Forever Shores (14 page)

I think then it was that I called ‘Fire!' in a voice that carried well beyond my head.

Tsiolkovsky flew through the hatch and seized the fire-extinguisher. Nothing came out of it. We needed the back-up extinguisher, and the back-up to the back-up.

The fire alarm rang, a piercing buzzer. I remembered Globa, asleep in the Spetkr module. I had to get him. The alarm should trigger a shutdown of the ventilation system. Manakov tussled with the container of oxygen masks, wrenching it open and throwing them to us. Tsiolkovsky threw a towel on the flames. It caught fire, and specks of smoke and burning towel flew round the module.

I saw smoke, and at its heart a yellow glow, and Tsiolkovsky fighting with the extinguisher that would not come free from the wall.

I saw motes of dust in the air, and splashes of molten metal.

Manakov wrenched the nozzle round from the hull, and flecks of foam flew in the cabin.

The fire hissed.

The first mask did not work. The oxygen did not trigger. I threw it away and took an extra for Globa. I had to find him and wake him. We might need to evacuate in Soyuz.

Soyuz was on the other side of the fire.

I moved fast out of Kvant and shut the hatch behind me, so that smoke would not seep into the ventilator system.

It was so quiet out there.

I found Globa awake, trailing his wires, and fighting to remove the blue cap so firmly gelled to his head. He scattered the sensors about him. They floated in free fall, measuring the brain waves of the ether. His blood splashed into the air from the discarded catheter, and formed blobs of red rain.

Globa was in a state.

On Base, they did not like interruptions to their sleep experiments.

The masks worked and we breathed sweet air. I wondered, then, about the air. Perhaps we no longer needed it. If we did not need to breathe, then Tsiolkovsky was right when he said we were dead, and had been so for a long time.

The fire shrank. The burning bush contracted to a point. The flame went out. It was over.

We did not need the escape module Soyuz, not yet.

Our fire debriefing was swift and to the point.

Manakov said: ‘It happened. I saw it, with my own eyes. I saw the fire and I sensed the presence within.'

Globa said: ‘I heard a voice I have always known.'

Tsiolkovsky said; ‘The music is in our hearts. The light is in our heads. We fought a fire, and won a prize beyond the telling.'

I said: ‘I shall inform Base that there has been a small problem with the oxygen emergency oxygen supply. Nothing we couldn't fix.'

Metal fatigue, they said, afterwards, it was caused by metal fatigue on Mir, the untested effects of space radiation on earth-made metals. As the hull of Mir got more exhausted, as did its occupants, and yet more exhausted, the exhaustion became a creeping contagion that spread, here loosening bolts, there rusting fire extinguishers to the bulkhead, here sending hand-rails careening off into space. Metal fatigue rusted the judgment of long-stay cosmonauts, so that they saw God on space-walks, and heard the songs of angels.

They trashed Mir in the Southern Ocean. Of course, they thought we had all returned by then, and certainly, Tsiolkovsky, and Globa, and Manakov seemed to come back with me, in Soyuz, but it was more that they sent their emissaries in their bodily forms, ghosts that went through the motions of being human.

Tsiolkovsky said: ‘I always told you, Volkov, that I had a dream, and now I know that I have awoken from my dream, which was the dream of life on board Mir. I awoke, and I found myself in an awesome place, and here I want to stay.'

And I alone returned to earth, as me, the real, the one and only me. Since then, I have mourned my loss. I dream, with Tsiolkovsky, that there is a ladder set on this ground upon which I now walk, and its top reaches far beyond the ghostly Mir in the sky to the gate of Paradise itself, and angels go up and down it. They pass close by the ghost Mir, which sings in its celestial orbit, captured by the sphere of perfection. Mir is crystal clear, and shining with its solar panels and its hull free forever from rusting and metallic stresses, flying in the ethereal wind, and clothed in the fiery garments of light.

Mir circles still on high, and I think of Manakov, busy, as always, eternally mopping up puddles of the heavenly quintessence.

The Boy Who Didn't Yearn
Margo Lanagan

I should have realised straight off. Of all people, I, Tess Maxwell, should have seen him for what he was. I mean, I knew something was different, something big. My eyes kept going back to him. But I was caught up in people leaving the Art Cottage, and he was in the crowd going to the basketball courts, and we got swept away from each other, Keenoy Ribson and me.

I tried to work it out at the bus stop, the way you try and get a whole dream back using the one little shred you remember, but it turned into a flutter among flutters in my mind, and the bus came, and I went home.

I went home and I went to work—same place. I work in ‘the parlour', Mum calls it, a polite name for such a messy, personal kind of business premises.

My first client was a woman who was after her husband. He was right there with her, of course; the thick, dark string of his tether went from his worn slipper-toe to her right shoulder. He hung over her, griping.

‘He's saying “Don't burn the snags, Merrill”,' I told her.

She laughed. ‘Oh yes, of course. Yes, that's him. Same old whinging bludger. God, I miss him!' And she cried. They always cry when you tell them that kind of detail.

And then there was a man. He had a very handsome boyfriend—well, the handsome version alternated with a blotched, dying one who slid down to lie between us on the Turkish rug. ‘He's very grateful for everything you did for him,' I said. ‘It made it easier, he says. You did everything right. Robert, his name is.' And the guy nodded, and he dissolved in tears, too. ‘You're doing good work,' I went on. ‘You think it's pointless without Robert, but every day of your life you make a big difference to a lot of people. He's not saying that; it's just … clear, around you. There's all this value; you're very solid. What is your work?'

‘I'm a nurse,' he said, through the complimentary tissues.

‘Oh, there you go, then.'

After him, I was tired, because it is tiring. But two clients means a hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars a week is a good amount—it means we can live, as well as keep Dad at Bernard House. If I were really
determined
I could do more, but I guess I'm not. We're managing, aren't we? We're managing fine on two a night.

Mum was in the kitchen with a fruit-shake and a cheese muffin for me, and Dad was there, too, on home-care. I sat and ate and thought about bed.

‘Take Dad for a walk?' said Mum.

I nodded. It was too early for bed; a walk would clear my head ready for homework.

It was cold outside, grey and darkening. I wheeled Dad up to the park, because the paths there have got nice, rounded corners, and I needed to be somewhere quiet, among trees and rotundas and curly metal seats. I started to wake up there, I started to come back to myself. You can't hurry that; all you can do is wait.

I used to exhaust myself over Dad. It didn't do any good. I can feel his brain almost as if it's in my own skull, and half of it's just drained, of juice, of life. And nothing on the living side's very strong, either. Everything shimmers at the same level, with no memory bigger or better than the others, and there are no links between the memories, or feelings tied to them; everything's just random poppings-up, a sort of play of life like a small, settled fire that won't actually burn anything.

Once, right back at the beginning, Mum asked what I could see. ‘They say the life force can flow back in, bit by bit,' she said. And she looked up from Dad, wanting hope—from me, probably the only person in her world who couldn't give her any.

I was so embarrassed for her I couldn't speak.
Life
force—where'd she get that idea? And who were ‘they' supposed to be?

‘But that'd be for
mild
strokes, I suppose,' she finished, turning away.

I recovered a bit. ‘He's there, but he's all mulched up. He doesn't hang together.'

‘Is there any point,' she asked, ‘in it being us, who look after him? Does it make any difference? Does he recognise us?'

‘Not very often. And not much happens when he does.'

Which was why we eventually put him in Bernard House, to get some life back for ourselves, some time
not
tending that fire. We do still tend it, but only on a few weeknights. Mum wheels Dad home and parks him in the kitchen-family room he designed and built, and feeds him while I work—she says she doesn't want me feeding him, doesn't want me to have memories of that. And she talks to him. She's hoping to get something back, an eye-flicker, a noise that sounds like an answer. Stubbornly she goes on, serenely talking, about the news, about people they both used to know (but now only she knows them), goes on and on breaking her heart over him—or maybe not breaking it so much as wearing it away, grinding it gradually down to nothing.

I won't do that to myself. I know it upsets Mum that I don't talk to Dad, but what's the point if he doesn't exist enough to hear me? Mum still thinks he does—time and time again I see her making up that alternative life, seeing his eyes brighten, watching him throw off his rug and stand up:
I'll just get that doorknob fixed before dinner
, he says, or
What are we all sitting around here for, with long faces?
But even when his voice is so clear, coming through her, I can't believe; I
know
Dad's kind of damage never mends. He won't come back.

Next morning I woke up breathing the deep calm of a Dad-free house.
Whatsaname Ribson
, I thought.
Keenoy. The air around him is absolutely clear and silent.
Yeah, that was it. No strings attached him to any yearnings or losses. He was clean; he was himself, he was completely self-contained. Like me. Excitement stirred tentatively under my ribs.
Could
there be someone like that? Or did he have some attachment I just wasn't seeing yet?

I dressed and took coffee in to Mum, stroked her head to wake her up and gave her one of those big morning hugs—better than coffee, she says—which are like being drunk out of, but like drinking too. And I smiled back at her, which I can do, some mornings.

‘Busy day ahead?' she said. Beside her the bedclothes were flat and uncluttered, where for a long time after Dad's stroke there'd been a mound, a Dad-shaped mound that Mum had put there.

‘Busy day every day. Want toast?'

‘There are some muffins left—I'll have one of those. Please, I mean.'

‘Your wish is my command.'

‘Thanks, love.'

Going up the hill to school, I saw a tall boy's curly blond hair ahead.
Ah, yes. Him.

He was talking to Slade and those guys. He said something that made them laugh. They were easier to see for a moment—those guys are usually so stuck about with hang-ups it's quite painful to look at them. But when the veils of fear and bad home life and wanting-a-red-car clustered back around them, Keenoy Ribson was still clear and unobscured. My eyes searched around him automatically, wondering where he hid all his stuff—some people can do that—searching and searching and finding nothing. Nothing at all. It was kind of stunning, like a fine day after a long rainy spell. I watched him closely—his relaxed walk, his personal version of the school uniform, the beaten-up school bag with his old school's crest on it, with the motto KNOW THYSELF—and I waited for interference, but he stayed as crisp and clean-edged as a photograph.

Several times that day I saw him, always with totally different groups of people. He didn't seem to care who he was seen with, Slade's roughnecks or Mandy's knitting circle or that nerd Purtwee. He always looked perfectly comfortable; the group was always cheerful and busy with conversation.

‘Did you see that new guy?' I heard Josh Bateman say.

‘What a suck—see him talking to Bannister? Getting in with the school captain?'

But at lunchtime there they were, Keenoy and Josh and all the soccer-heads together, out on the oval, kicking a ball around.

Nobody had a problem with him, unless you call the girls' instant wild crushes a problem. ‘
Such
a babe,' Blossom O'Malley said to me—I happened to be standing near her when Keenoy walked past.

‘You think?' I said.

‘What, are you crazy?' She goggled at me.

‘You think he's good-looking?'

She gazed after him. ‘Well, it's not so much the looks, though they're
okay
. It's more, he's so
happy
.'

I liked Blossom for a second, then, with that note of longing in her voice. Just for that brief time, she had dignity, before all her usual cutesy, kittenish attachments bobbed in around her again.

My work makes it hard for me to like people. They seem so despicable sometimes, going around inside out, all their weaknesses showing in their walk, in their clothes, in their I'm-in-control-of-it-all faces, let alone the visible holes in them, the baggage-people they drag around with them. Mum says these things are only obvious to me, though. I must remember that not everyone can see what's so shatteringly clear to me. I envy other people that, and I despise them. I can't see how they can live, so cluttered up with other people's lives and influences; I'd hate to live in someone else's shadow. Worse, I'd hate to go around with my insides all blurted out like that, moaning my wants to the whole world, mourning what I'd lost.

Keenoy Ribson
went on
being happy. (I should've realised then, at least.) He didn't take on any of our hang-ups, didn't join any of the cliques. He seemed to enjoy himself, to enjoy being at
this
school, with us. He volunteered for the daggy old musical; he played sports—not well, but with lots of energy; he worked hard enough but didn't do brilliantly. And he talked. He greeted everyone, he chatted, he joked, he had deep-and-meaningfuls when deep-and-meaningfuls were required. He was always in there with people, close up, interacting.

I kept waiting for some insufficiency, some little longing, to show itself near him, but it never did. I'd have to talk to him, maybe, get to know him better, or just get him away from the crowd and see him against a plain background, before I'd know for sure.

I did follow him home one day—well, not all the way home. Somehow I lost him near the freeway overpass, just got distracted for the second it took him to disappear up some lane or into some house.

I didn't try again. I wasn't exactly in a hurry to be disappointed. (Funny how, through the whole thing, I always expected disappointment, even though I went after hope. ‘Went after'—hmph, more like I sat like a lump, doing nothing, letting hope grow all by itself, like ivy, latching onto me with its millions of little suckers.)

‘How does it come to you, the Knowledge?' one of my clients once asked me, a client who'd pulled a whole bunch of mooing, chattering gurus into the parlour with her, all their tethers snarled together.

It always annoys me, that soft, awed tone of voice. I sighed. ‘It's very simple. You know how some people have been hurt so badly that they shuffle when they walk, or they hunch over and hug the inside edge of the pavement? You know how angry people wear this angry face around all the time, with the pulled-down mouth and the eyes kind of flashing to warn you?'

‘Yes, you're right!' She sounded surprised, as if this was new to her. ‘It's as if their experiences are imprinted in their bodies somehow.'

‘Well, exactly. And all you have to do is look a little bit closer, and all the details of that imprint will show you the shape of the thing that's giving them pain, or anger, or sadness. Usually it's another person, but it can be some
thing
they want badly, like a big house or a pile of gold that can push you out of shape, too.'

But I'd lost her—she'd gone all reverent again. She wanted me to be another guru, the guru of gurus, to give her the final answer that would pull all the others together and give her one simple rule for living. ‘It's a wonderful gift.' She thought she was agreeing, but she was actually preventing herself from seeing. People do this
all the time
.

It's not a gift. Everyone can do it—but nobody does. Nobody bothers to read—from the way a person's spine bends or the way their voice turns all feathery when they're stressed—the shape of the
other
person who stands behind, or over, or inside, or squashed underneath the client.
Absent ones
, Mum calls them, but in fact they're very present. They've carved themselves into each client—sometimes gently and in a good way, sometimes with a single thump or shout spoiling a life, cramping every movement from that moment on. Just open your eyes and you'll see them.

It was a Wednesday evening, getting into autumn. I was pushing Dad home from the park. Everything looked coldly blue, except for the golden interior of Bar Piccolo, like a little lantern between the closed minimart and the vacant shop that had once been the Bibliophile bookshop. Kids from school sat laughing around a table in there, among them Keenoy Ribson.

I guess I kind of loomed up to the window out of the dark, and Dad's wheelchair's a bit of an eye-catcher, and … anyway, Keenoy looked up, and lifted a hand as if we were old friends.

I put a smile on my face that died as soon as I was past the window. Then I heard footsteps, and there was Keenoy beside me. ‘Tess! I need a word with you.'

‘Oh?' I tried to casually hide the wheelchair behind me.

‘Sorry. You in a hurry?' He indicated Dad with his eyes.

‘Not really. Um, this is my dad.'

‘Hello, Mr Maxwell.'

Dad's head wandered around to look at him.

‘He's had a stroke,' I said. ‘He can't speak.' In fact, he isn't really here at all. Please act as if he isn't here.