An Evening at the Carnival with Mister Christian

The house was huge. Stairways led to an upper floor -- and to a basement, and even the paintings on the wall remained. "Louisburg Square?" she sighed. 'Is this not the house from Boston, that other Boston?'

"I was in Paris," Esterhaus said, "only yesterday. Or was it Vienna?" He reached out for the piano, and it's presence seemed to steady him -- for a moment. "But -- Marian...? I wonder where...?"

But they turned to the door, and saw Timothy sitting on the ground off the porch, clutching his chest one moment, then holding his hands up as if to ward off a blow. He stopped, looked around at the porch and the fields and he pushed himself up, brushed dirt off his britches as he turned and turned, looking at the porch as if it was the only thing in the world that mattered...

Then his eye fell on Jennifer.

He ran to her, fell into her arms -- crying hysterically, still grabbing at his chest...

"Is it you?" he asked. "Really, really you?"

She looked at him, at the wounds in his eyes. "I think so, brother, but I am not sure where we are yet."

He nodded his head. "Where does one place end, and the other begin?"

"Just so," Esterhaus said, walking out onto the porch, "but even so, I'd kill for a decent glass of port."

"A what...?" Jennifer asked, but they heard a great commotion overhead, a crashing through limbs and thrashing shouts of consternation -- and they looked up, saw Langston in the tree -- dangling upside-down from a limb high above the ground.

"Goddamn it to fucking Hell!" her brother growled as he picked his way down through the branches. "Somebody has a fucking evil sense of humor!"

"Langston!" Jennifer shouted, hands now over her ears. "Your language! You speak with such a foul humor...what is wrong with you...and where have you been?"

He jumped the last few feet down to the ground and shook little bits of branches and dead leaves from his hair, then looked at the house. "What the fuck happened here?"

"Langston! Really!"

"What crawled up your ass and died, Jenn?" Langston said, ignoring the pained look in his little sister's eyes, then he walked up to the porch and disappeared into the house.

Jennifer looked at Timothy -- who only shrugged -- then shook his head. "It looks like Langston," Tim said hopefully, "but perhaps it's not...?" But Tim was still drifting in and out of that accursed hospital room, thinking of the old man on the swing-set and two men crawling in the window...then as their guns erupted again he jerked back to the present...

"Oh, it's me alright," Langston said, striding back out onto the porch, now looking up at the sky. "Looks like rain," he said, eyeing the solid cloud cover, "but I feel there's something wrong..."

"But Langston?! What's wrong with you?" Jennifer asked yet again.

"What's wrong with...? Are you fucking kidding me?" He shook his head, as if trying to clear the cobwebs of a long nap from his mind, then he seemed startled, almost afraid. "Has anyone been to see Na-taka-ri?"

"No," Jennifer said. "We only just arrived."

"Fuck," Langston said as he jumped from the porch, taking off at a dead run for her cabin in the woods.

Then Jennifer heard barking -- coming from somewhere along the trail that led up from the river, then she heard two dogs barking -- and she ran too, ran to the sound she'd dared not hope...

She saw the Guild Master emerging from the wood, walking up from the village with two dogs quartering ahead through the grass and she stopped, looked at him, then at the pups. Little brown and white pups, their legs covered in mud -- and she noticed it had started to rain. Gently now, a familiar, cool rain...and she drifted...back to the beach off Cape Cod, to that day when she'd only just learned her fate, when she waded into the water...

"Charley?" she said slowly, softly, then she looked the pup in the eye: "Charley? Is that you?"

The lead pup stopped and went into a point, the pups eyes boring into her own, then Charley burst into a sprint -- running with all it's heart for the woman on the hill...to that voice -- so familiar...the heart knows...and two soul respond in kind...

But the pup stopped short, looked confused, eying Jennifer first then looking back at the Guild Master.

"Go ahead, girl," Jennifer heard him say, and Charley looked at her again, closed the remaining distance slowly, carefully.

"Charley, it's me," Jennifer said as slowly, as awkwardly -- but now she was looking at him, at the Guild Master, and the woman walking by his side. "Sumner?" she asked. "Sumner..."

He nodded as he came close. "Yes, it's me," he smiled -- and she ran to him, fell into his arms.

"Thank God," Jennifer sighed. "I thought I'd lost you..."

"Where's Claude?" the woman by his side said. "Is he here? We didn't see him in the village..."

"Marian! Marian, is that you...?" Esterhaus said, jumping from the porch...

Sumner held onto Jennifer, held her so tight it hurt -- but he couldn't let go, not again, not ever again...and the two pups by their side circled between legs, endlessly rubbed against them, melding past to present. He held her face to his and kissed her lips over and over, finally feeling alive again with her in his arms.

At last she pulled away and knelt down -- and Charley, the first Charley, was all over her and they fell to ground in laughing embrace -- then Timothy was standing by the Guild Master, looking at him most strangely.

"I take it you knew my sister once?" Tim said, and Sumner, the Guild Master, could see that all the boy's self-righteous piety had been drained from his soul.

"You could say that." But now he heard another dog barking and he turned, looked seaward to the village, saw two women walking up from the village, a large tan dog walking along faithfully by their side.

"I'll be damned," Sumner whispered, ignoring Debussy and Orgeron as they fell and rolled around in the grass, and Jennifer turned to look at the women.

"Who are they?"

"A shrink, and an owl," Sumner said, now wondering where the hell Ted was. "Where're your other brothers, Jenn?"

Jennifer looked at the Guild Master -- yet she heard Sumner's voice as if still faraway, down, perhaps, forgotten halls of memory. "Langston? He has gone to see after Na-taka-ri..."

"The native girl? Why, is something wrong?"

"She was ill -- the pox, I think."

"The pox? You mean...smallpox? Jesus H Christ, we can't let him..." He turned, looked at Jennifer, then at Timothy. "Where is she? Do you know?"

"Yes," Tim said. "A clearing in the woods -- it's not far." Yet Tim was looking at Esterhaus and the strange woman, suddenly quite annoyed. "Herr Esterhaus? Should you not go back to your house, do such things in private...?" -- then he saw snowflakes falling, just in silence, and Watanabe's song washed over the moment, leaving him bereft of judgement.

"Isn't that another dog," Jennifer asked as she looked at the two women, and Odysseus turned to see Argos looking at him -- then the pup was streaking to his side, barely a year old again and he was furious with himself for leaving the pup alone so long. From miles away the pup leapt into his arms and he drifted through time for a moment, back to Ithaca -- but Jenn was looking at him now, pulling him back into the moment.

"Argos?" she said.

"It's a long story," Odysseus said to Penelope. "One for another day. Now, we must find Langston, and this sick girl..."

+++++

They found him on the floor, inside the small cabin he'd built for Na-taka-ri, and he was beside himself, weeping a trail of tears down his own hall of mirrors.

"I can't lose her, not again..." He was lost in another village, lost in time, for his was a transcendent grief born of love and guilt, carried by memory through eons of time to the present.

The Guild Master walked inside, keeping the others out with an outstretched arm, and he walked over to the girl; he saw the angry alligator hide of the poxed -- even her eyelids and mouth were completely covered and he wanted to turn away, but he had to get the boy out of this place, get him away from this infernal disease...then burn this fouled space to the ground.

There came a deafening crash -- and they jumped as a burst of light filled the cabin.

"What was that? Lightning?" Langston said, and then he saw Jeremiah walking into the cabin, and he made his way unsteadily to his feet then dove into his brother's arms. "Oh Brother, I have missed you so!"

Yet Jeremiah was all business now, and though he held his little brother for a moment, he soon stepped aside...and saw the Guild Master... "Sumner?"

And Sumner smiled. "Good of you to come, Spud. I was beginning to wonder...?"

Ted smiled and, still dressed in scrubs, he leaned over Na-taka-ri while he pulled latex gloves from a case and put them on. He gently opened the girls eyelids and shone a light in each, then examined her mouth and nostrils. He nodded once, took an IV kit from his case and swabbed the girl's arm, then started a line.

"Langston, I need you to tie this up, hang this bag from the timbers, this end down."

"Yes, brother," the boy said, the joy in his eyes replaced by a hundred unanswered questions.

When the line was dripping freely Jeremiah took out a syringe and filled it with a powerful steroid, then he stopped and looked into the shadows. "This one?" he asked -- and only then did Langston see the small blue creature standing just out of sight.

"Yes, directly into the femoral artery," the miniature version of Jeremiah said. "Then you must leave. I will look after the girl while she remains infectious."

"Jeremiah?" Langston said, clearly perplexed and not at all sure what he'd just seen. "What manner of creature is this?"

"It's alright, boy," the Guild Master said. "Call this fella Ted. His people are our friends."

"People? Friends?"

Jeremiah nodded his head and almost smiled. "Now, did you touch the girl?"

"You mean Na-taka-ri? Yes, of course..."

"Take off your shirt," Jeremiah commanded, and he stood back while his little brother stripped down to his waist. "Arms up," he added, "real high," then he poked around Langston's armpits, shone his light in each of his brother's eyes -- then up the nostrils and down his throat, and when he was finished he turned to the blue creature, this urTed, and said: "Looks good. I don't see a thing, no nodes involved."

"20cc of the attenuated virus should suffice, for now," the creature said, "but we should begin vaccinations throughout the colony -- before the day is out."

Jeremiah drew up the syringe then looked at his brother. "You'll have to trust me on this, Langston. Give me your arm..."

"You're going to stick me in the arm? With that lance?"

"Uh-huh."

"The hell you say," and he began backing out of the cabin -- and ran into the Guild Master...

...who began clucking like a barnyard hen...then: "Why don't you do me first?"

"Okeedoke," Ted said, and he felt himself drifting through layers of personality, struggling to settle on one...to settle somewhere in time...

Yet he swapped Sumner's arm with an alcohol pad, then pinched the skin and slipped the needle under the skin.

"See?" the Guild Master said, "Doesn't hurt at all."

Langston looked dubious, looked from the Guild Master to his brother and back again. "What does this thing do?" he asked, his voice dripping with suspicious anxiety.

"It'll keep you from getting the pox," Jeremiah said. "And a few other things, too."

The Guild Master leaned over and whispered something in Ted's ear as he gave the injection to Langston...

"She's here already? Outstanding!"

"The house, on the porch," Sumner added. "With your sister who, by the way -- is not in a wheelchair."

Ted smiled, still fighting off the disorientation as best he could, but this phasing from Ted to Jeremiah to Ely Rosenberg and back again was taking more than an emotional toll. Then he recalled how the 'Vulcans' had considered Carol's and Jeannie Curry's knowledge crucial, so along with his 'Rosenberg's layer' of surgical skills, there'd be enough medical knowledge on hand -- for a while, anyway -- to keep the colony going.

They left the urTed with Na-taka-ri and walked out into the freshening autumn afternoon, and Ted walked through the forest to the Clemens' house, then saw Carol sitting on Langston's porch, beside Hopie and Jennifer. His smiled deepened when he thought of Jennifer, the way things had worked out. That crazy dolphin...she'd thought of everything. And what she hadn't -- Hopie had.

Another wave of disorientation struck and he staggered under the weight of so much conflicting information. So many connections, so much contradiction. Everywhere -- hell...everywhen. An infinity of connection struggling for attention.

He watched Sumner and Jennifer fold themselves into one another and he considered them for a moment, the miracle of this reunion, then he sat between Carol and Hopie, the two women central to his life now, here, forever.

The clouds were thinning, light was breaking through -- and Jennifer gasped, began to shake uncontrollably.

"I don't think I'll ever tire of looking at that," Carol sighed, looking up through parting clouds at Perelandra. A ringed gas giant ten times larger than Saturn, and with more than twenty moons visible in the daylight. And of which one -- Ithaca, their new home -- was but one of many being colonized even now.

Coda

They settled on a day and called it Sunday, and all the colonists streamed to the church on the little hill that looked out over the harbor. Many walked uncertainly, their eyes fixed on the sky, and beyond, on Perelandra. Once a gas giant, now a water world -- and home to the most irrational force in the universe -- the planet dominated the sky like nothing any human had ever known. Smokey gray in daylight, an oddly iridescent blue in the night sky, the huge planet simply could not be ignored. And because Ithaca was but a moon in her orbit, Perelandra was always in view. In orbit around a binary system, Perelandra's path through the system was stable, but her many dancing moons produced an exotic pattern of tides, and Ithaca's wildly fluctuating -- if somewhat predictable -- weather patterns were another interesting result.

The Clemens clan walked inside and sat in their family's pew, yet Timothy held back when he saw a girl sitting alone on the far side of the chapel. She was young and her skin black as night, and as he approached he saw she was holding a baby in her lap. She looked up at him when he stopped by her pew and he saw it in her eyes. That faraway place...

"Emma?"

"Yes? But have we met?"

He smiled inside, smiled as he drifted in Watanabe's song, then he looked at the boy in her arms, and listened to echoes of another beating heart.

"May I sit here?" he asked, and she slid over a little to make room.

The Rector, the Right Reverend Roger Foster, walked in -- a young woman by his side. "Her name is Emily," Jennifer said to Carol and Jeannie. "They found one another a few days ago, yet I hear they're already fast friends and quite inseparable."

Claude and Marian played their piano, a gift from the Clemens, a duet of course, and the assembled colonists sat in raptured silence while the new composition unfolded

The Rector spoke about the meaning of love and tolerance, and the virtue of temperance, yet he lingered on the path ahead, the choices each colonist would have to make in the years ahead if life on Ithaca was to have any lasting meaning, then the service was at an end and the congregation walked out onto the lawn, to the food Jeremiah and the Guild Master were preparing, and soon everyone was seated, eating smoked venison and roasted corn.

"That was such a beautiful piece, Claude," Jennifer said as Claude and Marian sat next to her. "What do you call it?"

"Ode to a Nagging Housewife," Debussy shared, and Deborah leaned over, bit the tip of his nose -- gently -- then looked at Sumner, something tugging at her heart...

But his eyes were fixed on two people coming up from the harbor, and she followed his eyes.

Dr Mann, and Phoebe, Sumner's twin sister? 'And just how did I know that?'

She watched as they walked up to Sumner and Ted, and Deborah watched this reunion unfold with bittersweet memory lapping at the far shores of her own memory...

Then Phoebe was pointing, pointing to rocks in the distance, and Sumner nodded his head and left, began the long walk out to the rocky point beyond the harbor, and Marian wondered what that was all about...

Then Dr Mann was beside her, smacking his lips as recognition set in...

"And how are you...? Marian, isn't it?" the old psychiatrist asked -- and then he recognized Debussy sitting by her side and smiled -- but then the old man looked up at the sky -- and he began to tremble as consciousness began to register what the eyes could not quite accept.

"Perelandra," Marian said, following his thoughts skyward.

"And what, do tell, is Perelandra?"

"That," she said, pointing to the ringed planet, "is Perelandra."

Mann was nodding his head, his hands still atremble when a girl leaned over and said: "Toto...you ain't in Kansas anymore."

Mann's lip's smacked away as he struggled for words, then he turned and looked for Phoebe...

+++++

Tom Goodwin sat on the rocks, motionless now, though he'd been fidgeting for hours and was quite exhausted after yet another sleepless night. He hadn't seen them, not one of them, since their arrival -- and he felt at a loss to explain why this was a surprised. Hadn't the little blue ones made things clear enough? This world was for us, not them -- and they had to remain away from humans or trouble would ensue.

Perelandra alone belonged to them, and he had to learn to live with that.

Yet he missed her, the one with the scars under her eye, almost as much as he missed Margherita and the Muppet. There was hardly ever a moment he didn't think of them, of their choice to stay, and he hoped they had found peace...

He heard someone coming down through the rocks, turned and saw Sumner Collins skipping down the hill, and he sighed, turned back to the sea.

Sumner bounced to a stop and sat, and looked out to sea -- waiting for Goodwin to say something, anything.

"I wonder where they are..." Goodwin finally said.

"Up there, I reckon..." Collins said, pointing at Perelandra.

Goodwin scowled. "I can't accept that, you know. Can't accept that they're gone...that she's gone from my life. From all our lives."

"Why?"

"Because she became so much a part of who I am, what I care about."

"Change is inevitable, don't you think?"

"Of course, but she was my one constant in a dissolving life; she had been for years, then Margherita..."

"Okay, I get that, but..."

"The thing is, Sumner, I know she's out there. She's waiting for me. I can feel it."

"Did I get a chance to tell you about John Lennon?"

"Who...? You mean the Beatle...?"

"Yeah, the very same. So, let me tell you a story...

"I was with him, well, very close when he was killed and, I don't know, maybe I was the last person he got a chance to connect with..."

"No kidding...?"

"Well, the point here...he started visiting me a few years ago, after Jennifer passed away..."

"What?"

"I know...but these weren't simple hallucinations, Tom. Other people saw him to, and more often than not he was singing, and playing the guitar..."

"Look, Sumner, this is making me a little..."

"What? Uncomfortable?"

But Goodwin was looking at Sumner, and he hadn't opened his mouth, had not spoken those words. He jerked around, saw Lennon sitting on a rock, his feet dangling over the edge of the cliff, with only the sea below, then he began singing: "Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup," then he stopped, shook his head and began again: "I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in, and stops my mind from wandering, where it will go..." then he stopped again, and turned to Goodwin.