more, I could fashion dreamscapes with an
exactitude normally precluded by the dream-addled mind. I set myself tests, to
survive, to gather information, to seduce. I fashioned hostile environments,
and cast myself in a role suited to each. I became the ill-favoured son of a
dying patriarch—really became him—and challenged myself to extract an
inheritance at his death bed. I plunged myself into a jungle and became the
quarry in the hunt of a despot—I became a gaunt figure, barely human, and
befriended shadow and silence as I eluded him and his hounds. I took the form
of my brother and confronted my mother over the affair that had broken my
father’s health—my mother!

Day after day I scourged myself in this way
as my time drew near. In my mind, I fooled them all. Only one question gnawed
at me: Would my body reify this dream?

The answer, as you can see for yourself,
is: yes.

I’ve told this tale eight times now. It has
become something of a ritual. It grows with every telling, giving me time to
observe, and perfect my form. I watch for all of the subtle expressions that
travel a subject’s face, the starbursts of reaction to each revelation, and
gather the nuances necessary to fool a lover’s intuition, or a mother’s
scrutiny.

Strange to say, the look is not sufficient
to create a flawless doppelganger. We do not stand like statues for each other
in real life. We constantly move. How often do we recognise an acquaintance,
even at great distance, by their gait? The slightest perturbation, a leg
hitched up too far, a shoulder slung to low, and the game is up.

Now it is time for you to travel on into
the Great Unknown. I almost envy you. But I thirst for the endlessness of
space. I shall exhaust Infinity before acquainting myself with Eternity.

I, PART SUN

A boy stood atop a cliff, looking out
at the ocean. In the distance, clouds spent themselves in rain upon water
burnished by the descending sun. Was there a more beautiful futility? Perhaps
beauty trumped futility.

He sighed―so deeply he took himself for a
man.

The man shifted his gaze to the shore.
Waves were hurling themselves onto the beach, climbing it, pausing ever so
briefly, then listing, receding to mingle with the next. Each wave left a
momentary stain upon the shore like a shadow of itself.

The man desired the feel of spume and sand
in his toes. He began to descend.

He reached with his mind to fashion the
brute rock of the cliff into a stairway, and then remembered he could no longer
do it. The loss still hurt. He had yet to adjust to this impotence, to be
unable to shape the world according to whim. He felt stuck in the concreteness
of it all, a fly in amber.

He had first sensed something sapping his
power as he rose from the centre of the earth, treading a stair he formed by
parting and shaping the living stone. The realisation had coincided with the
rumble of a far-off storm―an out-of-place sound in the grottos formed by the
ballooning of his will in the uniform rock. Perhaps he had heard the storm
before then, in the murmur of molten pools near the earth’s core. He could not
remember why he had travelled there, what quest had pulled him thither. He
could not remember much at all―it was as though he were in a dream. As with a
dream, he could not recall how it had begun.

Now that he had breached the surface he
could see the storm standing off on the horizon. Its belly was dark, and the
wind carried the scent of its menace.

The man resigned himself to picking his way
down the cliff’s haphazard ledges. Its rock was limestone, bored by wind and
ancient waters as though it had played host to some gigantic parasite. An
onshore breeze moaned in the hollows. Stunted scrub clung impossibly, eking out
life in defiance of gravity and the elements.

While descending, he pondered (not for the
first time) why he could not remember his name. He knew he had one. It was like
a tickling at the back of his mind, just beyond the reach of his thought.

Who are you?

—Who r u?—

He was surprised on reaching the beach to
see it marked with small footprints, like those of a child. Beside them ran a
groove in the sand, as though the owner trailed a stick in one hand. With his
gaze he tracked the footprints along the beach, just above the water line, as
they shrank and disappeared behind a small bluff.

Intrigued, he followed the tracks. He could
not remember the last time he had seen another living soul.

The footprints meandered left and right,
always staying just beyond the reach of the water that would erase them. The
groove dogging the child’s heels wove to and fro across the footfalls. When the
man had rounded the bluff the footprints veered the closest they had come to
the waterline. The groove disappeared, and the man saw the last traces of a
pattern of marks that had been etched in the sand―writing or perhaps a sketch.
The surging water had removed any possibility of recognition.

He quickened his step.

Soon he saw more evidence of writing in the
sand. He thought he must be gaining on his quarry, for the marks became
increasingly clear. Each had been left to the ravage of waves for less time
than the last.

He came across marks that were tantalisingly
fresh. He squinted and tried to force them to become words. They wouldn’t. When
he looked up, his breath caught. There, planted in a line beside the small
footprints, were large ones, those of an adult. He felt a thrill of fear.

He dug in his back pocket for the pocketknife
he knew to be there. His search yielded, instead, a folded sheet of paper. He
withdrew it and unfolded it. It was the sketched portrait of a girl. He
recognised his sister, and, as he lowered her portrait, he saw her a hundred
yards farther down the beach. She was crouched, drawing in the sand with a
stick.

He hurried toward her, realising as he went
that the large footprints he had feared were his own; he was on an island, had
already circumnavigated it.

Seeing him approach, she stood and ran in
the opposite direction. Her hair bounced as she ran, and he fancied he heard
the wind carry her laughter back to him. She rounded the bluff and was lost to
view.

Passing the point where she had been
drawing, he had time enough to see a single letter written in the sand: H,
already being assailed by the water.

The man rounded the bluff and saw that he
had gained on her. She had stooped to draw, but on seeing him, ran again. Her
hair flailed out in a banner. The wind was beginning to rise, sending spume
flying, and sand snaking across the beach’s undulations.

As he ran, he became aware that his path
was curving more and more tightly. His sister no longer trailed the stick, so
he could not gauge his path neatly, but there could be no mistake: the island
was shrinking. That realisation brought him to a halt, and when he looked up
and out at the ocean, he was appalled by what he saw.

The storm had closed on the diminishing
island. The encircling ocean, far from being beaten down by the coming torrent
of rain, was lifting to the cloud belly, bending upwards like a colossal
meniscus.