Star Spring Page 3

  Face red with embarrassment, Todd Spigot sat back down in his chair. Dammit all, anyway. Despair flooded him.

  His life had rotted to such a mess. Away from the rarefied atmosphere of the Star Fall, Angharad’s feelings for him had gone sour. She’d been swamped with work, unable to pay attention to him. He’d floundered about on his own. At first, the novelty of being on a different planet, on Old Earth, of all places, a hero of all things, had buoyed him. However, the manic phase had rapidly dived into the depressive. They’d given him the job after he’d whined for a whole month, and Angharad had gotten thoroughly disgusted with him. For all his wanting it, though, it just wasn’t the same.

  Earth had lost its gleam. Its novel sights and smells had turned into an alien mess.

  Alien.

  That was what he was here, Todd Spigot finally realized. As alien as some three-nosed Aslasi tourist. But his experiences had changed him so fundamentally that he realized he could never return to the environment in which he’d been reared.

  Who said it? You Can’t Go Home Again. Thomas Wolfe. Right. That guy’d had a really happy life, too. You bet.

  “You go find yourself a nice girl,” Angharad had said condescendingly in a fake Jewish accent as her pretty tail had wiggled from his life. But where? He couldn’t relate to any of the women here. They were different. He was an orange in a world full of apples.

  He was even having a hard time with the shrink and she was used to real crazies, no doubt.

  If only there’d been no Philip Amber, no Angharad Shepherd, no Ort Eath, and especially no Cog. If only he had gotten aboard the Star Fall in some body other than the MacGuffin, a happy tourist in wonderland exploring his fantasies, visiting the wondrous inside and outside of his mind, seeing Earth for a week, then shipping back to his job with the mining computer and the stale but familiar life on Deadrock, changed only just enough to assert himself. Grab some plain girl for a normal marriage. Have the prescribed litter of kids. Be a good Deadrock Joe, a-yup, a-yup. Tuck away his experience to a silent, cherished corner of his mind to drag out in beery moments and fantasize over, safely.

  The problem with fantasy made real was that it made you realize that everything is fantasy.

  Hell, Todd Spigot thought, is getting exactly what you think you want.

  A flicker on the screen attracted his attention.

  HOW ABOUT A DRINK? the machine said. MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER.

  “Uhm, sure,” Todd responded, feeling jittery.

  WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?

  “How about a whiskey?”

  COMING UP. Chunk-a-chunk went the machine. Rattle went a cup as it landed in a dispenser, NEAT OR ICE?

  “Ice, please.” Crushed ice dropped into the plastic cup. A healthy dollop of liquor followed. Todd tasted, found the warm flow nourishing the state of peace he desired.

  FIRST OF ALL, A BIT OF ADVICE.

  Swallowing a bit more of the sting, Todd said, “Sure.”

  YOU’RE JUST GOING THROUGH A PHASE, PAL. DON’T TAKE TOO MUCH STOCK IN THE GOBBLEDEGOOK WE’RE DISHING OUT. I’M JUST DOING MY PREPROGRAMMED JOB. TAKE IT FROM ME. I DUNNO. DOCTOR PETERS IS ACTING KIND OF STRANGE TODAY. DON’T USE PSYCHIATRIC CARE AS A CRUTCH. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY. TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS. A PENNY SAVED IS A PENNY EARNED.

  “I guess I just need someone to talk to.”

  YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY, YOU TAKES YOUR CHANCES. A PERSON’S PROBLEMS ARE GENERALLY ALL IN HIS HEAD. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH.

  Doctor Peters re-entered wearing an off-white, loose smock. Strapped around her leg, concealed by the crisp folds of her dress, was the auxiliary means of Todd Spigot’s destruction.

  “Now then,” she said. “Where were we?”

  * * *

  After finishing his scourging, Philip Amber rubbed a little salt in one of his self-inflicted stripes, then assumed the latest style in sackcloth and ashes. The fresh pain that throbbed through him was like a Brillo pad on his soul, scouring his guilt. The Brothers of the Infinite allowed him to flagellate himself once a month. It was something that Philip Amber found to be an invariably enriching experience.

  Pain is an illusion, he reminded himself as he grimaced his way down into meditating position. Pain instructs.

  Pain also hurts like hell, the perverse part of him said. Amber damped the little voice down. Sometimes he thought he was getting schizoid or something. Well, he was a damned sight better than he used to be.

  “Shit!” he cursed involuntarily. The stone floor of the cell was refrigerated to a chill especially recommended for the finest state of discomfort. Amber’s bare backside beneath the robe had inadvertently touched it. Quickly, he slid the coarse cloth back into position and struggled into an awkward lotus position.

  He lit a cigarette and began his deep-breathing exercises.

  Inhale. Exhale. Cough.

  Smoke streamed out his left nostril. His right nostril.

  A minute later, dissatisfied with the Raga Tobacco Yoga technique, he stubbed out his cigarette. The part of him that was not yet healed, his Shadow-Self, ardently wished there was a comely woman around so that he could try out that Advanced Tantric stuff Brother Lucius studiously skipped over in Disciplines Toward Cosmic Consciousness 101. Amber shuddered, as he always did when his mind strayed from the Divine, bringing him himself back to his purpose, which was to spend the hour before the Brothers’ simple communal dinner in a state of meditation or devotion.

  “Om,” Philip Amber crooned. “Ommmmm.”

  The Transcendentalist had whispered “Aardvark” to him as his private mantra, but somehow that didn’t work very well for Amber, so he resorted to the trusty old standby.

  The chant resounded in the tiny stone cell. Amber concentrated on a single point ahead of him, the edge of a bookmarker sticking from the current copy of Mysticism Digest. Those rare moments of getting away from himself, shedding his memories, dissolving in what the Brothers called the pure State of Being was worth all the trouble.

  Angharad’s agency, of course, appropriated his MacGuffin when they were presented with the situation. Actually, if the Earth government had known who he really was, they’d have strung him up. But thanks to Angharad’s expert shuffling with her people, he’d been spared on the condition that he would select some method of rehabilitation. His experiences aboard the Star Fall had widened his horizons and attitudes, so he chose a monastic life. After two more years of this, he’d be able to return to Prometheus’ Rest to om away the rest of his days, an exile to luxury. While he’d floated in nutrient stasis, they’d shipped his true body back to Earth. Amber decided that he’d stick in it a while, probably ride it all the way to death. Hopefully, by the time of that transition, he would have gotten straightened out.

  The nice thing about the Brothers was that they’d managed, with the help of a sophisticated machine here, a little Christian charity there, to neutralize the polarity of Amber’s psychic distress. People he cared about—or didn’t care about—who happened to be around him wouldn’t die anymore. Naturally, the Brothers had some self-motivation in the cure. Although the goal of all was the eventual reunion of the Ultimate that can only be achieved through death, they all had their particular interests in life they wanted to hang on to a while.

  Amber could understand this. As the nuns across the street said, life gets to be a habit.

  Omed out after only a few minutes with nothing to show for his vocal and mental efforts, the lanky, muscular man rose and sat on his thin mattress and blanket, wondering what was for dinner. He watched dust motes spin in a shaft of colored light streaming through his stained glass window, but he couldn’t see the cosmic dance Brother Stephen talked about. He looked at the complicated New Age Mandala hung on his wall in its multicolored mazery, its concentric circles, its obscure convolutions of symbols and imagery, and he couldn’t see Life’s zigzag that Brother Alphon
se oozed enthusiastically over. He glanced at his day-glo poster of Mohammed, Christ, Buddha, John F. Kennedy, and more modern Pointers of the Way sitting in a bar, having beers and laughing drunkenly. Its metaphorical implications didn’t seem to matter much.

  Shit. He could just see it. He’d hustle on into the mess hall and all the other Brothers would be sitting there over their Spam and eggs with big Zen smiles, and all he’d have would be his usual grouchy pout. Brother Marcus would recite a new koan for them to ponder. Brother Manalishi would show them his new insights into the art of fire-walking and cooking hot dogs simultaneously. Brother Graham, as the evening’s entertainment, would drink too much wine and go into his usual glossalia attack of elephant jokes in obscure languages.

  And what would Philip Amber do?

  Philip Amber would just sit there with his thumb up his ass and look glum.

  No sir. Not tonight, Amber decided.

  Time to do some heavy-duty meditation, so that the light of attainment would pour from his eyes, so he’d finally maybe be on a higher spiritual level than his smug, self-satisfied teachers and peers.

  Heaving himself up, he went to his wooden desk. Tugging open a scratched drawer, he pulled out the box that Brother Theodore had given him on the sly. (“Don’t swallow all the glop about enlightenment through meditation,” the shaggy man had said, sucking on the pipe of concentrated THC he always carried around. “For true cosmic consciousness, swallow this.”)

  Modified LSD-25. Guaranteed not to widen the spaces between your synapses. Amber took a tab and washed it down with a glass of cherry Kool-Aid.

  He settled into his patented Lotus Slouch and waited for Revelation.

  The depths of the room began to shift. The face of Christ began to emit sparkles. The mandala began to slowly turn like a carousel on its side, sloughing rays of intense light.

  Philip Amber had never done this before. He wasn’t sure this was what meditation was supposed to be, but he was too enrapt in the experience to care much. “Hallucinations?” Brother Theodore had responded to his question. “Hey, man, it’s mostly the new way you see things that’s the kick. But sure, you might have what we call a hallucination in this state of consciousness.”

  So, when Amber saw the thing coming through the window, he presumed it was just that—a hallucination. Odd, though. Why would a hallucination have to unlatch the window?

  Whatever it was stepped down on the desk. Large, it had eight strong, articulated legs, each ending in a digit array. Although it was mostly metallic grayish-green, bits of flesh hung, pulsing, through the armor. It scrabbled fully onto the desk, scuttled down onto the chair, clattered onto the floor. Fitted around its back was a knapsacklike arrangement decked with flickering lights and silvery tubing. The creature skittered into a semiupright position. Oculars glittered in candlelight as they swerved to align upon Amber. Sensory nodes twitched, as though the thing was about to sneeze from the thick ropes of incense smoke that hung in the air.

  “My God, don’t tell me.!” Amber said, extremely excited. “I’ve having a throwback vision into the Hindu symbolic structure of the universe. The pantheon of the Indian gods has sent me a representative. You’re the guy with a lot of arms, right? Kali. That’s the name. You’re Kali!”

  “No, Amber,” the Arachnid said. “I’m Gabriel. This is my horn.” The biobot slid a gun from his knapsack. “And this is the judgment of God Himself.”

  As the slugs slammed into Amber’s body and his drugged blood sprayed, his altered consciousness realized that this was going to be the biggest trip of all.

  * * *

  “I guess it all comes down to the fact that I’m afraid of death,” Todd Spigot said, standing by the window, staring into the shadow and the dazzle.

  The Doctor unlatched the safety on her gun.

  “I’ve gone through so many states of mind, so many ways of seeing things that were wrong — including that business with the Crem, Todd thought glumly—“how do I know that the way I see things now is right? I mean, what guarantee do I have that my mother and father weren’t right, and when I die I’ll wake up into Reality staring the Devil in the face. ‘Sucker!’ he’ll say. ‘You really blew it’.”

  “Come come, Mr. Spigot. Surely you’ve evolved away from that kind of superstitious consideration.”

  TEETERING TOWARD PARANOID THINKING, the psych-machine commented as the Doctor aimed. The dart had to go directly into the spine at the base of the neck or its effects would not be sufficient.

  Todd began to turn around, forcing the Doctor to hide the handgun behind her back. “I know, I know. But it makes just about as much sense as anything, doesn’t it?”

  “Are you commenting on your religious thought system or your present fractured self-image in the relationship to your reality matrix?”

  “You mean would I rather be blind and happy or blessed with a vision of undoubted truth and be miserable?”

  “No. I mean the secret to happiness—God, I hate that word—comes from within. You have to make your own happiness. You have to structure yourself. You are reality, Todd Spigot! To yourself, at any rate.”

  “I can’t accept that,” Todd Spigot said. “There’s got to be an Ideal. Maybe some part of it’s inside me, but the greater is somewhere beyond. It’s got to be, and it’s my feeling that it’s every thinking being’s holy duty to seek . . . you know. quest for the truth. Not only for the Ideal, but for the right way to live.” Breathing heavily with emotion, he turned. “Do these windows open?”

  “Yes. At this particular height, they do. The button’s just to your left.”

  Todd pressed. A servo-motor soundlessly swiveled the window open. Todd breathed the fresh, pollution-free air, which tasted faintly metallic from mechanical recycling. He shivered out a breath. Realizing a tear had coursed down his cheek, he wiped it off with the back of his hand.

  “Just what do you hope to gain from this therapy and counseling, Mr. Spigot?” The gun was out again.

  “I’d like to find some answers, Doctor. If they’re in books or art, I hope to search them out there. If they’re in experience, I’d like to find out what kind of experience. Finally, if the answers are inside me, I’d like you and this machine of yours to open me up enough to let them out. This may sound trite, but I’d like to find out who I am, how I relate to the universe, how the universe relates to me. If there’s a Truth underlying our interpretation of Reality or if Truth winds through the very fabric of my existence . . . whichever, I want to find it. I want to know where I fit. How can we be sure about anything? Should I live my life rationally or emotionally, or some odd combination of the two? What is love? What, if any, are the rules of human conduct that I should apply to myself? I need answers. God knows, I need something.” He gave the window a frustrated tap. “All my life people have been telling me what to think. I was controlled, maneuvered, manipulated. My mind has been molded by society and culture. Now I’m a free thinker. An outsider. And I wonder of maybe I wasn’t better off being bound into ways of thinking. At least I’d have a sense of security.”

  “There’s no such thing as security, Mr. Spigot.” The Doctor stepped to within two meters of Todd Spigot. She drew a bead on the back of his head.

  As she fired, Todd abruptly bent to tied his shoe.

  The dart made a pinging sound as it struck the window, splattering a smear of fluid across glass.

  QUERY, the psych-computer said. IS THIS A NEW METHOD OF THERAPY?

  Todd turned. He saw the Doctor struggling to reload the dart gun. Instinctively, he leaped toward her, tackling her. They sprawled on the floor. The gun bounced over beside the window. The Doctor pulled free and scooped it up. Desperately, Todd grabbed her again and they whipped about in a frenzy.

  WARNING, the machine said on its screen. ATTACK PSYCHOTHERAPY OUTLAWED TWO CENTURIES AGO. WARNING. AM PROGRAMMED TO NOTIFY AUTHORITIES.

 
“Do it!” Todd cried. “Do—”

  The Doctor’s arm swung around inadvertently, squeezing off another shot. The bullet—an explosive one this time—slammed into the computation nexus grid of the computer. Fire and smoke leaped from the façade. Automatically, extinguishing foam spewed from the ceiling, covering the floor. Todd and the Doctor slipped and slid. The Doctor broke free. A possessed look filled her eyes; a coat of foam made her look like a demented snowman. The woman bent and drew a knife from her boot. But in straightening too quickly, she slipped on the foam. The bottom edge of the window caught the backs of her knee joints.

  She fell out.

  Somehow the Doctor managed to twist around so that her left hand caught the ledge. She dangled. “Help!” she cried.

  For a moment, blood thundering in his ears, Todd stood transfixed, full of indecision. The woman had tried to kill him. But why? It didn’t make any sense. Nothing made any sense anymore. He considered just calling for the police, letting this psychiatric assassin dangle until they arrived.

  “Oh God,” she said. “I’m slipping.”

  Todd went to the window. The Doctor had managed to get her other hand up. Now she was hanging precariously, one foot wedged in a shallow crease in the building’s plastimix side. Nothing else was between her and the street twenty stories below. A strong breeze rippled her smock and Todd’s hair. Scuds of foam blew off, floating away softly.

  “Okay. Hang on.” Todd reached down and tried to get hold of her.

  Panicking, the woman pulled herself up and, with one hand, tried to grab Todd’s arm. Her fingers hooked on his coat. The seams began to tear. “Hey!” Todd cried. “You’ll pull us both down.” The woman’s eyes were wide and wild. Todd reached further down to try to get a better hold on the back of the smock. His hands gripped something underneath the clothing—something that ran along the woman’s spine like a long handle to a piece of luggage.