Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

Time doubled back on Bruno for a moment; he recalled the Sabadell-Andorra event, ninety-two seconds of explosive shaking that had toppled trees and structures throughout the Ter valley. There’d been so much fear, so much damage, so much injury and death, a whole population battered out of its smug, suburban complacency. He remembered his neighbors standing on broken alley pavement, bitterly arguing and complaining about this and that crack in their house’s foundation until a man from across the street—whose name they had never known—walked over and handed them a peach.

“Bruised,” he said. “Won’t last an hour. Better eat it quick.” And then he’d walked back to his own house, a pile of shattered brick, to continue shoveling for anything salvageable. Then his neighbors had noticed Bruno looking at them, and had turned away with a funny kind of shame or guilt in their faces. Guilt at having survived. Bruno, overcome with quiet, unfocused affection, forgave them for it immediately.

That was how it had gone: the ones who lost everything, whose lives were separated completely from the material possessions that had seemed to define them, were the ones who somehow managed to take it in stride. Himself included, in a way, although it took some time to realize that Enzo and Bernice were not disgraced or somehow forgotten by his pursuit of happiness. That had been a terrible year—being a fifteen-year-old University student without parents, without a home—but by the following spring it had begun to seem like they’d simply stepped back, giving him the room he needed to grow.

He doubted there would ever be another disaster of comparable scale, on Earth or anywhere else—the Queendom was simply too safe a place for that. But perhaps, one way or another, there’d always be this scene: a man surveying the ruins of his home with sudden, passionate equanimity.

“You should have seen it,” Marlon said again, now with pride. He raised an arm to point. “I had olive trees over there. All down through here was running water and marble walls. Actual marble; I had it shipped up from Earth.”

“We’ll rebuild it,” Tamra promised, laying a purple-gloved hand on Marlon’s shoulder. “I’ll send my finest architect.”

Marlon managed a laugh that was only partly hollow. “There are no backups, Majesty—no complete record of the structure anywhere. Some photographs were published in my last biography, but that’s all. I didn’t want it duplicated, you see. Imitated, perhaps, but never duplicated. Even I don’t remember every detail. Ah, damn it, I’ll miss this place.”

And then his eyes misted with tears, and Bruno suddenly remembered that from the earthquake as well. Equanimity could be a fragile thing.

“We’ll build something different, then,” Tamra said gently.

“Yes. I suppose we will.”

Tamra’s hand still rested on Marlon’s thick shoulder padding; he probably couldn’t feel it, but certainly he could see it in his rearview mirrors. He knew it was there, and indeed something seemed to pass between the two of them, using that arm as a conduit. Bruno was uncomfortably reminded that Marlon Sykes had been Philander before him, and had, cumulatively, spent decades longer in Tamra’s presence than Bruno ever had.

“Come,” Bruno said softly, bending close to little Vivian as if to whisper in her ear. “Let’s, ah, examine the area, the two of us.”

One can’t whisper over an open frequency, though, not to one person. Marlon and Tamra both looked sharply at him, annoyed about something. Well, humph, what was he supposed to do? It seemed like a private moment, one they were certainly both entitled to, but was he to pretend he didn’t exist? To ignore their business here and stand around quietly until they were finished?

“Switch to Police Five,” Vivian said, in a tone that echoed Bruno’s murmur but was simultaneously commanding and self-conscious, as if she were covering or apologizing for a mistake he’d made.

“Excuse me?”

“The channel. We’re on Police One right now. The knob is here .” She jabbed a gauntleted finger at his forearm.

“Ah, I see.” Once they’d completed the switch and walked a few paces away he added, “That wasn’t very grown-up of you.”

“Well, I never said I was grown up, did I?”

“Tamra seems to believe it.”

Wood and marble chips crunched beneath their feet, trapped between boot soles and deck plates drawn together by the spacesuits’ safety grapples. They were strolling along a darkened… avenue, he supposed, their head- and hand-lights illuminating jagged stubs of building on one side and, on the other, the shattered remains of a canal, ice crystals glittering along what remained of its sides and bottom. Above, a pair of evidence technicians drifted by, their own lamps setting aglow the fragments of column and slab that spun slowly through the hanging dust.

“Tamra is benevolent,” Vivian said, “and inclined to see strengths. She’s very dear to me—I remember that much— but I’m not sure I’m quite the person she used to know.”

“Er, I’m sure they’ll find your full pattern eventually.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed, “but I’ve lived that life already— her life, the older me. I remember a lot about her. If they did find and reinstantiate that pattern, I’d feel very close—very, um, empathetic—but whether I’d want to be her, to be recon-verged with her, I’m not so sure. Nobody has really asked me that.”

“Oh. I see.”

Vivian’s tone became sharp. “Do you? I don’t see how. People act like this is some kind of unfortunate setback for me. They act like they understand how hard it is for me right now, which they couldn’t possibly.”

“Hmm, well.” Bruno wished he could pinch his chin. “We all have our problems, I fear. I don’t suppose anyone understands the ones that other people have, but it shouldn’t stop them from trying. They know what a problem feels like, anyway. Your police do seem to understand a bit, to be making allowances for you. Even I, an outsider, can see how highly they think of you.”

“Or of her,” she said, making a face. When they’d crunched along a few paces more, she turned and asked him, “So what’s your problem? You’re rich; you own your own planet far, far away; and you once saved the entire Queendom from calamity. What makes you think you know the first thing about people’s troubles?”

“Brat,” he said to her, not unkindly. “If you were an adult, you wouldn’t ask a question like that. I get lonely sometimes. Often. It’s my wealth and my fame, far more than distance, that isolate me. People always seem to expect something of me, some wisdom or eloquence or leadership I’ve never known how to provide. I used to study history, looking for an archetypal figure to emulate when these occasions arose. A tycoon? A philosopher? A military conqueror? I even tried to dress the part, to look historical. But one day, I finally realized how absurd that was. There wasn’t anyone to emulate; civilization had changed too much, and human beings along with it. Changed because of me, I mean, because of things that I’d done. There were no other Declarant-Philander shatterers of worlds, certainly no immortal ones. No other men like me, ever. So really, I’m the archetype for future histories to deconstruct, and I fear that’s a lot of responsibility for one man to bear. Really, a lot.”

They’d stopped walking, and behind the dome of her helmet Vivian pursed her lips and considered his words for several long seconds. “You’re a megalomaniac,” she said finally.

He burst out laughing. “Ho! From the mouths of babes. Indeed, I do think highly of myself. But others do, as well, and not in quite the right way. They admire—too well!—a person who isn’t really me.”