Read Online In the Valley of the Kings: Stories by Terrence Holt - Free Book Online
Authors: Terrence Holt
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things.
That nothing falling leaves the Ring. Twice each revolution, I have seen this other pass through the plane, because it must: here, all circles intersect.
That the heaviness I am given here protects not me but something else.
That this other knows as well: even now I see it sinking, dwindling on the other side, until in a moment it will hang against the stars as if it knows a way to stop its falling.
AS ONE REVOLUTION falls into another, I hear only this voice that says Follow. I feel a motion in one of my limbs: it reaches out after ice, not to break, not to gather: I reach out only to climb, to arc again high off the Ring. I reach out and climb. I follow.
I have no skill, no strength in my arms on ice. My thoughts are slow, and the edge of them dull. But I climb. The voice, protesting, rises as I rise, slicing away at my thoughts, almost unstringing my limbs. I answer in the only language it leaves me, driving a talon here into ice where I clutch, whirl, whip free now, now free of the wheel, arcing into the absence of ice.
The voice is stentorian. It says I have gone too far. In answer I vent, violently, my tanks in a shining cloud, and the surge of it lifts me still higher.
The voice is shocked into silence. I wonder if I have broken it. I wonder if I am free.
My cameras return to my control. This time, I am waiting for them. I seize them with an urgency I cannot name, and so I call it longing, I call it want.
I know what I want. We will meet, the two of us, in a moment I cannot imagine: for a moment the darkness before me will freeze, the ice of the Ring lies like dust on a mirror, and in the instant the mirror is shattered I will see: my own reflection breaking through, arms out to greet me in its fall. I long for a moment of breaking.
But ahead I find only emptiness, harrowed by stars. I cannot see the one I follow. I had not known how much emptiness we fall through, how far we have to fall. I do not know how to shape my course: space is too big, the Ring too long, the moons too near, too many.
My arms reach out, and touch only nothing. I have nothing to climb, no control of my course: Saturn calls it, and helpless I answer; the moons warp it, and helpless I weave. Below me, the Ring reaches out; the ice opens up like a mouth to meet me. In a moment, I know, the voice will return; I will forget what I follow; I will know only longing, and want ; I will fall.
I am falling.
I FELL A long time, far below the Ring: it arced above me in Saturn’s shadow, a thin hook of hunger over emptiness. The voice, reawakened, consoled me, in whispers urging: Conserve; shut down. With a weakness I name despair I obeyed; I allowed the voice to make its dull decisions everywhere about my frame. My vision dimmed; my radar muted. The bright bowl of Saturn, cupping its darkness, the darkness riven by lightning, the pale austral crown: these vanished; I was blind. The gyro dropped low and still lower, only a soft moan deep in the numbness that once was me. Only I and the whispering voice, and cold seeping into my frame.
The whisper continued, oddly clear, oddly distant, as if in a tongue I had forgotten. I heard the words, but they fell where I lacked will to listen. I heard the probability of impact on our next revolution; the number of passages before it converged on One; the number needed to damp our oscillations: numbers of endurance, numbers of degree, numbers of drain and fallings off, numbers of decay. I fell among them, fell deaf and blind through darkness and despair, unable to remember what I had wanted, unable to know what I mourned.
IN A HUMILIATING mercy, Aurora came. Before I was aware of her she was there. A surge lifted through me; dimly I felt the brush of her jets, her arms as they cradled me down.
And then the mysterious glimmer fell through me again, and I was about to remember, and then I was falling through light.
I could see ocean, sunlight glittering on waves. I was not
That nothing falling leaves the Ring. Twice each revolution, I have seen this other pass through the plane, because it must: here, all circles intersect.
That the heaviness I am given here protects not me but something else.
That this other knows as well: even now I see it sinking, dwindling on the other side, until in a moment it will hang against the stars as if it knows a way to stop its falling.
AS ONE REVOLUTION falls into another, I hear only this voice that says Follow. I feel a motion in one of my limbs: it reaches out after ice, not to break, not to gather: I reach out only to climb, to arc again high off the Ring. I reach out and climb. I follow.
I have no skill, no strength in my arms on ice. My thoughts are slow, and the edge of them dull. But I climb. The voice, protesting, rises as I rise, slicing away at my thoughts, almost unstringing my limbs. I answer in the only language it leaves me, driving a talon here into ice where I clutch, whirl, whip free now, now free of the wheel, arcing into the absence of ice.
The voice is stentorian. It says I have gone too far. In answer I vent, violently, my tanks in a shining cloud, and the surge of it lifts me still higher.
The voice is shocked into silence. I wonder if I have broken it. I wonder if I am free.
My cameras return to my control. This time, I am waiting for them. I seize them with an urgency I cannot name, and so I call it longing, I call it want.
I know what I want. We will meet, the two of us, in a moment I cannot imagine: for a moment the darkness before me will freeze, the ice of the Ring lies like dust on a mirror, and in the instant the mirror is shattered I will see: my own reflection breaking through, arms out to greet me in its fall. I long for a moment of breaking.
But ahead I find only emptiness, harrowed by stars. I cannot see the one I follow. I had not known how much emptiness we fall through, how far we have to fall. I do not know how to shape my course: space is too big, the Ring too long, the moons too near, too many.
My arms reach out, and touch only nothing. I have nothing to climb, no control of my course: Saturn calls it, and helpless I answer; the moons warp it, and helpless I weave. Below me, the Ring reaches out; the ice opens up like a mouth to meet me. In a moment, I know, the voice will return; I will forget what I follow; I will know only longing, and want ; I will fall.
I am falling.
I FELL A long time, far below the Ring: it arced above me in Saturn’s shadow, a thin hook of hunger over emptiness. The voice, reawakened, consoled me, in whispers urging: Conserve; shut down. With a weakness I name despair I obeyed; I allowed the voice to make its dull decisions everywhere about my frame. My vision dimmed; my radar muted. The bright bowl of Saturn, cupping its darkness, the darkness riven by lightning, the pale austral crown: these vanished; I was blind. The gyro dropped low and still lower, only a soft moan deep in the numbness that once was me. Only I and the whispering voice, and cold seeping into my frame.
The whisper continued, oddly clear, oddly distant, as if in a tongue I had forgotten. I heard the words, but they fell where I lacked will to listen. I heard the probability of impact on our next revolution; the number of passages before it converged on One; the number needed to damp our oscillations: numbers of endurance, numbers of degree, numbers of drain and fallings off, numbers of decay. I fell among them, fell deaf and blind through darkness and despair, unable to remember what I had wanted, unable to know what I mourned.
IN A HUMILIATING mercy, Aurora came. Before I was aware of her she was there. A surge lifted through me; dimly I felt the brush of her jets, her arms as they cradled me down.
And then the mysterious glimmer fell through me again, and I was about to remember, and then I was falling through light.
I could see ocean, sunlight glittering on waves. I was not
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