The Transmigration of Souls (54 page)

Picking up a book and opening it. Clinically detailed image of a woman’s crotch, Tanner Stage Five Female Escutcheon, the caption said, shot in harsh white light, so you could see just what was what. No romance there. No soft love, no gentle words, no woman whispering in my ear... Then why does it stir me so?

Closing the book, some medical text he supposed. Picking up another one, opening it as well. Woman sprawled seductively, one knee cocked up, showing herself off. Image shot in soft light, gauzy light, vulva reaching out to you with its own special come-hither look.

Another book. Woman on her knees, of course, woman on her knees and bent forward, head most likely resting on the bed, though all you could see was her rump and the tops of her thighs, rounded buttocks spread just so, shaven flesh glistening with some kind of oil.

He tossed the book aside, onto a growing pile. Stared out morosely at black sky and fast-moving clouds, listened to the dull boom of the wind. That old television clip. The man who survives the end of the world, finds himself at last in the library of his dreams, broken glasses in hand...

Taking it away from me. Taking it all away. Taking away lovely young Valetta, blond Valetta, willing Valetta of the Moon Man’s dreams, replacing her with a rough handful of rich, steaming meat.

Give me a place to sit, and I will move my bowels
...

Mirth in the voice.

Ling arose from the floor, stood and stretched, walked over to the window, stood looking out into the darkness. Nothing out there but sky and clouds. No stars, not a glimpse of moonlight. Nothing but black eternity. Such a nice, symbolic evocation of death’s unending suffocation...

Don’t be so bitter, Professor. Doesn’t become you at all
.

Ah. The probability manager returns. Has my time come at last? He said, “All right then. Put an end to this.”

What would you prefer
?

Nothing out there but black night. A shrug. “Take me to your leader?”

Soft laughter behind him. Soft laughter with a human echo to it. He turned slowly, beheld a man in a cheap gray suit, hands in his pockets. Became suddenly aware that he was himself quite naked. He said, “You looked much younger on your book jackets.”

The old man smiled, scratched at his throat, fingers skritching audibly in dull gray hair, looking for all the world like he was hunting for fleas. “Well. Those pictures were taken when I was still shy of forty. I didn’t see any reason to have new ones taken, since I was no better looking old than young.”

Ling stood there, staring at the old man, tried to wait, swiftly failed. “Enough of this,” he said. “Just take me to God now. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

The old man grinned. “Ah, brave, brave Ling. Sorry. Can’t take you to God.”

Shoulders sagging in defeat. “All right. Make it the Devil then. Maybe he’ll offer me a nice job or something.”

Grin broadening. “Thinking maybe he’ll make you conductor on the Hell-Bound Train? Somebody else has already got the job, I’m afraid... No. No Devil.”

“Am I not entitled to a Judgment Day of my own, then?”

Sardonic look. “Too many dumb old books, Ling Erhshan. Thoroughly infected by Christian memes of one sort or another.” Short bark of laughter. “With every book I wrote, I thought I was striking a blow against conventional morality, against New Age magical thinking, against... Hell. Against every power I thought had worked to spoil my life. Wish someone had told me then I was merely a vector of that same sad disease.”

Ling had a sudden sense of the empty void yawning at his feet. I take one step forward, another, and... The black night never ends. “It doesn’t end here. It can’t possibly end here.”

Softly: “Oh, no? Think back, Ling Erhshan. Think about all those books you read, way back when. Does the fabulous riverboat ever make port? Does Amber ever coalesce? Do we finally get to meet the Maker of Universes?”

A shrug. “Those were just books, neither more nor less than your own books, Mr. Millikan. As well ask me about the ultimate fate of Muad’Dib.”

Still, the smile. “Ah, yes. If I gave
you
a place to stand, you’d move the Multiverse. What if there’s no place to stand, then?”

“Sophomoric twaddle.”

“And what if you can only see God from the outside?”

“Sophomoric twaddle.”

“Well. I guess I did drop out of college in the middle of my sophomore year, didn’t I?” Millikan now an old man leaning against the endcap of a tall library shelf. “Tell me, Professor Ling: What’s the most salient characteristic of the Multiverse?”

Uneasiness now. Why ask me? He said, “There are as many histories as probability allows.”

The probability manager folded his arms. “Theoretically, then, there must be a finite probability that there
is
a God. What do you think, Ling Erhshan? Does the probability manager rule over an infinite, omnipotent, all-knowing God?”

“Please don’t tease me with childish riddles about irresistible forces and immovable objects.”

“So it’s either God or probability? Not both? Which would you prefer?”

God shrinks you down to the significance of a molecule. Probability shrinks you down to nothing at all. He said, “Like everyone else, I only wanted a reason for being. I hated the idea that some... deity might reach down and impose such a reason on me. But... even the scientist in me hated the notion that there might be... no reason at all.”

“Imagine how
I
felt, then.”

“You know the answer, Dale Millikan. Why not just tell me? Is there
no
God? Did the Multiverse just
happen
, because there was a finite probability that it could?”

The probability manager said, “That does suggest the possibility that probability antedates being.”

Ling said, “That was always the frustration for me, why I turned from theoretical mathematics and speculative physics to the rewards of engineering. You solve a riddle, the answer is only another riddle. We worked our way right back to the beginnings of time only to find a blank wall. No First Cause. And the only other possibility was no beginning at all.”

“Worlds without end. Times without number.”

Ling sighed, a loud chuff of anger and resentment. “Just tell me the answer.”

The probability manager said, “OK.”

Astonishment. Then,
snap
.

o0o

Ling Erhshan, wandering alone under a pale lilac sky, feathery blue-gray grass soft under his feet, walking through lightly forested blue-gray hills, following the winding course of a stream colored with lime juice. Vista in the distance, a view forward, over the edge of a cliff perhaps, which suggested the possibility of a waterfall...

Listening then. Faraway rushing sound maybe a waterfall, maybe only the unfelt wind whispering in the tops of the feathery gray trees. Vista nonetheless, seen through the trees, of a softly lambent plain, horizon ending in indistinct gray, like a shadow against the lilac-to-magenta edge of the sky. City. A city in the distance. City of many colors. Am I supposed to go there? What happened to Christian when he went to Mansoul? What was the fate of Ignorance?

I don’t want to awaken and behold it was a dream.

Ling Erhshan then, standing still behind a thin screen of feathery blue-gray bushes, standing naked, watching his apparition. She lay sprawled back on her flat stone bed, head resting on a little crest of bare rock, rock used like a pillow so she could lie staring at the city. Astrid Kincaid in the guise of her lost youth, looking at that nameless city, arms and legs in the posture of a naked woman who believes there’s no one to see.

Ling thought, That familiar fantasy. When women are alone, they tell no lies. Persistent male fantasy. Women, alone, doing these things, because they want to do them. Not the lie of
I love you
. Not the lie of
You disgust me
, just...

Astrid Kincaid, alone on her stone, hands moving restlessly, exploring what must be such dreadfully familiar territory by now. Stroking softly on her belly, just above the beginning of her pubic hair. Fingers tracing the outline of a breast, pausing briefly at a puckered nipple. Hand gently roaming across the supple skin of an inner thigh...

You know what you’re hoping to see, Ling Erhshan. Hoping to see she’s not so different from you after all.

Sudden shock of realization: Kincaid’s head turned to one side on her little stone pillow. Looking at me. Looking right at me. Hand resting ever so lightly on her vulva, fingers poised to... Ah. Is it hatred that burns in her eyes now? Rage that twists her mouth so?

She sat up slowly, turning to face him, legs flat on the stone bed, spread out so alluringly, so carelessly, vee of her legs channeling his gaze into her crotch, locking it there. She said, “You like this, do you Ling?”

Embarrassment a soft squirm in his belly. But... Yes. Yes I do.

She drew her knees up slowly, arching her spine sinuously forward then back, pressing the soles of her feet together, then pulling them apart, legs bent, following the dream algorithm of every newly-pubescent boy. “How about this?”

Ling Erhshan, frozen in space and time.

“If you come closer, maybe you can see a little better.” Fire crackling in her eyes, burning him up with shame. And drawing him closer as well. Drawing him to the foot of her stone bed, making him kneel.

She said, “Turns you on when I stick my finger inside, doesn’t it?”

Watching the wet slide of hand on gorgeous flesh, he thought, Of course. Of course it does. What else would it do? Not wanting to look down and see his erection rise, as always, of its own accord. He said, “If not this, then what?”

Nothing but anger in her eyes.

Then,
snap
.

o0o

Astrid Kincaid standing in a blue forest glade, looking down at her hand. Nothing. Not even a tingle between my thighs. Not naked anymore. Not exposed. Not posing. Not...

Shiver of apprehension. That was the thing that bothered me about Passiphaë Laing, the thing that made her so much more realistic than that ridiculous Rhino Jensen. Every woman has a script written for her, prepared before her birth, a script that holds her captive until the day she dies.

Dressed in combat fatigues now, an old green army uniform, uniform of a noncom, an E-4 sergeant, circa 1990s, maybe a little later. Worn out old clothes, well patched, badges of service mostly gone. So who am I supposed to be now? What script am I supposed to follow?

Overhead, the sky was dull indigo, with perhaps a touch of red hinting that it could be purple at times. A few bright stars dimly visible and... Down by the horizon hung the crescent Earth, recognizable only by its coloration, its frosting of clouds, crescent hinting at the direction of the Sun, Sun hidden somewhere behind the craggy gray mountain on whose shoulder she stood.

Where the Hell am I? Almost home? I know whose woods these are...

Walking then, walking on and on, coming out of the forest, standing on the edge of the cliff, looking out across the plains to a glisten of shining silver sea. Somewhere out there, ancient sailing ships prowled, sailors and pirates alike, playing out their long game. Somewhere still, the Kalksis rule.

What’s the point, Dale? Having bought me, am I never to be more than your plaything now?

On the shoulder of an adjacent mountain sprawled a splendid white palace, palace cut from a Grecian pattern, columns and pillars, porches and porticoes, architecture of a thousand years all mashed together in a sea of ignorance. Over there, she realized, lovely blond Valetta waits for Dorian Haldane to come. Waits for him, even though she doesn’t know his name, doesn’t know he’s been hurled through the riven mists of spacetime just to be her rescuer.

Hah. Image of Valetta on her back under Haldane, Haldane humping away while his plaything simpered and squirmed. What kind of rescue was that, lovely Valetta? Rescued from one rapist and handed to another?

Jump cut, and she was suddenly inside the Kalksis mansion, standing at the head of a long flight of brilliant marble stairs, looking down a long red carpet to an impossibly opulent livingroom. Nothing ever changes. Dale should have thought through the economy of Greek colonists stranded on the Moon. Where would they get such wealth?

Slim man looking up at her, eyes wide with fear. The Kalksis Lord? No, this is a woman’s palace, all delicacy and lace trim, absent a man’s leather and wood and sportsmen’s trophies...

She walked down the stairs, slowly, weight held forward in the low gravity, light and athletic, light as a hunting tigress. The slim man, dressed in linen so light you could see his body right through it, watched her descend. Terrified. Terrified. Why? You could see his little brown nipples through the shirt, defining his hairless chest. See his dark pubic hair through the shorts, the vague outline of a small, flaccid penis.

Cowering at her approach. Flinching as she reached out to touch him.

“Why are you afraid? I’m not going to hurt you.”

Still cowering, biting his lip, flush rising in his cheeks.

“Tell me.” One hand on the side of his head now, thumb under his chin, forcing him to look her in the eye.

He opened his mouth, slowly, reluctantly. Obviously, following a script of his own. He said, “I assumed you were going to fuck me now.”

Shock of separation. “Why would you think that?”

Flush of embarrassment building, surrounding a frown of misery. “I don’t know. In the... original, Dorian Haldane got an erection as he walked down the stairs. Valetta couldn’t help but notice.”

 Is that what made her lie down on the floor and spread her legs? I doubt it. She said, “Come on. Since I’m supposed to be here to rescue you, let’s get busy.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Anywhere. Away from here. We can talk about it later.”

“Talk?”

“Sure.” Talk. Travelers together, ambling along the forest trail, talking about anything and everything. The image was of two men. Friends. The image was of camaraderie. She said, “You can... tell me how you feel.”