Alternate Realities (57 page)

“John Ree. It occurs to me to make a great bronze plaque when all’s done; to set the name of every hand that worked to rear this sculpture, the apprentices, the stonemasons, the crane operators, the runners, every single one ... out before the north wall.”

“Would be splendid, sir,” Ree murmured, looking confused, and Herrin laughed, walked away with energy in his step.

Within the hour, before dawn, the word had traveled. Supervisor Carl Gytha had heard, and asked him. “Everyone,” he confirmed, “every name,” and watched Gytha’s eyes grow round, for Gytha was competent and knew at least a degree of ambition within the University.

“Yes, sir,” the supervisor said earnestly.

“Make a list; keep it absolutely accurate. Cross check with Leona Pace.”

“Yes, s
ir
.”

“To the least. To the sweepers.
Everyone
.”

“Yes, sir.” Gytha went off. Herrin smiled after him, marvelously self-content. “Come
on
,” he heard yelled from the top of the courses, workers exhorting each other. No different than had been ... but was there yet a sudden keenness in the voice?

He sculpted lives, and intents. Promised John Ree a place in time along with Waden Jenks and Herrin Law. Created ... in John Ree ... a possibility which had never been there in his wildest fancies.

See
, John Ree would say to his son or daughter, to his children’s children,
see
...
there. There I am.

Ambition ... for ten thousand years of that unremarkable worker’s descendants. And what might it not do?

He felt a sudden lassitude, physical impact of half a night awake, as he considered creative energies expended, looked at the dawning which began to pale the glare of lamps, realized what sleep he had missed. But the brain was awake, seldom so much awake. He paced a time longer, finally knew that he was exhausted, and headed outward, through the developing maze of the shells, out into the pink daylight.

A row of dark figures stood there, robes flapping in the slight breeze. Eight, nine of them, all in a row vaguely artistic—an arc observing the arc of the dome itself, he realized; invisibles, all of them. Watching. He stopped, unease touching him like the touch of the wind, and on an impulse he turned and walked back through the maze to the
other
side, the other gateway, to the south.

There were more invisibles, and more than one row, not appearing to have any symmetry to their standing, but symmetrical all the same, because they were focused on the dome.

He refused the sight. He turned and retraced his steps, the way he had started in the first place. Workers called out to each other, still shouting instructions. He swept through the dome, out past the line of watchers, managing this time not to see them, except as shadows.

He made no particular haste, walking in the dawning up through the street, on which morning walkers were beginning to appear, ordinary citizens.
Safe
, the thought came to him, and why he should subconsciously reckon hazard he did not know. There had never been any hazard from invisibles. It was fancy, imagination, and he thought that he had purged fear of that.

He moved to the Residency that morning. It was a matter of packing up a sackful of clothing and personal items from the studio and appearing at the Residency entry desk in the main hall, casting himself on Waden’s recommendation and the staff’s invention. The room turned out to be extravagant, by his standards, with white woodwork and a wide, soft bed. It had a magnificent view of the Port Street walkway, the hedge, the grand expanse of Main beyond, and most important, the dome, the Work.

He was delighted, grandly pleased, stood smiling into the daylight which was streaming over distant Jenks Square.

He did not delude himself that Keye would come here. She had an almost superstitious fear of being inside this place. He grimed with amusement. So much for Keye’s fears, and his twilight nightmares and watchers about the square.

So much for any assumption Keye might now make that she had dissuaded him from this venture into the Residency. He had, he thought, delayed overlong on her account ... or his own comfort. It was, after all, a mere change of address. And Keye’s apartment was still accessible from the Square ... when there was time. He foresaw a time of increasing preoccupation, when he would not indeed have time to have made the shift to the Residency, and he would not have Keye pouring her own opinions into his ear without also doing what he chose on the contrary tack. That Keye should know his independence ... he had no vanity in that regard—in fact whatever she wanted to think was very well, and better if she deceived herself—but he would not be dissuaded by her, or oppose her for its own sake, which was likewise to move at her direction. It was simply a good morning to get around to the move, when he could do so without particular reason one way or the other.

He found it even more pleasant than he had thought.

The door opened uninvited. “Welcome,” said Waden’s voice from behind him.

He turned, raised brows. “Well. It’s splendid hospitality, First Citizen.”

“It’s nothing too good for you, is it?

“Of course not.”

Waden laughed softly. “Breakfast?”

“Gladly.”

“You choose strange hours for moving.”

“Convenient to my schedule.”

Waden’s eyes traveled over him minutely. “You worked all night? Zeal, Artist,”

“I enjoy my work.”

“Doubtless you do.”

Waden walked to the window, turned, wiped a finger across the brooch he wore on his collar, smiled quizzically. “Bizarre ornament.”

Herrin smiled, said nothing, which brought a spark of amusement to Waden’s eyes. Herrin laid a hand on Waden’s back, turned him toward the door. “Fellows’ Hall?”

Waden agreed. They walked together, ate together; Waden went back to his offices and his work; Herrin went back to his, in the studio, at peace with his reality. He gathered up his own cutter for the first time since the project began, selected his tools, went out to the Square on the nervous energy which had fired him since midway through the night.

The cranes groaned and ground their way about their business. Leona Pace came up with her checklist to see if there was anything that wanted doing; he refused her, waved off a question about the plaque and the proposal of the names to be engraved there.

“True,” he said simply, and knelt down and began unwrapping his tools, his own, which were the finest available, before the pillar which would be the central sculpture. He was sure now. That had been the reason for the lack of sleep, the anxiety, the energy which had suffused him and dictated so many shiftings and changes and readjustments in recent days.

He focused himself now on his own phase of the work. The cranes hefted enormous weights which sailed like clouds overhead, any one of which, slipping, could have crushed him to grease, but he refused even the slight concern the possibility suggested.

He focused the beam, and began, oblivious to all else.

He dropped the cutter, finally—saw his hand was wobbling and jerked it away from the stone before disaster could happen. It fell, and he sank down where he was, dropped head into arms and arms onto knees and sat there, aware finally that he was getting wet, that rain was splashing onto his shoulders and beginning to slick all the exposed stonework. He was not cold yet, but he was going to be. His joints felt as if the tendons had all been cut and there was fire in his shoulders and his arms and his legs.

A plastic wrap fell about his shoulders. Leona Pace was there, her plump freckled face leaning down to look at him sideways. “All right, sir?”

He drew a breath, massaged his hands, nodded, looked up past Pace to the Shape which had begun in recent days to emerge from the stone, which had begun, with the beam-cutter’s swift incisions, to
be
Waden Jenks. He sat there, with the rain slicking down his forehead and into his eyes, and stared at what he had done, numb already in the backside and with a grateful numbness creeping into his exposed hands.

Leona Pace followed his stare, looked down again. “It’s amazing, sir.”

“I should have rested.” He tried for his feet, wrapping the plastic about him, and Pace made a timid effort to steady him; it gave him equilibrium. Other workers and apprentices had sheltered in the curve of an arch. The lights had come on as the clouds darkened. He turned full about, saw a dry spot under a curve and went to it, thinking Pace was following. But when he looked back she was walking away, her brown hair straggling as usual, her bearing matter-of-fact and lonely-looking.

He was spent, as from a round of sex. He felt the same melancholia as encounters with Keye tended to give him; he looked reflexively toward the window where Keye might be, and saw nothing because of the curve. The new reality was closing in. Permanent. Strangely he felt no more desire for Keye, for anyone, for anything.

And as after sex, it would return. He leaned against the stone, watching the sheen of water flow this way and that. It was the first time the work had stopped, the only circumstance which could delay it. He looked up at the sky, which was already showing signs of breaking sunlight. Such storms came and left again with suddenness in this season. The stone would dry within a short time when the rain had stopped.

The hot-drink cart made the rounds; an hour’s rest became holiday. Laborers tucked up in plastics, drinking the steaming cups which splashed with raindrops, came from their shelters to stand and stare at the central sculpture, and Herrin, his own hands clasped about warm ceramic and his belly warmed by the drink, watched with vast satisfaction.

Laborers asked questions; apprentices swelled with importance and answered, pointing to the imaginary vault of the roof, the future placement of curtain-columns, and laborers explained to other laborers ... Herrin watched the whole interchange and drank in the excitement which suffused the whole crew.

Pride. They were
proud
of what they were doing. They had come here diverse, and something strange had begun to happen to all of them in this shell, contained in this sculpture of his devising.

And then the Others came.

They filed in through the gateways and stood about, four at first and then more, midnight-robed. Ten, twelve, fifteen.

The workers
saw
them. The excitement which had been palpable before their coming tried to maintain itself, but there was an erosion, a silence, an unease. Men and women tried to maintain equilibrium, realities,
choice.
Herrin leaned against the stone and looked elsewhere, trying to ignore all of it, but they came from the other side as well.

“Out!”
Leona Pace cried, shocking the almost-silence. Shocking every reality into focus.

She had
seen. Admitted
seeing. Her reality had slipped, and Herrin stood transfixed and helpless.

The same look was on Leona Pace—rigidity, panic. Suddenly she cast off the plastic mantle and left, running.

He kept staring at the hole where Pace had been when she passed the gateway; and the cold from the rain crept inward. He recovered after a breath, walked out casually among the workers and the invisibles, ignored what they should not see, and quietly dismissed them.

“The rain may continue,” he said. “Things will have to dry. Secure the area and go home. Come back at your next regular shift.”

Tools were put away against invisible pilferage; the cranes were shut down and locked; and one by one and several at a time, the workers and the apprentices drifted away.

“Andrew Phelps.” He hailed the senior apprentice. “You have a responsibility next shift, to be here early, to keep accounts, to direct.”

“Sir,” the man said, youngish, dark and thin, his eyes still showing distress, which rapidly yielded to surprise. “Yes, sir.”

So he replaced Leona Pace.

He had no illusions that she would return. It happened, he reasoned, because of the sculpture; for that moment, humans and Others had had a common focus, had gathered within the same Reality, and Leona Pace had been thrust into the center of it, responsible.

Had broken under the weight of it. Would not be back, either on the site or at the University or indeed, among sane citizens. No one would see her, just as they did not see other invisibles. Survival was for the strong-minded, and she had not been strong enough.

He drank himself numb after a moderate dinner at Fellows’ Hall, walked through the slackening rain to the Residency, just barely able to steer himself to his room without faltering.

He slept and woke at the first light of another day, still lying where he had lain when he fell into bed; he bathed, assumed sober Student’s Black and walked the distance to the Square; he set matter of factly to work and so did everyone else, wounds healed.

Leona Pace did not, of course, return. The cheerfulness of the crew did. Andrew Phelps was an energetic and intelligent supervisor, and that was sufficient. He did not care for the past day, revised time and his Reality and recommenced his carving with full attention to the moment.

The Shape emerged further under his hands. It was slow now, very slow. Above him, the cranes labored, and he worked in the shadow of scaffolding and stone which had sealed off the sky once and for all.

The scaffolding in days after was lowered again to permit work on the detailing of the triple shell, and there was solid stone overhead. There was no more sound from the cranes, which had filled the center of Kierkegaard with their groaning and grinding for what had begun to seem forever; their job was done. The crane operators took their leave, returning now and again as other jobs or simply the course of coming and going through Kierkegaard took them through the dome.