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When the mind wants a dream forgotten, the process is pretty thorough.
 The mind, or your hosts, Anna said.
 Yes. It was something about my situation. He frowned.  I think & wait. I
know! I was a great king, in a magnificent palace, watching a huge spiritual
hand scrawl something on a stone wall with a fingernail made of fire. But what
did it write?
 Read the Bible.
 I don t understand.
  You have been weighed in the balance, and found wanting, or something to
that effect. An old biblical tale.
Kawashita looked at her with brows lifted, mouth open slightly, eyes showing
prominent whites.  Yes,
he whispered. He scurried off, robe shustling behind him, to another room in
the house.
 Anna the muse, she said to herself. She reached into a fold of her robe and
brought out a remote switch.
 Let s get this place heated. And clear the hibachi out. Bring back the usual
furniture.
 Yes, madam, the voice replied.
Kawashita scribed busily on the surface of his tapas pad. The memory extension
units  containing all the libraries he thought would prove useful  rested in
their cases next to his sleeping pad. A meter away was Anna s sleep-field, a
luxury she had refused to give up.
The dome followed a twenty-four-hour cycle. Judging from the brightness of the
artificial sun, and the
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Beyond Heaven's River color of the sky projection, it was late afternoon. Anna
left Kawashita in their bedroom and walked among the bare shoots of trees and
bushes planted around the house. The hills were beginning to green with fresh
grass. After the recent shower the air was fresh and smelled of wet loam. The
dome didn t have all the conveniences of the
Peloros
, but it was pleasant, and she had little cause for complaint.
Since early adolescence she had wanted to use an artist s modifier to create
and record four-dimensional abstract experiences. She fulfilled her dream in a
shed a hundred meters from the house, working an hour each day. In a month or
so, she thought she might have something worth showing to Kawashita. Attached
to the shed was a cloning laboratory with an agricultural attachment, which
she was adapting for landscape and gardening purposes. That took another hour
or two a day.
Next came the five years of business records to examine and assimilate. Using
a tapas, she looked over the bases of her financial empire and worked out
theories for improving profits and efficiency. As an adjunct to that study,
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she was brushing up on planetary geology, exobiology, xenopsychology, and a
touch of warper science. Since she foundered on anything beyond algebra, she
relied on her tapas to solve complex problems.
Still, she was restless. She didn t say anything, but it was clear Kawashita
knew. She guessed she might last a year, even two, but beyond that she d have
to become active again. She watched the approaching orchestrated sunset.  I m
burned-in, she said.  Fixed and unchangeable. She turned to take another
path, this leading past the truck-garden plots. A few lettuce heads were
making their debut, but everything else was still dormant or undecided. An
earthworm  one of sixty thousand born two weeks before 
struggled on the concrete path. She reached down and carefully removed it to
the soil.
Two weeks ago Kawashita had shown her a few entries from his tapas journal.
They d interested her but had been too rough and esoteric to mean much. Still,
his ideas seemed to be reaching some conclusion.
She hoped their schedules would coincide.
The stars came on. They were set to mimic the outside sky. A sensor on the top
of the dome followed the skies closely, and if any event presented itself 
meteor, aurora, or ship in orbit  the inner projector reproduced it.
 I ve become awful domestic the past year, she whispered to herself. She
kneeled in the dirt and sniffed the flowers on a blackthorn hedge. The routine
was pleasant, her life was settled; for the first time in her memory she was
content. Yet & not. The pressure in her throat began and moved up to squeeze a
few drops of moisture from her eyes. She was afraid. If she had to leave,
would he love her enough to come with her? If not, what would she do without
him? They d twined like the squash vines  separation would tear a few roots
and leaves, bloody them both.
She repeated her name to herself, like some mantra of strength, but all the
power had gone from it. She knew, now, of things more important than her
planet-swapping career and reputation. There was peace to think about, and
self-knowledge, and asking questions  probing for the sources of human
corruption.
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Beyond Heaven's River
She respected Kawashita s search, but she wasn t anxious to join in on it.
It was clear what her life would be like, one way or the other. Peace would
never last long. She d always rush from goal to goal.  Dammit, that s the way
I am, she said through clenched teeth. She filtered the dirt through
tightened fingers. A worm, squeezed in half, wriggled out and fell to the peak
of the little pile. She stood up quickly and brushed her hands on her
overalls. She longed for the clean, certain corridors of her ship. Her
clumsiness didn t result in any tiny slaughters there.
The dome, despite its far-reaching night sky, seemed to cramp her. Her lips
worked as she half walked, half ran, to the perimeter. A honeycomb of shelves
for equipment storage stood by the air lock. She chose an environment backpack [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]