Meridian Days (20 page)

Later, drunk and maudlin, the events of the past few days going around and around in my head, it occurred to me that Fire had explained everything, everything except just one thing. Why had Tamara Trevellion kept the knowledge of the planet's shut-down to herself, and not made the fact public?

The answer was so obvious, really, that I completely failed to see it.

I found out the following day.

TEN///'BETRAYAL'

I awoke late as usual, dragged myself to the kitchen and made a mug of coffee. I drank it in the lounge, staring out at the islands. Something moved me to switch on the vid-screen and try to find a news channel, my social apathy giving way to a desire to know how the business of saving the world was progressing. I switched from one band of static to the next, wondering if the situation had deteriorated to the extent that the authorities were unable to put out even a simple news bulletin. Then I chanced upon a moving picture.

It was terribly familiar.

I sat, unable to move, and stared at the procession of images on the wall-screen. The pictures were accompanied by a voice intoning poetry, Fire's voice. I watched, appalled and yet fascinated, as the history of Earth was played out before my eyes. These images were intercut with simple, stark shots of Fire, standing to attention on the grav-platform, reciting lines of verse.

Then the images switched from those of Earth and spaceflight, to those of far flung colonies and Meridian. I watched the familiar progression of Brightside landscapes through to the frozen vistas of Darkside, culminating with shots of the meridian sea and the archipelago, caught in the planetary vice of the two inimical hemispheres. Tamara Trevellion's poetry emphasized the inhospitality of the colony world. "We rode the wave of the Push/ Settling worlds not meant for humankind..." Fire's voice, the close-up of her face, her tears, brought a cry of rage from me. I knew, then, what was to happen next. For the audience that night, the event had finished here. But this recorded vid-art would go beyond the live event and show what only Tamara Trevellion and myself had seen. Fire recited the lines, "Betrayed, we are made isolate/ Twenty light years from home/ On a world hostile and unforgiving." Intercut with the full-length images of Fire, alone in the darkness, fear visible on her face, were shots of a stalking sand lion, alien and evil. A doom-laden soundtrack heightened the tension, the separate images of girl and lion edited together in quick succession to unbearable effect. I tried to close my eyes as the music crescendoed, but found myself unable to do so. The sand lion leapt. The girl — no longer Fire, but some perfect personification of humankind — screamed as the beast tore her limb from limb. This was shown in a series of quick shots from every angle, the image never remaining long enough for the effect to be sickening. Her death, seen this way in a thousand protracted cuts — and not over within seconds as it was in reality — made the scene all the more horrific, the moral of the piece all the more shocking. In Trevellion's view, humanity on Meridian would die slowly, left to starve to death by a callous central authority.

The last frame — of Fire's wide, dead eyes staring accusingly into the camera — faded, to be replaced with the caption: "Betrayal — VidArt by Tamara Trevellion." Then this too faded, to be replaced by images of Earth's history, and Fire's voice, beginning the cycle all over again, as Trevellion's event was beamed from Meridian, across the light years to a suitably chastened Earth.

I reached out and switched off the screen. I sat in silence for a long time, trying to work out my reaction to what I had seen. I felt sickened, and the feeling had to do not only with the horrific content of the video, but with the realisation of its quality.

There could be no doubt that
Betrayal
was Tamara Trevellion's greatest work of art. I suspected that it would be judged as such by those on Earth and Meridian who viewed it without knowing the full story behind its production. Perhaps only I was in a position to judge the piece, to understand the artist's motives. I alone knew that what had driven her to produce
Betrayal
was not so much indignation or anger at Earth's treachery, or an altruistic desire to speak out on behalf of the citizens of Meridian denied a voice. Tamara Trevellion had been consumed by the need to sacrifice that which was most close to her, her daughter — who she hated, as she was unable to hate herself — at the alter of Art in a bid to appease the devil within which taunted her for the failures of her past. She had attempted this with Jade, but in her own estimation had failed; and she had tried again with Fire...

For two days following my first viewing of
Betrayal
, I wanted nothing more than to track down Tamara Trevellion and kill her. I thought of nothing else. It seemed to me that the scales of universal good and evil were forever tipped in favour of the latter while Tamara Trevellion remained alive. To make the world a better place, to balance the scales, it was my duty to eradicate her.

Then it came to me with the impact of a revelation that revenge was unnecessary. As I sat on the patio one evening, watching the shield usher in another period of darkness, I understood the truth. I realised that, by their very nature, artists are forever dissatisfied. They are only as good as their last creation, and when the satisfaction of achievement begins to wane, when time has intervened to show them that their last work is not as great as they hoped, that it can be improved upon, then they are driven to produce something which, in their eyes at least, is even greater. And so on. This is the axiom of artistic endeavour. Tamara Trevellion had used first Jade, and then Fire, in her art — and, I knew, no matter how fine she considered her latest creation, there would come a time when satisfaction wore thin, when the need would arise to create again... Now Trevellion had only herself to hate, and it occurred to me that by leaving her to the self-destructive processes of her art I would be gaining the ultimate act of revenge. I foresaw a time when Tamara Trevellion would either kill herself in despair at having no-one else to hate, or be forced to confront her self-hatred and produce, in one sado-masochistic burst of creative energy — which might even then prove suicidal — a work of art which would truly be of herself and acclaimed as great, and by so doing make some amends for all the misery and suffering for which she was responsible.

The sense of no longer feeling hatred was like a balm.

~

At night, after a day fishing or working in the fields, I sit on the patio and watch the pterosaurs fly to Brightside. The sight always fills me with sadness and regret, and reminds me as well of Fire, who wanted so much to escape, but never did.

Every night I think of all the frost on Brightside, just waiting to be taken. Then I contemplate the events which have brought me here, and what the drug turned me into, and I put all thoughts of frost from my mind.

I survive. I live from day to day, wishing at times that I had never known Fire Trevellion, had never suffered all the pain, while at others realising, of course, that all the pain was necessary.