Universe 1 - [Anthology] Read online

  Ah. The white smoke! The moment of revelation comes!

  A figure emerges on the central balcony of the facade of St. Peter’s, spreads a web of cloth of gold and disappears. The blaze of light against that fabric stuns the eye. It reminds me perhaps of moonlight coldly kissing the sea at Castellammare or, perhaps even more, of the noonday glare rebounding from the breast of the Caribbean off the coast of St. John. A second figure, clad in ermine and vermilion, has appeared on the balcony. “The cardinal archdeacon,” Bishop FitzPatrick whispers. People have started to faint. Luigi stands beside me, listening to the proceedings on a tiny radio. Kenneth says, “It’s all been fixed.” Rabbi Mueller hisses at him to be still. Miss Harshaw begins to sob. Beverly softly recites the Pledge of Allegiance, crossing herself throughout. This is a wonderful moment for me. I think it is the most truly contemporary moment I have ever experienced.

  The amplified voice of the cardinal archdeacon cries, “I announce to you great joy. We have a pope.”

  Cheering commences, and grows in intensity as the cardinal archdeacon tells the world that the newly chosen pontiff is indeed that cardinal, that noble and distinguished person, that melancholy and austere individual, whose elevation to the Holy See we have all awaited so intensely for so long. “He has imposed upon himself,” says the cardinal archdeacon, “the name of-”

  Lost in the cheering. I turn to Luigi. “Who? What name?”

  “Sisto Settimo,” Luigi tells me.

  Yes, and there he is, Pope Sixtus the Seventh, as we now must call him. A tiny figure clad in the silver and gold papal robes, arms outstretched to the multitude, and, yes! the sunlight glints on his cheeks, his lofty forehead, there is the brightness of polished steel Luigi is already on his knees. I kneel beside him. Miss Harshaw, Beverly, Kenneth, even the rabbi all kneel, for beyond doubt this is a miraculous event. The pope comes forward on his balcony Now he will deliver the traditional apostolic benediction to the city and to the world. “Our help is in the Name of the Lord,” he declares gravely. He activates the levitator jets beneath his arms; even at this distance I can see the two small puffs of smoke. White smoke, again. He begins to rise into the air. “Who hath made heaven and earth,” he says. “May Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, bless you.” His voice rolls majestically toward us. His shadow extends across the whole piazza. Higher and higher he goes, until he is lost to sight. Kenneth taps Luigi. “Another round of drinks,” he says, and presses a bill of high denomination into the innkeeper’s fleshy palm. Bishop FitzPatrick weeps. Rabbi Mueller embraces Miss Harshaw. The new pontiff, I think, has begun his reign in an auspicious way.

  <>

  * * * *

  * * * *

  For the past several years, Clarion State College in Pennsylvania has been running summer classes in science fiction writing under the direction of sf author Robin Scott Wilson, with visiting instructors such as Fritz Leiber, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Samuel R. Delany, Joanna Russ and Harlan Ellison. Editors in New York have learned to pay attention when someone who has taught at Clarion comes to town raving about a new talent discovered in the class. There are three Clarion alumni in this book, Edward Bryant being one of them. In his first of two stories in these pages, Bryant tells of an inventor with a device to edit time, of a young boy terrified by the reality of his dreams, and of his governess, a catmother. You don’t know what a catmother is? Read the story.

  JADE BLUE

  Edward Bryant

  “And this,” said Timnath Obregon, “is the device I have invented to edit time.”

  The quartet of blurred and faded ladies from the Craterside Park Circle of Aesthetes made appreciative sounds: the whisper of a dry wind riffling the plates of a long out-of-print art folio.

  “Time itself.”

  “Fascinating, yes.”

  “Quite.”

  The fourth lady said nothing, but pursed wrinkled lips. She fixed the inventor in a coquettish gaze. Obregon averted his eyes. How, he wondered, did he deserve to be appreciated in this fashion? He had begun to wish the ladies would leave him to his laboratory.

  “Dear Mr. Obregon,” said the hitherto silent one. “You have no idea how much we appreciate the opportunity to visit your laboratory. This district of Cinnabar was growing tedious. It is so refreshing to encounter an eminent personality such as yourself.”

  Obregon’s smile was strained. “I thank you, but my fame may be highly transitory.”

  Four faces were enraptured.

  “My APE—” The inventor took a cue from the concert of rising eyebrows. “Ah, that’s my none-too-clever acronym for the artificial probability enhancer. My device seems on the brink of being invented simultaneously —or worse, first—by a competitor at the Tancarae Institute. One Dr. Sebastian Le Goff.”

  “Then this machine is not yet, um, fully invented?”

  “Not fully developed. No, I’m afraid not.” Obregon thought he heard one of the ladies tsking, an action he had previously believed only a literary invention. “But it’s very, very close to completion,” he hastened to say. “Here, let me show you. I can’t offer a full demonstration, of course, but—” He smiled winningly.

  Obregon seated himself before the floor-to-ceiling crystal pillar which was the APE. He placed his hands on a brushed-metal console. “These are the controls. The keyboard is for the programming of probability changes.” He stabbed the panel with an index finger; the crystal pillar glowed fluorescent orange. “The device is powered inductively by the vortical time-streams which converge in the center of Cinnabar.” His finger darted again and the pillar resumed its transparency. “For now I’m afraid that’s all I can show you.”

  “Very pretty, though.”

  “I think blue would be so much more attractive.’’

  “I found the most cunning sapphire curtain material yesterday.”

  “Tea would be marvelous, Mr. Obregon.”

  “Please, ladies. Call me Timnath.” The inventor walked to a tangle of plastic tubing on an antiseptic counter. “I’m a habitual tea drinker, so I installed this instant brewing apparatus.” He slid a white panel aside and removed five delicate double-handled cups. “The blend for today is black dragon pekoe. Satisfactory with everyone?”

  Nodding of heads; brittle rustle of dying leaves.

  “Cream and sugar?”

  The tall one: “Goat cream, please.”

  The short one: “Two sugars, please.”

  The most indistinct one: “Nothing, thank you.”

  The flirtatious one: “Mother’s milk, if you would.”

  Obregon punched out the correct combinations on the teamaker’s panel and rotated the cups under the spigot.

  From behind him one of the ladies said, “Timnath, what will you do with your machine?”

  Obregon hesitated. “I’m not sure, really. I’ve always rather liked the way things are. But I’ve invented a way of changing them. Maybe it’s a matter of curiosity.”

  Then he turned and distributed the tea. They sat and sipped and talked of science and the arts.

  “I firmly believe,” said the inventor, “that scienceis an art.”

  “Yes,” said the flirtatious lady. “I gather that you pay little attention to either the practical or commercial applications of technology.” She smiled at him from behind steepled fingers.

  “Quite so. Many at the Institute call me a dilettante.”

  The tall lady said, “I believe it’s time to go. Timnath, we thank you for allowing us to impose. It has been a pleasure.” She dashed her teacup to the tile floor. Her companions followed suit.

  Startled by their abruptness, Obregon almost forgot to smash his own nearly empty cup. He stood politely as the ladies filed past him to the door. Their postures were strangely alike; each in her brown dress reminded him of the resurrectronic cassowaries he admired at the Natural History Club.

  “A pleasure,” repeated the tall lady.

  “Quite.” (The short one).

 
Exit the flirt. “Perhaps I’ll be seeing you again soon?” Her gaze lingered and Obregon looked aside, mumbling some pleasantry.

  The fourth lady, the one whose features had not seemed to jell, paused in the doorway. She folded her arms so that the hands tucked into her armpits. She jumped up and down, flapping her truncated limbs. “Scraw! Scraw!” The soft door whuffed shut.

  Taken aback, Obregon felt the need for another cup of tea and he sat down. On the table a small black cylinder stood on end. It could have been a tube of lipsalve. Apparently it had been forgotten by one of his guests. Curious, he picked it up. It was very light. He unscrewed one end; the cylinder was empty. Obregon raised the object to his nose. There was the distinct acrid tang of silver iodide emulsion.

  “It appears,” said Obregon softly, “to be an empty film canister.”

  * * * *

  A child’s scream in a child’s night. A purring, enfolding comfort. A loneliness of nightmares and the waking world and the indistinct borderland. A feline reassurance.

  “Don’t cry, baby. I’ll hold you close and rock you.”

  George buried his face in the soft blue fur which blotted his tears. “Jade Blue, I love you.”

  “I know,” said the catmother softly. “I love you too. Now sleep.”

  “I cant,” George said. “They’ll find me again.” His voice rose in pitch and his body moved restlessly; he clutched at Jade Blue’s warm flank. “They’ll get me in the shadows, and some will hold me down, and the one will reach for—”

  “Dreams,” said Jade Blue. “They can’t hurt you.” Feeling inside her the lie. Her fingerpads caressed the boy’s head and drew it close again.

  “I’m afraid.” George’s voice was distantly hysterical.

  The governess guided the boy’s head. “Drink now.” His lips found the rough nipple and sucked instinctively. Her milk soothed, gently narcotic; and he swallowed slowly. “Jade Blue . . .” The whisper was nearly inaudible. “I love you.” The boy’s tense body began to relax.

  Jade Blue rocked him slowly, carefully wiping away the thin trickle of milk from the corner of his mouth; then lay down and cuddled the boy against her. After a time she also slept.

  And awoke, night-wary. She was alone. With an angry snarl, quickly clipped off, she struggled from the bed. Jade Blue extended all her senses and caught a subtle scent of fear, a soft rub of something limp on flagstones, the quick flash of shadow on shadow.

  A black, vaguely anthropomorphic shape moved in the darkness of the doorway. There were words, but they were so soft as to seem exhaled rather than spoken: “Forget it, pussy.” A mouth gaped and grinned. “He’s ours, cat.”

  Jade Blue screamed and leaped with claws outthrust. The shadow figure did not move; it squeaked and giggled as the catmother tore it apart. Great portions of shadowstuff, light as ash, flew about the room. The mocking laughter faded.

  She paused in the doorway, flanks heaving, sucking in breath. Her wide, pupilless eyes strained to interpret the available light. Sharp-pointed ears tilted forward. The enormous house, very quiet; except—

  Jade Blue padded swiftly down the hall, easily threading the irregular masses of inert sculpture. She ran silently, but in her mind:

  Stupid cat! That shadow was a decoy, a diversion.

  Foolish woman! The boy is my trust.

  Find him. If anything has happened to him, I will be punished.

  If anything has happened to him, I shall kill myself.

  A sound. The game room.

  They couldn’t have taken him far.

  That bitch Merreile! I could tear out her throat.

  How could she do it to him?

  Close now. Quietly.

  The double doors of the game room stood ajar. Jade Blue slipped between their baroquely carved edges. The room was large and echoing with the paraphernalia of childhood: glaze-eyed hobbyhorses, infinite shelves of half-assembled model kits, ranks of books and tapes and dot-cases, balls, mallets, frayed creatures spilling stuffing, instruments of torture, gaming boards, and an infrared spectrometer. The catmother moved carefully through George’s labyrinth of memories.

  In a cleared space in the far end she found him. George lay on his back, spread-eagled, straining weakly against intangible fetters. Around him flocked the moving shadows, dark succubus-shapes. One of them crouched low over the boy and brushed shadow lips around flesh.

  George’s mouth moved and he mewed weakly, like a kitten. He raised his head and stared past the shadows at Jade Blue.

  The catmother resisted her first berserker reaction. Instead she stepped quickly to the near wall and found the lighting panel. She pressed a square and dim illumination glowed from the walls; pressed harder and the light brightened, then seared. Proper shadows vanished. The moving shadow creatures raveled like poorly woven fabric and were gone. Jade Blue felt an ache beginning in her retinas and dimmed the light to a bearable level.

  On the floor George was semi-conscious. Jade Blue picked him up easily. His eyes were open, their movements rapid and random, but he was seeing nothing. Jade Blue cradled the boy close and walked down the long hallways to their bedroom.

  George was dreamless the remainder of the long night. Once, closer to wakening, he stirred and lightly touched Jade Blue’s breasts. “Kitty, kitty,” he said. “Nice kitty.” Friendlier shadows closed about them both until morning.

  * * * *

  When George awoke he felt a coarse grade of sand abrade the inside of his eyelids. He rubbed with his fists, but the sensation lingered. His mouth was dry. George experimentally licked the roof of his mouth; it felt like textured plastic. There was no taste. He stretched, winced, joints aching. The syndrome was familiar; it was the residue of bad dreams.

  “I’m hungry.” He reclined against the crumpled blue satin. A seed of querulousness: “I’m hungry.” Still no response. “Jade Blue?” He was hungry, and a bit lonely. The two conditions were complementary in George, and both omnipresent.

  George swung his legs off the bed. “Cold!” He drew on the pair of plush slippers; then, otherwise naked, he walked into the hall.

  Sculptures in various stages of awakening nodded at George as he passed. The stylization of David yawned and scratched its crotch. “ ‘Morning, George.”

  “Good morning, David.”

  The replica of a Third Cycle odalisque ignored him as usual.

  “Bitch,” George mumbled.

  “Mommy’s boy,” mocked the statue of Victory Rampant.

  George ignored her and hurried past.

  The abstract Pranksters Group tried to cheer him up, but failed miserably.

  “Just shut up,” said George. “All of you.”

  Eventually the sculptures were left behind and George walked down a paneled hallway. The hall finally described a Klein turn, twisted in upon itself, and exited into the laboratory of Timnath Obregon.

  Luminous pearl walls funneled toward the half-open door. George saw a quick swirl of lab smock. He was suddenly conscious of the silence of his steps. He knew he should announce himself. But then he overheard the dialogue:

  “If his parents would come home, that might help.” The voice was husky, the vowels drawn out. Jade Blue.

  “Not a chance,” said Obregon’s tenor. “They’re too close to City Center by now. I couldn’t even begin to count the subjective years before they’ll be back.”

  George waited outside the doorway and listened.

  Jade Blue’s voice complained. “Well, couldn’t they have found a better time for a second honeymoon? Or third, or fourth, or whatever.”

  A verbal shrug. “They are, after all, researchers with a curious bent. And the wonders which lie closer to the center of Cinnabar are legendary. I can’t blame them for their excursion. They had lived in this family group a rather long time.”

  “Oh shit, you idiot human! You’re rationalizing.”

  “Not entirely. George’s mother and father are sentients. They have a right to their own life.”
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br />   “They also have responsibilities.” Pause. “Merreile. That fathersucking little—”

  “They couldn’t have known when they hired her, Jade Blue. Her, um, peculiarities didn’t become apparent until she had been George’s governess for several months. Even then, no one knew the ultimate results.” ’

  “No one knew! No one cared, you mean.”

  “That’s a bit harsh, Jade—”