Stephen Baxter - Transcendent

“And what do you think?”

She folded her hands neatly in her sleeves. “There are older ideas which may help. Theologians have a long history of distinguishing between the form of an object and its substance, its true nature. It’s an analysis that goes back to Aristotle, of course. The Church subsumed his philosophy to find a way to think about the Eucharist.”

“The Holy Communion.”

“Yes, the host that is at once a piece of bread, and at the same time the flesh of Christ. Morag’s remarkable new body may have something of the qualities of Christ’s resurrected body — indeed, the bodies promised to us all on resurrection. It is a body, but something more. The resurrected body is impassible, beyond pain, agile, so that you move as you like, and it has subtility, so it is totally subject to the desires of the soul. And in its glory, it shines like the sun.”

All this was so much ancient bullshit to me. But I thought of Morag’s body in the dark of the hotel room, shining with a warm light of its own. “Oh, hell, Rosa. Do you believe any of this stuff?”

“Not everybody who lived before the age of enlightenment was a fool, you know. Whatever is going on here, whatever her origin — what if Morag is not the first manifestation of her kind? If there have been earlier Morags in history, the thinkers of the day will have tried to explain her away in the language of the time, in concepts alien to us. But their analysis may record some imperfectly understood aspect of the truth.”

This was overwhelming me. Exhausted, still in pain, I shook my head.

Rosa was watching me. “I don’t think it’s the nature of Morag’s transmogrified body that is troubling you, though. Is it, Michael? You have her back,” she said gently. “And it isn’t as you imagined.”

It was hard for me to answer this, for I hadn’t yet admitted it to myself, and Morag and I had come nowhere near talking it through. But she was right. “We can’t talk,” I said. “Not really. Oh, we can talk about our old lives, what happened to us, what we shared before she, well, died. But even that is odd. For her it’s recent; for me it’s seventeen years ago. Even the memories don’t feel the same anymore. Then there are the trivial things, the little things. We trip up all the time. The world has moved on while she was away, and I lived through it all. But I have to explain everything, like she’s a tourist from some other place.”

Rosa said, “She was taken out of the world, but the world kept turning. And the more the years have passed, the more has happened that she simply did not see, did not share with you.”

“The dead get deader,” I said somberly. “I feel ashamed that I can’t—”

“That you can’t love her? Don’t be ashamed, Michael. You didn’t ask for this situation; you may be in a situation nobody has ever had to face before. No wonder your emotions are all over the place. But you’re doing your best, for everybody, including Morag. Just as you always do. I have faith in you, you know.”

“Thank you.”

Rosa watched me carefully. “What about your work, Michael? Is all this getting in the way?”

Of course it was. I glanced at the clock. Not yet five-thirty, but I knew I had a breakfast appointment at seven A.M.

I was working hard, because I believed in it all. Since the bombing, as I had immersed myself in the hydrate project, I had thought harder than I had ever before about the context of my life, the meaning of my work. I had discovered conviction in myself, for the first time since I was a kid, before cynicism knocked it all out of me. We had to do this; it was as simple as that. And I was central to it all.

“Gea keeps telling me she believes I am a fulcrum of history,” I said. “ Me. And you’ve said the same might be true. Even George said it. Now I’ve started to believe it, to believe my own myth. Is that crazy?”

“Not necessarily. But Morag is getting in your way.”

“I guess so.”

“The restoration of a lost wife is a fantasy of redemption. I daresay it was your fantasy. But has it made you happier?”

I thought that over. “Even if you give me Morag back, you can’t wash it all away. The memories of her death. All that suffering, all that pain. It’s as if it still exists, out there somewhere, beyond reach… Does that make sense?”

“And what do you fear most?”

“That I will come to hate her,” I said honestly. “I don’t think I could bear that.”

She straightened up, purposeful. “We don’t know how she got here. We don’t know the meaning behind your visitations, this strange reincarnation. We don’t know who is meddling with your life in this way, or why. But we must take control of the situation, so that, with or without Morag, you can move on. I think it’s time we bring it to a head.”

“Bring it to a head? How?”

I would never in a thousand years have guessed the word she used next.

“Exorcism.”

They sat in their translucent-walled tent, beneath the towering cathedral.

“I still have doubts about the Redemption, Leropa.”

“I know. The Transcendence knows. You have become something of a focus, Alia, for internal debate.”

“If you’re going to say that I’m not fit to question the wisdom of an infinite entity — a being that is to me as I am to an individual cell of my body—”

“I wouldn’t dream of saying any such thing,” Leropa murmured. “Your humanity is the point of the exercise, Alia. The Transcendence loves you as you are. And the Transcendence’s love for you means that it knows you — it shares your doubts. You are far more important than you know.”

“You already said the Transcendence loves me,” Alia said dully. “Several times.” It seemed to mean nothing. Perhaps the Transcendence was too large to know what love truly was. Perhaps the finitude of humanity was part of what made love work; perhaps the need to devote such a large fraction of your own limited life to others made love precious in the first place. Or perhaps, she thought guiltily, perhaps it was simply immature, emotionally. Powerful it might be, but it was very young.

And if the Transcendence didn’t understand love, could it ever understand the logic of Redemption?

“Even the Restoration isn’t enough,” whispered Alia. “How can it be? Just to be made alive again — it simply isn’t enough. Leropa, can’t you see that? Michael Poole loved Morag. His Morag, who died. And his love for his Morag, in the end, encompassed her death. His loss deepened his love, enriched it. That is the nature of life in a universe of mortals. If you crudely reverse her death, simply bring her back, then you are taking her out of her context of history. How did Michael Poole put it?…”

“The dead get deader,” Drea said bleakly.

“And you can never put that right.” Alia took a deep breath; this was the heart of it, though she scarcely knew how to express it. “ The Restoration is futile, as futile as all the watching was, the Witnessing, even the Hypostatic Union. Because even if you allow Morag Poole to survive the suffering of her childbirth, that particle of suffering still exists, out there in a wider universe of possibility.”

Leropa stared at Alia for long heartbeats. For the first time Alia detected hostility in her gaze. “You reject the Restoration,” Leropa said. “But I wonder how you would feel if those you have lost were Restored to you.”

A shadow moved on the wall of the hut — a human form, dimly seen, perhaps a woman with an infant in her arms. She walked uncertainly, as if lost. Drea’s eyes widened, and she clutched at Alia.