Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

“Finding such love can be as bad, I fear,” Bruno said morosely. His chin was resting on his hand. “Perfect love, yes: it bends and compels you, it crowds out every other passion. Love is sublime, truly, a precious gift. But also, alas, one of God’s little pranks. It’s naive of you to confuse love and happiness, as if they were somehow the same thing. In fact love, once found, is more akin to gravity: too strong, too close, and it will crush you. Unless you’re careful, always.”

She twirled, absently, one of her platinum-colored braids. “There are so many theories about why you and Tamra split up.”

“Theories, humph.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. “It couldn’t be simpler: we fought too much. We did come from opposite sides of the Earth, after all. The antipodes, as she used to say. Love does nothing about the friction of misunderstanding; if anything, it exacerbates the problem. And thirty years really is a long time to spend with one person. Back then it seemed like a lifetime, but of course that was a foolish perception. We were young, and the lives ahead of us so long.”

“I didn’t know you fought,” Deliah said, surprised. “You always looked so happy together.”

“Didn’t we?” Bruno agreed. “But there was just so much baggage there. My family wasn’t wealthy—a restaurateur and a small-time politician—but at University, after the earthquake, I started to have some money. Far more than any teenage orphan should have, really, and by the time I was thirty, even before Tamra’s lawyers got behind me, it had mushroomed beyond all sense. My reaction was predictable: an excess of excess. Drugs, women, miniature planets… It was just a phase, but I was still in it when she summoned me to court. She was so vulnerable—I mean, her parents had just died, one right after the other, and like me she’d been thrust into a very public role which small-town life had never groomed her for. I was older, and I’d been through all that, and she turned to me in, just, absolute desperation. I suppose I took advantage.”

Seeing Deliah’s querying look, he sighed and expanded, “It was two or three years before she had the courage to demand my fidelity. I found it difficult to refuse a beautiful woman, and they were all so beautiful, so drawn to that complex of youth and wealth and power… I had no charm, no guile, no ‘sizzle,’ as we used to say back then. But I had brains and money, as well as Tamra herself: I was that forbidden morsel from the Queen’s private garden. But none of those ladies were ever worth the pain they caused. It makes me physically ill to think of it now.”

“But you’re the one who left,” Deliah said, looking as if she was struggling to comprehend. Bruno, who’d been summarily classified and pigeonholed and speculated about for as long as he cared to remember, was flattered that anyone would actually struggle to comprehend him.

“You’re a good friend,” he said, nodding. “I’ve never talked about this. It feels good to get it off my chest. Yes, I was the one who left. By then I’d been faithful and accommodating for two decades, but my work had been suffering for it. And I drank too much. I always drank too much.”

“Alcohol?”

“Indeed. Crude, I know, and I always expected the media to expose me for it. But like the womanizing, it was something they just didn’t want to find out about. I never understood that. I never understood much of anything back then, and the arc defm was beckoning, and I had this whole planet to retreat to. So I left, yes. Some would call it an escape; some would say I ran from my problems instead of solving them, but that too is naive. In solitude, I found the clarity I needed. My work flourished, my vices fell away like childhood. I’m a better person today; I truly am. Or a bigger fool, perhaps, but that’s nearly as good.”

“But we miss you, Bruno. Everyone misses you. There’s never been another Philander, not really.”

“Oh, pish. I was always an embarrassment. Like that time on Maxwell Monies, when I threw up at the banquet table. Drinking again, after all those years. Throwing money around, insulting the hostess… What a wretched night!”

“That was embarrassing,” Deliah admitted, cracking a doleful half smile. “You had toilet paper on your shoe, also. And that silly hat of yours was in fashion for all of about three months. But we followed you up that mountain, Bruno. All of us did.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You were there?”

“Yeah, that was right after my laureacy. I took over the Ministry of Grapples only a few years afterward, from this really pleasant man who wound up doing cryoastronomy in Russia. Talk about your happy demotions! But, I mean, yes, I was there. And you were brilliant, you really were. You probably are a terrible manager, but you’re also the sort who makes footsteps other people want to follow in, constantly—it’s your default state.”

Bruno had nothing to say to that.

She pressed. “Bruno, is hiding away on your private planet really the best thing you could be doing? I don’t personally need an arc defm —I’m not sure anyone does. And, seriously, we do miss you.”

“The planet’s gone,” he told her. “Destroyed. Used up.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps it served its purpose.”

“Tamra misses you,” she added thoughtfully.

“We have forever,” he said, and shrugged again. But that felt shallow, unjust. “I miss her, too. I wish I’d been better for her.”

Deliah stared at him for several seconds, her eyes growing sad.

“We all make mistakes. Marlon was one of mine, I guess. But I think you’re wrong about him, Bruno. I… God, I’d like to think I’m not that stupid.”

Bruno should have offered some words of comfort for that, some reassurance. He wanted to reassure her, this good friend he hadn’t really known he had. But what could he say? That it was all right? That she’d failed to recognize the monster because she had no monster in herself? He couldn’t bring himself to say that; the lapse was inexcusable. Not only on her part, but on his, on everyone’s.

Seeing that he wasn’t going to answer, Deliah turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he offered. It was the best he could do.

In times of distress, Bruno retreated into his work. This day was no exception. And he could use the work, too, because in retrospect there were all kinds of things wrong with the ertial shield and the design of the Sabadell-Andorra , and for clarity’s sake he wanted to know exactly where he and Muddy had gone wrong. It wasn’t a vain undertaking—a detailed understanding of the ship’s flaws might well save their lives in the coming hours.

“I’m very happy to be rescued,” Deliah said after a while. Her tone was more serious now, and Bruno turned to face her. “From the… depths of my heart I thank you for that. But I was this close.” She held up two fingers, pinching the air between them. “Death and I were on speaking terms. He’d taken three good people right in front of me, and afterward I had a lot of time to contemplate, and not much else to do. People don’t have that experience anymore, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it as recreation or any such thing. But still it’s a very purifying thing, to finally look at your life from the outside. And to be reborn afterwards!

“Maybe it’s like your decades of solitude, only more compressed, and more urgent. I don’t think I can go back to being the same person I was. Or I could , maybe, but what a waste it would be! Of hard-won insight. This whole Laureate-Director thing has been very interesting—I’ve learned a lot about so many different things—but am I supposed to do it forever” ? Or until someone better comes along and replaces me, I guess, but even that… I’m more person than that. Every person is so much more than the paths they’ve taken, those tew particular paths we choose on the spur of the moment, with no information. So much of it is mistakes.