Engineering Infinity (17 page)

I’m running out of wall to
scribble on: anyway, this is taking too long and besides, I’m feeling a little
hungry myself.

Goodbye, sister. Sleep tight. Don’t
let any strangers in.

Kathleen Ann Goonan

Kathleen Ann
Goonan has been a packer for a moving company, a vagabond, a madrigal singer, a
painter of watercolours, and a fiercely omnivorous reader. She has published
over thirty short stories in venues such as
Omni Online
,
Asimov’s
,
F&SF
,
Interzone
,
Amazing,
and a host of others. Her
Nanotech Quartet
includes
Queen City Jazz
,
Mississippi
Blues
,
Crescent City Rhapsody
,
and
Light Music
; the latter two were nominated for
the Nebula Award.
The Bones of Time
, shortlisted for
the Clarke Award, is set in Hawaii. Her most recent novel,
In War Times,
won the John W. Campbell Award and was named as the
American Library Association’s Best Genre Novel of the Year. Her seventh novel,
This Shared Dream,
will be out from Tor in
2011,
along with a short story collection by PS Publishing. Her
novels and short stories have been published in France, Poland, Russia, Great
Britain, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, and Japan. “Literature,
Consciousness, and Science Fiction” recently appeared in the Iowa Review online
journal. She speaks frequently at various universities about nanotechnology and
literature, and is a Visiting Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
where she teaches writing and literature.

Hunched over his third icy mug of
San Miguel, Kyo silently lauded the sense of history and mission with which the
Pantheon proclaimed itself, on a bold plaque, “Honolulu’s Oldest Bar.”

Though he didn’t know it at the
time, it was Kyo’s last day on Earth.

Pool balls clicked off of one
another behind him. Blazing tropical noon was only a bright rectangle of light
framed by the open doorframe. A warm breeze rattled a ratty-looking potted palm
just inside the door, carrying the faint, salty scent of Honolulu Harbor and
exhaust fumes from Nuuanu Avenue.

Kyo jumped at a light touch on
his shoulder.

“Kyo!”

“Liliha?”

His auntie squeezed his face
between huge hands and kissed him with the loud smack that had, years ago,
embarrassed him. Now he just smiled into her large, brown eyes, framed by
sun-and-smile-etched lines. She smelled faintly of sandalwood. The white
strands of hair that had escaped her bun framed her face like a halo, backlit
by the light from the door.

“Guess I haven’t dropped by
lately.”

“No, not since you decided to
shave your head and strut around with those strange birds at the zendo. And you
were such a bad little boy!” She laughed. “You used to hide behind the counter
and then run off with a package of Chinese crack seed.” She shook her head,
clucking, as she maneuvered her bulk onto the barstool next to him, shifting to
arrange the folds of her holiku.

Kyo shook his head. “I never did
anything like that, Auntie. That was Io.” He raised two fingers for the
barmaid, who clinked a fresh glass of San Miguel against his empty, and added
another for Liliha.

He studied Liliha’s stately,
dark-gold face. Though her heavy cheeks sagged with age - she had to be seventy
- the patrician lines of her face were clear and strong.

She regarded him with gravity. “Sure,
Kyo. You twins - always tricking me. Io’s a big shot lawyer now, yah?”

“His own firm.” Io the Perfect
made all the right moves.

“So what you doing for yourself now?
Still a doctor?”

“Don’t give me a hard time,
Auntie. You know what happened.”

“No, I don’t. Never understood
it. Your wife dies - that’s a hard thing. But it happens to people, Kyo. Lots
of people. And how long ago was it?”

“Four years.”

“Still blaming yourself.”

Kyo opened his mouth to protest,
but couldn’t speak. The image of Linda, arching herself against the powerful
Pali winds, reappeared, as it so often did.

She had insisted on driving to
the overlook, on the brink of a sheer drop of a thousand feet, after one of
their arguments, “to clear her mind.” She’d sat on the wall, facing the parking
lot, then had scooted around to face the valley and got to her feet. “Let’s see
if the wind will hold me up today, Kyo.” Her thin white cotton dress, whipped by
the strong, upwelling gusts, pressed against her lithe, brown body. She leaned
outward.

For instants he could never
forget, she looked like an angel in flight, white wings spread above verdant
valleys, floating against the brilliant blue backdrop of distant Kaneoe Bay.

It had taken forever for the
police to come while he sat on the wall, staring out at the air where she had
so briefly been.

Kyo downed the rest of his mug in
one long, practiced gulp. Without asking, the barmaid refilled it and set it in
front of him. “It was my fault. She told me she was depressed. Many times. I
was just too busy with my residency to pay any attention. That was so
important. Much more important than her. I
laughed
at her, Auntie. I
laughed
at her pain. I didn’t
believe it. I didn’t believe anyone could feel the way she said she did.” Linda
had definitely enlightened him regarding the amount of pain a human could feel.

“Still live in your parent’s
house?”

“Why not?” His mother had died
when he was little. His father, a Japanese immigrant as a young man, had died
soon after Kyo graduated from medical school. Their tiny frame house, paid off
after years of backbreaking labor in the Dole fields, was worth more than his
parents could have imagined. Kyo found its slow deterioration comforting, and
the monstrous greenery hiding the house from the street soothed him when it
rustled in the ever-present wind. A pink-striped green gecko, whom he called
Bess, lived with him, flicking her sharp tongue and skittering across the
walls. And it was right down the street from the zendo.

“Well, Kyo, if you’re not a
doctor what are you?”

A drunk. Can’t
you tell?
he almost said. At least, that’s what he felt like now, though
it wasn’t always true. The spells spaced themselves out. Maybe one every two
months.

At first, when Roshi had been
kind enough to take him in, it had been more often. Not that it really mattered
to him. Nothing had. Not even, for at least a year, the zendo life. But it was
simple. It kept him alive. He had an occupation he thought suited his
abilities: he swept the courtyard and raked the sand in the Zen garden into
curves that flowed around boulders.

Kyo reached into the pocket of
his shorts and pulled out a baggie containing a pale powder. “This is what I
do,” he said. “Besides a little carpentry to make money.”

“Some new drug?”

“An old one. I make beer. I like
things that grow. This is a new strain of yeast I’ve been working on.”

“I guess you don’t have to pay
much attention to yeast, eh, Kyo?” She emptied her mug.

Tears welled in his eyes, and he
had a brief impulse to punch his dear old Auntie in the face.

“It’s a shame that you didn’t
keep on with your medical studies. But maybe you’re a better brewmeister.”

His anger vanished, and he
smiled. She was still the same old nosy, bossy Auntie. He returned the package
to his pocket. “Probably. I take bottles of the best batches to the monks.
Roshi seems to have quite a taste for it.”

Liliha brushed back strands of
startling white hair with a weathered brown hand, put the hand atop Kyo’s, and
patted it. “I don’t blame you drinking beer, Kyo. Not that you ever cared about
the old ways, but it’s the end of a nu’u. A cycle. Pele, she has called down
fire. Not some little beach fire to cook fish on. It will be big. She’s mad.
Damned mad.”

Kyo had heard her superstitions
since he was a baby. Pele, the Volcano Goddess with her wild, long, lava-black
hair, was always mad about something. “Come.” She slid from her stool. “I want
you to meet someone.”

“Why not.” Kyo picked up his bag
of groceries: economy size peanut butter, Wonder Bread, and shoyu. Once they
were out on the street, he followed the old woman toward Diamond Head.
Enveloped by the heat and the roar of traffic, they passed the Hukilau, one of
Kyo’s favourite bars, one in a long string of favourite bars. He almost dropped
out of the trek in favour of another cold beer. But wasn’t this the place that
he’d gotten in a fight with some Koreans a few nights back? Yeah, yeah;
flashing lights, as an ambulance took the Korean to Queens Hospital, and he
slipped down an alley, eluding the police. He had a knack for starting
arguments, even though he was sure that he hadn’t said much of anything. He
never did. Anyway, Liliha strode down the sidewalk with surprising speed,
showing no sign of wanting to stop.

In forty-five minutes they were
in Waikiki. Condos loomed overhead. Haole and Japanese tourists swarmed the
streets, clad in flower-print imitation of a culture which never existed.

He followed Liliha as she turned
off King Street. Soon, they came to a canal Kyo had not been to before. It
shimmered quietly, a stark contrast to the bustling streets a few blocks over.
Liliha entered a warren of branching docks holding sheds, houses, and tiny
islands within their arms.

Finally, she stopped. “This is
the one.” She walked up to the door of a sagging white frame house supported by
pilings jutting from slow-moving water. The sounds of the city were gone; he
heard instead sussurating surf and the omnipresent click of palm fronds in the
light trade wind.

Liliha knocked, but did not wait
for an answer. She motioned him inside, where light leaked into a dim, cool
room through pulled blinds. “Kalihi?”

As Kyo’s eyes adjusted, he saw a
room where ancient Hawaiian fishhooks and stone pounding tools mixed casually
with an old lady’s overstuffed, lace-protected chairs.

An unusual midnight blue chunk of
lava caught his attention. He had never seen lava that colour. But just as he
touched it, he heard Auntie say, “There you are, you stubborn old lady!”

“I’m not stubborn, only hard of
hearing,” someone said. Kyo followed the voices onto the deeply shadowed back
porch.

Kalihi, who looked Hawaiian,
nodded at him as he stepped into her cool oasis. Unlike Liliha, she was thin,
but she too was Hawaiian-tall. Her face was an intense, thin blade, almost
masklike, lit by blazing eyes so black they might be blue. Hair more shockingly
white than Liliha’s flowed over her shoulders as she stood on one of the tamati
mats covering her porch floor. Her spare, focused stillness put Kyo in mind of
a heron at work. The heavy, sweet scent of plumeria blossoms mingled with salt;
the thin blue line of the sea lay beyond. A tea of poi, lomi lomi salmon, and
taro broth arranged for three, and a flask of sake, sat on a low, black table.

“Sit.” She gestured toward
cushions. After dropping onto her cushion, quite easily for such an
ancient-looking woman, she stared straight at Kyo, smiled, and poured him a tiny
glass of sake, her long, elegant fingers a ballet of unconscious grace
augmented by the flowing Asian sleeves of her black garment.

They watched surf dance through a
frame of palm trees all afternoon, but when Kyo finally left, he couldn’t
remember what had been said as he rode the bus back to Nuuanu. Yet he felt
immense peace. As the small houses and neighbourhood Chinese restaurants on
every block caught the evening light, the scent of wok-stirred garlic and
ginger blew through the open windows. He rested in the cleansed, bright
aftermath of the day, more at peace than he’d been in years. He had felt that
way after seeing Liliha ever since he was a child, no matter how annoying she
could be.

But all too soon the thoughts she
had interrupted in the Pantheon returned. He was a Zen monk now? He was fooling
nobody. He wasn’t fit to be a monk, any more than he had been fit to be a
doctor or a husband.

Now the bus started and stopped
in loud, grinding fits. The sun hurt his eyes even through his sunglasses. He
felt old and stupid, and the fact that he’d left his bread and shoyu at that
woman’s house was proof of his innate, habitual irresponsibility.

His familiar desolation returned.
Meaning could drop out of life with frightening ease, leaving just the dead frame.
Those glimmers of wide understanding, those
tenshos
he clung to - even though, of course, one was not supposed to - would never
blossom into enlightenment for him.

When he returned to the zendo, he
walked the stepping-stone path through the carefully raked sea of sand
considering how best to tell Roshi that he was quitting. It wouldn’t be the
first time.

As he entered the inner compound,
he stopped.

Roshi was speaking to creatures
with wings. Not, thankfully, angels. Instead, they were slim, almost emaciated,
and slightly blue. They wore no clothes, but it did not seem as if they had
skin; rather, it might have been the shortest imaginable fur, or the sleekness
of an alligator.

Kyo’s breath quickened. He knew
Roshi was aware of him, though Roshi did not so much as flick a glance in his
direction.

Roshi gasshoed low.

The creature gasshoed as well,
then kneeled on long, slim limbs and touched forehead to ground. He - or she -
rose, bowed, and walked around the corner.

“Roshi!” Kyo screamed, as the old
man prepared to walk away.

Roshi turned. “You will say
nothing,” he commanded.

And within half an hour, before
Kyo had time to consider whether to say nothing or not, much less to whom, he
and the other monks were ushered onto a luminous ship hovering behind the
zendo. How had it gotten here? It must have just... appeared. His doctor’s
mind, which surfaced so rarely now, had only seconds to consider the scientific
implications. He shouted at everyone - Roshi, the creatures, the other monks -
then, with a flip of mind, became silent. Why not? What did he have to lose?
Getting upset was almost laughable.