“But—”
“It’s all set. Seqiro’s in range. He’ll make you understand the ritual and words. You can make yourself look like me. I can’t disappoint my parents. The marriage must go on. Go and do it, Nona. It’s the only way.”
Nona stared at her. Then she got up and clothed herself in illusion. Suddenly she did look like Colene, face, dress, and size. Even the tiara and bonnet. “I will do it, Colene. For the sake of our friendship.” She left.
Colene concentrated on Burgess, seeking the pain in him and suppressing it. The flow of air diminished, and he settled back on the ground. He was still in agony, but it was becoming tolerable, with her help. She hung on, tiding him through, making sure that his fundamental will to live remained. It seemed like hours, but her watch said ten minutes.
She heard the car move out. She tried to reach it with her mind, but her range was too short. She was alone with Burgess.
Gradually in the course of the next half hour, the pain in the floater eased, and she was able to disengage from him somewhat. She sat beside him, one hand on a contact point. “Well, I did it,” she said conversationally. “I sent Nona off to my wedding. I wonder if that’s what I had in mind all the time? She’s really a better match for him. She’s older, and prettier, and she has way more magic than I’ll ever have.”
Burgess began to be aware of his surroundings and her thoughts. He had not been in a position to understand what was happening in her social horizon. What was Nona doing?
“Nona is marrying Darius, in my stead,” Colene said. “I told her to. It just had to be done. We couldn’t cancel; it would have broken my folks’ hearts, after they put themselves in the hole to finance it. The show just had to go on.”
Then she put her head down and wept. The tears flowed, and kept coming, dropping into her lap. She knew she had done it to herself. She had gambled on Burgess’ treatment when she shouldn’t, and then had to throw away her dream. But if it hadn’t been for Burgess, would she have found some other excuse? She had so blithely set up to marry Darius, but she was afraid of marriage, too, because she had seen so clearly what a loss her parents’ marriage was. Was she, deep down inside, determined to avoid the married state herself?
Or was it that she remained suicidal in every way? Not merely in the body, slicing her wrists, but in emotion, slicing her potential happiness? So that every time something good threatened to happen to her, she just had to mess it up? Sometimes she had used her nature to beat others, such as when she had won back Darius’ Mode-traveling key by challenging the jerk who had it to a bleeding contest. She would have bled herself to death, too, if he hadn’t backed off. Because part of her always wanted to die. Did another part of her always want to be miserable?
She remembered telling Seqiro that she wanted everything—and nothing. She was a cipher, even to herself, a riddle never to be understood. Even buoyed by her friends of the hive, she had never truly known her true desire, and she didn’t know it now. What did she want, if she didn’t die?
“My future is a blur,” she said to Burgess. “I have no goals, I only want to make my life count. When I think of how short life is I can’t accept mere survival as an achievement. If there is nothing after we die, we have to make every second we’re alive count. I don’t want to be caught in ‘Mundania.’ I can’t bear to live a dull, gray existence when there are bright glorious adventures to explore. I know they are out there somewhere. Because I can read about them. Perhaps that’s my trouble. I read far too much. At least I did before I found the Virtual Mode. How can I help it, though? My life and the life of a fantasy character just can’t compare. Before, I was satisfied to live the lives of the people in my books, but now I know that it’s not the same. I want to really and truly live. I want so many different things I know I can’t have. I’m bright, creative—I could probably choose any profession I wanted, but I don’t want any of them. Not here on Earth. I want to roam the universe looking for adventure, never being sure where I’ll go next. I want to be a famous artist or musician or something. I want a simple home and family. I want to change the world. I want everything anybody wants—and more. I wish there were no civilization, only nature and living. I want to live in the wilderness empty of people and technology. Yet I love to watch different people come and go. I want to live in a bustling city. I want love, I want hate. I want a cause I could give up everything for. I want to be able to just get up and leave where I am and not worry if I have enough socks and whether I forgot my toothbrush. I want to be organized and under control. Nothing can satisfy me.”
She glanced at Burgess. “Does any of that make sense to you? Well, it doesn’t to me. I’m a bundle of conflicts. No wonder I can’t even get married when it’s all set up. I have a love-hate feeling about marriage. I want it and I fear it, at the same time. So I guess it’s not surprising that I’m sitting here mourning the marriage I didn’t make. I really walked out on Darius at the altar. And I shoved Nona into something she really didn’t want.”
She shook her head. “You know, sometimes I even wrote poems in my diary. I would tease Maresy Doats with them. Maresy is my friend who is a horse. Before I met Seqiro. She always understood me. The way Seqiro does now. But still I teased her.”
Colene closed her eyes. She recited the poem from memory.
“My eyes aren’t actually green, in this life, of course, but in my fantasy realm they are. In the ugly real world they’re brown, but when I’m exotic they’re green. So if you ever see me with green eyes, you’ll know I’ve crossed over. With my loneliness.”
She laughed, verging on hysteria. “Do you want to know something funny, Burgess? Last year, when I had been raped and was turning suicidal, I was voted the happiest person in my class. That’s how well I fooled everybody.”
She thought the floater was laughing, before remembering that he had no sense of humor. He was going into another seizure!
She grabbed on to him. “Easy, Burg, easy! You got through it before; this one’s bound to be easier. Just tide through, and the poison’ll be gone.” Her words were more for herself than him; what counted for him was her presence and her emotion. Whatever comfort and hope she had, she gave to him, spreading mental oil on the troubled waters of his malady.
Slowly, it eased, and at last he settled again, his pain diminished. But Colene’s pain was increasing. Because more time had passed than she thought, and now the wedding was beginning.
She was at the limit of Seqiro’s range. Most of his mental energy was devoted to the wedding, to make sure that the groom and bride did not miss their cues. But there was enough left to send Colene a picture, and snatches of sound. No actual thought, but that didn’t matter; the picture was enough.