Mythmaster, page 11
When the music ended, they returned to the table to find that Starson had ordered another bottle of rouge nuit and had filled their glasses.
Shannon was about to protest that he wanted no more when he felt Reba’s hand touch his thigh beneath the table.
‘One final toast,’ Starson was saying. ‘To the wanting.’
They drained their glasses.
Almost immediately, Shannon knew that something was wrong. Reba’s face seemed impossibly distant. As he looked across the table at Starson, he felt the room shift as if it were settling in the first shock of a tremor. Starson had done something to his drink. Shannon felt himself becoming Mythmad as Reba stood up and seemed to float away from the table and disappear from sight. He glanced through a rising, shimmering haze at Starson.
‘I will not hurt you,’ Starson said from miles away. ‘I hurt only myself.’
The haze swept down upon Shannon, blurring the angles of the room, muting the music and his own barely audible protests. He knew it was too late to save himself from what was to come. With the advent of Mythmadness, reality withdrew and spectres walked abroad, freed from the locked prisons of his own Mythmad mind. He felt himself surrendering. He was letting go, slipping away from himself. Before Starson reached out to take his hand and lead him from the table, Shannon heard the tinkle of breaking glass. He looked down slowly at the table that was vanishing beneath him and wondered why he had shattered such an innocent object as the glass that now lay in fragments on the floor. He looked up again, wondering why Starson looked so sad.
He felt himself moving through the streets of Underdenver. Was it the dead Devlin who moved so eerily beside him? No, it was another young man with a forlorn face. Who, Shannon asked himself, had robbed that face of joy?
The room in which he found himself, after an eternity of walking, was dark and heavy with the smell of… Incense? No. The odour of flesh against flesh. The air was alive with musk of lust. The room tilted and swayed, and it was some time before Shannon realized that it was he who reeled and not the room. The young man beside him was coming towards him, and he knew the man, had known him. The grip of the man’s hand was strong on his arm, and he looked down at the white knuckles and the many rings. The tiny hairs on the hand became a forest in which he wandered, temporarily lost.
He was being led to the bed. Undressed. He saw Starson reach out to flick the switch that would totally darken the room, and then stop at the sound of a stricken cry. His cry. The cry of the hunter? Or the cry of the prey that begs the moon to throw down its light so that a means of escape might yet be discovered.
Starson left the lights as they were. Shadows moved in the room as he reached out and touched Shannon. Five shadowy rods flickered over Shannon’s face and tangled hair. Momentarily distracted, Shannon watched them. And then, with a sigh, Starson bent down to a familiar feasting.
A fury, escaped, stalked the shadows. Shannon found himself engaged in a primal battle. But when he tried to ascertain the nature of his enemy, he found only warm flesh and heard only whispered words that were too tender to have come from the lips of any enemy he had ever known. He felt himself as separate at first from this other, this one unknown, and then, suddenly, a vital part of him. Where did he begin, and where did this other man end — this man who was touching his body with, yes, reverence? Were they one?
He found himself on his feet, and they were indeed one as the shadows wrapped themselves around the odd construction they had become. At his feet, Shannon saw someone kneeling and wondered how he had become a god. He felt the unfamiliar fingers sliding up and down the inner surfaces of his thighs, and he marvelled at the fires that had been lighted within him. And then, in an uncontrollable surge of joy, he bent down and raised the worshipper up, and they were linked, locked together, and the shadows remained, for a time, at bay.
And then they fell, a twinned tower, crumbling. The bed shuddered under their impact, and the words went on. Fragmented, Tortured. Joyless.
Shannon saw the image of the glass he had broken earlier, but this — this body now beneath his own — was not that glass. Was it?
Starson’s touch was hot and skilled. Beneath it, Shannon rolled away, out of the world and then back into it, and finally all the Starsons in the world were upon him and in him, and he cried out in pain and pleasure. He felt every drop of sweat that beaded his body as a separate entity, and he forgot completely that his face was scarred and his leg destined forever to limp as it carried him from world to world.
Someone’s tears tasted salty suddenly on his tongue. And then, again, there was only the stormy harbour of his thighs in which the ship that was Starson had chosen to anchor. Starson’s head bobbed in its tempestuous haven, and Shannon at last exploded and sank down into a dark and lonely sea, no longer linked to anyone, free.
Alone.
Starson, gleaming with sweat, brought astringents with which he anointed Shannon’s body. In his hand was an antidote capsule, which he firmly placed between Shannon’s lips. Rising, he stared down to watch the mists of Shannon’s Mythmadness whirl away.
Shannon opened his mouth to speak. Starson closed his eyes as if he were afraid to hear the words.
‘I lied,’ Shannon whispered, and the last shadow in the room died triumphant.
Starson moved away. As he backed towards the door, he memorised the body lying on the bed that was slipping rapidly into sleep. That naked body on the bed spoke silently of power and strength and also of weakness and a pain that had nothing to do with scars or injured legs. It told of the pain that a man feels when he is determined to protect himself from love and discovers that he has failed.
‘I was a door, Shannon,’ Starson said softly. ‘You have passed through me and will go on. Tonight I met you for the first time. And tonight you have bade me good-bye, because that is the way it must be for both of us.’ He picked up his clothes and began to dress, trying not to think, desperately trying not to care.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shannon was awakened the next morning by a shrill and petulant cry. He sat up in the bed,’ startled and blinking, and saw the man who was wearing a kimono pointing at him and crying out and waving his hands about in angry agitation.
‘Hoist your ass out of there, hustler! You paid till eight a.m., and it’s ten past already!’ The man’s rouged cheeks were lanterns. but there was no matching light in his eyes. He was emaciated, and beneath his wet lips, his teeth were yellow and broken. ‘Come on, you two,’ he yelled back through the door that was open behind him. To Shannon he said, ‘Your lover left this note for you.’
Shannon took it from him and hurriedly began to dress.
A woman came into the room followed by a girl who bore a blue salamander on one scrawny shoulder. The two of them stared at Shannon as he fumbled into his clothes. The girl ambled up to him and put her hand on the belt he was trying to buckle. ‘Listen, if you want, you can stay. I do anything. So does she. To anybody.’ The girl jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the other woman, who was lighting a scentspray. ‘It won’t cost you nothing, because we already paid, and it might be fun, you know? You look like you got what it takes. Want to show me?’
Shannon pushed past her as the man in the kimono tore the sheets from the bed and screamed something about an extra charge for stains all over everything. But Shannon was gone.
Outside the decrepit building, he unfolded the note the man had given him and read what Starson had written. He was to meet Starson and Reba at Central Census at nine.
He crumpled the note and tossed it into the gutter. As he watched it soak up the slime there, he thought about the previous night. He couldn’t remember clearly what had happened. But he could guess. He remembered the restaurant and Reba’s suggestion that he let Starson… Had he? There had been the drink. The Mythmadness. What, he wondered, had come afterwards? He felt violated. Had he violated Starson, and if so, in what manner? A feeling of anger raged through him momentarily. He was not angry at the… the contact that had probably taken place. He had done worse, and often. He believed there was nothing wrong with finding sexual satisfaction with a person of one’s own gender. Shame was unnecessary. Guilt was archaic. He knew that there were a few of the Space Patrol ships themselves that were manned with pairs of men chosen carefully for the degree of their mutual love in order to help ensure valour in battle. Lovers made the best fighters, the Patrol had discovered in this enlightened age. They fought not only for their own survival but also for that of the beloved.
Then what caused the anger he was feeling? He was angry, he began to realise, because he could not remember what had happened. Starson had cheated him. In his lust, he had undoubtedly indulged himself, and at the same time, wiped Shannon’s memory clean. He cursed and strode up the street, heading for Upperdenver.
* * *
Reba and Starson were waiting for him outside the building that housed Central Census.
‘It’s almost time to say good-bye,’ Reba said as he joined them. Her voice was calm. Her fireworms had vanished in the night with the stars. Her hair had been redone in a more sedate fashion, and she was wearing a simple green gown that bared only her ankles.
‘You’ve reregistered?’ Shannon inquired.
‘Not yet. They’ve just opened. Come in with me. I’d like you both to know my new locus.’
Starson said to Shannon, ‘Good morning.’
Shannon ignored him. There was nothing in Starson’s expression that revealed his feelings or attitudes. His face was neither triumphant nor disdainful. He looked neither happy nor sad.
They went inside and were directed by the code clerk to the proper cubicle. Reba stood before the Census Set and punched in her identification digits and then spoke into the receptor. She told the machine that she had lost her identity status and current assignment and wanted to reregister.
The machine told her to wait. A moment late, it’s electronic voice announced that reregistration was impossible.
‘But why?’ Reba cried, annoyed.
‘Reba Charlo,’ the machine replied, ‘has been declared without legal sanction and as an Illegal can be given no identification papers for use in any Uppercity.’
‘I’ll appeal,’ Reba protested.
‘No appeal possible. This order has been signed by the magistrate of Interworld Tribunal. However, there is a codicil.’
‘A codicil?’ Reba waited impatiently.
‘Reba Charlo may redeem her current status as an Illegal, provided she agree to return to her previous locus and remain there under the probationary aegis of Oxon Kaedler.’
Reba’s hands clenched at her sides. She turned swiftly and strode out of the cubicle with Shannon and Starson following her. Behind them, they heard the machine babbling: ‘Illegals will be summarily shot upon identification in any Uppercity of Earth, and their remains will be unclaimable by kin and they…’
‘Kaedler!’ Reba exclaimed as they came out of the building.
‘He isn’t about to let you get away from him,’ Starson commented. ‘He may be legally dead, but that hasn’t stopped him from bribing the magistrate and bending the law.’
‘Forget Kaedler,’ Shannon said. ‘Starson can forge new identity papers for you. How long will it take, Starson?’
Starson shrugged. ‘A day or two. Three at the most.’
‘You can stay with us for that length of time, Reba,’ Shannon said, ‘Or if you prefer, you can go down to one of the Undercities.’
‘No more than three days, Starson?’ Reba asked.
He nodded.
Reba, as she weighted her options, bit her lower lip.
‘Let’s head back to the ship,’ Shannon suggested.
Reba hesitated and then said, ‘Wait. I want to try something. It will take only a minute.’ She walked down the street and went into a shop.
Shannon and Starson entered behind her and heard her ask the clerk behind the counter for a supply of scentsprays. She told him that she had lost her cashcard but gave him her name and asked him to check Central Census for verification of both her identity and credit status. When the clerk returned after doing so, there was fear on his face. He declared that he didn’t dare serve Illegals or he’d be put out of business. Reba asked him what the trouble was. He explained that Central Census had listed her as an Illegal and that she would remain so until she reestablished herself in her previous locus.
Outside the shop, Reba said to Starson, ‘You can forget about the forged identity papers. Kaedler’s fixed it so that I can’t do anything or go anywhere, even legally. You’d have to put my picture on the papers. Even if I used a different name, I’d still be recognised by the optical scanners.’
‘We can talk about it back on the ship,’ Shannon said. ‘Come on.’
They walked in silence to the Transitube Terminal and boarded a car that carried them soundlessly to their destination. They walked the remaining distance to the ship. Throughout their brief journey, “Shannon had found himself occasionally touching Reba, as if to guide her or protect her. His hand now and then found her elbow. He placed his arm around her waist at one point and another time he clasped her hand in his. He suspected the reason for his gestures He was making a declaration to himself and to Starson that would deny the reality of the previous night. See, said his flesh against Reba’s, I am a man and this is a woman and thus it shall be for me. What happened last night was of no importance. I know the nature of my desires.
Shannon, when he reached the command cabin of the ship, ordered Starson to plot course for the imminent raid on Outerupperdenver. It would occur at noon, he decided. As he was about to leave, Starson said, ‘Last night is over, Shannon. In a way, I’m sorry it happened. In a way, I’m not.’
Shannon’s eyes narrowed and stiffened. ‘Mythmadness brings counterfeit dreams. You know that. No alchemy ever known can turn the lead of lust into the gold of love.’ He had not known what the words would be when they finally came, as they had just now done, but he had known that they would have to be harsh and that they would have to hurt. The expression on Starson’s face told him that they had fulfilled their purpose.
‘Mythmadness,’ Starson said. ‘is its own reality. It feeds on the victim’s own madnesses. Madness is merely a symptom of the failure of reality contact. But madmen were at certain times and in certain places thought to be divine.’
‘I don’t love you,’ Shannon said. ‘I never could.’
Starson seemed not to have heard the remarks. He went on speaking, his eyes focused on a point just to the right of where Shannon was standing so stiffly. ‘They called those madmen “touched”. They had been “touched” by the finger of some god. They were revered and envied as well as feared. I cherish my own madness. Shannon, if that is what you would call it. Some tricky god has touched me, and now I walk on no main highway.’
‘Should you ever try again to…’ Shannon left the sentence unfinished. There was a need, he felt, to complete the slaughter. He had to make sure of something not quite fully comprehended. ‘In the future, you might consider proper payment instead of resorting to Mythmadness. Enough Tokens might make me… amenable.’
Starson shuddered visibly. Shannon’s knife had tasted the throat of the sacrificial animal, and blood was everywhere.
‘I have already paid,’ Starson said. ‘Last night, I paid.’
‘I don’t mean for that filthy room.’
‘Neither do I. I mean that I paid in a currency that is not calculable in your terms.’
Shannon muttered an obscenity.
Starson did not flinch from it. He almost seemed to welcome it in the sense that a sufferer under the cruel hands of the torturer may begin to believe in his own guilt. ‘Do you remember anything about last night, Shannon?’
‘It was not I who was with you last night. It was some Mythmad man.’
‘Anything you said?’
‘It was not me who spoke. It was the Mythmadness.’
‘Yes. The Mythmadness. Perhaps it was only that.’
Shannon left the command cabin and the battle he had waged there, unsure of whether he was victor or vanquished, certain only of the fact that it had been a dangerous duel.
He met Lee Rawley in the corridor. Rawley grabbed his arm as he strode past.
‘Hey, Shannon! Give a greeting, man! Don’t go careening by like some damned orbitless derelict!’
‘Sorry, Rawley. I was thinking.’
‘Deep thoughts, no doubt, to make your old friends and colleagues in crime invisible. How was your visit to Underdenver?’
‘Don’t leer. It was… Underdenver. Enough said.’
‘I hear you have another strike lined up.’
‘Yes. Before leaving here, we’ll hit Outerupperdenver. The Epicureanite Branch Hostel there. We’ll use the cloning technique this time. A total of one hundred individual cells are called for in the contract.’ Shannon explained the nature of the contract, and Rawley whistled through his teeth. ‘Check with Starson. He’s in the command cabin. He’ll give you the co-ordinates and the timing. I’ve briefed him. He’s alerting the crew.’
Shannon left Rawley and headed for the cabin Reba occupied. When he stood before it, he knocked loudly. When there was no immediate response, he pounded his fist on the door and then opened it.
‘I was bathing,’ Reba said, stepping out of the sanicube. She belted a crewman’s robe about herself and sat down. ‘You look like a clam that someone has stepped on.’
‘Are you planning on staying shipside, or are you going Undercity?’
She hesitated, examining Shannon’s face. Something seemed definitely wrong. He was looking at the robe that bulked about her body, leaving only her lower legs bare. ‘Does it matter? Would you want me aboard? After all, I’m evidently Kaedler’s prey, and he’s a determined hunter, as we’ve already seen. I would be a liability shipside.’
