THERE CAME A day when Hari woke up and found Shanna sitting at his bedside.
He lay on his gelpack pillow and gazed at her through half-opened eyes while awareness leaked into his brain with the morning light.
She sat staring idly out the window, toward the clouds, toward the ocean, high over the shantytown of media vans that invested the hospital like the siege engines of an Overworld army. She was thin, her cheeks still hollowed and her eyes dark, and she still carried her left arm stiffly at her side—and Hari thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
He didn’t speak, for fear that the sound of his voice might dispel the dream.
She coughed a little, with wet discomfort, when she felt his gaze on her. She smiled and touched her ribs where the quarrel had smashed through them into her lung. “Pneumonia,” she said apologetically.
He ventured a tentative answering smile. “Yeah, me too—think I caught it in here, though.”
“I, ah . . .” she began, then said, “How, how are you? I mean . . .”
She nodded vaguely toward the gunmetal bulk of the MRNS unit that covered him from thighs to ribcage; she didn’t really want to look at it directly.
Hari shrugged and patted its side. “I don’t know. Not so bad, I guess. They’re telling me I should get some feeling back in my legs within the next couple of weeks. They’re gonna hook up one of those computer-bypass things so that I’ll be able to walk in a year or so, by pretending to wiggle my toes or something, even if the regen doesn’t take . . .”
He sighed in a deep breath for courage, sighed it out again. “Mmm, they say I’ll probably walk with a cane for the rest of my 529 life; I told them I knew that already,” he offered with a crooked smile.
She turned away, toward the window again, and lowered her head.
“Yeah,” he murmured, “bad joke, I know.”
“Stop it,” he told her. “Don’t even start.”
“Fuck my career. All I—all Caine ever wanted to do was to die in your arms. That’s his happy ending, and it’s good enough for me.”
He rolled his shoulders forward and back again and wished the thousands of hairlike probes that ran through his skin from the MRNS unit to his severed spinal cord would let him shift his hips—he was getting a hell of an ache.
“And I got out of it alive. How many living retired Actors do you know?”
Her voice was barely a whisper. “You’ve given up so much for me . . .”
“I didn’t do it for you—you should know me better than that by now. I did it because a world without you in it is one I’m not all that interested in living in, y’know?”
He slapped the cold side of the unit. “My legs? My career? Cheap at twice the price. You’re worth ten of me.”
She said softly, still looking away, “I used to think that, too . . .”
And the hand that squeezed his heart wouldn’t let him think of anything to say.
LATER, SHE ASKED, “Have you been following the trial?”
“Are you kidding? Watching that rotten fuck go down in flames is several of the high points of my life. Hand me the remote—let’s see what they’re up to now.”
He keyed the pad, and the screen above his head lit up with a scene outside the San Francisco Corporate Court. One of a long line of limousines disgorged a knot of Attorneys who circled their client like bodyguards, even though not one of them was as tall as their client’s shoulder.
“Hey, that’s Ma’elKoth,” Hari said. “I guess they’re gonna let him testify after all.”
His Attorneys held off the mob of reporters so that he could mount the steps, then he turned and favored them with a smile that seemed to brighten the sunlight. He wore an immaculately tailored suit of an appropriately classic Eurocut double-breasted style that emphasized the enormous breadth of his shoulders. The taupe-colored weave set off his richly burnished hair, which was now drawn back into a conservative ponytail.
Clean-shaven now, with the noble jut of his jaw, with the wide brow above his clear and serious eyes, he could only be believed when he turned to the tapers and rumbled, “My interest here is to see justice done. Arturo Kollberg robbed me of my throne and conspired against my life, as well as the lives of Pallas Ril and Caine. Only the truth, ugly as it may be, can serve to guard society against such crimes.”
The cameras followed him on his stately march into the courthouse.
“Amazing how well he’s adapted,” Shanna murmured. “He sounds like he’s running for tribune.”
“I suppose I would, too. You think the Studio will ever let him go back to Overworld?”
“Doubt it. I can’t imagine he’d want to—the way I took him out branded him as an Aktir. He wouldn’t have much of a life.”
“He doesn’t have much of a life now. He can only leave the ON vault for a couple of hours at a time. To have come so far, he must spend all his time watching the net.”
“He had a head start,” Hari said.
“You notice?” he went on. “He’s got Karl’s accent.”
“I’m not gonna apologize for that. I’ve done some shitty things in my life, but that wasn’t one of them. It was better than he deserved, and you know it.”
“Yes, I do know it,” she said faintly. “You . . . you just have to understand that it’s a little hard for me. There was a time when I thought I loved him; no matter what I know about him now, nothing changes that . . .”
That fist within his chest came back and squeezed his heart; he couldn’t look at her. “We’re not gonna live happily ever after, are we?”
“I don’t know, Hari. I really just don’t know.”
DAYS PASSED. VISITORS came and went, interviewers, most of whom wanted to know how Caine had managed to execute his bewilderingly complex plan to such a nicety; none of them believed him when he said that he didn’t know either, that he just kept inching toward daylight till he finally made it.
Marc Vilo called every day to check his progress; he remained blindly certain that Caine’s career was not over, as though with his billions he could buy new legs for his pet star.
Some news of Ankhana leaked through from various Actors around the Empire; the story was that the King of Cant and his Subjects had saved Duke Toa-Sytell’s life at the stadium that day when Ma’elKoth had been revealed as an Aktir. With Kierendal’s Faces, they held the city and were gradually gaining the loyalty of the military. In light of this, much of the nobility was pledging fealty, and it looked like the Empire would stand with Toa-Sytell in control.
It was impossible to get more details than this because the Empire had become, for Actors, very dangerous indeed. Toa-Sytell carried on Ma’elKoth’s Aktir-tokar with a vengeance. A number of Actors had been caught and executed.
Hari appreciated the cold irony: the Studio conditioning that was intended to prevent them from betraying themselves or others was the very means by which they were caught.
From there in his hospital bed, Hari watched in quiet exultation as the Interim Chairman announced over the nets that the Studio was suspending Ankhanan operations until a solution could be found.
Arturo Kollberg was hung out to dry by the Studio; the official line was that this had all been his own rogue operation. Down-casted to Labor, he was moved to a Temp block not far from where Hari grew up.
They’d killed him, but it didn’t matter; he’d beaten them all.
Then, one day, Shanna came back.
“CONGRATULATIONS, ADMINISTRATOR MICHAELSON,” was the first thing she said. “I hear your upcaste came through.”
Hari shrugged. “Hello to you, too. Yeah, the Studio got behind me, and they pretty much get what they want.”
“The Studio?” she said, looking puzzled. “Why would they want you upcasted?”
“Because they offered me Kollberg’s job.”
She went absolutely blank. “I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t either, but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. I’m the most famous man on the planet, right now. Even though I’m—I was—only a Professional, I could cause the Studio a shitload of trouble. I’m virtually untouchable, and I could tell some stories. I could deliver the knockout to follow up the black eye they got from the Kollberg business. So they want to keep me in the system.”
“They really think you could do them that much damage?”
He spread his hands. “Hey, I’ve toppled one government already this month.”
“Well, maybe not. All I can say is, they better not piss me off.”
Her face had become more full, and the shadows had disappeared from under her eyes. She suddenly seemed vastly uncomfortable; she made tentative I think I’d better leave movements.
“Hari, I . . . I don’t know. That’s great, your news, your upcasteing, all that, but I . . . Maybe I’d better just let this go.”
“I don’t want you to think this has anything to do with your upcaste—”
His heart leaped into his throat, and blood sang in his ears. “This what? Come on, you’re killing me: Talk.”
She hand-combed her hair away from her eyes and turned to gaze into the misty distance outside the window; she spoke hesitantly, with obvious difficulty.
“There at the last, I was a god,” she began, and sighed as though she didn’t know how to continue.
“I remember . . .” Hari said softly.
“And, you know, it wasn’t really me—I mean, it was me, I was me, but I was also him, it, Chambaraya. I was only a little part of the god, but at the same time I was all of it, and I know this isn’t making very much sense . . . Words are kind of inadequate, I guess; the only way you could really understand is if it had happened to you.”
“You miss it, don’t you,” Hari said. This wasn’t a question; the truth of it was all too clear, and it stabbed him inside. She’s leaving me again, he thought. Leaving me for the love of the river.
“Yes. Of course I do. But I’m here now, and this is where I need to be. I need to be where I am, and whatever I’m doing, that’s what I need to do. Do you understand?”
“You saw the power,” she said, “but power has nothing to do with being a god. They, the gods, they look at things differently. To join with Chambaraya, all I had to do was see the world the way it does. And when the world looks different, it’s because you’ve become different—you’re not the same person that saw it in the old ways.”
She spread her hands, shaking her head with a weak smile of surrender. “I can’t seem to get close to the point.”
She rose and paced about the room; Hari’s gaze followed her helplessly.
“You know, the gods don’t understand us, either,” she said. “Mortal folk are as much a mystery to them as they are to us. And what they understand least, what they just can’t figure out, is why we choose to be miserable. It seems to them that we insist on being unhappy . . . When I was with Chambaraya, it seemed that way to me, too, and I couldn’t understand it any more than the river could.”
She straightened. Hari could see the faintest tremor in the hand that smoothed the seam of her tunic. She breathed deep, as though drawing in courage from the air.
“I’ve been giving this a great deal of thought, looking it over from every side I can find,” she said hesitantly.
Hari squeezed his eyes shut. I don’t need to hear this.
“You’re going to be going home soon.”
“Yeah . . . ?” was the best he could force through his closing throat.
“I’d like to . . . I’d like to be there, when you do. And after.”
He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even blink.
She sat down and once again turned away. “Businessman Vilo, he’s got this simichair . . . He and Leisurema’am Dole, are, well, y’know, and so I’ve . . . Over the past week, I’ve been, sort of, first-handing your Adventure.”
“I understand so many things, now. And, and Hari? Through it all, through everything, the separation, everything, I never doubted that you loved me. I guess I just thought you had to love me my way—or something equally petty and stupid. I don’t know. I guess it’s not important, now.”
“I don’t know if we can make anything work between us, Hari. I really don’t know. I’m not the same woman you married—different things are important to me, now. And you’re not the same man, either. Maybe, maybe we could . . . get to know each other again. You think? Because I love you, and I want to try to be together, again. I want us both to try to be happy.”
“Shanna, my god, Shanna . . .”
And as he reached out to take her hand, a team of doctors with a crashcart burst through the door of his room; his telemetry had set off six different alarms.
DAYS LATER, WHEN the doctors had been satisfied and he was loaded into the levichair that would be his mobile home for the next few months, he held her hand and gazed into her eyes and thought, Well, shit, this is all right: in the end, I even get the girl.
She walked beside his humming chair as they left the hospital and entered the open air.
The sky arched high overhead, and the shining golden spark of an approaching cab arced down toward them.
He looked up at her. “You really think we can make this work?”
“I hope so,” she said. “After all, I promised I’d never leave you. And promises are important.”
“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, they are . . . Y’know, you just reminded me of another promise I made.”
When the cab landed, she helped negotiate the loading of his chair inside. He leaned forward, tapped the CANCEL RUN key, and told the driver to enter a course for the Buchanan Social Camp.
“The Buchanan?” Shanna asked. “Why are we going to the Buchanan?”
Hari smiled, just a little; his heart was too full for anything bigger. The greatest joys are expressed in the stillest, smallest, quietest ways.