Robert Wilson - The Chronoliths

She put the tips of her fingers together. “Ashlee, tell me how you define the word ‘monument.’”

“Well,” Ash said tentatively, “it’s a thing, a structure, like a building. It’s, you know, architecture.”

“So how is it different from a house or a temple?”

“I guess you don’t use a monument, the way you use a house or a church. It just sort of stands there announcing itself.”

“But it does have a purpose, right? The way a house has a purpose?”

“I don’t know if I would say it’s useful… but I guess it serves a purpose. Just not a very practical one.”

“Exactly. It’s a structure with a purpose, but the purpose isn’t practical, it’s spiritual… or at least symbolic. It announces power and preeminence or it commemorates some communal event. It’s a physical structure but all its meaning, all its utility, is invested in it by the human mind.”

“Including the Chronoliths?”

“That’s the point. As a destructive weapon, a Chronolith is relatively trivial. By itself, it achieves nothing in particular. It’s an inert object. All its significance lies in the realm of meaning and interpretation. And that’s where the battle is, Ashlee.” She tapped her forehead. “All the strangest architecture is right up here. Nothing in the physical world compares to the monuments and the cathedrals we build inside our own skulls. Some of that architecture is simple and true and some of it is baroque and some of it is beautiful and some of it is ugly and perilously unsound. But that architecture matters more than any other kind, because we make the future out of it. History is just a fossil record of what men and women construct out of the contents of their minds. You understand? And the genius of Kuin has nothing to do with the Chronoliths; the Chronoliths are just technology, just people making nature jump through hoops. The genius of Kuin is that he’s using them to colonize the world of the mind, to build his own architecture directly into our heads.”

“He makes people believe in him.”

“In him, in his power, in his glory, in his benevolence. But above all in his inevitability . And that’s what I want to change. Because nothing about Kuin is inevitable, absolutely nothing. We build Kuin every day, we manufacture him out of our hopes and fears. He belongs to us. He’s a shadow we’re all casting.”

This in itself was nothing new. The politics of expectation had even been debated in the press. But something about this speech made the hairs on my arms stand erect. The degree of her conviction, her casual eloquence. But I think it was more. I think I understood for the first time that Sue had declared a private and very personal war on Kuin. More: that she believed she was at the very center of the conflict now — anointed by the tau turbulence, promoted directly into the Godhead.

I met Kaitlin for a Sunday dinner out, strictly fast food, this representing the last of the weekend’s windfall money.

Kait came down from the apartment over Whit’s garage looking brave but inconsolable. She had passed her first couple of nights without David, and it showed. Her eyes were shadowed, her complexion sallow for lack of sleep. The smile she gave me was almost furtive, as if she had no business smiling while David was at war.

We shared beanpaste sandwiches at a once-brightly-colored but lately scabrous People’s Kitchen. Kait knew that Sue Chopra and Ray Mosley were in town and we talked a while about that, but Kait was plainly not much interested in what she called “the old days.” She had been troubled by nightmares, she said. In her dreams she was back in Portillo, but this time with David, and David was in some mortal danger from which Kait could not rescue him. She was knee-deep in sand, in the dream, the Kuin of Portillo looming over her, nearly alive, gnarled and malevolent.

I listened patiently and let her wind down. The dream wasn’t difficult to interpret. Finally I said, “Have you heard from David?”

“A phone call after his bus got into Little Rock. Nothing since then. But I guess boot camp keeps you busy.”

I guessed it did. Then I asked how her mother and Whit were dealing with it.

“Mom is a help. As for Whit—” She fluttered her hand. “You know how he is. He doesn’t approve of the war and sometimes he acts like David is personally responsible for it — as if he had a choice about the draft notice. With Whit it’s all big issues, there’s no people involved, except as obstacles or bad examples.”

“I’m not sure the war is doing any good either, Kait. If David had wanted to duck the draft, I would have helped him dig a hole.”

She smiled sadly. “I know. David knew that, too. The odd thing is that Whit wouldn’t hear of it. He doesn’t like the war but he couldn’t sanction breaking the law, putting the family in legal jeopardy and all that crap. The thing is, David figured Whit would probably inform on him if he tried to evade the conscription drive.”

“You think that’s true?”

She hesitated. “I don’t hate Whit…”

“I know.”

“But yes, I think he might be capable of that.”

It was perhaps not surprising that she suffered from nightmares.

I said, “Janice must be around the house more since her job evaporated.”

“She is, and it’s a help. I know she misses David too. But she doesn’t talk about the war, or Kuin, or Whit’s opinions. That’s strictly forbidden territory.”

Janice’s loyalty to her second husband was remarkable and probably admirable, though I had a hard time seeing it that way. When does loyalty become martyrdom, and just how dangerous was Whitman Delahunt? But I couldn’t ask Kait these questions.

Kait couldn’t answer them, any more than I could.

By the time I got home Ashlee had already gone to bed. Sue and Ray were awake at the kitchen table, talking in low tones over a map of the western states. Ray clammed up when I passed through, but Sue invited me to sit down and join them. I declined politely, much to Ray’s relief, and instead joined Ashlee, who was curled up on her left side with the sheet tangled at her feet and a night breeze raising goosebumps on the slope of her thigh.

Should I feel guilty because in the end I hadn’t sought or achieved a private martyrdom — like Janice, bound to Whit by her sense of duty; like David, aimed at China like a bullet and about as disposable; or like my father, for that matter, who had justified his life as a martyrdom? (I was with her, Scotty.)

When I rolled into bed Ashlee stirred and mumbled and pressed herself against me, warm in the cool of the night.

I tried to imagine martyrdom running backward like a broken clock. How sweet to abdicate divinity, to climb down from the cross, to travel from transfiguration to simple wisdom and arrive at last at innocence.

Hitch came into town missing two fingers from his left hand and walking with a limp. It seemed to me he didn’t smile as readily as he used to, either, though he smiled at Sue and gave me an appraising look that was friendly enough. Certainly he did not make Ashlee smile.

Ashlee worked at the city water-treatment plant, writing the status reports required by state and federal regulations and staffing an Accounts Receivable desk for the financial manager. She came home tired and she nearly fainted at the sight of Hitch Paley, even though Hitch was dressed in a respectable suit and had even attempted a necktie. Hitch remained a bad memory for Ashlee — Hitch had been with her when she lost Adam.

She did not, of course, recognize former FBI desk man Morris Torrance, now even balder than Ray Mosely, who had also arrived in the big utility van parked out front. I attempted an introduction, but Ashlee said in a flat tone, “We can’t sleep all these people, Scott. Not even for a night.”