Project Pope

Thirty-six

Jill went to the clinic to visit Mary. The nurse met her at the door. 'You can stay for only a few minutes, said the nurse. 'Don't try to speak with her.

Jill moved a few feet into the room and stopped, looking down upon the frail, pallid woman on the bed, her body so thin and unsubstantial that its shape barely showed beneath the sheet. Her gray hair was spread out on the pillow. Her two clawlike hands lay outside the sheet, clutched together, the fingers interlaced as if in desperation. Her thin lips were loosely pulled together. The jawbone and the cheekbones stood out in all their starkness, thinly covered by a parchment skin.

There was about her, Jill thought with some alarm, a certain look of skin-and-bones holiness, reminiscent of a drawing she once had seen of a fanatic medieval hermit who had managed to starve himself into acceptable holiness. This, she thought, this poor wreck of a woman, this skeleton — this is the one who is being touted as a saint!

Mary's eyes came open, slowly open, not naturally, but as if she'd forced them. Her head was so positioned on the pillow that the opened eyes looked squarely into Jill's face.

The loose lips moved and a question came out of them, a thin whisper that cut across the silence of the room.

'Who are you? she asked.

Jill whispered back at her. 'I'm Jill. I dropped by to see you.

'No, said Mary, 'you are not Jill. I have heard of Jill but I've never seen her. And I've seen you. Somewhere I have seen you.

Jill shook her head slowly, thinking to calm the woman on the bed.

'I recognize you, insisted Mary. 'Once, long ago, we talked together, but I can't remember where.

The nurse stalked toward Jill, then halted when Mary spoke again.

'Come close, she said. 'Close so I can see you better. My eyes are bad today. Bend down so I can see you.

Jill moved close to the bed, bent down.

On the sheet the two clasped hands came apart and Mary lifted a paper-tissue hand and patted Jill upon the cheek.

'Yes, yes, she said. 'I know you.

Then the hand fell back and the lids slid down across the eyes.

The nurse was beside Jill, tugging at her. 'You'll have to leave now.

'Get your hands off me, said Jill in sudden anger. 'I'm going.

Outside the clinic, she drew in a deep breath, suddenly feeling free. There was death inside that room, she told herself. Death and something else.

The sun was moving down the west, hanging just above the purple mountain wall, and this final hour of sunlight lay like a soft benediction on the land. Now, for the first time since she had come to End of Nothing (how long had it been — a few days, a few weeks, a few months?) — now, for the first time, she saw the land on which she stood not as an alien world, not as a grotesque setting for the great incomprehensibility that was Vatican, but as a place where she lived, as an environment in which she had comfortably settled herself.

Vatican lay against the land, now a part of it, growing out of the land as if it had sprouted roots deep into its soil — not a glaring obtrusion, but something that had grown as naturally as trees, blending into the biota of the planet. To the east and south lay the fields, the gardens and the orchards, an idyllic oasis that moved in close to the mass of squat, spreading buildings that made up Vatican, an ordered interface that linked Vatican to the primal soil. To the west were the mountains, the cloudlike mass of blue that was forever shifting shades, the continual shadow-show that Jason Tennyson had fallen in love with that first moment he had set eyes upon it. When he had drawn her attention to the mountains, she had not been impressed; to her, at that time, a mountain was a mountain and that was all it was. She had been wrong, she told herself. A mountain was a friend, or at least it could be one if you allowed it to be. The feeling for the great blue surge against the sky had stolen on her gradually from days of seeing it, becoming acquainted with it, and now realizing for the first time what it had come to mean to her — a landmark in her life, an eye-watching, surprisingly protective presence, a familiar figure that she could always turn to. It was only, she told herself, that until this moment she had never taken the time to stand and look. She had been wrong and Jason had been right.

Standing there, thinking of Jason and the mountains, it seemed suddenly imperative that she see him. He had not been at the clinic, which might mean he was home, although she could not be sure he was. He had fallen into the habit lately of going on long walks, or he might have gone once again to call on Decker.

She rapped on his door and there was no answer. He might be napping, she told herself, and turned the knob. The door came open when she pushed on it. On End of Nothing, few doors were

ever locked. There was little need of locks.

The apartment was empty; it had an empty hollowness. There was no clatter in the kitchen, so Hubert wasn't there. A small blaze burned on the fireplace grate.

'Jason, she called, speaking more softly than she had intended to, the hush of the room imposing an instinctive urge to silence. She saw herself reflected in the large mirror mounted on the wall above the fireplace, a lost figure standing in the emptiness of the vacant room, a pale smudge of face emblazoned by the redness of the disfigured cheek.

'Jason, she called again in a slightly louder voice.

When there was no answer, she walked through the open bedroom door. The bed was made up, the colorful coverlet drawn over it. The bathroom door was open.

She turned back to the living room and there stood Jason, in front of the fireplace, with his back to it, facing out into the room, staring out into the room, but there was a blankness on his face that seemed to say he was seeing nothing. Where had he come from? she wondered. How could she have missed him? She had not heard the door open or close and, as a matter of fact, there had been too little time since she had left the room for him to come through the door and walk across the room to the fireplace.

'Jason, she said sharply, 'what's the matter with you?

He swung his head towards her at the sound of her voice, but he registered no recognition at the sight of her.

She moved quickly to him, stood facing him, reached out with both her hands and grasped him by the shoulders. She shook him. 'Jason, what's going on?

His eyes, which had seemed glazed over, brightened slightly.

'Jill, he said in a halting, doubtful voice, as if he was not able to accept the fact that she was there. 'Jill, he said again, reaching out to grasp her by the arms. 'Jill, I've been away.

'I know you have, she said. 'Where have you been?

'Another place, he said.

'Jason, snap out of it. What other place?

'I went to that equation world.

'That place you dream about? That you have nightmares over?

'Yes, but this time it was not a dream. I was there. I walked its surface. I and Whisperer…

'Whisperer? That little puff of diamond dust you told me about?

'We went as one, he said. 'We went together.

'Come on, sit down, she said. 'Is there something that you want? I'll get you a drink.

'No, nothing. Just stay with me.

He lifted a hand off her arm and ran it across her cheek in a caress — the cheek that carried the ugly, angry scar. He had grown into the habit of doing that — as if he might unconsciously be trying to express his love of her despite her disfigurement. At first she had flinched away from the gesture. Other than that caress, he had never, since shortly after they had met, made any move or said a Word to indicate that he was aware of it. That, she knew, was one of the many reasons that she loved him. No other man, no other person, had ever been able to be, or seem to be, so unaware of that terrible scar. Now she no longer flinched away from the caress. She had come, instead, to value it, as it might be some form of benediction.

His hand passed across her cheek. She was facing the mirror above the fireplace and she could see how the hand came out to stroke the cheek and, in that very motion, she saw the sign of love.

His hand dropped away and she gasped in disbelief. It was her imagination, she told herself, it was a moment of latent wish-fulfillment. She wasn't really seeing what she thought she saw. In another second or two the imaginative process would pass away and she'd return to normal.

She stood rigid as the seconds passed away. She closed her eyes and opened them and the wish-fulfillment was still working.

'Jason! she said, speaking low, trying to control her voice, but unable to keep it from shaking.

'Jason! she said again, the word cracking with emotion.

Her cheek remained unblemished. The stigma was no longer there.