Bears Discover Fire

I drifted. I seemed to have a body again, although it was not in my control. For hours, centuries, eternities we drifted through a world as small as a coffin, yet never reached an end. At the still center of it all was a circle of stones.

I followed Sorel down toward them. Somebody—or something—was inside.

Waiting.

She passed through the stones toward the Other, pulling me with her. I pushed back; then pulled away, filled with terror. For I had touched stone. Nothing here was real and yet—I had touched stone. Suddenly I knew I was awake because everything was dark, only I could no longer see.

Beside me was her body; its dead hand clutching mine. I had never before awakened—retrocuted—before Sorel. I reached up with my left hand, fearfully, tentatively, until I felt the lid of my coffin just where I knew it would be. It was porcelain or steel, not stone. But cold as stone.

I tried to scream but there was no air. Before I could scream there was a shock, and I fell into another, a darker, darkness.

“What you felt was the roof of the C-T chamber,” DeCandyle was saying. “It enables you to remain in LAD space longer without damage to the home tissue. And with ultrasonic blood cooling, to cross directly to the Other Side.” It was the first time I had heard the term yet I knew immediately what he meant.

Someone was clutching my right hand; it was Sorel. She was still dead. I was lying on the gurney; it rocked on its wheels as I struggled to sit up.

I shuddered as I remembered. “Before I touched the lid, while I was still dead, I touched stone.”

DeCandyle went on: “Apparently there are realms in LAD space whose accessibility depends on residual electrical fields in the home tissue.” I waited for the click, which never came, and realized he was talking only to me.

“There is a magnetic polarity in the body that endures for several days after death. We want to find out what happens as the electrical field decays. The C-T chamber allows us to explore this without waiting on the actual mortification of the flesh.”

Mortification. “So there’s dead and then there’s deader.”

“Something like that. Let me drive you home.”

I was still holding Sorel’s hand. I pried my fingers loose.

I couldn’t sleep. The horror of the Gray Realm (as I was to call it in a painting) kept leaking back in. I felt like a man halfway up the Amazon, afraid to go on but afraid to turn back, because no matter what horrors lay ahead, he knows too well the horror that lies behind. The Devil’s Island of blindness.

I ached for Sorel. We blind are said to be connoisseurs of masturbation, perhaps because our imaginations are so practiced at summoning up images. Afterward, I turned on the lights and tried to paint. I always work in the light.

Painting is a collaboration between the artist and his materials. I know paint loves light; I figure canvas at least likes it.

But it was no good. I couldn’t work. It wasn’t till after dawn, amid the harsh din of the awakening birds, that I realized what was bothering me.

I was jealous.

My ex came by a day early (I thought) to drop off some microwavables. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I was trying to call you all day.”

“I was at the university on Monday, as usual,” I said.

“I’m talking about Tuesday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Today is Thursday; you’ve lost a day. Anyway, we struck paydirt with your other name. Noroguchi was the real thing, a tenured professor at Berkeley, in the medical school, no less. That is, until he was murdered.”

I could hear her flipping through my canvases, waiting for me to respond. I could imagine her half-smile.

“Don’t you want to know who murdered him?”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Philip DeCandyle.”

“Ray, I always said you should have been a cop,” she said. “You take the fun out of everything. Manslaughter. Plea-bargained down from Murder Two. Served six years at San Rafael. The creepy one was an accessory but she never went to jail.”

“I thought you said they were both creepy.”

“She’s creepier. Did you know her tits are different sizes? Don’t answer that. Did you know you have a blank canvas here in the finished pile?”

“It belongs there,” I said. “It’s called ‘The Other Side.’”

On Monday, it was DeCandyle who picked me up in the Honda. “Where’s Sorel?” I asked. I had to know. Even if she was dead I wanted to be with her.

“She’s okay. She’s waiting for us at the lab.”

“I’m dying to see her,” I said. I didn’t expect DeCandyle to laugh and he didn’t.

He drove maddeningly slowly. I missed Sorel’s breathtaking speed. I asked him to tell me about Noroguchi.

“Dr. Noroguchi died during an insertion; that is, failed to retrocute. I was blamed. But I get the distinct feeling you’ve heard the whole story.”

“And he’s still there.”

“Where else?

“But why him? Millions of people are dead but we don’t see them.”

“You’ve seen Edwin?” DeCandyle stopped and there was a scream of brakes as someone almost hit us from behind. He stepped on the gas. “We don’t know why,” he said. “Apparently the connection persists when it’s strong enough. He and Emma were partners on many insertions. Too many. Emma’s convinced that it’s possible to penetrate deep enough to find him.”

“To bring him back?”

“Of course not. He’s dead. Edwin always insisted on going deeper and deeper even though we didn’t have the C-T chamber then. It’s Emma’s obsession now. If anything, she’s worse than him; than he was.”

“Were they—”

“Were they lovers?” It wasn’t what I was going to ask, but it was what I wanted to know.

“Toward the end, they were lovers,” he said. He laughed; a bitter little laugh. “I don’t think they knew I knew.”

When we got to the institute I heard rhythmic shouts and the unfamiliar crunch of gravel.

“We’ll have to enter through the back,” DeCandyle said. “We have demonstrators out front. A local preacher has been telling the natives that we are trying to duplicate the Resurrection in the laboratory.”

“They always get it backward,” I said.

We entered through a side door, directly into the lab. I sat on the gurney waiting to hear the swish of Sorel’s nylon jumpsuit between her legs. Instead I heard the suss of rubber tires and the faint ringing of spokes.

“You’re in a wheelchair?”

“Temporarily,” she said.

“Thrombophlebitis,” said DeCandyle. “The blood clots when it pools in the veins for too long. But don’t worry; the C-T chamber diffusion fluid now contains a blood thinner.”

We lay down together, side by side. My hand found the glove, which was between us. Was the solution getting old? There was a funny smell. Sorel’s hand found mine and our fingers met in their familiar lascivious fond embrace, except—

She was missing a finger. Two.

Stumps.

My hand froze, wanting to pull away; the handbasket started gurgling and we were rolled forward, then