Crawling Between Heaven and Earth Read online

  I thought then, at that moment, that he hallucinated and said whatever was needed to soothe him, paying no more heed to my words than to the sounds a mother makes to gentle a babe to sleep.

  Later, walking behind the wagon, with all the other men who could walk, it came to me, as a dream, the awful memory of that sleepless night and the thoughts that had haunted me in those days in Gettysburg.

  They were clear, like dreams of being awake, but they made no sense, because of course I knew that Stonewall Jackson had died at Chancellorsville, and that Gettysburg had been a disaster for the Confederacy. We’d never taken Cemetery Hill. My thought that we had, had to be the product of sleepless nights and the shock of working with so many wounded.

  The man who’d been wounded on the head died that night, on the wagon, and was buried by the side of the road, like so many other anonymous heroes, who died to defend our land.

  (Water damage) …these many years later. And yet, sometimes I wake in the dark of night and think of that scene in the woods, East of Orange Plank Road and I remember the circumstances of the North Carolina detachment of Pender’s brigade shooting at General Jackson. I remember Hill’s frantic pleas for them to stop, screaming “Cease firing,” and then the sound of a voice with a thick Piedmont accent calling out, “It’s a lie; pour it into them, boys!” and a full volley striking the group, giving General Jackson his fatal injury.

  Then I sit in my bed, all in a sweat, and wonder. I wonder if it was me who caused the death of that hero, Stonewall Jackson. I wonder if it was me who put the knife through the heart of the Confederacy. If it was me who made it possible for the North to feed on the South like a jackal on sickened prey.

  Of course, if that blame rests on me, then my patient’s injured brain allowed him to go through the different paths of time and place and visit the possible futures. And if that was true, then it must be the design of the Almighty that I could save the American lands from being divided between France and England.

  And yet, the man had half his brain missing. What if he could truly wander amid time and place, but could not see clearly?

  What if I caused the defeat of the South in vain? Did I betray my land for nothing?

  I think and I turn and I toss. From outside my window come the sounds of bustling London where I sought refuge after defeat, and where I’ve lived for forty years now.

  As my days draw to a close, rarely a night goes by that I don’t hear that voice shouting in my dreams, “Pour it into them, boys.”

  And that fatal phrase on which the entire war pivoted, on which my sanity hangs, is pronounced in the voice of the wounded man that we left buried by the roadside on the way back from Gettysburg.

  Ariadne’s Skein

  I’ve always been fascinated with Borges’ poem and the idea of a circular time—the idea that the myths and legends of humanity might reflect the time ahead, not the time before them. This story was born of this.

  “When Rome is dust Again shall wail in the endless Night of his rank palace”

  Jorge Luis Borges, “The Minotaur”

  We clambered onto the white deck of a Blue Gryphon 56 sea-to-air and sat on deck chairs disposed in two rows. There were fourteen of us, jet-lagged tourists from pan America and the guide who’d show us the manufactured wonders of Mythos.

  Sunlight showed as no more than a hint of silver on the deep blue waves of the Mediterranean.

  The man across from me reclined on his chair, stretched his long legs, threw his head back and half-closed his eyes. He wore only a scrap of shorts and looked no more than twenty. Tanned and sporting fashionably long black curls, he showed better defined muscles that any one man should have been born with.

  Instinctively, I glanced at the middle-finger of his right hand.

  In the place where an artifact had to display the red ring of his slavery or the black ring of his freedom either permanently embedded in the flesh this man wore a thin gold band. Matching ones adorned every finger of his right hand, even his thumb.

  So, this exquisite creature had been naturally born, not test-tube assembled. Would wonders never cease?

  He looked at me from beneath his artfully lowered eyelids. The corners of his lips lifted in a tentative smile.

  “Living, breathing things to see at last.” The fidgety older blonde who sat next to him dug a skinny elbow into his supple muscles. She wore a long yellow silk party dress, singularly out of place. “It will be a relief, after all those dried-up stones at Knossos and all the dreadful bits of pottery in museums.”

  He opened startling green-blue eyes and looked at her with the bewilderment of an innocent.

  “But Nary, if you wanted an amusement park peopled with fantastic characters, why didn’t we stay in Sea York? They do have those, you know?” His voice would serve a university professor better than a gigolo.

  Which proved nothing, except that natural humans seldom lived up to their archetypes. I wasn’t about to believe the demigod had paired with this woman out of love.

  His girlfriend blushed and primmed thin accordion-creased lips. She glanced at me, lifted her eyebrows at my too-regular features. Her gaze found the black ring of a freed artifact on my right hand and she relaxed.

  I was not really human. Didn’t count. Not to people like her, I didn’t. After all, freed artifacts, though nominal citizens, could neither marry nor vote.

  “Don’t be tart, Pol,” she said. “Mythos is not an amusement park. It recreates scenes from mythology. It is… cultural.”

  Pol’s perfect lips curled disdainfully. “Ah,” he said. “I see. Amusement park for adults.”

  “Pol, you are not irreplaceable.”

  I looked away. I didn’t want to empathize with his reluctantly subservient position. True, I’d been subservient most of my life, but I hadn’t chosen it as the quickest course to an easy life. I’d been born an artifact. I’d been born owned, one of a few thousand people worldwide who had been created because the unique attributes they could be given outweighed the cost of making and training them.

  Willfully abstracting my mind and gaze from the couple and stared ahead where the dark shape of an island rose out of the glimmering sea ahead of the boat.

  “Ladies and gentleman, if you please,” the guide said. “Could I have your attention?”

  We swiveled our chairs to face him.

  Dapper and cool in a white linen suit, the guide graced us with a practiced smile. In Pan-America, his position would have been filled by an artifact. But not here. Though he looked just like any of the figures on a thousand classical vases, he lacked the artifact ring. “Welcome,” he said.

  The self-piloted ship thumped against the shore, mooring on the white sands of the artificial isle.

  The guide gestured towards land. “Welcome to the fabulous island of Mythos, where you will see marvels to dazzle your eyes.” His perfect, white teeth flashed briefly between red lips. “Our first stop is the palace of the Minotaur… the fabled labyrinth. For those of you not familiar with the legend, let me tell you how Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos, gave birth to a monster, half-man, half-bull. This monster was confined in a labyrinth built by Daedalus. Because he ate human flesh, the city of Athens was forced to send a yearly tribute of seven maidens and seven youths. The Minotaur devoured them all, year after year, until Theseus was chosen. Theseus killed the monster with the help of Ariadne, daughter of king Minos. She gave him a sword to slay the Minotaur and a skein of magic thread with which to find his way out of the labyrinth, once he’d killed the beast. Ariadne and Theseus left together, but later Dionysus fell in love with her and compelled Theseus to abandon her while she slept.”

  He cleared his throat. “Our engineers have recreated the labyrinth and the Minotaur in all particulars,” he went on. “Of course, the Minotaur does not eat meat and has the mind and manners of a well-behaved seven-year-old. As for the labyrinth, do not be afraid of getting lost. If you become disoriented, just remain still. Sensors on the walls will
allow rescuers to find you anywhere. Now, follow me to the country of myth.”

  We rose. Pol helped his companion stand, offered her his arm. She gave no sign of being charmed. Perhaps familiarity truly bred contempt.

  His muscled chest glimmered with suntan lotion. I wouldn’t mind getting familiar with him. But I would have no chance. He was the wages of fortune and no doubt of natural birth.

  Reserved for nats only. No artifacts need apply.

  The guide led us down the automatically-lowered gangplank to the shore.

  If I hadn’t known Mythos had been built by an international conglomerate less than twenty years ago, I would have thought it was just another Greek isle. It looked ancient and weathered another volcanic islet. The only difference was that this one didn’t show any signs of ever having been inhabited, much less of the creeping overpopulation that crowded every other isle with massed houses and unsightly high rises.

  In Mythos, the white shore rose slowly to a plateau where no building glimmered. Up the white shore, we tourists went scrambling.

  The first to reach the summit, I removed my light wrap and stowed it in my ever-present belt-pouch while I waited for the others. Under it I wore a sleeveless short dress, adequate after walking. Even the guide had been left behind by my trot , not surprising, considering what I’d been created to do.

  The sun showed itself now, pale but warm. A heated breeze blew. The day would be a scorcher.

  On the other side of the beach, at my back, green countryside stretched inland, cut here and there by groves of gnarled, twisted olive trees.

  Another party of tourists walked through the middle of a field, stopping to take their tiny cameras to their eyes and snap holos of the view.

  The rest of our group finally joined me, one by one and two by two. The guide came first, and accosted me with a buoyant, “You’re a fast walker.”

  Then he looked at the ring on my finger and looked away, towards the approaching party. It took some people that way. As the other tourists arrived, he talked to them, instead, discussing the sea and the heat, the sand and recreated myths. But I’d ceased existing.

  Pol brought up the rear, supporting his less decorative companion.

  She leaned heavily on him, and no wonder, since she wore five inch stiletto heels in shiny, rock-hard dimatough. Not the most adequate shoes for walking on sand, and what could have possessed her to wear them?

  I wondered how money, or even social prestige, could keep a thinking man in thrall to such a fool. Then, of course, I was assuming that Pol was a thinking manna stretch of the imagination.

  Turning away from him, I concentrated on following the guide and not overtaking him as he led us on the same route the other group had followed, up a convincingly weathered narrow path and through a grove of trees.

  Flawlessly sensuous nymphs danced with faultlessly goat-legged satyrs for the amusement of yet another group of tourists.

  I looked away, counting my blessings. Other than exceptional strength and agility and the eidetic memory and sense of direction necessary for my erstwhile job as a courier, I had no modifications that distinguished me from natural humans.

  Oh, my features might be a little too perfect, as designers would make them if they got the chance. And I wore the black ring of a freed artifact. But those didn’t matter. It could have been worse. Much worse.

  A hundred steps past the grove, a seven-foot-tall stone wall rose. A panel of dimatough, inexpertly made to look like wood, covered a narrow doorway.

  Our guide touched a button. The panel slid away.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, let us enter the fabulous labyrinth of the Minotaur.”

  We followed him into a tunnel. Its walls were molded of smooth black dimatough, and the blackness swallowed what light shone from the diminutive lamps on the wall sconces.

  The uncertain lighting changed my companions into shapes and shadows. The dank air reeked of manure. It felt like a cheap ride in a second class carnival.

  “It smells like a stable,” Pol’s girlfriend said. “I’m not going in.”

  The guide turned around. A light affixed at the base of his throat lit his face partially and from below, obscenely emphasizing his mouth. “It’s perfectly clean,” he said his mouth opening and closing, white teeth shining and making him look like a snarling beast. “But the Minotaur…. You see, he’s an animal. He smells.”

  In the doorway, square-shouldered Pol bowed meekly to whisper something to his companion.

  She giggled. “Oh, don’t be silly. No, I wouldn’t want to deprive you…. I know you want to go in.”

  Another bout of whispering, and a muffled giggle. “No, I won’t stay here alone, either. I guess I’m being a silly old woman. We’ll go in, Pol. Come along.”

  They joined the party, her high heels clicking as we walked along the ever-narrowing corridor. We stopped in front of a fresco-adorned wall that depicted, in gruesome color and lurid detail, the Minotaur feasting on the corpses of ancient Greek maidens and youths.

  The guide turned to face us, winked. “Follow me,” he said.

  Flattening himself against the fresco, he slithered sideways, seemingly disappearing into the stone wall. Pol followed, eagerly, smiling like a child at a party.

  I tried it next.

  There was an opening, of course, to the left side of the panel, an opening so narrow that it required our sliding sideways, squeezing between stony surfaces.

  On the other side, Pol smiled at me, and the guide looked away.

  “Look what it’s done to my dress,” Nary said as she emerged. “I don’t think anything will get it clean.”

  Her bright yellow silk dress showed dust and something like a verdigris stain.

  The guide looked abashed. “Replacements will be provided, of course,” he said, and bowed and turned to lead us down the wider, curving corridor into which we’d emerged.

  We walked a long time, between black walls and my sense of direction, built into me for my job as a courier, told me that we actually described a full circle before we took an abrupt left turn.

  The purpose of the circle would be to make the way seem longer. However disadvantages of being a human homing pigeon my being forced to take a circuitous route countered my carefully designed instincts for always choosing the quickest way. My mind knew where the turns we took were silly and useless and, trudging along the dark, dank, smelly hallways, I literally ached to take a streamlined path.

  The ceiling of the next compartment hung so low that we had to duck our heads. Because of his height, Pol had to bend almost double. His dark hair brushed my shoulder.

  No one spoke. At the end of the tunnel, the head of the Minotaur, carved in stone, glared at us. We turned right, suddenly able to stand up. The high ceiling, on which the guide helpfully shone his light, displayed another fresco, this one of the Minotaur standing astride a pile of human corpses, while Theseus pierced the beast’s chest with his borrowed sword.

  The smell of manure got worse. My hair attempted to stand on end.

  “It’s too long,” Pol’s girlfriend said. “And it smells. Can’t we take a short cut? Can’t you call the beast to us?”

  “Ah, my dear, but the Minotaur hides in the labyrinth and ambushes us,” the guide said.

  Nary murmured something from which the word, “nonsense,” emerged.

  To my disgust, I agreed with her. She might be an idiot, but even idiots were right sometimes.

  The place did smell like a stable, a musty animal-waste smell. The dark, cold corridors didn’t disturb me any less for my knowing that they were supposed to disturb me.

  Most attractions didn’t try this hard to put tourists off.

  We turned left, then right, then left again. Two of the frescoes repeated themselves. The carved head of the Minotaur protruded from the tunnel at regular intervals and if it were not for my sense of direction, I’d assume we were going in circles and passing the same carving again and again.

  Couldn’t
make it too easy to find our way out, could they?

  I huffed under my breath, doubting that my complaints would be met with such gentle rejoinders as natural-born Nary’s.

  Mostly, I was mad at myself. Why hadn’t I begged off this particular attraction? For that matter, why had I signed up for this tour of Mythos at all?

  But I knew why. Greek mythology, with its capricious gods, its heroic mortals, drew me like a half-healed lip sore, to which your tongue strays irresistibly. Hard to read the myths and not to think of our present world, of capricious humans playing god and long-suffering artifacts enduring their whimsy. Hard not to identify with the situations created.

  “Imagine Theseus making his way through these dark corridors,” the guide said. “Knowing that at the end he will have to fight a supernatural beast for his life and the lives of his companions.”

  I shook my head. Not while discreet electrical lights shone on me, not when I knew the Minotaur was vegetarian and had the intelligence of a seven-year-old.

  A high pitched, tremulous scream echoed through the chamber. It ended in a gurgle.

  Ahead of us, the corridor bifurcated via doorways opening to the right and left of another horrendous fresco.

  I froze in place, all my instincts alert. My heart raced.

  Scene-setting, my mind said. But my senses protested it had been too realistic. Too real. The scream had sounded too present, too anguished to be part of the scene-setting.

  My nostrils flared.

  I caught the smell of the charnel house, the metallic tang of blood mixed with animal waste: the smell of sudden death.

  “What! What is that?” Nary asked. “What I want out.”

  “Hey, take us out of here,” Pol said. “My friend is” He stopped. “Where did he go?”

  I looked around for the guide, as did other tour members. But we saw only each other’s frightened expressions. Our guide had vanished.