Eighteen - Jigsaw Moons
The new Sally Droover wasn'ttaking anything for granted. Her dreams paraded, imagery from adissolving brain. Really, it flowed out her ears, stained the pillow.But the engineer had returned for her, smirking like a hornyleprechaun.
He lifted Sal, threw her over hisshoulder and capered along the dim passage. She bobbed erratically,dribbling phlegm, a pain in her stomach. The darkening walls passedon either side, narrowing toward some distant point, shading grey toblack to emptiness: the void, less the stars, less the planets andmoons and satellites.
To begin withhis footfalls were silent, then, as her eyes drifted shut, melting,her ears caught the crunch of dry leaves, the slap of soles on wetpavement, the familiar ring of steel gantries, catwalks, deckshielding. Through the transparencies of her mind Sal descried ahatchway, and beyond it sunlight, greenness, flowers...
It was heaven, Sally reckoned, andshe liked it.
It smelled of other worlds.
Luna and Callisto; Thebe, Sinope,lo, Atlas, Janus; Mimas and Phoebe; Miranda, Umbriel, Charon...all ofthose and others, a regular bouquet.
Pieces of moons assembled in herskull, inverted, blossomed, gave her this vision: of a place within aplace, an interior whose global boundaries interconnected, splicedfrom longing, shaped from a hundred birthday parties...a jigsaw ofjuxtaposed fantasies.
It contained her, but Sal wasn'tsatisfied.
Byron put her down gently.
‘Where are the angels?’ sheinquired.
‘What do you think I am?’
‘Crazy...’
He smiled. ‘Now there'sgratitude for you.’
She hugged her knees. ‘Where arewe? I mean, actually.’
‘The main fuel-tank.’
‘You're lying!’
‘Nope.’ He rummaged in a baggypocket for tobacco and papers, the latter red with yellow polka-dots.‘Ernie grows his own,’ he explained. ‘The paper - like muchelse - he recycles. Old comics mostly.’
‘You're serious.’ Sally lookedaround. Close by bubbled a stream, water running (Do I believe...)uphill.
‘It takes some getting used to,’Friendly admitted. He waved his lighter. ‘Abdul's dead.’
‘Yeah?’ The air tasted vaguelyof retrograde. ‘You mentioned Ernie...’
He nodded. ‘He's aroundsomewhere.’
‘Living?’
‘Of course living.’ Thecigarette-smoke rose awkwardly, like it were confused, undecided.
‘How did I get here?’ A rushof questions suddenly crammed her head.
‘How does an engine travelbetween stars?’ he replied. ‘Ask yourself the answer.’
She laughed.
*
Uncle Stylo stepped out of theelevator and walked past the rows of clattering typewriters, theirattendant fingers busy, hammering inky letters onto the page. Hepushed through the ornate door and heard it close behind as heapproached the bulky desk, the woman sitting on it to glance up froma sheaf of coloured reports.
‘They don't make good reading,’she told him.
Stylo unbuttoned his jacket anddropped into the leather seat, dislodging a pencil balanced on onearm.
The woman swivelled.
‘What don't you like?’ heasked.
She avoided his gaze. ‘Mainly,’she hesitated; ‘the Research Section's handling of Droover.’
He accepted the implied criticism.‘Kate, right?’
‘Right...’
‘Mordy's with her.’
‘You trust him?’
‘He's reliable.’ Stylo weighedthe statement and found it wanting.
‘I'm not sure-everything's so complicated.’ She dumped the reports. They splashedover the desk, slid to the marble floor.
A tense silence lingered...
‘You worrytoo much, Amy. The situation's under control.’ He stood, steppedround the front of the desk, leant back on it. Reaching behind him hegrabbed a pencil from amid the varihued litter and spun it in hisfingers, all the while smiling at Amy Jones, who was static, patient,thinking of the crew, her duty to them.
The man's smile broadened. Heraised the pencil to her throat and dragged its blunt end slowlydownward till it met the zipper of her blouse, whiting her skin.There it halted. He pushed from the desk. She remained passive. Thepencil moved once more, counted off the plastic teeth, descended,their clicking like that of the typewriters dimly echoing through theheavy doors, far and near and measured.
His smile, she decided, wassickening.
The pencil passed below herbreasts, exposing them, and lodged in her navel, where he gave it atwist. Then his greedy mouth was on her, nipping at flesh.
*
The SSUsufructdrifted ever closer, its darkened mass that of a warship, its silenceforeboding. John Silver watched the craft's progress from thestation, mouth dry and eyes strained to pick out the merest detail,while on the orbital's screens the unfamiliar beast provoked a riotof colour - an expansive contrast of visuals. In no way was it tryingto disguise itself. Neither did he intend to stand in its way; butstill there was no coherent message.
'Dangerous,' was all Silver andhis colleagues had to go on right now. The warship would be nose tonose with the orbital station in minutes.
And then?
‘You're convinced?’ Mortimerqueried.
Silver licked his lips. ‘Yes...itall fits. They wouldn't be out here for anything less.’
‘Rocket fuel,’ said Mortimer.‘Shit.’
‘And there,’ Silver concluded,indicating Bid-2, its scarred, mountain-grey surface, ‘lies maybethe only source outside of Europa. A million times as much!’
‘You think they're sided withTopica?’
‘It's probable...’
‘But we can't be sure.’
Silver spunaround. ‘No,but the ball's in their court. We'll see.’
‘Yeah - whether or not they blowus apart,’ the older man finished.
Time waspassed...
‘Did they find the girl yet,Mort?’
‘No...’
‘She couldn't have justvanished.’ Silver paced, eyeing the flickering screens. ‘Whydon't they do something?’
‘They're looking. It's okay.’
‘Jesus! Not our people...Them,’he pointed. ‘Could they have got her out?’
Mortimer was confused. He inhaleddeeply. ‘No way.’
‘But she's gone.’
‘Yes...’
‘Where, Mort?’
Their expressions locked. ‘It'sweird,’ came the reply, ‘but I think Friendly paid us a visit.’
‘Byron? Undetected?’ Silverliked it. ‘Why not? There's more here than retrograde, uh?’
The stakes werehigh, he told himself, and mounting, literally, the planet over whichthey hung contributing to the plot, as did the Usufruct...
*
They faced eachother across the dark expanse of a fibrous carpet, its tangled pilelike charred grass. Morgan smiled his jolly smile and folded hisarms, rested his weight on one hip, said, ‘Please, no autographs.’
Nobody laughed.
There were six in the room: fourwith weapons drawn, a fifth whose teeth appeared uneven. Himself.
index iii - THE ECLECTIC CITY
Credo quiaabsurdum,thought Sally: I believe it because it's impossible. Our forefatherswere wise...
Byron strolled toward her, lookingconcerned.
‘Where does the light comefrom?’ she asked, stealing his air for her own words.
‘Ah, Droover,’ he said,teasing. ‘Do you need answers to everything?’
‘Just the relevant bits,’ Salcame back. ‘Well?’
‘I haven't a clue,’ Friendlyadmitted. He waved his arms. ‘I think it's got something to do withretrograde though.’
‘What about Ern, he must know?’
Byron sat down next to her,plucked a blade of grass, chewed it. ‘He's disappeared...but that'snormal.’
‘Normal?’
‘Okay - maybe normal's the wrongword.’ She was gazing at him with mock severity. ‘What can Isay?’ he pleaded.
Sally rested her head on herknees. The flora around her was pungent, tangible, yet completelylacking shadow; or rather what shadow there existed was diffuse,spread too thinly. Of a sudden she felt as if she'd spent her entirewaking life afraid, numb, a frozen bulwark erected against a falseogre, what she understood to be loneliness, and was only now seeingthe world - the pristine world - as it really was.
If that made sense. Sal couldn'tbe sure...
Of what?
‘Byron.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Are we inside or outside?’she wanted to know.
He took his time replying. ‘It'sa matter of scale,’ he said. ‘On a planet you can be outside, inopen air, but still contained within an atmosphere. The same applieshere. If you believe it, then it can grow, be any size, infinite -unlike a planet, which is spherical...’ He paused, stumped.
‘Go on,’ Sal encouraged;‘you're getting there.’
‘Right -betterto talk in terms of an OUT side and an IN side, hm? You follow?’She nodded. He went on, ‘So, this, the inside, one word, can beeither OUT or IN, depending on how you perceive it.’ He rolled acigarette.
‘Like an alternate reality?Isn't that deluded?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Which?’ Her skin feltstrangely tight. Were the shadows, the shade's scattered remnantscoalescing?
Maybe.
‘Not an alternate reality,’said the engineer. ‘A rediscovered one; like an old painting that'shung on the same wall, in the same gritty draught for years, takendown and cleaned, and there beneath the accretions is a whole freshdimension of forgotten subtleties. What the painter intended, hisoriginal ideas, but obscured by repeated abuses and near totalinattention. Only the layers of neglect, the alterations and sloppypast repairs, have some relevance too.’ The roily was lit, poisedbetween smug lips like a token of expertise. ‘They make a picturein their own right.’
‘And the delusion, that's real?’Sally pressed.
Byron blew smoke at her. ‘Doesit matter? Yes? Then it's as real as anything else you'd care tomention.’ He seemed rattled, perturbed.
‘It's funny,’ she said; not,as she'd hoped, surprising him. The smugness was pretend,self-mocking. He'd beaten her to it, asserted his familiarity withthe perverse, his ability to cope with its more erratic turns.
She fell onto her shoulder,crushing daisies, and wondered what the punchline was...
*
‘“Yes,” replied the alien;“but can you eat it?”’ Mordy's face was blank.
‘You don't get it,’ said Kate,feeling foolish. She shook her head.
‘You lost me,’ Mordy told her,‘I'm sorry.’
*
‘Universe B.’
‘Eh?’
‘Oh, I readit somewhere.I was thinking out loud.’
Byron shifted her weight. He wascarrying Sal piggy-back, like Europa did Sarpendon, who, if mythsindeed be true, was slain by Patroclus as his father Jove looked on,warned not to intercede lest all the inhabitants of heaven dolikewise whenever one of their offspring was threatened.
‘How far have we come?’
‘Who can say?’
‘The sky, Byron, is growingdark.’
Death and Sleep, twin brothers,carried Sarpendon's dishonoured corpse away...
*
Amy responded. She needed him,what he could give. Hers was an addiction only Stylo understood. Butshe hated him, hated herself as she lay sprawled over his desk, facepressed into a mass of scrunched paper, the sheets she had dropped,their sharp folds like accusations, each biting her sore breasts:teeth like his, as uneven. She cried out, not wanting to, knowing howmuch he liked to hear her pain, kneading her twisted spine with hispalm as she tried, despite herself, to wriggle loose.
Stylo gripped her thigh roughly,forcing it back, the knee to her chin as he entered her...again, thisa diluted rape; first of her bruised, vulnerable psyche, second ofher physical self, hooked and cheapened by his lust.
But she needed him, what he couldgive. And take away. And refuse her.
Amy Jones couldn't risk that. Shewas Stylo's to do with as he wished. He possessed her, kept her soulin his genitalia, a drug, his semen, Amy was dead without.
‘How much does Mordy know?’she questioned later, housed in a blue couch, his apartment.
‘Enough,’ answered UncleStylo. He counted the hours to her next fix and plotted itsadministration.
‘But not all...’ she said, thestrength in her voice that of well-being, present control, the manopposite - contradictorily - in awe of her.
‘No, only we know that.’
Amy didn't believe him. Greed hadgot her where she was, and his greed was greatest.
‘I have to go out.’
Stylo shut his eyes. ‘Goahead...’
Into the city.
It altered asshe passed through, a shape among shapes, few more permanent, lessactual. She went to a cafe whose towering walls swirled moltenly,refreshed herself, a drink of such crispness that it dried her mouth;and across the clockface table a man, tall and angular, hisreflection in the watery dial as the minutes seeped away.
He didn't talk, wasn't real. Hiseyes were windows onto twin kitchens, identical, the menu posted ineach.
She'd orderedthe drink off his luminous sheriff's badge. It was delivered via histhumb after the glass had grown from the table. There were otherplaces whose taste was less refined. Amy avoided those, they remindedher too much of Stylo.
She left amid a glow of orangelight. She toyed with the idea of going up to the surface.
It was the same everywhere, shethought, the same hollow eyes staring out of pallid, unsuspectingfaces. No wonder Stylo had been able to channel such power, theseexpressions, of easy bliss and complex wrappings, wanted nothing ofresponsibility, were glad, ignorant, happy for him, for any to carrythe burden, even if it led to their ultimate extinction. Althoughthat was perhaps their unconscious motive. They were bored.
Amy forgot them, became blind tothem as they surely were to her. She climbed into a vacant sedan andpointed it toward Bench 9, the last stepping-stone in a series thatcrossed from Radio to nowhere... and back.
The city was a thousand citiesfrom a hundred ages. He could program its architecture, arrange thelayout of its nebulous streets. It was beyond description. Behind itsillusory walls its citizens roused and slept, ate and performed,their lives introspective, shy even; for all the resources that layat their disposal, they were trapped.
And Stylo was no different. Hestruggled as they struggled, but inevitably lost. So he organized afiction, designed a character, implemented a scheme, and watched asit overwhelmed the vague borders of his mind.
He was, at the seat of hisawareness, Lumping Jack. He was, in spirit, Research Section Five. Hewas, for all intents and purposes, Ernie - both writer andillustrator, consumer of fact and producer of that fiction which waskilling him. His life and lives, and the explosion in his head, allhis own intricately crafted lies.
Was itmegalomania? He'd succeeded in transmitting his syphilis onto theengineer, but at a cost. It worked against him now, clouded thewaters of his healing well, those same he'd hoped would restore him.But to what? The past, yes, but not his past, his personal, pined forhistory. It was bigger than that. It was more substantial by thehour. He'd witnessed it himself in the desert. He had used hiscreation as a kind of whipping-boy, substituted its reality for thatof the world's, and now it was using him, Stylo. His arrogance hadgrown independently. Like Ernie's body, his mind developed tumours,morbid humps typical of his disease.
General Paralysis of the Insane; aslippery slope, his mental deterioration, one he'd thought toescape...
Only it wascatching up with him. The madness coiled about his arms and legs,compressed. Yet the grip, he sensed, was his own. It held himtogether. It slowly destroyed.
Bench 9 undulated, its yellowgrasses sighing in the breeze, her every stride bending stalks,trampling ground. The insects roved, ants and butterflies, creaturescased and winged; they occupied each separate strata of air to aheight only the birds knew for sure.
At the island's centre was a clumpof trees, elms and beeches, a single gnarled oak. They might havestood there since the beginning, but as the soil they owed theirbeing to a comparatively recent ideology. They were inherently false,synthetic in all but facade, ersatz copies of a type, a primary...
Amy was drawnto them. They felt real. She clambered into the oak's spreadbranches, as high as she dared, the thirst in her loins distracting,and wedged herself in a V of limbs. She had decided. She wouldn'treturn. Stylo had poisoned her and Amy had taken his poisonwillingly. She was as guilty. She would die in this tree that was nota tree, away from his double-headed seed. Her first act of bravery ina long time.
And she'd stick with it.
The sun wentdown, the moon waxed, the sweat of her skin made?nonsense of thecold - but she remained.
The captain owed it to her crew...
She was sorry.
*
Ernie put pen to paper, thenumbness in his wrist irritating, and wrote...
Last Of The Earth Men - issue 59.
Morgan hit thefloor; shots fired inches overhis whitened knuckles, his head. The carpet threatened to choke himin its depth.
The succeeding quietness wasunnatural.
‘It's okay,you can get up now,’ said Henry Grey. ‘I got all of them.’Casually, he wafted a smoking carbine.
‘I thought you were dead,’said Lumping Jack.
The scientist laughed. ‘Me too!But I've a few tricks up my sleeve, eh?’
Morgan examined the slumpedbodies.
Their skins peeled off. ‘Whatthe...’
‘Pink-people,’ Henry told him.‘I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with you,’ he added.
Frozen Hound came padding into theroom. The dog's nose was troubled by so much death, the smell ofkilling.
The doctor shouldered his weapon,patted the dog with his one hand. ‘Come on, aboard the guppy, I'llexplain.’
Lumping Jack Morgan and hiscurious partner travelled from the Hightop building out into theSpanish midday sun.