Periphery (15 page)

“You experiment on them as well?” she asked.

“Only the ones whose sponsors have given permission, or defaulted on their contracts,” Johanson said. “We have tested some great discoveries here, done research that is a benefit to humanity.”

The face of the prisoner next to Aleph was twitching with an uncontrollable tic.

“Take these prisoners, for example,” Johanson said. “They have received what men for centuries have dreamed of: the gift of Lazarus’ serum.”

“What does it do?”

“Lazarus was working on the biochemistry of the aging process. She found a combination that halted the breakdown of cells in the laboratory. These were the first human tests. So far, it seems to have slowed the biological clock to a crawl. These men could live for centuries.”

Aleph felt horror rising from the pit of her stomach. “You gave them eternal life? To spend like this?”

“Lazarus did.”

Aleph plunged forward, seeing nothing, her hands clutched to her chest lest they touch what lay on either side. A door loomed ahead of her. She lunged for it, but recoiled when it lit up with a huge projected image of Johanson’s face.

“I want you to give a message to Lazarus from me,” the image said. It was as tall from chin to forehead as Aleph herself. The cracks in its lips were the size of her fingers. “It suits my sense of justice that she should join her guinea pigs in here. What she gave them, I’ll give her: eternal life in a coffin. No more movement, no more sight, no more anything. Just life.”

The image was gone. Aleph threw her shoulder against the door and it opened into the corridor. She covered the distance to the elevator in a few long strides. In the seconds before the elevator door opened, she saw a waste recovery chute and slung the video monitor into it.

She didn’t slow when she reached her own room. In one motion she stripped her uniform off and went into the shower. There she soaped every inch of her body to get off the stench of the prisoners. When she came out she took a washcloth to pick up the uniform, and threw it into the laundry chute. She then washed the place on the floor where it had lain and threw away the cloth.

She stood in front of the mirror naked, drying her hair. The turmoil in her mind had coalesced into a deep anger. “I ought to have no part in this,” she said aloud. “I can break my contract, you know. I can take the next shuttle to Earth.”

The mirror stared back at her. Already her hair seemed thicker and darker. The pseudobone of her face ached where it was softening and remolding itself to build up the bridge of her nose, the thrust of her eyebrows, the stubborn jut of chin. But more striking than the face was her manner. She stood like Lazarus now, feet apart, head up, unapologetic. She looked up at the light fixture, then turned to show herself to it. “Satisfied?” she asked it.

She threw the towel across the room, then stood on her hands and walked upside down to the door, then back to the bed, where she sat. She had never expected to be so grateful for the simple movement of muscle.

“Did you really do it?” she asked the Lazarus in the mirror. It looked back with charcoal eyes. She could see the arrogance in its face, the self-absorption that could stoop to torture and not care. She felt a wave of rage at whatever invisible, immoral brain had invented this prison; but more than that, rage at Lazarus for having fooled her, and herself for having been fooled.

An hour ago she had wanted this shape, this personality, more than she had thought herself capable of wanting anything. She looked away from it. The book of poetry lay beside the bed, open to a sonnet. Aleph glimpsed the lines:

For I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste except you ravish me.

She made a movement to get up, to pack her bag and return to the vacuum. But she stopped, washed back by a current of hunger. Her instincts still ached with an insupportable need to
be
, to have full personhood, to have
this
personhood. She was helpless in that undertow. She watched in the mirror as a smile grew on her face, ironic and tantalizing, Lazarus’ smile. Lazarus, her jailer.

*

When Aleph entered the cafeteria the next day, Lazarus was pacing, dark and tense, by the opposite door. She was so absorbed she did not notice Aleph crossing the room. When she finally looked up, her ominous glower disappeared in an instant. She came forward, took one of Aleph’s hands to study the fingerprints, then walked around her, looking her over. “It’s a miracle,” she said.

“The change has only just started.”

“Yes, I can see. But it’s still remarkable.” She put her arm around Aleph’s shoulder and turned to the door. “I’m free to come and go today,” she said quietly in Aleph’s ear. “They’re just following to see what I do. Come to my room.”

As they were about to leave, the door bounded open and a young man in an untidy white uniform came through. He had a thin, pale face, a scanty beard, and hair down to his shoulders. When he nearly collided with Lazarus, he flushed. Aleph glimpsed a small object passing from his hand to hers. It was gone before she was sure it was there.

“Lazarus!” he said nervously. “Are you free now? What’s happened?”

“They’ve let out my leash,” she said.

The young man glanced around to see if any guards were near, then said in a low tone, “Listen, I’ve heard that they hired—” He stopped, eyes on Aleph, realizing what she was. A look of revulsion crossed his face.

“My friend Aleph,” Lazarus said, her arm still tight around Aleph’s shoulders.

The man took an involuntary step backward. “I’d better go,” he muttered. But before he could turn away, Lazarus caught his arm, pulled him toward her, and kissed him on the cheek. She let her hand linger for a moment afterwards, as if reluctant to pull away. His face went rigid, but his eyes on her were full of unguarded longing. She turned and steered Aleph out the door.

The instant they were outside, she set off fast down the hall, absorbed in her own thoughts. Somehow, Aleph knew she had forgotten all about the man.

“I have to talk to you,” Aleph said.

“Soon,” Lazarus answered.

Lazarus’ room lay on a silent, dead-end corridor as monotonous as all the others in the steel honeycomb. When they reached her door, she whispered, “Stand under the light and don’t look at me. I’ll tell you when it’s safe.”

When they entered, Lazarus darted to the other side of the room and wrestled the chest of drawers away from the wall. She climbed on top of it and, producing a cafeteria knife, pried up a ceiling panel next to the lighting fixture. She took a small device from her pocket and, using the knife to loosen some screws, began to wire it into something in the space above the drop ceiling.

Aleph stood with the light trained on her, looking around the room to avoid watching what Lazarus was doing. Once, the room had been identical to her own. Now, the tile floor was covered by an intricate Persian throw rug. On the book-heaped writing table stood an 18th-century orrery, its gleaming brass arms supporting the six planets in a spidery embrace. Beside it, a rosewood recorder lay on a leather bound book open to a pre-Copernican diagram of the celestial hierarchies. The dresser top was a forest of bottles, each marked with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet corresponding to an obscure chart tacked to the wall above them. Hanging above the rumpled bed was an original print of Dürer’s
Melancholia
, her dark, intense face gazing troubled into the featureless wall.

Lazarus fitted the ceiling panel back into place and jumped down. “That should confuse the führer for a while,” she said. “Long enough for us to speak alone.” She turned, and Aleph felt like a searchlight had been trained on her. Lazarus looked as if she were memorizing each pore, each hair. Fascinated, she put out a hand to touch Aleph’s face. Aleph stepped back.

“Not yet,” she said. “I need to know something.” She crossed her arms, eyeing Lazarus darkly. “Johanson showed me the prisoners yesterday. The ones you experimented on.”

Lazarus’ look did not flicker. “Yes?”

“For God’s sake, don’t you feel any guilt?”

“They’re criminals. I let them serve a good purpose for the first time in their lives.”

“They’re suffering. Don’t you feel anything for them?”

Lazarus was studying her closely, puzzled. “Why is it you do? You are supposed to be me, just like me.”

“Our memories, our experiences are not the same. Damn it, I have
been
criminals like that.”

A look of disgust crossed Lazarus’ face. “Don’t say that! I don’t want to hear that you have ever been anyone but me.” In the silence, a look of horrified curiosity took over her face. “How many people have you been?”

Aleph looked down. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now.”

Lazarus had drawn close again, as if she could not keep away. Aleph had intended to vent her outrage; but being so close woke a sharp, animal hunger in her. As yet, she had barely tasted Lazarus; she wanted to gorge like a glutton. Her anger seemed thin and empty.

“If only I could be like you,” Lazarus whispered. She put her fingers lightly on Aleph’s cheek, and this time Aleph did not draw away.

“What do you mean? You
will
be like me.”

“No, I mean free to be anyone.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t really want it.”

“But I
do
,” Lazarus said. “We all do, secretly. In our hearts.”

Aleph wondered if it were true. It was a new feeling to be envied by a human.

“Does that strike you as immoral?” Lazarus asked.

Aleph shook her head. “I don’t know what morality is.”

“Of course not. No more than a cloud or a number does. You are so free.”

“No,” Aleph said. “I lied to you. I’m not free. I can’t ever be free, as long as humans exist. Whatever they feel, I must feel. Whatever they are, I must be. I have no ideas, no emotions of my own. I am no better than all of them. I
am
all of them. All humanity, with their stinking prejudices and guilt.” She looked up. “At least you are not at their mercy.”

“Oh yes?” There was a sad, wise smile on Lazarus’ face. She gestured around the room. Aleph remembered it was a prison cell.

She caught Lazarus’ hand in her own. She felt a kinship with her, prisoners as they both were. “Listen, I have to warn you. Johanson gave me that tour for a reason. She wanted me to see what was in store for you. She’s going to put you up there, in one of those boxes. Soon, if I fail. She wants to do it now.”

An ordinary person would not have thought Lazarus reacted at all. But Aleph could feel the rush of stark panic under her skin. “What am I going to do, Aleph?” she said. Her voice sounded calm, but her blood was screaming in Aleph’s ears.

“Tell me something to keep her happy. We can buy time, at least.”

Lazarus’ eyes clouded over under their dark brows. “I can’t tell you. It’s the price of my freedom.”

“You will have no freedom if you don’t! Please, give me something.”

Lazarus turned her back and stood thinking for several moments. Then she looked back over her shoulder. “Let me show you something,” she said.

She went to the corner of the room farthest from the eye of the light. Kneeling, she used her knife to pry off a small false panel near the floor. With a mysterious smile, she gestured Aleph to come over.

Sitting cross-legged, Lazarus carefully laid out five tools in a semicircle. One by one she pointed to her treasures. “Razor. Wire. Cyanide. And this one is my favorite.” She picked up the small, antique handgun, survivor from an age when weapons were art. Its black surface shone with careful polishing. When she snapped open the cartridge chamber, it clicked with a well-oiled, satisfied sound.

Lazarus picked up three bullets, the last items in the line, and loaded the gun. She cradled it carefully in her hands, looking at it. “This is the one I’ll use, I think, if they ever come to take me. I sometimes imagine how it would be.”

Slowly, she turned the gun around till it faced her. Her eyes closed for a moment, as if to still her heart. Then, slowly, she lifted the gun to her forehead. As she pressed it between her eyebrows, her face took on a strange, rapt expression. She drew back the hammer.

Aleph watched, frozen, not daring to make a sound. But as she saw Lazarus’ finger tense on the trigger, a tiny protest escaped her. Lazarus’ eyes snapped open. She lowered the gun, uncocked it. “That’s how it would be,” she said.

Aleph closed her eyes, inexpressibly relieved. Lazarus put a hand on her shoulder.

“Would you be sorry if I did it?” Lazarus said.

“Yes. I would be sorry.”

“Listen, then. I’ll tell you this: the longevity formula is not a serum. It’s a virus. Just knowing that much is useless. But tell it to her; it will keep her guessing.”

“Thank you,” Aleph breathed.

That night, Aleph tried to reach Johanson on the terminal. She could get no live response. At last she typed her information in and sent it to a secure mailbox, labeled for her employer’s eyes only.

The next morning when she woke, the message light was blinking. Without bothering to dress, she sat down at the terminal, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and accessed the message.

So it’s a virus. Tell me something I didn’t know. Johanson.

Aleph glowered at the screen. Johanson had missed the point. It was not important whether she knew; Lazarus had thought she didn’t know.

As Aleph watched, a second message scrolled onto the screen.

I have decided you are unlikely to learn anything more of value. I am therefore terminating your contract. Be ready to return to Earth when the guard comes to fetch you.

A hundred arguments crowded Aleph’s brain. She hadn’t had a chance. Interrogations like this took time. Didn’t the old tyrant know that? The process had barely started, and yet there had been good progress. Furiously, she began pounding an impassioned reply into the keyboard. When it filled the screen she stopped, looked at it, and erased it without sending. She rose and paced across the room.

She could not let Johanson think it was mere personal desire that made her want to finish the job. She had to couch it in professional terms. And yet, desire throbbed hot inside her. A week was all she needed. A week to become fully individuated, to soak in Lazarus’ character, to experience it fully.