Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall

She must have seen the hesitation in my face. “Well then,” she said. “Your choice is obvious.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is.” And I pushed past her toward the elevator.

Again she stood before me. Herringbones chased each other down her cheeks, and I thought surely she would disappear at last; but she regained control. “They’ll be watching for me,” she said. “But if I swarmed again, I might get out. And this time go to Africa, and try to find a place to grow my soul back. If I did that, and came back to you in, say, another twenty years, would you—” Her image flickered, and her mouth moved silently. Static invaded her eyes.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

And if I could, I would freeze that instant forever. But it’s no use. I can trap the young rose in the hologram, but the rose is long since dust. And what I most want to conceal from you, you’ve always known:

That I went up into the world and left her there, in the prison camp beneath the ocean, with the ruined mind of the new Iscariot and the body of the whale.

An extract from Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, copyright © 1957 by Vladimir Nabokov, copyright © 1985 by Vera Nabokov and Dmitri Nabokov, is reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, a Division of Random House Inc. All rights reserved.

An extract from “Cinderella,” Transformations , copyright © 1971 by Anne Sexton, is reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE FORTUNATE FALL

Copyright © 1996 by Raphael Carter

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

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Carter, Raphael.

The fortunate fall / Raphael Carter.—1st ed.

p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN 0-312-86034-X (alk. paper)

1. Women journalists—Russia—Fiction. 2. Genocide—Russia—Fiction. 3. Virtual reality—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553.A78278F67 1996

813’.54—dc20 96-2656

CIP

First Edition: July 1996

Printed in the United States of America

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