As She Climbed Across the Table

37

I tumbled into darkness. I landed on the familiar tile floor of the chamber, but the lights were out. Fortunately I didn’t crush the cat. It must have scampered into a corner. I righted myself and squinted into the blackness, trying to find some hint of light.

There wasn’t any. The darkness was hintless, perfect. The power in the building hadn’t gone out, though. I could still hear the hum of the generators, and feel the floor vibrate slightly. It was just the lights.

I grappled my way past Lack’s table, to the door of the chamber. The observation room was completely dark too. There wasn’t even the hint of a form in the blackness. I held the door open for the cat, but I couldn’t tell if it followed me out. I gave up, and left the door open. I reached out for the wall, and my hands found the panel of some instrument parked there. The buttons and knobs felt unexpectedly gigantic, and interesting. I’d feared these machines, before. Now I imagined I could learn to operate them by touch. I groped past them, to the door, and out into the curved hallway, expecting to find some light there.

The drought of light was absolute.

Keeping one hand on the smoothly pebbled wall of the corridor, I headed for the elevator. The wall dipped away from my hand—the phone booth, where I’d called for pizza. I lifted the receiver. Dial tone, incredibly loud, hugely reassuring. I’d never loved dial tone so well.

I slapped at my pockets. No coin. But the floppy cloth pockets were distracting. What an invention! I tore myself away from them, started for the elevator again.

The wall disappeared again. Another cubby. Water fountain. I twisted the handle, and put my hand in the flow. Water, cool as rain. No pistachios. I drank. It was delicious. I wiped my mouth with the ragged, staticky sleeve of my shirt—another remarkable sensation. Then I made my way through the dark to the elevator.

Inside, I pressed three or four buttons. The doors opened on different floors, all absolutely dark. I listened for signs of life, but there weren’t any. No people, and no light. The building was alive though, humming, chortling, like an intestine. The sounds were comforting, and at the same time dangerously intense.

I knew I’d reached the lobby when I smelled the lawn, and tasted the breeze in the air. I wandered out of the elevator. Total darkness. I felt my way down the steps of the building, exploring with a probing foot. The pavement jumped to meet my shoes. I stepped out of the shade of the building and felt the heat of the sun beating down on my face. I stared up at it.

Nothing.

I was blind.

I couldn’t even see the sun. All my other channels, though, were cranked up to levels that were almost painful. I heard a bird’s wings beating in the air above me. My clothes were a collage of weights and textures, and I felt tiny impacts of pollen or pollution on my face. My ears were two echo chambers, reading soundscapes that warped madly if I turned my head even a fraction. My nose was attuned to rotting sewers, and distant lightning.

No human smells or sounds, though. I wasn’t home yet. This was another abandoned place. Not my world. Not Alice’s.

I stepped backward until I relocated the bottom step of the physics facility entrance. Using that as a landmark, I pointed myself across campus, to my apartment. The landscape felt huge, blown all out of proportion. But the objects I found—parking meters, bulletin boards, park benches—were normal-sized. They were islands in a sea, and I clung to them gratefully.

The final island in the series was my car. I knew it by a dent over the right taillight. I ran my hands over the car, like a game-show hostess fondling a prize.

Then I heard the voices.

I went up the porch steps, to the door. It was open. The voices were inside. The very familiar voices.

“Evan! Garth!” I said. “You’re alive!”

The talk stopped. The silence was profound. I felt my way in through the door. Was I imagining things?

“Did you hear that?” said Garth wearily. “He says we’re alive.”

“I told you,” said Evan. “You wouldn’t listen.”

“Huh,” said Garth.

If I’d turned away, they probably would have returned to their bickering, and never thought twice about my appearance. Since I stood in the doorway, they were forced to acknowledge me.

“Philip,” said Evan.

“Evan,” I said.

“Let’s see. Do you still want to sleep on the couch?”

“What?”

“We can both sleep in the guest room, if you want. Or if you want the guest room we can both sleep out here, or in your room. I’ve been sleeping in your room, and Garth has been sleeping in the guest room. But I don’t mind the couch. There’s still plenty of room, unless Alice is coming.”

“Is Alice coming?” said Garth.

“No,” I said, dumbfounded.

“Okay,” said Evan. “I’ll take the couch.”

“What if he wants the couch?” said Garth. “You should ask him. He always sleeps on the couch.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I couldn’t believe they were arguing, here. I wanted to scream, I’m blind!

“What’s okay?” said Garth.

“Anything is fine,” I said. “I’ll sleep anywhere.”

“You can have the couch if you want it,” said Evan.

“He said anything is fine,” said Garth.

I stayed only a few hours. The blind men were impossible now. They’d perfected themselves, a completely closed system, the loose ends tucked in, the channels to the outside shut down. They finally had the uninterrupted time they’d craved, to squabble or sulk in embittered silence. Dorms full of canned food to pillage. They could stop checking their watches.

I was inside their blindness. Lack had taken it and made another whole world. Here’s what Braxia forgot to predict: Along with making a facsimile of our world, Lack had reproduced himself. His chamber, his table, and his hunger for reality. Like a Persian carpet maker, every world Lack made would have a flaw, a Lack of its own. And every Lack would want to make a world. Soft’s experiment would never end. His vacuum bubble would expand forever, his breach would never heal.

Kits, cats, bags, wives, how many going to St. Ives?

It was hard to force Evan and Garth to notice my questions, but I learned a few things. They’d lived in the Dada-ready-made reality for about a week, wading through the ball bearings and wool, feeding on ice cream and barbecued duck. Then they’d climbed back over the table, into Lack, and emerged here, where they settled unquestioningly. Sure, they argued about whether they were alive or dead, whether they’d woken from a long dream or fallen into one, but they also argued over the location of specific fire hydrants, and about the chances of judging the amount of ink left in a ballpoint pen by weighing it in your hand. They were happy here. They were home.

I followed them back to the chamber. Now I knew how impressed to be by their ease and speed negotiating blind. They tapped efficiently with their canes, and I hurried along behind, tripping over roots and broken pavement. The supersensory effects weren’t exactly a help. The world whirled around me, over-saturated and trippy. Evan and Garth squabbled, ignoring me. They weren’t curious about my destination, and they didn’t want to be rescued. I didn’t press them. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see again. I wanted to tell Alice she loved me.

We went down in the elevator. Evan and Garth knew the way.

“Why did you do it?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“What?”

“Go into Lack.”

“Huh,” said Garth. “You tell him.”

“Well,” said Evan, “we did have the idea that we’d come through Lack and be able to see. We had that idea. I don’t know why.”

“You had the idea,” said Garth.

“We can’t see, of course,” said Evan.

“Blind is blind,” said Garth.

We left the elevator and walked down the curved hallway, to the chamber.

“Also, don’t forget, we needed a place to stay,” said Garth. “There was that aspect to it. We couldn’t stay in your apartment forever. We looked and looked, but we couldn’t find another place.”

I opened the door to the chamber, and something brushed against my leg. The cat. I lifted it. It was purring. I put it into Evan’s arms. It could catch blind mice and birds. And Evan and Garth might secretly need a third. I wasn’t up to it, myself.

“Also, the radio,” said Evan. “Tell him about the radio.”

“Huh. I also broke your radio.”

“He didn’t want to have to tell you about it.”

“Huh,” said Garth. I pictured him rubbing at his chin with the end of his cane, grimacing, flaring his nostrils.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” he said. “Here I am, telling you about it.”