Dark Ararat

“Do the others know?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Matthew said. “If they’ve guessed, they’re keeping it to themselves, just as I was. If they only suspect the truth, they’re in no hurry to exchange suspicion for certainty. Bernal expected to find something down there, didn’t he? Maybe not humanoids, but something worthwhile. Serial killer anemones. NV correlated with ER. Something to tip us off as to why this world is at one and the same time so seemingly simple and so obviously weird. We really don’t know what might be down there—and it’s certainly far too soon to despair of making progress when we haven’t even stepped across the threshold.”

Dulcie didn’t turn around, and Matthew could see that her attitude was still all wrong. That line of argument was too familiar to cut through the Gordian knot of her confusion; he needed something that could catch her attention more securely: something that could draw her out of her neurotic self-absorption; something that could surprise her. It had to be true, though. Surprise was no good in itself, and no good at all unless he could startle her with the truth—or something that could pass for the truth.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything that was sure to do the trick. He was tired, and his arm hurt worse than any IT-equipped man ever expected any part of him to hurt, and he had already said most of what there was to be said about the stubborn mysteries of Tyre, alias Ararat, alias humankind’s New World.

He had to get insideher skin. He had to break into the dark bubble where she had confined herself and condemned herself to death.

“You loved him,” he said, as soon as the notion popped into his head. It arrived as if from nowhere, but he knew that wasn’t the case. Ever since he had guessed that Dulcie had killed Bernal he had been asking the question why, even if he had found the puzzle too uncomfortable to expose it to the full glare of consciousness. He had been working on it while be was asleep, and while he was spaced out, without even allowing himself to realize the fact. And he had solved it. He knewthe answer. Verstehenwas delivering it up to him even as he spoke. The guess spun like a hectic top, drawing a thread of certainty tightly about itself. It was the only story that made sense, even if it could not have made sense of anyone else but Dulcie Gherardesca.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she parried, not yet surprised enough.

“You were part of the same intake,” Matthew remembered. “You were frozen down at the same time as Bernal. You were with him—on the moon, if not at the spaceport. And afterthe moon, when you had to take the next outward jump. You were together. Both apprehensive. Both scared you might not be doing the right thing. Both scared, period. You were together.” He went on with increasing fluency, congratulating himself as he went on having rediscovered his improvisatory skills at last, wishing that there could have been a camera ru

That was when she turned around, and he knew that he’d won half of the half-battle that still remained to be won.

“You don’tknow,” she spat at him. “Do you think I’m stupid? I understand that it wasn’t his fault that he forgot. I understand that it was just a side effect of the SusAn. Do you think I’m so stupid that I don’t know that?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Matthew shot back, lightning-fast. “That’s not what I mean at all. I really can see the whole picture. You and Bernal were together before you were frozen down. You were in love. When you were brought out again, separately, he was affected by the memory loss but you weren’t. You understood. I knowyou understood. And when you came here, he was with Ly

“You thought it meant that he hadn’t been serious, couldn’t have been serious, that he was just filling in time, that it was just because you were there, available, when nobody else was. You thought it meant that he could never reallyhave been interested in someone like you, that he had never really looked behind the scars. You could have forgiven him for forgetting, because that wasn’t his fault, but you couldn’t forgive him for not being able to do it all over again from scratch, for not being able to duplicate the same emotional chain from the square one of i

“I understand, Dulcie. I really do. But you’re wrong. You’re wrong about Bernal. You’re wrong about it not being serious, about it just filling in time, about it just being a matter of availability, of scratching an itch. He wasn’t like that. I knew him, Dulcie. I knew him as well as any man alive. He was alwaysserious. He loved them all, Dulcie. Every last one. He couldn’t help himself. He was utterly and absolutely sincere. It never lasted long, but while it did, he was head over heels. He meant it, Dulcie. Whatever he said to you, he meant it all. He was an honest man. In that, and other things as well, he was totally and incorrigibly honest.

“The problem wasn’t that he forgot too much, but that he didn’t forget enough. At some level, he knew. He couldn’t bring it to the level of consciousness, but something in him knew. If he really had been back to square one, utterly i

“I don’t know you at all, but I know how the people on Hope—Nita Brownell included—reacted when I lashed out and injured a man, and I think I can understand well enough how you felt when you realized that you’d lashed out, like exactly the kind of barbarian the crewpeople think we are and we’re so very desperate to think we’re not. And I know it wasn’t as mad or bad as it seemed, because I’m begi

Finally, inevitably, Matthew ran out of breath. But he hadn’t lost his audience. The fish was well and truly hooked.

Matthew had no idea whether he was telling the whole truth or not. He had known Bernal Delgado, and the way he’d just represented and explained him was exactly the way that Bernal Delgado would have represented and explained himself—but how well, Matthew wondered, does any human being ever know any other? And how well, in the final analysis, does any human being ever know himself—or herself?