The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance

  “It isn’t funny!” Margaret cried, and then relented. “Maybe it is. Anyway, he did his sphinx act until I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I left. So we don’t know the significance of the trip to Icarus.”

  “Even if he told us we might not know,” Karna said. “He may understand as little of his experience as we do of ours.”

  “Even so, it would help us to know what form it took. And he was very shaken by it. Very shaken. For a while there I thought he would be catatonic for good.”

  Their hotel room’s holophone buzzed, and Margaret flicked on the audio portion. “Nevis here.”

  “I want to speak to Karna Godavari.”

  “Speaking,” Karna said.

  “I want to see you.”

  Karna stepped to the phone and turned on the visual. “Here I am. Who is this?”

  “This is Charles. We met in Kang La.”

  “I remember. Let me see you.”

  The phone’s screen flickered on, and the portly figure of their black-and-white-haired informant appeared. “I’m in Burroughs now, and I need to see you.”

  Karna nodded. “When and where?”

  “The Bridge of Geese, at sunset.” The image in the phone flickered off.

  Margaret jumped to the phone. “Now that is odd. Excuse me, Karna. I’m going to make a call to a friend in the Martian government.” She tapped at the console. “Kuan Ch’ing, please,” she said to the speaker. Then, while waiting: “Greys are forbidden to live on Mars, did you know that?”

  “Charles said something to that effect when we talked to him on Europa,” said Karna.

  “It’s hard to believe,” Dent said.

  “Downsystem the governments get a lot more bossy, let me tell you,” said Margaret. “And for some reason Mars doesn’t want to have anything to do with Greys. They give them one month visas very rarely, and when I last talked to Kuan two days ago, none had been granted for some time. So there should be no Greys on Mars. Kuan! Hello.”

  A very tall Oriental man looked out from the screen. “What is it, Margaret?”

  “I need to know if you’ve let the Greys on planet since we last talked.”

  Kuan said, “I know that we haven’t. I’ve been keeping track of them since our conversation.”

  “Thanks. You’ll let me know when any of them do come?”

  “A large group of them is scheduled to come to the Areology.”

  “I remember. Thanks, Kuan.” Margaret said good-bye and cut the connection. “Now who is this Charles? Is he a Grey traveling disguised, or is he something else disguised as a Grey?”

  Karna said, “He could be with a splinter faction, as he implied.”

  “That’s right. When we landed on Icarus and were met by one party, and then that group was eliminated and we were spirited away by that single Grey! Now what was going on there? Could they have been fighting over us even on their home world?”

  “Sure,” Karna said. “I’ll bet they were.”

  “It sounds like it was a pretty desolate place,” Dent said. “You never did see a town of any kind. The Greys who met you could have been…”

  “Anybody,” Margaret said. “And this Charles met with the man you saw on Lowell and Titania. So he’s not just a solo maverick Grey. He’s in on this somehow. And here he is contacting us.” She looked sharply at Karna. “Could you get some sort of truth serum into him at this meeting?”

  And after a moment they both looked at Dent.

  “What?” said Dent. “Me?”

  the irregulars in action

  And so Dent found himself trailing Karna and Yananda as they walked down one of the immensely broad boulevards of Burroughs, Mars. Burroughs, dear Reader, sprawling over Isidis Planitia, is a city of hills like Rome or San Francisco, cut by a river that splits into a large delta and canal district. The tour crew’s hotel in Burroughs was on the top of one of the southern hills, and so the three men descended a grassy boulevard flanked on both sides by double rows of ornamental cherry trees, their branches thick with white blooms. All three of the men stared about them as they walked; the gravity was unusually light, the deep pink sky was infinitely deep, and it was obvious with every step that they walked on a planet. It was a strange feeling. But Dent was distracted. He juggled the small dart gun in his pocket; it reminded him of the tranquilizer gun lent to him by the people on Grimaldi, although it was smaller, and, he had been told, shot only a tiny dart. Even the victim would have trouble finding it. Still, how was he supposed to shoot a man unobtrusively, right out on the street?

  To calm himself he paid closer attention to the passing scene. Street vendors stood under the trees by their pushcarts, doing a brisk business in popcorn, hot pies and the like. The cherry blossoms glowed under the dark pink sky. On the half dozen hilltops within their view skyscrapers clustered like rockets, standing a hundred stories tall and more. Hills, as always, were the high rent districts. Big sections of each skyscraper were open to the air, and filled with trees. Each building was fronted with stone of a different shade of the Martian spectrum, which, although narrow, was nevertheless rich: dark purples and veined black-reds were dramatic, the myriad shades of red pleasing, a particular dark yellow soothing. The swift swirls of thin cold air chilled Dent’s lungs. Under the stimuli of the engineers the planet itself had out-gassed this atmosphere, and Dent thought he could feel the difference. Walking in the light gravity was different too; Dent was sure he looked at least as awkward as Yananda and Karna as he bounded down the boulevard, unable to avoid occasional flights, and even a few falls. The other offworlders on the boulevard looked just as comically uncontrolled. But the Martians flowed as smoothly as creatures in a dream: very tall people they were, towering over even tall men like Dent and Karna; lithe-limbed, with greyhound torsos, and long high-foreheaded skulls; they walked with little dancelike pushes at the end of every long step, and wore thick fabrics of green or blue or rust that fit them closely, emphasizing their greyhound forms. Dent thought them beautiful, and their city ravishing, and as he lofted down the boulevard he managed to forget himself in staring at them, and muttering “A Paris of the mind, a Paris of the mind,” so much so that he almost lost Karna and Yananda when they turned down a smaller street at a forking Y intersection.

  This street was busier, and Dent was dunned by a variety of street merchants, and political workers waving petitions. Some carried placards or tacked signs to treetrunks, and Dent read over and over VOTE RED, VOTE RED. But the cards that caught his eye were small and black, tucked here and there precariously in the branches of the cherry trees; in green print they said Green Mars. Green Mars. Some sort of election coming up, Dent knew; the Festival was a part of it, somehow. Martian politics were byzantine—no one offplanet could ever get the many issues straight, as far as Dent could tell. And the Martians seemed to consider it their private business, holding meetings of their Congress in secret.

  The street ended at a T junction, and Dent followed his friends east, downstream beside the river. The blood-colored sun was halfway behind a hill, but as they walked on it cleared the hill and the glassy surface of the water fired. They crossed a bridge, and Karna and Yananda asked for directions. They crossed an island, and on the next bright channel were geese, black marks on the copper surface. A wide flat wooden bridge was apparently the Bridge of Geese, for Karna and Yananda stopped on it and leaned against one of the high side rails. Dent did the same on the opposite side of the bridge. They waited. As the sun disappeared it lightened in color, until it was a bright yellow point on the hill. The city below was a rusty shadow, sprinkled with yellow streetlights that were not as bright as the salmon sky.

  There, across the bridge in a knot of maple trees—a shock of black-and-white hair. Charles stepped onto the bridge, looking wary. Dent leaned over the rail and inspected a popcorn box floating in the murky water. He heard Karna greeting Charles, realized he was facing the wrong direction for the task at hand, and turned around. He sat and leaned his back against t
he rail, trying to look like a drunken tourist. Yananda and Karna had moved in such a way that Charles now had his back to Dent. Dent fingered the gun in his coat pocket. He had been instructed to aim at bare skin, or else light clothing. But Charles was wearing a Martian tunic of rust bunting, and his pants appeared to be made of the same material. Perhaps a shot at his light socks, revealed between calves and feet … or a bare wrist and hand, or the hair on the back of his neck.… Pretty small targets, all of them! The gravity of his action frightened Dent, and he began first to quiver, then to tremble. The three men were now deep in conference, it really was time.…

  Dent took out the dartgun and held it inside his raised left knee. Excellent for concealment, but how was he to aim the thing from down there? He pointed it at Charles’s left ankle, fired, opened his eyes. Yananda had jerked, and now he shot a lightning glance of irritation in Dent’s direction. Desperately Dent adjusted his aim and fired again. Charles shifted a foot onto the railing and slapped at the back of his calf.

  “Mosquitoes around here,” Yananda said. “I just got bit myself,” with a look at Karna.

  “Didn’t know mosquitoes had gotten onto Mars,” Charles said. “Damned stupid of the Martians, if you ask me. Thought mosquitoes were extinct.”

  “Apparently all sorts of pests remain,” Karna said, sparing one baleful glance for Dent. “Come, let’s try the other side of the bridge, here.” They crossed and stood behind Dent, who sat on his gun and tried to pretend he was asleep.

  “Tell us what the Greys really want,” Karna said. “You haven’t yet told us that, have you.”

  “All kinds of Greys,” Charles said, sounding befuddled. “Some use Grey to cover smuggling operations. The real Greys don’t care. So many of us can be Grey. Even inside the upper echelons there’s conflict. That’s what they all say. The Lion of Jupiter is in a struggle with the Lion of Mercury, and no one knows where Zervan stands on the matter. No one’s seen Zervan for years. Makes it so easy for us.…”

  “Easy for you in what way?” Karna said. Yananda leaned against the railing, blinking rapidly.

  “Easy for us. We’re going to the Telemann Works, did I tell you that?”

  “No, you didn’t. Tell us about that.”

  “All of us are ordered to Earth, to the Telemann Works.”

  “And who is us?”

  “Our group. They’ll be looking for me soon—” Expression of dismay, exaggerated panic in his voice—“I have to get back, they’ll be looking for me soon!”

  “Who will be looking for you?” Karna insisted.

  “My group. We leave for Earth and the Telemann Works, but first we have to go see Ekern.”

  “Ekern?” Karna said sharply.

  “The Greys want contact with him now and we have to help. I only joined because I was in trouble, understand? If I had stayed on Europa they would have deep-sixed me for good, I was so far in debt to that woman, I just walked into the nearest crowd of Greys and melted in. I had no idea what part of the Greys they were! It was just chance. Now Mithras protect me, I’m out here talking to you and they’ll be after me just like the gangs of Europa, I’ve got to go! I’m late, I’ve got to go!” He pulled away from Karna’s steadying grasp and staggered across the bridge.

  “We’re not done talking to you!” Yananda said loudly, but Karna pulled him back.

  “Shut up, Nanda. You’re drugged too. Dent, get your ass after that man, and don’t lose him.”

  With a loud groan Dent rose to his feet. “Hurry!” Karna said. Dent tried to jog across the bridge after the receding form of Charles, but the light gravity made it treacherous; he almost jumped over the railing into the water. So he loped gently up a narrow tree-lined street after the shock of black-white hair, muttering under his breath at being forced into such a role again. Charles was weaving ahead of him, proceeding quite slowly, and Dent caught up to him without difficulty. He trailed him closely, with little fear of being noticed; Charles was still quite obviously disoriented. It occurred to Dent that he might be able to continue the exploitation of Charles’s drugged state, and without pausing to consider it he drew up behind the man.

  “Zervan wants to see you,” he said into the man’s ear.

  Charles leaped away, spinning in mid-leap so that he came down facing Dent. His expression was stricken beyond anything Dent had expected. “Come with me,” Dent said, fascinated despite himself. “Zervan wants to speak with you.”

  With a shriek of panic Charles was off and running, down the street and into an alley. By the time Dent reached the alley’s mouth, the frightened Grey was nowhere to be seen.

  the modern alastor

  Since Icarus a bond had developed between them. It had started to grow after the trip out to Fairfax House; but now Margaret and Johannes could sit together in comfort in the endless succession of hotel rooms that contained their lives, and chat or bicker or sit silently as the mood took them. She had carried him down that long mountain trail in her arms, and then roused him and helped him down the valley trail to the runway.… He had cried most of the way, poor suffering tear ducts swelling horrendously, so that he had truly become a blind man and she had led him step by step, coaching him, steeling herself against his surprisingly infectious hysteria. And all that wildness broken by moments of calm, a simulacrum of lucidity. “It’s the end of Johannes,” he had said. “End of all of us. We’re just notes in the score, do you see, Margaret? Did they teach you too?”

  “No.” And off he had gone again, puffed eyes pouring salt tears.

  And on the voyage back into the plane of the planets, an arm around his shoulders as he stared mindlessly at the black square of the window, a hand under his head as he slept.…

  So now they were siblings of a sort: bright feldspar and dark diorite, melted into granite by the metamorphosis of danger. Sitting on the darkened porch balcony of their hotel suite Margaret tried to banish thoughts of the past, and failed. Johannes sat beside her, their shoulders just touched. Below them lay Burroughs, a rumpled blanket of lights, darker in the lowlands, brilliant on the hilltops where the skyscrapers leaped up at the evening whitsuns setting to the west. Over them the duller evening star of Deimos shot upward in its retrograde course like a distress flare.

  “What did they teach you, Johannes?” she said. “Can’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t think I can. It has to do with Holywelkin’s mathematics.”

  “I only understand that we can use this work to manipulate the world to—this. To what we see, not just here, I mean, but everywhere.”

  “Yes. The technology derived from it. But…” A long silence. He stood and she could see that he was going to give it a try. “With his mathematics we can see that nothing happens by chance. Everything we do is determined by all that came before.”

  “Oh that’s nonsense, Johannes,” Margaret said quickly. “Clearly that isn’t true. Physical models of the universe—they come and go. But the subjective reality of chance and uncertainty remains. And that’s what is important, isn’t it?”

  Johannes shook his head. “No! Put it another way—what if it was a human agent? What if some person controlled your life, manipulating it from behind the scenes? You wouldn’t be so easy about it then.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. But this idea … a mathematical model is only that, Johannes. An idea, no more.”

  “It’s the division Dent spoke of,” Johannes said, abstracted and distant. “You can know discursively or by acquaintance. You know these theories discursively, as I tell you of them. But I am acquainted with them, now. And the difference that makes, for the future…”

  “Do you know the future?”

  “No. Zervan said I will know it.”

  “As it occurs you will know it, yes. The Greys,” she said scornfully. “Why should they know any more than the rest of us?”

  Another long silence. Finally Johannes said, “I believe their purpose is to hide the true ramifications of Holywelkin’s work from the rest of the world
.”

  Margaret shook her head. “I don’t. And until we know just what they want, and what they propose to do, you should not trust them so.”

  “I have seen it, Margaret. Now all that remains is … music.”

  He was so distant, sitting there, staring into some part of himself. There was nothing to say to him. “Your composition?”

  “… I don’t know yet.”

  “Your music is important.”

  “Yes. Sometimes, now, I can’t think of anything but music.”

  “You think in music?”

  “Sometimes it’s the only language left to me. It’s frightening. The music writes me.”

  What to say to him? She felt that he was mad; but his intelligence had not perished on Icarus. Rather had it been concentrated, like chaotic sunlight into a fierce whiteline. Within that whiteline of music he was more powerful than he had ever been in the pursuit of any sane goal; but outside it—the vacuum. “So it might feel to you. But here, on Mars—” Margaret stopped, considered how to say it. “I sense that something different is happening here. If you ask me, these Martians are in the throes of a very quiet and polite civil war. At the festival when you play, they will be volatile, suggestible. Like you were on Icarus. And so—your music—” She halted; she didn’t know how to say what she meant.

  But he was nodding. “I see,” he said quietly. Photoptic cells reflecting all the lights of the immense city.

  * * *

  Margaret held him for a while, let him go, left the room. And when the irregulars came back from their foray she was in a strange state of mind, distressed and impatient. “You shot Yananda?” she repeated. A shame-faced Dent looked at the floor. “So he said Ekern, did he?”

  Karna nodded. “‘We have to see Ekern,’ he said. But at no point did he make clear who the ‘we’ was supposed to be. Some faction of the Greys, it seemed to me. But he slid away from that question, even under the drug.”

  “Some faction of them,” Margaret said to herself, “either working for Ekern or else employing Ekern.…” She glared at Dent. “And you let him get away! Why didn’t you keep following him?”