COSMOS magazine

Epilogue

Monday, May 2, the Year after Next

"Morbius," the little girl said. Tongue stuck out the side of her mouth, she tried to coordinate her chubby fingers and seal closed the strip of heavy paper she had daubed with glue at each end.

Alex laughed out loud, delighted. The child sent him a hurt glance, then looked back in concentration to her task. One end of the strip whipped free, straightened.

"Oh no!" she cried.

"Never mind, sweetheart. Try again. It's going to be beautiful." Baby-sitting is never a twelve year old boy's favourite task, especially on his birthday, but Alex was immensely fond of his brilliant half-sister. "That's it. Now twist the end..."

Estella frowned, rotated one end of the strip, held both ends parallel, pressed the glued tips together. They locked instantly. The match was not perfect, but both children gazed in satisfaction at the famous puzzling shape. One side of the heavy paper was luminously purple; the other dull old gold. The boundary where they met was abrupt, yet as Estella fed the closed circle through her fat little fingers, around the half twist, it was shockingly apparent that the strip had only one side.

"The road goes ever on," Alex sang in a melodious soprano.

"Morbius strip!"

The night before, the Peters family had watched one of Paul's favourite science fiction classics, Forbidden Planet, an unintentionally funny space opera made half a century earlier. Dr. Morbius, the tragic mad scientist, had enthralled little Estella. She'd laughed at the antics of Robby the Robot, but the intense, deep-voiced Morbius held her silent.

"August Ferdinand Möbius," Alex said carefully. "Not Morbius and not Morpheus. This is a Möbius strip. MER-bee-us. Great German mathematician."

"Huh," the little girl said, winding the unending strip through her fingers. She gave a gasp of delight. "Only one edge!"

"You clever little darling!" Alex cried. He picked her up and tossed her giggling into the air. Green and pink globes of light swirled around them, guardians, gateways. "I was at least ten before I worked that out."

A man came out of the house, stood watching them at play on the bright grass. Estella noticed his presence first, ran up to him with her hands outstretched.

"Unca Bruce! Gi' me a ride on your back!"

Alex watched tensely. In the fullness of time, he knew, he would come to terms with this. Redemption and recovery, the acquisition of maturity in men and women cruelly damaged by history's poisons and limits. He walked across the grass, hands in his pockets. Roberta and the Changs, Drew and Maureen and little Carlos, Carol Glassman whom he still thought of fondly as an adopted auntie, the whole crew were flying down in the MTJ jet for his birthday party and he wanted to be neatly dressed for them, within the limits of cool. Blick glanced directly at him across his sister's shoulder. Luminously prismatic tears stood in the corners of the man's eyes. He said nothing.

Alex nodded, expression neutral, and stepped into the cool shadows of the hacienda. His mother's voice floated to him from her study, playing her guitar, singing lightly in Spanish. He was not sure what he would do after today, but he would think of something.

Monday, May 2

Two young women approached and stood diffidently, waiting for King Wayne to notice them. "Eleanor! Gracie!" He was genuinely glad to see them willing to consult him in a dispute. Two years ago, they had been mentally retarded, abused or ignored by almost everyone, barely able to cope with life.

Gracie smiled and blushed, Eleanor frowned.

"We need an intervention," Gracie said shyly.

"No problem. Who'll speak first?"

Eleanor stepped forward. "Grace is always going off in the morning, leaving stuff strewn all over the place. She keeps food over there, and—"

"I do not!"

"One at a time. Eleanor?"

"Half the time she forgets she's got food stashed 'til it starts to stink. Lord knows what kind of bugs she got crawling around in her bed."

The other woman opened her mouth wide, indignant.

"Wait, Gracie, you'll get your turn. Eleanor, what would you like to do about this problem?"

"I just want you to tell her to move her stuff and sleep somewheres else she gone be such a slob."

"Anything more?" In the fire flicker, King Wayne kept his expression neutral.

"No." Eleanor glared.

"Gracie, what's your take on the problem?

"True I'm not the neatest person, but I'm not dirty. I took food back to my place once, maybe twice, when I was sick. She just lying about it being rotten."

Eleanor shrieked denial, but Wayne held up a hand.

"She want me to move so her boyfriend have my space. He been sleeping with her every night, and half the time put his stuff in my space, and..." Gracie swiped a hand under her nose. "Last night he threaten me with a knife."

"Okay, Gracie. What would you like to do about the problem?"

"Eleanor be the one to move. I been here longer than her, and nobody ever complain before. Her boyfriend need to be thrown out."

"Anything else?"

Gracie shook her head.

"Okay. First Gracie—I have seen your stuff scattered around. Clean up your act. Understand?"

"Yes, Wayne, I will."

"Good. I'll be watching. Now, Eleanor. You know the rules. One person to a space. You want your friend to have Gracie's space, she has to agree to it first. You might want to offer to pay her something, make it worthwhile for her to move. Otherwise, you and your boyfriend find another spot with two spaces side by side." He looked at her keenly. "About the knife—"

"A tiny little pocket knife! He didn't threaten to cut her none."

King Wayne said calmly, "I'll need to talk to your boyfriend. What's his name?"

"Freddie."

"Okay, please have Freddie come by and talk to me sometime tonight."

"All right," said Eleanor sullenly.

"Thank you, Wayne," said Gracie, "I'll keep my place neater from now on, I promise." They were dismissed.

Wayne gazed into the flames. Soon he would move on from here, as Curt had done months ago, enter into the extraordinary world that was forming amid violence and confusion and exultation beyond this refuge of Les Miserables. He sighed, gazing across his small kingdom. The healing illness had passed through the encampment in waves, unremarked. None of the indigent had yet noticed their freedom from colds and sores, the improvement in their minds, although their growing hunger had driven some back to theft and others to work.

It seemed to Wayne, now that he paid attention to it, that the endless thudding sound of wheels above his head was more muted of late. Far fewer people were driving to work, of course, but the first wild upset-ant nest swarming was done as well. A plague of intelligence had unhinged long-established social patterns and habits. For sure it was a disturbing time to be alive, especially for a man who had once been dead, and before that a madman and a killer. An exhilarating time.

Wayne rose, stretched, felt life surge in his muscles. He smiled. Mirth grew within him, burst from his lips, shook his chest. King Wayne laughed out loud with joy, and a ripple of laughter spread like a contagion through the ragged men and women who at last would leave this wretched place and join in creating a new world without death.

Melbourne/San Antonio, 2007

*** THE END ***