Harbinger (17 page)

“You County-ites really believe in people power, don’t you?” I said.

“It would be wasteful to use anything else for local get-arounds, unless you’re older generation. The monorails are good for distance travel, and there are a few electric transports.”

“Hey, I’m not knocking it,” I said, and I swung onto the backseat. We found our balance point and started pedaling. Up until the last year or so I’d kept myself in pretty good shape. Weights, Yoga, Jeet Kun Do workouts. But a year is a long time to sit idle, and the tandem bike demanded use of a different set of muscles.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Everybody heads for the Oxygen Forest. So it’s more private out by the wall.”

“The wall it is.”

I got into the rhythm of it and began to enjoy the effort. The back of Delilah’s neck acquired a sheen of perspiration. I felt a strong urge to kiss it but didn’t. There was a cute little brown mole peeking above the scooped back of her bodysuit, and the finest silky hairs. About a kilometer outside of Bedford Falls I realized who she was and I almost fell off the bike.

We came to a point where the path began a wide loop back in the direction from which we’d come. Delilah kept us pointed straight and we whispered onto the grass and continued for another five minutes or so. When we finally stopped we were both slightly winded and sweaty.

Delilah grabbed the picnic basket and we dumped the bike on the grass. We had to be very close to the holographic scrim but it was impossible to tell where it began. The meadow seemed to roll off into distant haze.

“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” Delilah said, spreading the red and white blanket on the air and letting it float down.

“Lovely,” I said.

She unpacked lunch: a baguette of French bread, synthetic cheese, real apple slices, a bottle of white wine and two stem glasses.

We sat on the blanket cross-legged, facing each other.

“What’s the matter?” Delilah asked.

“Nothing.”

“All of a sudden you look a million miles away.”

“More like a couple of trillion plus two hundred or so years.”

She made a quizzical face and uncorked the wine. “Explain,” she said, pouring.

“I think I know who you are,” I said.

“I’m Delilah Greene,” she said and handed me my glass. Uncouthly, I drained off about half of it in a single draft.

“I should have said I know who you were.”

She half dimpled. “And who were I?”

“Never mind, it’s crazy.”

“Come on.”

“It’s just a resemblance, but a striking one.”

“A resemblance to who? Whom.”

“Once upon a very long time ago there was a girl.”

She lit up. “Nichole!”

That damn Environment. “Yeah,” I said.

“You think I’m Nichole reincarnated.”

“I didn’t say that,” I said, though I had and regretted it. “And you’re still thinking of the Environment.”

“It really bothers you, that everybody knows your life, doesn’t it.”

“Everybody
doesn’t
know my life. What bothers me is that they think they know it.”

“Isn’t the Environment constructed out of your own unconscious memory patterns?”

“That’s what they claim.”

“And you willingly participated, or did you? I thought you had to be willing or the environment wouldn’t work.”

“I was willing, but I had no idea the thing would wind up on the open market.”

“So . . . the tech is no good?”

I drank the rest of my wine and held my glass out for a refill. Sometimes if I drank fast enough I could attain a fleeting buzz.

“The tech is good,” I said.

“Then it’s kind of accurate, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean on your first night with Nichole she brought up the whole past life thing. And you and I have this, I don’t know,
frisson
. So it’s kind of what you think is going on. Or is that not right?”

“How far are we from the scrim?” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know. I mean I’m not sure. It’s pretty close, though. Don’t you want to talk about Nichole?”

“Nichole has been dead a long time.”

“And dead is dead?”

“Probably.”

“What about all your visions?”

“I never trusted them, and I wouldn’t characterize them as visions, exactly. I don’t know what they were, and I haven’t had one in more than a hundred years. Do you mind if we talk about something else?”

“I don’t mind, Mr. Cranky.”

“This is good wine,” I said. An ephemeral bee inhabited my mind then vanished, leaving behind a dull ache.

“It’s passable,” she said.

“Should we go back to the weather?”

“Whatever you feel would be interesting.”

“What about Gerry?” I said.

“What about him?”

“He likes you.”

“He likes the idea of having me,” Delilah said. “But he can’t, so he’s pretty unhappy about it. This is a generation ship. Lovers are matched up by genetic compatibility. What pairings will produce the brightest, healthiest offspring with the best chance of enriching the population. That’s what counts.”

“And you’re not matched up with Gerry.”

She shook her head and poured herself more wine. We’d just about killed the bottle already. “Nor do I wish to be,” she said. “Gerry’s a nice guy, but on the level of bed buddies, he’s creepy.”

“He’s a nice guy, huh?”

“Not really.”

We laughed.

“Sorry about getting touchy about the Environment thing.”

“That’s all right,” she said.

“I’d pretty much slipped into blessed obscurity back on Earth. Then Laird came up with SuperQuantum. People all over the world entered my Environment. There was a resurgence of the Evolutionary Consciousness shit. I became ‘The Herrick.’ It’s like a bad joke; at least to me it is. It didn’t help that people in general seemed to be going slightly crazy. The Harbingers were
my
delusion, I thought. You wouldn’t believe the polarization, in America at least, between the EC-ers and the Jesus contingent.”

“I wish I could have seen it. At least I would have been on Earth. Sometimes it’s hard to accept my whole life will begin and end on
Infinity
.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said, then wished I hadn’t.

Delilah sipped her wine. My two glasses had gone to my head in a melancholy way. Except it wasn’t the wine and couldn’t be. I rolled onto my back and looked at the sky, false and true. A fluffy white cloud drifted, and I wondered whether it was real or projection. Then it did something funny. There occurred a brief flicker along its leading edge, and the scrim produced a rudimentary duplicate so it would appear to go on drifting.

I sat up, then stood. I cocked my arm back with the empty wine glass in hand. It wasn’t exactly Waterford crystal, just some plastic polymer.

“Make a wish,” I said.

And Delilah was up like a shot, grabbing my arm.

“Don’t,” she said.

I lowered my arm. “Sure, but why not?”

“I don’t like to  . . . spoil it. I don’t like to think of a bunch of junk on the other side of the scrim. I don’t like to think of it as a scrim at all.”

“All right, Delilah. I understand.”

“No, you don’t. And don’t be smug about it, either. I know this isn’t your world. You were born in a real place, and you’ll still be alive when
Infinity
reaches Ulin’s World. But this is all I’ve got and all I’ll ever have.”

I dropped my empty wine glass and started to hug her, but she stiffened up and said, “I don’t need sympathy.”

“I’m not offering any. I just find you highly huggable.”

She dimpled on the left cheek. “Huggable, huh?”

“Highly.”

“Well, that’s different.”

We hugged and it was a good fit, her head snuggled under my chin. After a while she said:

“Is that part about you being, you know, sterile, is that true?”

“Yeah. Ironic as hell, wouldn’t you say?”

“As hell.”

“Hey,” I said. “If you’re not matched up with Gerry, then who are you matched up with?”

“It isn’t just one person, of course, though there is usually only one
perfect
genetic match.”

“Who’s yours?”

In my arms, she shuddered. “The Mayor of Waukegan.”

“What’s he like?”

“Old.”

“How old?”

“Almost wizened. Why, are you jealous?”

“Naw, I’m above that sort of thing. Besides, we just met. And also, he’s wizened.”

“Almost wizened. Anyway, when I get pregnant it’ll be in vitro. Ellis, do you really think we just met, or do you think the other thing’s possible?”

“Anything’s possible,” I said, then I kissed her pretty mouth.

We parked the tandem bicycle behind the Bedford Falls Hotel
, crossed the promenade, and entered the hotel by the rear entrance. A middle-aged woman was behind the front desk. Delilah took my hand and led me up the stairs, passing through diamond-paned light on every landing.

“You have a room here?” I asked.

“I have every room here. My mom and I run the place. That was her at the check-in desk.”

“So you know which rooms are empty.”

“Naturally.”

We came to a room on the second floor. Everything from the rug runner to the wainscoting to the paneled doors was mock period accurate. But the locks, which resembled yellowed ivory doorbell buttons, were actually thumbprint readers. Delilah pressed her thumb to the reader by our door and the lock snicked open.

I followed her in and shut the door. She turned to me. I slid my finger along the collar of her bodysuit, felt the slightly raised nub, inserted the edge of my fingernail and drew the finger down, smoothly parting the clever static seal. The suit fell off her like a yellow shadow. Beneath it she was naked. She unzipped me then undid me, and we went on from there, wonderfully.

Much later, I said, “So is recreational sex discouraged?”

“Is that what this was,” Delilah said.

“Not as far as we’re concerned, but I’m wondering if the PTB might have other ideas.”

We were lying on the bed, damp among the rumpled sheets and pillows. It reminded me of a similar situation a long, long time in the past.

“PTB?” Delilah said.

“Powers That Be.”

“There aren’t any PTBs in The County. That’s all on the Command Level. We all know what’s at stake and what can and cannot be tolerated in the interests of the overall mission. The County power structure is minimal. And are you sure this isn’t just recreational for you?”

“Delilah—”

“What?”

Something disarming and charming came to my lips, but I recognized it for what it was and wouldn’t let it out. Instead I said, “You’re not Nichole.”

Uncomfortable beat. Then: “I know that.”

“I mean, this isn’t anything mystical.”

“Okay, Ellis. I know. I was kidding about the reincarnation idea. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Good. I’m not worried either.”

“We’re on the same page, then.”

“Sure, of course.”

More uncomfortable beats.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve got a hotel to run.”

“Come on,” I said.

“What?”

“You’re mad.”

“I’m not mad. What makes you think you know so much about me, anyway?”

“Hubris?”

She laughed, which was better. “Really, though. I’ve got work I’m supposed to be doing. The whole day can’t be picnics and sex, can it?”

“Can’t it?”

“It can’t. At least not
recreational
sex.”

“Ouch.”

She got out of bed and clothed herself. “Are you still planning to stay a while?” she asked.

“Hell, yeah, the room service here is phenomenal.”

“Very funny.”

She was all sealed up again, like a pretty yellow banana with curves and bumps and a sexy musk. If only there were a bunch of her, but that might have been more than I could have peeled.

“Do you like this room, sir?” she asked. “It’s one of the nicest ones. If you look out this lovely bay window you can see Main Street. You might as well keep it. I’ll log you into the register.”

“Okay.”

I started to get up but before I could she was already halfway out the door.

“See you later?” I said.

“You’ll see me, Ellis.”

She shut the door.

I got up from of the bed, suddenly in a non-recreational mood. I rummaged a loose-fitting suit out of my bag and put it on.

The view from the bay window was as Delilah had described it, but I wasn’t in the mood for quaint vistas. Way off in the direction of the Oxygen Forest, a dark streaking haze indicated somewhat heavier precipitation than we’d experienced here in Bedford Falls at the time of my arrival. It made me wonder how much livelier the weather could get. It also made me think of that other time with that other girl. Nichole. That spontaneous eroticism that seemed to transcend itself, that
frisson
(as Delilah would put it), and Nature’s accompanying storm, as if to underscore the event.

But what were my memories? A normal man might accumulate seventy years of accessible recollections, but I’d already survived more than four times a normal life-span. Distance and imagination reshaped memory. That happened to everyone. In my case wasn’t it reasonable to assume my brain’s storage capacity was exceeded? The truth was still in there, perhaps, but the versions I was able to call up were undoubtedly corrupted by my conscious and unconscious desires and expectations.

Maybe it was time I had a look at my own Environment. For decades I’d assumed everyone who read it was getting a jaundiced view of my past. But perhaps I was the one not seeing straight. Perhaps.

I’d started to turn away from the window when I noticed a man standing in the street by the gazebo, looking up at me. It was Gerry. Didn’t he have urchins to herd? I waved at him, friendly as hell. But he didn’t wave back.

Downstairs, Delilah was working the front desk.

“Hi,” she said, “Where are you off to?”

“The Mayor’s office. He invited me to drop in, so I thought I’d take him up on it.”

“Watch out for Gerry,” she said. “He was just here.”

“Aw, he’s a pussy cat.”