The Death of Cassandra Quebec (4 page)

I paused by the door.
"Your father still uses–" I began.

She looked up and
stared at me through her tears. "After every session with the
Nigerian and me," she whispered. "He didn't want to remember how
much he enjoyed cutting us up..."

I could barely make
out her words. She seemed traumatised, present only in body. Her
eyes stared through me.

Then I saw the
mem-erase crown beside her on the bed.

"Corrinda..."

"I had to!" she said.
"I had to know what it was that made him do these things. I knew he
was ill, but I didn't know
why
." She struggled into a
sitting position, picked up the crown and held it out to me. "So I
took this and accessed his past."

I accepted the crown.
The access slide was set at its very first programme. I looked at
her.

"I replayed his memory
of the death of my mother." She began to cry. "Take it! Access it
for yourself!"

From another part of
the dome I heard Maltravers, calling his daughter. Corrinda looked
up at me and smiled a terrible smile. I quickly kissed her and
hurried from the room, at once eager to learn the reason for
Corrinda's horror and yet dreading what I might find. I left the
dome as dawn touched the desert sky. The party was breaking up, the
revellers leaving and making their way around the curve of the
oasis.

In my own dome I
poured myself a stiff drink, and then another. I sat down, picked
up the mem-erase crown and re-checked the setting. I placed the
crown on my head, connected the probes and pushed the slide to
activate the programme.

~

Instantly, I was inside
his head. I saw what Maltravers had seen that day twenty years ago,
experienced everything he'd heard and said. But his thoughts, as
they were not my own, remained in the background, blurred and
indistinct, full of nebulous anger.

He was in the studio,
facing his wife – oh, so much like Corrinda! – across a floor
littered with slabs of crystal, frames and crystal-cutters. The
Pterosaur, hunched and menacing, regarded him down the length of
its scythe-like bill.

Cassandra stood in
shirt-sleeves next to her fused crystal, sunlight falling on her
golden hair. "I don't understand your objection," she was saying.
"The crystal will show my
love
for you. I want you to
collaborate–"

"I want no part of it.
It's your crystal, not mine."

"But you're part of
me. How can the crystal be anything other than
both
of us?"
She stared at him. "Are you frightened? Is that it, Nathaniel? You
don't want the world to see you as you really are."

Maltravers turned at a
sound from the door, and the nurse hurried away to tend the crying
baby before he could find the words to censure her.

He slammed the door
and turned to his wife.

"How can you talk of
love like that, after what you've been doing?"

Cassandra stared at
him, stricken. "What do you mean?" It was barely a whisper.

Maltravers tried to
laugh, but the sound he made was desperate. "How did you think you
could keep it from me?"

She was staring at
him, shaking her head.

"How long has it been
going on? Before we came here?"

Cassandra was silent
for a second, then said, "Two days – no more. I met her here. But
she means nothing to me."

(Paralysed, on the
edge of consciousness, I screamed.)

"Then why have an
affair with her?" Maltravers cried. "It isn't even as if... as if
she's a good artist. Christ, the woman's third-rate. She isn't even
as good as me!"

(I wanted to hit the
release stud, retreat into the safety of ignorance; but some other
part of me, fascinated and appalled by this vision of the past,
would not allow me so easy an exit.)

"Oh, Eva's much better
than you, Nathaniel. That's what attracted me – her talent. But,
please believe me – I don't love her. It was only a physical thing,
an infatuation."

Maltravers' anger
welled; I could feel it massing in my head like a thundercloud.

"Then if you think
she's so good, why don't you stay with her!"

The Pterosaur hopped
from foot to foot in agitation. At any second, I thought, it would
swoop across the room and tear Quebec to shreds.

"Because I love you!"
Cassandra yelled through her tears.

"I don't want your
love – I want your respect for the artist I am."

She broke; the walls
of her reserve crumbled and she was no longer able to lie. She bent
almost double and screamed at him.

"But, Nathaniel –
you are no artist!
"

His anger exploded,
rocking me.

I knew, then, what was
about to happen. I suddenly understood the reason for Corrinda's
terrible smile.

The Pterosaur remained
on its perch.

Maltravers rushed at
his wife.

He lifted a
crystal-cutter and in a blind rage attacked, slashed at her again
and again as she stood before him and offered no resistance.

(I tried to shut out
the vision as Cassandra Quebec was transformed before my eyes into
a lacerated carcass – but the image played on in my head.)

Then Maltravers ceased
his attack and Cassandra slipped to the floor, and realising what
he'd done he fell to his knees, and his remorse swamped me. He saw
the crystal, and something – perhaps some insane idea that this was
the only way to immortalise his wife
and
her talent – moved
him to lift her and lay her to rest on the slab of crystal. She
died and gave her dying to the world, and Maltravers was overcome
with a weight of guilt and regret that I was slowly coming to
realise was my burden also.

I hit the release,
tore the crown from my head and sat staring through the dome,
weeping at the new order of reality revealed to me. Then I realised
what day it was – the twentieth anniversary of Cassandra Quebec's
passing – and something, some vague and disturbing premonition,
reminded me of Nathaniel Maltravers' obsession with the symmetry of
art. I could see, across the oasis in Maltravers' studio, the evil
flapping form of the Pterosaur. I pulled myself upright and
staggered from the lounge.

I crossed the lawn in
a daze of disbelief. I seemed to take an age to reach Maltravers'
studio, aware of the terrible fact that my affair with Cassandra
Quebec had brought tragedy upon two generations.

Just as I, denied the
emotion of grief by my use of mem-erase all those years ago, had
been brought here by my sub-conscious for motives of its own – to
empathise with Quebec's death on its anniversary, to fall in love
again with her through the medium of her daughter? – Maltravers too
had been delivered here by his subconscious for its own sinister
reasons. He hated women and artists and – as Corrinda happened to
be both, as well as a substitute figure for his wife - what greater
act of artistic symmetry might there be than a
second
celebrated Nathaniel Maltravers' crystal, twenty years on?

I came to the scimitar
support of Maltravers' dome and, sobbing with desperation, hauled
open the door. I ran inside and up the escalator, numbed by the
knowledge of what I might find.

I was crossing the
lounge when I heard Corrinda's scream from the direction of the
studio, and my relief that she was still alive was tempered by the
knowledge that soon, if her father had his way, she would not be. I
heard Maltravers' curse, and the din of things being overturned
from within the room. I reached the communicating door and tried to
yank it open – but it was locked. Corrinda yelled my name, pleading
with me to hurry, and I called in return that I was coming. Through
the frosted glass I could make out two indistinct figures circling
each other with extreme wariness, and above them the Pterosaur in
flight.

I scanned the lounge
for something with which to smash the door when I heard another
cry: Maltravers, this time – though whether in victory or defeat I
could not tell. Then silence. I hefted a carved statue, pitched it
through the glass and stepped in after it.

The scene that greeted
my eyes was a grotesque tableau, the aftermath of tragic events
played out to their conclusion. Maltravers lay on his back on a
slab of crystal, his throat slit and his torso, from gullet to
abdomen, opened to his spine. Beside him, Corrinda braced herself
against the faceted crystal, as if in exhaustion or in silent
prayer.

Still gripping the
crystal-cutter, she stared at me with eyes burning like
emeralds.

"He attacked me," she
whispered. "He had it all planned, the crystal set up..."

Only then did I notice
the rip in her one-piece and

the bloody gash across
her stomach. She stared at the cutter as if seeing it for the first
time, then dropped it and reached out to me. "Eva..."

"After all I've done?"
I said.

"I
need
you!"

As I took her in my
arms, the Pterosaur swooped through the air, alighted on
Maltravers' corpse and began picking at the bloody remains.

Corrinda looked at me
and, together, we reached out to the crystal and experienced
Maltravers' death. We shared his initial shock at the realisation
of his end, and then his profound relief that his jealousy and
guilt were drawing to a close. We experienced his macabre
satisfaction in the symmetry – not quite that which he had planned
– that the crystal would come to represent.

Then, in a subtle
underlay of emotion, I became aware of Corrinda's contribution to
the crystal. I felt her joy that at last she was free, her delight
in the irony of creating a work of art at her father's expense.

~

I came to Sapphire
Oasis in search of experience, or so I thought at the time.

Eric Brown
has
won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short fiction
and has published forty books and over a hundred stories. His
latest books include the novel
The Kings of Eternity
and the
children's book
A Monster Ate My Marmite
. His work has been
translated into sixteen languages and he writes a monthly science
fiction review column for the
Guardian
. He lives near
Cambridge, England, with his wife and daughter. His website can be
found at:
www.ericbrownsf.co.uk

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