VACANCY & ARIEL

Wired on stress and caffeine, I closed my eyes and was possessed by fragments of thought, fleeting images, memories, all relating to Ariel. Obsessed to the point of insanity. I would not have believed that I could be so described, yet I had snuffed twelve men without much in the way of a reaction and I had been planning without regard for human consequence to destroy the project and all in it with the remaining cylinders. Such indifference surely qualified as insanity. I had a waking dream in which I traveled to a distant place and sought out Ariel, convinced her of my loyalty, and together we spread an evangel of love throughout the multiverse, healing the breach between all Ishas and Ariels. Even in my disturbed state I knew this to be insane. I would never be able to look at Ariel again without feeling wary, mistrustful. I hatched a dozen plans, none of them practical. Of one thing I was certain—I could not return to my life. With suicide off the board, I was left with two choices: search for Ariel with my own interests in mind or come seething out of nowhere, a monstrous anomaly like Springheel Jack, to hunt her and her kind. The choices were much the same. Better said, I really had one choice. And no matter what I intended, I hadn’t the slightest notion of how I might act if I saw Ariel again. I believed more firmly than ever that the Willowy Woman had chosen forgetfulness over duty, because that was what I most desired for myself—to forget everything, to be ignorant and open to hope, unaware of the universe being eaten away beneath my feet and of my role in the process.

I jumped down from the table and went to explore the basements of the project. I told myself I was looking for one of the Akashel vehicles, but what I was truly looking for was a reason to act in some direction. Two levels below the kitchen I came upon a room containing five of the vehicles. Farther along was a room with a window in which a woman sat on the floor, her chin resting on her drawn-up knees. She was facing away from me, clad in a gray jumpsuit, her black hair short and neatly trimmed; but even before she stood and approached the window, I knew she was Ariel. Not my Ariel, but mine all the same. She greatly resembled the Willowy Woman. Tall and slender, with sharply angled eyebrows and that streamlined, too-simple beauty. Judging by her well-kept hair, I might have assumed that she’d been captured recently; but it was as likely that they had been studying her, caring for her, watching her change from a spindly, hissing creature, growing smaller, curvier, emptier. The window must have been a two-way mirror. It was clear she could not see me, but she was aware of me—that, too, was clear. She laid her palm on the glass and tilted her head, trying to find me behind her reflection. All I had felt on meeting the Willowy Woman years before was restored to me. Curiosity. Wonder. But these feelings were pushed to the side by the stronger emotions I had known in New York and California, and despite the bizarre condition that joined us, it seemed natural that I felt this way. I must have tried twenty keys before I hit upon the one that fit the lock. I opened the door and stepped back, uncertain whether she would know me; and if she did know me, how could I trust that her knowledge was not married to homicidal intent?

She slipped from the room and moved off a short ways, walking with that weird gliding step. I had a whiff of an unpleasant odor, but it was less intense than it had been with the Willowy Woman. She stopped, stared at me, and edged nearer. A line of perplexity creased her brow. She lifted a hand as if to point at me, a gesture half-completed. “Isha?” she said. I spoke her name, or its approximation, and the line on her forehead deepened. She apparently wasn’t able to link the name with an identity. Which meant she had been imprisoned long enough to dissolve the memory of her purpose. She glanced in both directions along the corridor and I realized she must not recall the way out. I led her to the elevator. As we ascended she pressed herself into a corner as far away as possible, watching my every shift in posture. I carried the gun barrel-down, but was prepared to use it. Outside the bunker, standing at the bottom of the hollow, she scented the air and scanned the sky, pricked here and there by dim stars. Occasionally her eyes darted toward me, as if she had lost track and was checking to see whether or not I was still there.