The Transmigration of Souls (55 page)

“How I feel?”

“Is there an echo in here?” Forced mirth but... yes, that little twinge of recognition. Men bewildered by the request. How do I...
feel
? Well, ah... Yes. Um... And then they lie. Why tell us stories about feelings they imagine we want them to have? Because their real feelings are so bad?

No answer. Then,
snap
.

o0o

It was dark in the movie theater, house lights faded, previews rolling, grumble of voices in the darkness running down, fading away, and Ling Erhshan could smell the fresh scent of the young girl beside him, crisp scent of shampooed hair, clean scent of laundered linen. No perfume. Stunned when she said yes to me. A date? A movie? Sure.

Small, weak Ling Erhshan not expecting to get a date with the strapping goddess from the field hockey team, doing it on a dare. Doing it to win a ten dollar bet. Funny, walking alongside her. Taller than me. Lots of people taller than me, all through school, but mostly I dated other Asians, Chinese girls, not giant Caucasians like Astrid Kincaid...

Held my hand, briefly, on the way here, talking and talking about this and that. Who would have suspected a field-hockey girl would want to be an astronaut? Turns out she knew about my ambitions as well, asking, Are you glad your parents came here from China?

Glad. Yes. Glad to be in America in 2017. Chinese manned program faded and gone, American program seemingly renewed after so many false starts. Yes, Astrid Kincaid, I’m glad to be here...

Sitting in the darkness beside me now, arm resting against mine. What is she thinking. Is it going to be an interesting movie? Does she care? Does she know what I expect? Of course she does. They all do. Reaching out now to touch her hand, feeling it turn under his. Going to hold my hand again? No. Turning it palm up, letting me touch her there, ever so softly.

Ling Erhshan shifting uncomfortably in his seat, sliding one arm along the hard rim of the seatback, being careful not to rest it on her shoulders, pretending to watching the coming attractions. I’ll have to come see that movie, a remake of the 1950s serial
Man Into Space
, updated to project what we’ll be doing in space over the next twenty years. Go with my friends, not with a girl. That way I can watch the movie.

Hand behind her back now, placed there dutifully. Doing... doing what I must. Is she leaning toward me? Leaning against the inside of my shoulder ever so slightly? I really can’t tell. Hand on her bare forearm now, stroking gently.

What is she doing now? Looking intently at the screen. Probably wants to see
Man Into Space
with her friends. So she can watch the show.

Hand casually draped over the arm of the movie chair now, the one arm separating the two seats. Glad there aren’t so many people here. No one nearby, one of the good parts about taking a girl to a shitty movie. Hand draped ever so casually over the arm of the chair, knuckles resting against the side of her thigh. No reaction. Is that good or bad? You never can tell with girls. Maybe...

His hand felt like it was tingling, fingers practically paralyzed, only inches from her lap. And she’s wearing a very short skirt. Accident or invitation? How am I supposed to know? OK, so it’s hot out. She could have worn shorts, but she didn’t...

Hand drifting now, Ling leaning forward, as if absorbed in scenes from the next preview. Something about a big, slobbery dog, images on the screen barely registering now. Scrunching closer to her. Other arm touching her back now. Loose hand suspended over her thigh.

He stole a glance downward. Bare legs gleaming in the movielight. Knees about four inches apart. Carelessness or invitation? How am I supposed to know? Well...

Leaning forward a little more, eyes still riveted to the screen. Is the movie about to start? Who cares? Fingertips resting atop her thigh. All right. You’ve backed out at this point in the past. Slight shortness of breath, the word
dyspnea
surfacing out of his seemingly endless store of words. Palm on the inside of her thigh.

He stole a look at her face. Nothing. Eyes on the screen, watching the titles roll. Hand moving up her thigh now. Erection starting to double up painfully in his pants. Edge of her skirt. Fail-safe point. Skin much softer the higher he went. Sudden hard bulge of tendon coming up out of the muscle, following it to the edge of her soft, silky underpants, feeling the hard, rolled seam there, softness beyond...

Strong hand holding his wrist suddenly. Tension of regret. She’ll pull it away now. Hold it in her own, hold it tight for the rest of the movie. Polite talk on the way home, a peck on the cheek, then gone.

Another voice, speaking from somewhere outside his immediate consciousness: Yes, that’s right. And by tomorrow all her girlfriends will know. That’s why they’ll giggle when they see you.

He could feel the flush of shame starting down his cheeks already.

But the hand was only on the back of his own, resting there, palm pushing down, flattening his hand against the space between her legs, his thoughts whirling giddily, making no damned sense at all.

She leaned toward him, head bumping lightly against the side of his face, and whispered, “Take it easy, Ling. This movie’s three hours long.”

o0o

Astrid Kincaid awoke and opened her eyes slowly. Outside, in the blackest imaginable night, the wind was booming hollowly, rattling the branches of bare winter trees, threatening storm. A glance at the bedside clock. Not even midnight yet. Ling resting against her, tucked under her arm, head resting against her shoulder, face pillowed on the side of her breast, breath soft and slow on her skin. Soft and slow.

Probably asleep. Usually asleep afterward. All right. Well I’ve been asleep too. Should’ve gotten up and cleaned myself at least. Damp tissue a distinct lump between her legs, where she’d stuffed it not long after they’d finished, tissue soaking with his semen, warm then, cold now. A smile in the darkness. So much for tender romance... that last of sex for which the first was made. 

Some of the swelling subsided now, that pried-open feeling gone away. A little itchy, though. Not enough to make me get up and take a bath. Plenty of time in the morning.

Memory of him, huffing and puffing over her, chugging away steadily in the empty darkness, going after his own orgasm long after hers had come and gone. All right. Not spectacular. One more knot on the long, uneven
quipu
cord of their marriage. Twenty years. Twenty years already...

She felt herself divide suddenly. Divide again. Divide a thousand times. Images of Astrid Kincaid infinite in number, dancing in the darkness like movies on the inside of her eyes. This one like a maidservant, washing his clothes, cooking his meals, taking his semen in whatever orifice he chose. Bearing his children. His children, though they came out of her body.

Or that one. Look at that Astrid Kincaid. Defying him. Walking out the door. Resuming her life as if his hadn’t happened. Another Astrid Kincaid over there, swaying in the night, hands pressed to her face, not wanting to look at him, lying in the bed, lying so still and pale, handle of the steak knife poking up from his breast...

This whole group of Astrid Kincaids over here, so happy to serve him. In what world did those poor women dwell? Look at them smiling. Young ones with babies at breast. Old ones with grandchildren on knee, proud old women with a slim, silent gray old Chinese man walking slowly beside them.

Women who seem to have been contented with their script.

Silent old gray man at my side... Did you suck dick all your life or stand up and fight, challenge them to kill you? What script did you follow? People learn to hate their scripts, then lack the courage to write their own. My God. A life full of ellipsis marks.

Astrid Kincaid lying in the darkness, listening to the roar of a midnight wind. Remembering this particular life. In the morning. In the morning we’ll rise. Shower. Go to the ready room. Have a breakfast of steak and eggs with all our cheery comrades. Suit up. Ride our bus out to the pad, spaceship lit by searchlights, cold gray Atlantic nothing but darkness beyond, all the way out to the eastern horizon, empty black sky waiting for the Sun.

Remember how it went, that Millennial Dawn? All the people of the world coming together under the aegis of the United Nations, all the people agreeing that they must act now, together, or all die together a century or two down the road...

Ling and Kincaid, friends since that high school date, fondly remembered, rising out of the darkness on nights like this, as they drifted to sleep in each other’s arms. Ling and Kincaid, through college together. Through graduate school and jobs, through children and career, always plotting together, threading their way through a political sea, eyes, always, on their goal...

Spaceship standing tall in the searchlights now, serviced by technicians, waiting for them to come and fly it away into the empty sky. A sky which, forever afterward, would be empty no more...

She said, “But it didn’t happen that way, Dale. I remember.”

Ling still by her side but... there, by her breast, the glimmer of his eyes, open on the darkness. Softly, he whispered, “But what if it had?”

A shadow by the foot of their bed, dark man, barely visible. Dale Millikan said, “You remember because I allow you to remember, Astrid Astride.”

Not even the tiniest clench of embarrassment now. No point. Astrid astride whatever the voice of the god tells her to straddle, wriggling for the watchers, handing them her heart.

Millikan said, “When God was real, we made him dance for us. It’s why He went away. Why should you be any better?”

Ling whispered, “Did He really go away?”

Invisible smile in Millikan’s voice: “Oh, I suppose. No one was minding the store, at any rate.”

Kincaid said, “If the Multiverse is everything, where could God go?”

Ling: “And if the Multiverse
is
God, why are we
here
?”

Soft laughter from the shadow figure at the foot of the bed. “You people never give up, do you?”

Kincaid: “Why should we?”

A shifting of shadows. A nod, perhaps? He said, “The dolphins had the only answer that mattered.”

Ling, angry: “Don’t tell me that.”

“All right, Milton had the answer too. God existed when He was only a word. Supposing the word was
if
? If and only if. Probability begets being, God fills up with angels, the angels resent the scripts probability writes for them, fight each other, rebel against God, fall, are consumed and scattered, leaving behind the empty scaffolding of Heaven. Is that a better answer, Ling Erhshan?”

Silence. Hearts beating in the night.

“God reduced to a drooling idiot, helpless to turn back probability, is no different from a God who has vanished.”

Kincaid: “Why should God be helpless against probability?”

Millikan said, “As well ask why probability should be helpless against God.”

Ling said, “More sophomoric twaddle.”

Again, that shadowy nod. “As, ultimately, are all questions that reach beyond causes and look for more than effects. In
this
Multiverse, God is no more than the vector sum of all the forces that imagine they create and destroy. Souls, like the fundamental particles they are, pass through the subtle realm of Platonic Realty, emerge changed, and the totality of the Multiverse is conserved.”

Kincaid whispered, “We haven’t come this far to be told, You live and you die; that’s it...”

A longer, darker silence, then Millikan said, “No one really dies. Not in a Multiverse where all possible histories are equivalent.”

“Are they equivalent, Mr. Millikan?” Ling, seeming to fumble for his words. “I understand, mind you, there is a finite possibility that each and every one of us will somehow live forever. I understand that, where such a thing is possible, it must
be
. But among the many possible histories... In most of those worlds I die. In most of them, we all die.”

Kincaid: “I was immortal in the history of my origin, in the sense that such a thing may have been biologically possible by the laws of the universe where I lived. What good did
that
do all the Astrid Kincaids who lived in universes where nothing but death was waiting for them?”

Millikan said, “Any two particles which have ever been in association, remain in communication, no matter how far removed they become from each other. As each universe, each history originates at a single point, as all histories and all universes originate in Platonic Reality.”

Ling said, “No information was ever passed through such a channel, nor ever could be. No spooky action...”

“But you’ve passed through all the gates now. Walked the byways of Creation. All of your lives are one life, lived in parallel. Because you forget your dreams doesn’t mean those dreams never were. And because I am here, I see to it that all lives go on.”

Kincaid, dryly: “Whether we like it or not?”

Merry laughter: “Oh, my poor little Astrid Astride. Matter and energy that may be neither created nor destroyed, only changed. Souls that travel from life to life, world to world, across all time, looking for some gray Nirvana where they may cease to be, finding only endless reincarnation...”

Suddenly they were under a pale blue sky, Ling and Kincaid side by side, still naked, the probability manager standing before them in his cheap, shabby gray suit, behind him a fat, flat mirror of an ocean that stretched out until it touched the remote end of the sky. Warm winds. Little white clouds high above.

He said, “Immortality’s the best I have to offer. The rest is up to you.” He vanished, leaving them alone.

After a while, they started to walk away up the beach together. And though they lived on forever and ever as they sailed across the wine-dark sea, looking for nothing, finding everything, Professor Ling Erhshan and Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid never tired of recalling the days when they sailed the Caliph’s ship and served My Lord Almansur.

Somewhere out there,
somewhere
by God, I swear they still live.