The gunslinger walked deliberately toward the circle of stones, pausing once to get a cool drink from the spring. He could see his own reflection in a tiny pool edged with moss and lilypads, and he looked at himself for a moment, as fascinated as Narcissus. The mind-reaction was beginning to settle in, slowing down his chain of thought by seeming to increase the connotations of every idea and every bit of sensory input. Things began to take on weight and thickness that had been heretofore invisible. He paused, getting to his feet again, and looked through the tangled snarl of willows. Sunlight slanted through in a golden, dusty bar, and he watched the interplay of motes and tiny flying things for a moment before going on.
The drug often had disturbed him: his ego was too strong (or perhaps just too simple) to enjoy being eclipsed and peeled back, made a target for more sensitive emotions - they tickled at him like a cat's whiskers. But this time he felt fairly calm. That was good.
He stepped into the clearing and walked straight into the circle. He stood, letting his mind run free. Yes, it was coming harder now, faster. The grass screamed green at him; it seemed that if he bent over and rubbed his hands in it he would stand up with green paint all over his fingers and palms. He resisted a puckish urge to try the experiment
But there was no voice from the oracle. No sexual stirring.
He went to the altar, stood beside it for a moment coherent thought was now almost impossible. His teeth felt strange in his head. The world held too much light. He climbed up on the altar and lay back. His mind was becoming a jungle full of strange thought-plants that he had never seen or suspected before, a willow-jungle that had grown up around a mescaline spring. The sky was water and he hung suspended over it The thought gave him a vertigo that seemed faraway and unimportant.
A line of old poetry occurred to him, not a nursery verse now, no; his mother had feared the drugs and the necessity of them (as she had feared Cort and the necessity for this beater of boys); this verse came from one of the Dens to the north of the desert, where men still lived among the machines that usually didn't work... and which sometimes ate the men when they did. The lines played again and again, reminding him (in an unconnected way that was typical of the mescaline rush) of snow falling in a globe he had owned as a child, mystic and half fantastical:
Beyond the reach of human range
A drop of hell, a touch of strange...
The trees which overhung the altar contained faces. He watched them with abstracted fascination: Here was a dragon, green and twitching. Here a wood-nymph with beckoning branch arms. Here a living skull overgrown with slime. Faces. Faces.
The grasses of the clearing suddenly whipped and bent
I come.
I come.
Vague stirrings within his flesh. How far I have come,
he thought From couching with Susan in sweet hay to this. She pressed over him, a body made of the wind, a breast
of sudden fragrant jasmine, rose, and honeysuckle.
"Make your prophecy," he said. His mouth felt full of metal.
A sigh. A faint sound of weeping. The gunslinger's genitals felt drawn and hard. Over him and beyond the faces in the leaves, he could see the mountains - hard and brutal and full of teeth.
The body moved against him, struggled with him. He felt his hands curl into fists. She had sent him a vision of Susan. It was Susan above him, lovely Susan at the window, waiting for him with her hair spilled down her back and over her shoulders. He tossed his head, but her face followed.
Jasmine, rose, honeysuckle, old hay.., the smell of love. Love me.
"Speak prophecy," he said.
Please, the oracle wept. Don't be cold. It is always so cold here - Hands slipping over his flesh, manipulating, lighting
him on fire. Pulling him. Drawing. A black crevice. The ultimate wanton. Wet and warm - No. Dry. Cold. Sterile.
Have a touch of mercy, gunslinger. Ah, please, I beg your favor! Mercy!
Would you have mercy on the boy?
What boy? I know no boy. It's not boys I need. 0 please. Jasmine, rose, honeysuckle. Dry hay with its ghost of summer clover. Oil decanted from ancient urns. A riot for flesh.
"After," he said.
Now. Please. Now.
He let his mind coil out at her, the antithesis of emotion. The body that hung over him froze and seemed to scream.
There was a brief, vicious tug-of-war between his temples
- his mind was the rope, gray and fibrous. For long moments there was no sound but the quiet hush of his breathing and the faint breeze which made the green faces in the trees shift, wink, and grimace. No bird sang.
Her hold loosened. Again there was the sound of sobbing. It would have to be quick, or she would leave him. To stay now meant attenuation; perhaps her own kind of death. Already he felt her drawing away to leave the circle of stones. Wind rippled the grass in tortured patterns.
"Prophecy," he said - a bleak noun.
A weeping, tired sigh. He could almost have granted the mercy she begged, but - there was Jake. He would have found Jake dead or insane if he had been any later last night
Sleep, then.
"No."