Complete Short Fiction, page 80
At seven the next morning, I took his arm and led him out to the beach, and walked at his side as always. After a few minutes, he spoke without looking at me, saying, “There will be no doctor, will there?”
It was time he knew the truth. “No one can help you.”
“In that case, when you feel that you have made enough money from me for your grandfather’s suffering, take me back to Cuba, Enrico.” He stopped and looked at me with his sad, bulging eyes, and I knew that I could not refuse him. Besides, his audiences at the club had been getting smaller recently. Many of the older patrons had stopped coming. They had lost interest in confronting some crazed old impersonator who could not possibly be their old enemy.
“We’ll finish out the week,” I said.
That same evening, in the middle of Fidel’s long, meticulous response to a question about corruption and drugdealing in his regime, a young man stood up at a table in the back of the room, shouted “Death to tyrants!” and fired three shots into Fidel’s chest. As the assassin turned and fled, Fidel simply sat back in his chair and stared into space.
I got a wheelchair from the wings and rolled it out to him. “Are you hurt?” I asked, ready to help him. There was still a part of me that doubted his condition, that expected him to be mortally wounded.
“No,” he said, standing up. “At least this one was more direct.”
“Direct?” I asked.
“More so than the CIA’s exploding cigars.”
I walked him back to his dressing room, sat him down, and opened his shirt to examine his wounds. There was no bleeding as I dug out the bullets from his rubbery chest. I had imagined that his heart rate and breathing were very slow, that he was only an old man with some peculiar condition, but the bullets convinced me of his true state. He could not bleed to death.
There was a loud knock on the door. I went to it and opened it a crack. A cop in plain clothes was waiting to be let in.
I said, “The shots missed, but he’s shaken up and can’t see anyone right now.” The cop looked past me, getting a glimpse of Fidel, and seemed convinced.
I rented a recreational vehicle in Havana and drove it to a small coastal village north of the Sierra Maestra Mountains. My brother flew Fidel in a day later by amphibious aircraft, and I hid him in the RV.
“This is more than the old bastard deserves,” my brother said before going back to the plane. “What is there here for him anyway?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it is, he’s going to have it.”
“Why bother about him?” He had come because he liked to fly his plane, not for old politics, and because I had asked him. Old Fidel had made us a few dollars, but sooner or later, my brother and I both knew, we would have to get free of him.
The next morning Fidel and I drove into the hills where he had started his revolution and stopped in a small village, beyond which there was no road.
I looked around at the dusty village. “What will you do here?” I asked, wondering how long he could exist without nutrients of some kind.
“I will find out how long I can survive.”
“What do you mean?”
“I must be able to die, sooner or later.”
As I gazed at his rigid figure sitting next to me, I confronted my own love-hate relationship with revolutions, with changes of any kind, which rarely achieve their ends, because of failings deep within the human heart. Young revolutionaries, if they survive, live to sink into immobility and disappointment with their own kind. The time of just revolutions had ended before I was born.
“Drive up as high as possible,” Fidel said, as if giving profound advice. “From there I’ll go by myself.” His raspy voice carried the authority of someone who knew where he was going.
I drove the RV up a winding dirt road, and came to a stop before a grove of trees. Rocky mountainside rose beyond it. Fidel struggled out of the vehicle and stood looking up at the heights. I got out and waited.
“Defeating Batista,” he said, “was easier than governing Cuba. I had been clever enough to see the battles that I would need to win, but to rule Cuba profitably would have required the friendship of the United States, which I lost because I would not deal with the devil. I went to the devil Washington feared, who professed just ideas. But it’s the devil you know that counts. I didn’t know either devil well enough to benefit Cuba.” He paused, as if overcome with emotion, but as usual his body stifled the show of human feeling, permitting him only words. “There are those,” he continued, “who believe it best to leave things as they are and hope for gradual change, no matter how bad things get. Do you believe, Enrico, that force is never justified?”
“What will you do here?” I asked.
He turned and faced me. “You know what must be done, or I will rise again, and no one knows how long I will suffer. Destroy me.”
“I can’t do it!” I shouted, remembering the doctor’s phone call.
“Do it for your grandfather, and for me.”
“No, I won’t . . . I can’t,” I muttered, appalled by my sudden weakness.
He turned away and started up toward the grove of trees. I waited until he was nearly out of sight; then curiosity got the better of me and I went in after him. He was staggering among the trees, toward the far side of the grove. I crept after him, realizing that I couldn’t take him back with me. What would I do with him? There was a limit to how long an ex-dictator could be exhibited, even if I could have his condition as a zombie certified.
I had a vision of two demented scholars from an old horror movie examining Fidel.
“Zombie?” asked the first scholar of his colleague.
The other nodded smugly and said, “Zombie.”
Fidel stumbled out of the grove and threw himself on the slope, lacerating his rubbery flesh on the sharp rocks, but his movements seemed unphysical. He was trying to crawl back into the hill of dreams, into the mocking mirage where every dear ideal cowers, into the hills where he had been a hero, to a wild high place beyond life, from which we take what we need, even though it doesn’t actually exist. The blood pounding in my ears became a roaring fire in my brain as I watched him struggling to tear himself apart.
“Okay—come back and wait in the grove!” I shouted, retreating.
I looked back from the grove and saw his stiff figure stumbling down after me. Wind gusted through the trees, but died away as I hurried through to the RV and took out a spade, a can of gasoline, and the machete.
There are nights when I awaken on the rocky hillside and see his pillar of fire roaring in the green grove. Trapped in an insane animation of a socialist realist mural with Henri Rousseau’s staring beasts, I cut up the charred body while Fidel’s frozen eyes watch me, and bury the pieces all over the grove, insisting to myself that he did some good, some bad, and was a lousy administrator, and that I was probably giving him too much credit for selflessness. What could you expect from an outraged, handsome young man who modeled his speechmaking on Mussolini’s? Maybe it wasn’t his fault. Maybe pragmatism is all we can get. I split the head into four bloodless pieces and bury them far apart. Then I wake sweating between icy sheets. My pillows are stones as I turn over and tunnel back into sleep, and the fire ignites again in the blackness behind my eyes.
1993
Behind the Stars
Part One
What calm composure will defend
Your rock; when tides you’ve never seen
Assault the sands of what-has-been
And from your island’s tallest tree
You watch advance What-is-to be?
The tidal wave devours the shore;
There are no islands any more.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
1
Max treasured the afternoons that he had always had to himself until dinner time; but the extra hour of school set aside for discussing his habitat’s arrival in Earth’s Sunspace had cut short the best part of his days, making him more resentful of going back, even though he had known all his life that the return was inevitable.
In less than three months, the once distant future would become a new present that would change his life forever, probably for the worse. Maybe something was really wrong with him, since all his classmates seemed to be looking forward to the great event, apparently unaware that anything was going to be taken from them. Was it his problem, or everyone else’s? It was bad either way.
Elaine Jonney came into the room. Max blacked his holoscreen and looked up as the display frame retracted into his desk. A middle-aged woman with short black hair, Tutor Jonney had soft brown eyes that gave her a friendly look, but she was a demanding teacher.
“With arrival now only three months away,” she began, “all of us in the teaching unit are confident that we’ve been able to prepare you adequately for the return. We hope that our preparations of the last year will help make the return a rewarding experience for all of you.”
Max couldn’t imagine Elaine Jonney ever being anything but confident about anything, but he did not dislike her. Most of the time he could forget about her and listen to what she was teaching.
“I want to emphasize again,” she continued, “that the tapes, films, and holos of Earth that you all grew up with cannot completely prepare you for the openness of a planet. The sky, oceans, deserts, rivers, mountains, canyons, and weather will be strange and wonderful, maybe even a bit distressing. Some of you might remember what the surface of a planet is like from our years of exploration in the Centauri system, but Earth is an inhabited world of cities and towns, with billions of people.”
Max found that part of it hard to take—that there were so many people. He glanced around at his classmates. Lucinda ten Eyck always looked attentive when the return was being discussed, even when she was playing with her long red hair. Emil LeStrange, her chubby younger brother, nodded to himself from time to time. The Sanger twins, Jane and Alice, just smiled. Muhammad Bekhter seemed to have a questioning look on his light brown face. Max was determined not to reveal his own feelings until he understood them better, and maybe not even then.
He raised his hand as the tutor finished speaking.
“Yes, Max?”
“Will it really be that distressing?”
“The surface of a planet is very open. Having grown up inside the hollow of this habitat, you’ll be getting used to living on the outside of a world, with only atmosphere above you.”
“Is that all you meant?” Max asked.
“Even though the surface of a planet curves the other way,” she continued, “it will seem flat and endless, and that might be disturbing.”
Max had stepped into enough virtual holos to know that the land on Earth would not rise up and around, and that there would be a distant horizon, and experiencing these sensations had not bothered him then.
“Max?”
He nodded. “I guess that was it.”
“Maybe Max has agoraphobia,” Lucinda murmured. Max tensed. Emil shook back his long, sandy hair and chuckled, obviously enjoying his sister’s comment.
“I’m sure he has nothing of the kind,” Elaine Jonney said. “He’s just naturally apprehensive and is willing to admit it. Fear of open places is very rare, but any kind of change can be disorienting at first.”
Maybe that was all it was, Max thought, trying to stay calm.
Muhammad grinned at him. The twins stared at him as if he had suddenly become someone else. Lucinda crossed her long, bare legs. Her green eyes mocked him.
He looked back at the tutor. She seemed to be expecting him to respond.
“What is it, Max?” she asked finally.
“Nothing—I was just curious,” he said uncomfortably, avoiding her eyes. Everyone was probably convinced that he had something. “Earth will be great,” he said suddenly. “I can’t wait to get there.”
There was a long silence.
“Max, see me after school,” Elaine Jonney said with a look of concern.
“Now, Max,” Elaine Jonney said when the classroom was empty, “tell me what this is all about.”
He looked into her eyes and wondered if he should say anything.
“I know it’s not agoraphobia,” she said.
“It’s nothing.”
“I know you better than that.”
“Look, all I did was ask a question,” Max said, “and Lucinda didn’t miss her chance to get in a dig. It isn’t as if it hasn’t happened before.”
“That’s true, but you seemed more disturbed by it this time. Are you sure that—”
“Those two think they’re better than everyone.” That much was partly true. Emil and Lucinda were conceited, and he had never known them to be friendly to anyone. Sarcasm seemed to be their primary means of communication, from what he could tell. “Maybe,” he continued, “it’s just finally getting to me. I’m glad I won’t have to put up with it much longer.”
“Why do you think they act that way, Max?”
Max shrugged and sat back in his chair. “Maybe because their mother is Navigator.”
Elaine Jonney sighed. “And that’s all there is to this?”
Max hesitated, then said, “And you keep using words like distressing and disturbing at least twice a week.”
“And that bothers you?”
Max nodded. “It’s as if you expect us all to be bothered, no matter what you say.”
“You’re deliberately misunderstanding,” she said with a look of exasperation. “Okay, Max, you can go.”
Outside, in the great hollow of the habitat, Max ran along the path through the trees, and came to the waterfall on the asteroid core’s inner equator. He lay down on the soft grass by the stream and felt the warmth of the distant sunplate on his face. The time until dinner had always been his to do with as he pleased, and he still had most of it, but he no longer felt the pleasure of escape.
He closed his eyes and put his hand into the cool water. After what seemed only a few minutes, his wrist ID timer beeped five o’clock. He opened his eyes, leaned over and sipped some water, then lay back and gazed at the countryside overhead. The inner carpet of the asteroid hollow swirled down into the bright sunplate two kilometers away at his left, and into the rocky area the same distance to his right. He imagined that he felt his world turning, pressing him down into the grass, even though he knew that the only major sign of the voyaging habitat’s spin was his feeling of weight.
“Hey, Max.”
He looked up, annoyed at having his solitude disturbed. Muhammad walked toward him and squatted by the stream. “You really can’t wait to get there, can you?” the dark-haired boy asked.
Max was puzzled at first, then remembered what he had said in class about how Earth would be great. “Sure,” he replied. “Everybody is. Aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah.” Muhammad grinned. “My father’s got a whole itinerary worked out—first Paris, then Damascus, and he wants to visit all the relatives in Tashkent. It’ll be great—all those cities and people. It has to be more interesting than here, right?”
“Sure—it’ll be terrific.”
“I guess I’ll miss this place, but it’s time to see something different.” Muhammad sounded a little tense, as if he were trying to convince himself about Earth’s wonders, but maybe Max was only imagining that.
“Look, I still have some studying to catch up on.” Max got up, his time alone by the stream lost; he felt angry at Muhammad for taking it from him. “Have to go.” He hurried away, heading down to the library in the circle of trees below the falls.
He liked the saucer-shaped building that housed the library. There were no doors, only open entrances and exits. He went inside, found an empty terminal and sat down. The library’s memory fascinated him because he could demand an answer to any question, not just to material from class discussions.
He liked to study alone; class discussions too often seemed faked. It was too easy to ask questions or give answers just to make a show of having something to say. Lucinda often used the discussions to take apart another student’s response, even when all she really had to do was answer a question, while Muhammad, who was smart, often held himself back in arguments, as if being everyone’s pal was more important than making his point. Max preferred to find things out for himself, by asking real questions in private.
He liked to invent questions that couldn’t be answered easily by the library’s memory. The Artificial Intelligence would hunt for the answer in its banks, and find that there wasn’t enough there to make a reply, which would force it to describe an area of ignorance, or to construct an uninformative, general answer that would be unintentionally funny.
It wasn’t the library’s fault. Most of its knowledge was over twenty years old, and additions made during the habitat’s voyage to Alpha Centauri could not equal the work done in that time by the millions of researchers in the home Sunspace, working in thousands of fields, using even more advanced Artificial Intelligences. “They’re way ahead of us,” Max’s father had told him. “Just think of all the new things we’ll learn when we get back!”
Max did not turn on the display, but sat staring into the dark frame, feeling that everything was about to be taken away from him. He got up from the terminal and wandered to the center of the saucer, determined to keep to the routine that he enjoyed. There he sat down in one of the observation chambers and put on a helmet.
Suddenly he was floating among the stars. The ones ahead were shifted into redness as the habitat collided head-on with their light, compressing the waves into the shorter lengths that were red to the human eye. The light catching up with the habitat was stretched into long, ultraviolet frequencies. He watched the hues vary, wondering at the vastness of the universe and the strangeness of being alive, of being himself rather than someone else. He might have been a star or a planet instead of something that wondered about itself.
