I worked desperately to keep my head above water, but it moved so swiftly, tumbling me and dashing me against the sides and bottom, that I had very little control at all. I could feel my topcoat being torn off me by the action of the rapids. As it flew away beneath the foam, I managed a last breath before I hit my head against another outcropping. Then I sank into unconsciousness, immediately dreaming that I was dead and that Corporal Matters of the day watch was sliding my body into its tomb.
There was an eternity of blankness in which I could feel myself becoming a pile of salt. When I finally opened my eyes, I stared up at a dreamy blue sky. There was a warm wind blowing, and I could hear birds calling in the distance. I felt thankful that death had been easy. I was tired and every muscle in my body hurt from the drubbing the river had given me. I lay there half asleep and just stared into the sky thinking, "Had I only known it was going to be like this."
I dozed for a minute or two, and when I woke again, the sky was eclipsed by something. A pale green piece of cloth fluttered over me. I concentrated and saw that it was a veil, covering a face.
"Aria," I said.
"Yes," said a voice, and I could tell it was hers.
"I love you," I said.
She leaned back so that I could see her whole body now, kneeling above me. Her beautiful hands came into view, and I watched them move like a pair of birds in the blue sky. They came to rest against my neck, and her touch thrilled me. I was about to reach up, when her fingers tightened around my throat.
» When I woke again, I was lying on the ground
I near a fire beneath a vaulting green canopy of leaves. That same beautifully warm breeze enveloped me, bringing the sweet scents of tree blossoms and wildflowers. I rose up on my elbow and saw Aria sitting across from me, holding a baby in her arms. Next to her, on the ground, sat the Traveler with his legs crossed in front of him. When he saw that I was awake, he smiled at me. I noticed now that in addition to the bumps and bruises that had been supplied by the river, my throat hurt terribly.
"Aria, I've come to rescue you," I said as I sat up. My head suddenly got light, and I fell onto my back again.
They laughed as I scrabbled back to a sitting position.
"You're lucky you're not dead," she said, her voice cold and flat, the veil moving slightly with her words as it had in my dream of her. "I would have killed you, but Ea came and made me stop choking you."
"Where am I?" I asked.
"Somehow, you came through the river into the false paradise. I found you washed up on the bank," she said.
"Aria," I said, then paused, trying to consider the best manner with which to present my case. Before I could employ any scheme to make my plea sound less trite, the words blundered forth with the power of the river that had nearly drowned me. "I've been waiting for a long time to ask you to forgive me for what I've done to you. I have suffered greatly, but somehow I managed to stay alive in order to find my way to you."
"You needn't have stayed alive on my account. What am I to forgive you for? Butchering my face? Making me a sideshow exhibit? Or just being a pompous prig, convinced of your own superiority?" she asked.
"I am changed," I said. "I have been to the sulphur mines. I am surreptitiously fighting against the Master in order to save your lives," I told her.
"Would you like me to remind you of what you were before this miracle you mention?" she said and began to lift the bottom of her veil.
I readied to cover my eyes, but here the Traveler held up his hand and spoke. "I can see in him that he is different now," he said to her.
"Unfortunately, my face is still a weapon," she said.
He put his hand out and touched her shoulder. "Even this, you will eventually forgive," he said in his calm voice.
After this, she let me speak, and I told them my sad saga and how I had come to see the evil of my actions. "All I can do now is try to rectify what I have done," I said.
She asked me about the fate of Calloo and Bataldo, and I wanted to tell her that they were free, heading through the wilderness toward Wenau, but that veiled face required more truth than any set of piercing eyes. She wept when I explained the fate of her people.
"I've got only a limited amount of time in which to get us out of the City," I told her. "In a few days, the Master is going to ask me for a list of citizens that he intends to execute as part of the gala event revealing this bubble of paradise to the people. If I have not been successful by then, it will be me who will be executed, for I will not turn over any names to him."
The Traveler asked me what I had in mind.
I told him how it was that I had come inside the bubble and suggested that, though it was dangerous, we could probably leave the same way.
"No," said Aria, "Ea is weak because of having to live beneath this counterfeit sun. The river almost killed you. He will never make it, and if he could, the baby couldn't."
"There are no other exits?" I asked.
"They built the place around us. It is hermetically sealed, a supposedly self-contained environment. It's a wonder you happened upon the entrance you did. We hadn't thought of that," she said.
"It is an egg ready to hatch," said Ea.
"Where did you learn the language?" I asked him.
"From the woman," he said, pointing to Aria.
"He is brilliant, Cley," she said. "He is so advanced, it was a miracle I could teach him anything."
"I remember," I said to the Traveler, "that you fed a piece of the white fruit to Aria before you left my study in Anamasobia."
"Yes," he said, "to preserve her life. She would have died otherwise."
"I thought maybe it would reverse the effects of my scalpel," I said to Aria.
"That will never change," she said.
"The fruit," he said, "does not do what you might expect it to always. That small bite of it helped her not to die, and it also burnt away some of her ambition for the power that you once held. If someone were to eat of it who was not so innocent as her, this could be trouble."
"Is it truly the fruit of paradise?" I asked him.
"It is not," he said. "It does cause seemingly miraculous things to happen, but they defy nature. They obscure what is important in life. Thousands of years ago, it came to Wenau, where my people lived. They began eating of it, and it caused many monstrous changes. The good things it caused cheated the people of a true life. The evil things it caused cheated them of hope. Finally, the elder of my people saw the truth about it and ordered the tree on which it grew to be burned. I was to take the last piece of fruit and find a spot to hide it that was so remote, it would never be found. We could not destroy it, because it had been made by the forest, and we did not have the right to obliterate it from the world. When I found such a spot, I was to take a mix of herbs and roots, prepared by our shaman, that would put me into a perpetual sleep. I was to guard the fruit and ensure that no creature ever tasted it again."
"But you were fed it by Garland, and then you gave a piece to Aria," I said.
He nodded and smiled. "I would have awoken from my slumber eventually without it. When the man gave it to me, it caused some change in my person. I should not have given it to Aria, but seeing her there in your room, I felt I could love her," he said. 'The change it made in me is that I was able to see her beauty, though she was so different from my people. I went against the spiritual law of Wenau for the promise of love. I am a criminal both here and in the Beyond."