Eric Brown - The Phoenix Experiment

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The Phoenix Experiment

a short story by Eric Brown

Foreword

"The Phoenix Experiment" is a companion piece to my short story The

Disciples of Apollo. It follows some of the same themes and concerns of

that story, loneliness and redemption, though in an overtly

science-fictional setting. It is a mood piece, the description of the time

in the life of a recognisably human character, perhaps one hundred years

hence.

It was published in the small press magazine The Lyre #1, in the summer of

'91.

The Phoenix Experiment

One month after the death of his daughter, Jonathon Fuller decided to

leave the city. The life and energy of the place was too stark a contrast

to the isolation he had imposed upon himself, too harsh a reminder of his

daughter's passing. He needed the tranquillity of the countryside, where

his desire to be alone would not be seen as perverse, to come to terms

with his guilt and eventually, perhaps, to persuade himself to return. He

shelved all his projects and told his agent that he was going away for a

long holiday.

Early that Summer he drove from the city and toured the southern coastline

in search of a suitable retreat, somewhere isolated and idyllic, untouched

by the technologies of contemporary life. Within a week he discovered a

lonely village overlooking the Channel, and made enquiries at a local

property office. He was told that there were no houses for rent in the

village itself - but there were chalets available in the Canterbury

Rehabilitation Community, half a mile away.

He'd heard about the Community, but, far from being deterred by the nature

of the place, it occurred to him that there he might be allowed the

privacy he desired. When he arrived at the enclosed estate later that

afternoon he was met by an invalid in a carriage, who called himself the

Captain and showed Fuller to one of a dozen identical A-frames that

occupied a greensward overlooking the ocean. The view of the seascape, and

the chalet's relative isolation, cheered him. He thought back to his

depressive state in the city and told himself that this was exactly what

he had been seeking.

That first night, as darkness fell and the stars appeared, he took a

bottle of scotch onto the balcony, drank and stared at the constellations.

The Captain had told him that he would be made welcome by the rest of the

patients - at this stage of their rehabilitation, he had said, they rarely

had contact with outsiders. Fuller had been unable to bring himself to

tell the Captain that he would not be requiring company for some time.

In one of the other A-frames on the gently sloping greensward, a party was

in progress: the patients, he thought, doing their best to forget the

present. Dark shapes passed across the lighted squares of windows like

figures in an Indonesian shadow play, and laughter drifted to him on the

warm night air.

He decided to set up a camp bed on the balcony, in the hope that his

dreams of late had been in part a product of the claustrophobia he had

experienced in the city. But the open air, the mild sea breeze, could do

nothing to alleviate the guilt, and in the early hours he awoke in a sweat

and watched his daughter's smiling face vanish into the night.

He took to going on long walks early in the mornings, so as to avoid the

patients who were active mainly in the afternoons. He would spend the rest

of the day reading, or drinking, or watching television. It was as if he

was purposefully filling his head with trivia, and allotting only the two

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hours he spent walking for the serious consideration of his circumstances.

At the funeral, and its aftermath, he had been unable to show the

slightest sign of grief. Many of his acquaintances assumed that he was

still in shock, but his father had seen through his silent facade and

called Fuller cold and emotionless, accused him of feeling nothing for his

dead daughter.

Only later did he begin to experience the guilt - not so much at being

unable to grieve at her death, rather at his inability to show her more

affection during the short time that she was alive. He had kept his

distance, remained aloof - believing that by doing so he could insulate

himself from the hurt that inevitably followed emotional involvement. He

believed that with involvement came the fear of another's mortality, and

from that the reminder of one's own - and Fuller feared his own death more

than anything else. Over the years, he had succeeded in distancing himself

from everyone with whom he had contact, his daughter included. He was

rewarded by the inability to suffer anguish at his bereavement. Only now

was he coming to realise that the quality of his daughter's short life had

suffered from his apathy.

One morning, after a long walk, Fuller encountered a patient on the beach

beneath the cliffs. He came to think of the brief meeting as prophetic,

though not at the time.

He saw the woman as he came around the headland, paused and considered

retracing his steps so as to avoid contact. She was staring out to sea,

with her back to him, and he decided to walk quickly past her towards the

steps cut into the cliff-face.

She stood in the wet sand, her hands slotted into the back pockets of her

denim cut-offs, a short white tee-shirt emphasizing her tan. She was a

crew-cut blonde with the figure of a small boy, and it occurred to Fuller,

with mounting shock that, if she were so physically perfect, then her

debilitation had to be cerebral.

Then he became aware of the subcutaneous network, the threads of gold that

embroidered the surface of her arms and legs, the small of her back and

belly between cotton shirt and the frayed waistline of her denims.

She turned and caught him staring. Her face was young and open. Fuller

tried to hurry past, but her question stopped him.

"Are you one of them?" Her voice was transistorised, straight from the

larynx, while her full lips smiled and her green eyes stared at him.

"I arrived here yesterday, from London." He stopped. "But aren't you-?" He

gestured to the greensward.

"I'm a patient, but not of the Canterbury Line. We do not mix."

He saw that although she had followed him with her head, her stance in the

wet sand had not altered. She stood with a torque to her spine that was at

once awkward and becoming, her hands still pocketed behind her.

He gestured to the steps in the cliff-face, suggesting she might care to

accompany him. "Why don't you mix?" he asked.

She walked with movements of such brittle care she might at one have time

broken every bone in her body, yet she was far from clumsy. She moved with

the fluid grace, the deliberation of an actress in a noh play.

She said simply in reply: "I scare them." And smiled at him.

At the top of the cliff he made an excuse and returned to his chalet.

There, he turned and watched her as she moved off with laborious languor.

Her perfection, despite whatever injuries she had sustained, filled him

with wonder - and he suspected that it was her perfection that scared the

other patients.

Two nights later he came close.

It was a contradiction that although for thirty years he had absented

himself from emotional involvement, so that he might hold himself at some

remove from the inevitability of death, now he was contemplating taking

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his life. A fear of death had made him what he was - and it was as if

threatening himself with oblivion he was in fact presenting himself with

an ultimatum: either change, and learn to live and give as others do, or

kill yourself now in the full knowledge of the futility of your

existence... So naturally he had flung aside the pistol with which, with

ultimate irony, he had intended to shoot himself through the heart.

Then, in lieu of fulfilling the directive of his ultimatum, he found the

bottle of scotch and drank himself senseless.

Often, during the next few weeks, the patients invited him to join them,

and Fuller could not bring himself to refuse. He attended picnics on the

greensward, barbecues on the beach, late night parties at which the

invalids would sit outside in groups and point to the stars where they had

served.

His main concern in capitulating and joining their company, that he might

have to explain himself and his presence here, proved unfounded. They had

heard of Jonathon Fuller, the historical-scripter, and knew of the loss of

his daughter. He found himself accepted without having to explain his

past, and part of him - the part that had refused to end his life the

other night - knew full well that he was cheating himself.

He soon spent almost every night at their gatherings, and it was ironical

that they regarded him - the only fit and whole person among them - with

the pity that they themselves deserved; they had come to accept their own

injuries, but they found it hard to come to terms with Fuller's loss. They

had passed so close to death that the mere thought of it terrified them.

They were daunting company, these survivors of starship burnouts, novae,

alien pestilence, war and a hundred other far disasters. They spoke of

their experiences with a gentle wisdom at odds with the enormity of their

physical deformities. He had thought that, beside them, perhaps his own

problems would come to appear slight, but such was not the case. Through

their experiences they had come to know themselves with a thoroughness

that emphasized his own uncertainty and lack of self-knowledge. All he had

that they did not was a fully-functioning body.

He could not talk of himself without appearing superficial, so although he

drank and laughed and partied with them, he remained aloof. He knew that

to save himself and accept intimacies would mean that they must accept

him, and he was not prepared to open himself to the pain and humiliation

he knew that that would entail.

One warm evening, at a party which had spilled from a chalet and across

the greensward, Fuller sat on the grass with a bottle in his grip while he

listened to the Captain recount the meltdown of his starship.

They were alone, and Fuller had ceased to be revolted by the Captain's

extensive injuries. They were rebuilding him piece by piece; he would

disappear for days on end, and reappear at last a little more human.

Fuller sat well beyond the crimson glow that encapsulated the Captain and

his overdose of radiation. A geiger counter on the spacer's belt churred

like a cricket.

He came to the end of his story, and they regarded the star where it had

happened. A silence came down between them, like the end of an act, and on

the periphery of his vision Fuller was aware of a familiar movement. He

turned to acknowledge her presence.

She crouched on the grass twenty metres away, hugging her bare shins and

staring at them. Her epidermal network glowed in the gathering darkness

like spun gold. She had the aspect of an angel.

In a bid to overcome his unease at her constant regard, he turned to the

starship captain. "Who's the woman?" he asked.

The carriage swung so that the gobbet of flesh and gristle that was the

extent of the Captain's physical being now faced the perfect woman. "She's

the Phoenix Line experiment," he said.

Her tragic isolation touched something deep within Fuller. "Why doesn't

she join us?"

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Eric Brown - The Phoenix Experiment

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