Lethe - Williams Walter Jon - Страница 6
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Davout gave a guilty start: she was, he thought, seeing too near, too soon. "Do you think so?" he asked. "I didn’t even know if I should see her."
"Her grudge is with the Silent One, not with you."
"Well." He managed a smile. "Perhaps I will at least call."
Davout called Katrin the Fair, received an offer of dinner on the following day, accepted. From his room, he followed the smell of coffee into his hosts’ office, and felt a bubble of grief lodge in his heart: two desks, back-to-back, two computer terminals, layers of papers and books and printout and dust… he could imagine himself and Katrin here, sipping coffee, working in pleasant compatibility.
How goes it? he signed.
His sib looked up. "I just sent a chapter to Sheol," he said. "I was making Maxwell far too wise." He fingered his little goatee. "The temptation is always to view the past solely as a vehicle that leads to our present grandeur. These people’s sole function was to produce us, who are of course perfectly wise and noble and far superior to our ancestors. So one assumes that these people had us in mind all along, that we were what they were working toward. I have to keep reminding myself that these people lived amid unimaginable tragedy, disease and ignorance and superstition, vile little wars, terrible poverty, and death…"
He stopped, suddenly aware that he’d said something awkward-Davout felt the word vibrate in his bones, as if he were stranded inside a bell that was still singing after it had been struck-but he said, "Go on."
"I remind myself," his sib continued, "that the fact that we live in a modern culture doesn’t make us better, it doesn’t make us superior to these people-in fact it enlarges them, because they had to overcome so much more than we in order to realize themselves, in order to accomplish as much as they did." A shy smile drifted across his face. "And so a rather smug chapter is wiped out of digital existence."
"Lavoisier is looming," commented Red Katrin from her machine.
"Yes, that too," Old Davout agreed. His Lavoisier and his Age had won the McEldowney Prize and been shortlisted for other awards. Davout could well imagine that bringing Maxwell up to Lavoisier’s magisterial standards would be intimidating.
Red Katrin leaned back in her chair, combed her hair back with her fingers. "I made a few notes about the Beagle project," she said. "I have other commitments to deal with first, of course."
She and Old Davout had avoided any conflicts of interest and interpretation by conveniently dividing history between them: she would write of the "modern" world and her near-contemporaries, while he wrote of those securely in the past. Davout thought his sib had the advantage in this arrangement, because her subjects, as time progressed, gradually entered his domain, and became liable to his reinterpretation.
Davout cleared away some printout, sat on the edge of Red Katrin’s desk. "A thought keeps bothering me," he said. "In our civilization we record everything. But the last moments of the crew of the Beagle went unrecorded. Does that mean they do not exist? Never existed at all? That death was always their state, and they returned to it, like virtual matter dying into the vacuum from which it came?"
Concern darkened Red Katrin’s eyes. "They will be remembered," she said. "I will see to it."
"Katrin didn’t download the last months, did she?"
No "The last eight months were never sent. She was very busy, and-"
"Virtual months, then. Gone back to the phantom zone."
"There are records. Other crew sent downloads home, and I will see if I can gain access either to the downloads, or to their friends and relations who have experienced them. There is your memory, your downloads."
He looked at her. "Will you upload my memory, then? My sib has everything in his files, I’m sure." Glancing at Old Davout.
She pressed her lips together. "That would be difficult for me. Me viewing you viewing her…." She shook her head. "I don’t dare. Not now. Not when we’re all still in shock."
Disappointment gnawed at his insides with sharp rodent teeth. He did not want to be so alone in his grief; he didn’t want to nourish all the sadness by himself.
He wanted to share it with Katrin, he knew, the person with whom he shared everything. Katrin could help him make sense of it, the way she clarified all the world for him. Katrin would comprehend the way he felt.
I understand he signed. His frustration must have been plain to Red Katrin, because she took his hand, lifted her green eyes to his.
"I will," she said. "But not now. I’m not ready."
"I don’t want two wrecks in the house," called Old Davout over his shoulder.
Interfering old bastard, Davout thought. But with his free hand he signed, again, I understand.
Katrin the Fair kissed Davout’s cheek, then stood back, holding his hands, and narrowed her grey eyes. "I’m not sure I approve of this youthful body of yours," she said. "You haven’t looked like this in-what-over a century?"
"Perhaps I seek to evoke happier times," Davout said.
A little frown touched the corners of her mouth. "That is always dangerous," she judged. "But I wish you every success." She stepped back from the door, flung out an arm. "Please come in."
She lived in a small apartment in Toulouse, with a view of the Allee Saint-Michel and the rose-red brick of the Vieux Quartier. On the whitewashed walls hung terra-cotta icons of Usil and Tiv, the Etruscan gods of the sun and moon, and a well cover with a figure of the demon Charun emerging from the underworld. The Etruscan deities were confronted, on another wall, by a bronze figure of the Gaulish Rosmerta, consort of the absent Mercurius.
Her little balcony was bedecked with wrought iron and a gay striped awning. In front of the balcony a table shimmered under a red-and-white checked tablecloth: crystal, porcelain, a wicker basket of bread, a bottle of wine. Cooking scents floated in from the kitchen.
"It smells wonderful," Davout said.
Drink? Lifting the bottle.
Why not?
Wine was poured. They settled onto the sofa, chatted of weather, crowds, Java. Davout’s memories of the trip that Silent Davout and his Katrin had taken to the island were more recent than hers.
Fair Katrin took his hand. "I have uploaded Dark Katrin’s memories, so far as I have them," she said. "She loved you, you know-absolutely, deeply." Truth. She bit her lip. "It was a remarkable thing."
Truth Davout answered. He touched cool crystal to his lips, took a careful sip of his cabernet. Pain throbbed in the hollows of his heart.
"Yes," he said. "I know."
"I felt I should tell you about her feelings. Particularly in view of what happened with me and the Silent One."
He looked at her. "I confess I do not understand that business."
She made a little frown of distaste. "We and our work and our situation grew irksome. Oppressive. You may upload his memories if you like-I daresay you will be able to observe the signs that he was determined to ignore."
I am sorry.
Clouds gathered in her grey eyes. "I, too, have regrets."
"There is no chance of reconciliation?"
Absolutely not, accompanied by a brief shake of the head. "It was over." Finished "And, in any case, Davout the Silent is not the man he was."
Yes?
"He took Lethe. It was the only way he had of getting over my leaving him."
Pure amazement throbbed in Davout’s soul. Fair Katrin looked at him in surprise.
"You didn’t know?"
He blinked at her. "I should have. But I thought he was talking about me, about a way of getting over…" Aching sadness brimmed in his throat. "Over the way my Dark Katrin left me."
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