ReVISIONS (9 page)

 

I pace the halls, the sweat of my jumpsuit dried to residue. I probably stink. I can't bring myself to care. The sounds around me are muted, the lights dimmed or shut off.

It's past midnight Topside, in the halls of Mission Control. I can visualize it, if I try. Lamps still burning over coffee-strewn desks; quiet voices and self-doubt and if-onlies, those who aren't beating off the press or justifying themselves to the president and God and everyone else with a sudden interest in the fate of NEREUS. The only ones asleep are those who have medicated themselves out of the pain.

I don't have that option, not yet. Sleep is impossible.

Gateway station is empty: of the seventy-two warm bodies that used to fill the space, only seven remain. They're the cleanup crew, clearing and scrambling the servers so nobody can take anything from here but memories. Everyone else has gone already, hustled off within hours. Just enough time to stuff a kit bag, knowing you won't be back.

The last sub comes for us in the morning. Four hours, maybe five. I'll be the last one to leave. Turn out the last light. My responsibility. My right.

The wheels of investigation are already turning, but there's only so much you can do. The site is off-limits, my order confirmed by NEREUS Command. You can't send bomb-sniffing dogs in, or lay the pieces out on a hangar floor, backtracking until you come to the moment it all went wrong. All we have are records, and readouts, and the hope that someday we'll know what happened.

But that will have to wait. The country's drifting on other currents now, moving into war. It fights us for space on the news feeds, making reporters' heads spin with the glorious glut of news.

But all wars end, eventually. They'll come for Gateway itself then: there's too much here that can be reused, or worse, used by someone else. No squatters are allowed on our failures. The machinery of progress, the massive claws and levers of industry, will dismantle what can be reused, leave the hull sitting here, the Slide a rooted stem without petals, without a head. Rebuild farther down the ocean floor. Somewhere the orange markers won't mock us.

I'm broken and bleeding inside. I know that, the way you know impossible things that are nonetheless true. I'm bleeding inside, and it's flooding me until I can't breathe anymore. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel. I don't remember what I used to feel.

They tried to retrieve me first, bring me Topside for debriefing, but I wouldn't go. Not yet. There will be time for all that. There will be nothing but time, soon enough. The shrinks will pull it all from me, the anger and the pain and the fear. They'll drain me and patch me and if I'm not as good as new; well, nobody who knows will tell. And then they'll reassign me to a very important desk job, somewhere miles from the brine.

I can almost accept it. I'll lie to myself, all for the sake of the dream, that there will be a Site Fifteen. That Kim and Gary and Seth and Michaels and all the others didn't sacrifice everything for nothing.

Tomorrow, I'll believe that.

I've been walking all this time. It seems inevitable, somehow, that I end up outside the Gate Room.

Red across the board. Out of habit, I flick the toggle. “Site Fourteen, this is Gateway Control.”

Somewhere inside the broken silence within me, I hear the echo of a single ping.

 

 

 

 

T
HE inn is dark, low, and uninviting. Its ale is not good, nor are its rooms cozy. The locals give it a wide berth. Even travelers benighted in English rain generally prefer to ride on to the next village, rather than stop at such an unpromising spot.

This is precisely why it stays in business.

The inn, as it happens, is subsidized by certain shadowy men. They made themselves so useful to the late king that their services have been retained by his usurper. Royal paranoia keeps them on the move, listening, spying, collecting evidence; and this remote country tavern has proved a great place to meet unseen, to interview witnesses, exchange information. Or to sequester those whose status is somewhere between political prisoner and guest. . . .

The man entering the inn has no name, at least none that will ever make it into history books. He hangs his cloak of night on its accustomed peg. He climbs the stair without a word to the innkeeper. He has no need to give orders.

Two men are seated at a table in an upper room. He sits down across from them, studying their faces by the light of one candle.

They are both men of middle age, in travel-worn garments. The one leans forward, elbows on the table, staring into the eyes of his visitor. He has a shrewd, coarse, sensual countenance, like an intelligent satyr. The other sags back against the wall, gazing sadly into space. He has the majesty of a Biblical prophet, with his noble brow and milk-white beard, but also an inexpressible air of defeat. The visitor notes that his left arm, tucked into a fold of cloak, is withered.

Preliminary courtesies are exchanged. The satyr speaks easily, with ingratiating gestures and smiles, congratulating the visitor on his precise Italian. Ale is brought; the satyr seizes up his tankard, drinks a toast to their enterprise, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He begins to speak. Unseen behind a panel, a clerk takes down every word.

 

No, he don't talk. That's what I'm for!

Is he my master? No, no, Signore, we're more sort of partners. Almost like brothers, you see? His mama and mine, they lived on the same farm. But Leo's a gentleman, yes. Father was from a good old family. Much too good to marry his poor mama, but Ser Piero couldn't get no sons by any other girl, so he kept his boy and brought him up, with a tutor and everything.

And was the boy smart? Why, Leo was writing with his left hand (and, you know, that's hard to do) by the time he was four! But then, one fine day, we boys were playing out in the orchard, and there was this big apple out on a high branch. Leo climbed out after it. And the branch fell! Boom, down he came and broke his left arm. Broke it so bad, the bones stuck out and the doctor thought it might have to come off. Even when he saved the arm, it didn't work so good anymore. It'd been shattered. Never grew right, after.

So then, Leo had to learn to do everything with his right hand. And I guess maybe it threw his humors out of balance, because he started to stutter. Stammered so bad nobody understood one word he was saying. Except me! I
listened
to him, you see, Signore? And I could, uh, interpret for him. He got so he wouldn't say nothing to nobody, except when I was around. We got such a, what's the word, such a rapport, Leo and me, that I know what he wants to say before he says it.

And his papa said, “Say, Giovanni, you're such a smart boy, my Leo needs you around to do his talking for him. You come live with us. I'll pay you a nice salary.” Which was a big opportunity for me, I don't mind telling you. When Leo was studying in books, I got to play in the street and learn a little something of the ways of the world, you understand? And I learned how to fight, which was good, because nobody dared call Leo a dummy or steal from him, while I was around.

I said, “Don't feel bad, Leo, you're plenty smart! One of these days we'll get rich off your cleverness, wait and see!” And we did, Signore. Plenty of times, we've been rolling in scudi. We just had bad luck. It could happen to anybody.

Ah! Well, let me tell you about Florence. Leo's papa sent us to Andrea del Verrocchio, that was a big rich painter there. I said: “How are you today, Signore? I'm Giovanni Barelli and this is Leonardo da Vinci, and he's the greatest painter you're ever going to teach, and I'm his manager.”

Signore Andrea didn't take that too well. He must have been thinking, “Who are these kids?' But he looked over Leo's little pictures that he done, like this rotten monster head he painted on a shield, with dead snakes and flies so real you could practically smell it, and he agreed to take Leo as an apprentice.

It probably didn't hurt that Leo was good-looking as the Angel Gabriel himself, in those days. Those artistic types, they like the boys, eh? Saving your grace's presence, but that's how it is in the Art World.

So we settled into that studio, with all those other boys there, and Leo painted better than any of them. He painted so good, pretty soon he was better than Signore Andrea. Signore Andrea painted this big picture of Jesus getting baptized, but Leo helped him some. And, I'm telling you, there were these two holy angels standing side by side in the picture, and the one Signore Andrea painted looked grubby and sneaky as a pickpocket, but the angel Leo painted was just beautiful, shining so bright you'd think he had a candle stuck up his, uh, hidden under his robe or something.

I watched Signore Andrea, and I could tell he wasn't so happy about this. The little boys were crazy jealous, and I knew sooner or later somebody would slip poison into Leo's dinner. So I went to Signore Andrea, I said, “Thanks a lot for the training, Signore, but it's time my Leo opened his own studio someplace else, don't you agree?”

But he didn't agree. He said Leo had to work for him a certain number of years and a day, or he wouldn't get into San Luca's Guild, blah blah blah. I saw Signore Andrea didn't want no competition. So I knew it was time to get us some leverage.

Any rich man has secrets, eh, Signore? You know what I mean, I can tell. And I could climb drainpipes real good, and open windows, too, and get locked cabinets open with one of Leo's palette knives. Pretty soon, I knew some things about Signore Andrea I'm sure he wouldn't want the Pope to hear about. You'd be amazed how fast he changed his mind about Leo getting his own studio, after I put a little word in his ear! Even threw in a nice parting gift of money.

And, Signore, the commissions poured in! Big murals for churches. Painted shields and armor. Portraits of little rich girls. Half those little girls fell in love with Leo, good-looking as he was. Of course, to talk to him, they had to go through
me
, and I wasn't so bad-looking either, in those days. Life was sweet, Signore.

The only problem we had, and I'm only telling you this because it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, was, if I left Leo alone in his studio while I was out with Ginevra or Isabella or Catarina, I'd come back and find he'd been, uh, distracted by his little drawings. Just filling up page after page with pictures of his hands, or water, or clouds or dead mice or anything. “Leo,” I said, “think of that nice bishop, waiting for his painting of the three wizards adoring Baby Jesus! You got to concentrate, Leo!” I told him.

I thought if I took his pens and paper away and locked him in, he'd have to paint. And it worked. But then one night I came in late, and I was a little, maybe, upset, because I was having troubles with Isabella, and I went to let Leo out so he could eat. There was this big canvas he was supposed to have been working on, still white as Isabella's—well—he hadn't painted one brushstroke on it, Signore. What he done was
drawn all over the walls.
I was so mad I socked him, boom, and he went flying. The candle fell and set fire to his straw mattress. What I saw, with the room all lit up, was that these were all drawings of
machines
.