Dreamsongs. Volume I

by George R. R. Martin

  “You would have been sorry,” Melody said.

  “No,” Ted replied. He strolled back to the bar and freshened his drink. “No, you know, I don’t think I would have been sorry. Not in the least. Not guilty, either. So you might as well stop threatening to kill yourself, Melody, because it isn’t going to work.”

  The anger drained out of her face, and she gave a little whimper. “Please, Ted,” she said. “Don’t say such things. Tell me you’d care. Tell me you’d remember me.”

  He scowled at her. “No,” he said. It was harder when she was pitiful, when she shrunk up all small and vulnerable and whimpered instead of accusing him. But he had to end it once and for all, get rid of this curse on his life.

  “I’ll go away tomorrow,” she said meekly. “I won’t bother you. But tell me you care, Ted. That you’re my friend. That you’ll come to me. If I need you.”

  “I won’t come to you, Melody,” he said. “That’s over. And I don’t want you coming here anymore, or phoning, or sending telegrams, no matter what kind of trouble you’re in. You understand? Do you? I want you out of my life, and when you’re gone I’m going to forget you as quick as I can, ’cause, lady, you are one hell of a bad memory.”

  Melody cried out as if he had struck her. “NO!” she said. “No, don’t say that, remember me, you have to. I’ll leave you alone, I promise I will, I’ll never see you again. But say you’ll remember me.” She stood up abruptly. “I’ll go right now,” she said. “If you want me to go, I’ll go. But make love to me first, Ted. Please. I want to give you something to remember me by.” She smiled a lascivious little smile, and began to struggle out of her halter top, and Ted felt sick.

  He set down his glass with a bang. “You’re crazy,” he said. “You ought to get professional help, Melody. But I can’t give it to you and I’m not going to put up with this anymore. I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be gone a couple of hours. You be gone when I get back.”

  Ted started for the door. Melody stood looking at him, her halter in her hand. Her breasts looked small and shrunken, and the left one had a tattoo on it that he’d never noticed before. There was nothing even vaguely desirable about her. She whimpered. “I just wanted to give you something to remember me by,” she said.

  Ted slammed the door.

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN HE RETURNED, DRUNK AND SURLY, RESOLVED that if Melody was still there, he would call the police and that would be the end of that. Jack was behind the desk, having just gone on duty. Ted stopped and gave him hell for having admitted Melody that morning, but the doorman denied it vehemently. “Wasn’t nobody got in, Mister Cirelli. I don’t let in anyone without buzzing up, you ought to know that. I been here six years, and I never let in nobody without buzzing up.” Ted reminded him forcefully about the Jehovah’s Witness, and they ended up in a shouting match.

  Finally Ted stormed away and took the elevator up to the thirty-second floor.

  There was a drawing taped to his door.

  He blinked at it furiously for a moment, then snatched it down. It was a cartoon, a caricature of Melody. Not the Melody he’d seen today, but the Melody he’d known in college; sharp, funny, pretty. When they’d been roommates, Melody had always illustrated her notes with little cartoons of herself. He was surprised that she could still draw this well. Beneath the face, she’d printed a message.

  I LEFT YOU SOMETHING TO REMEMBER ME BY.

  Ted scowled down at the cartoon, wondering whether he should keep it or not. His own hesitation made him angry. He crumbled the paper in his hand, and fumbled for his keys. At least she’s gone, he thought, and maybe for good. If she left the note, it meant that she’d gone. He was rid of her for another couple of years at least.

  He went inside, tossed the crumbled ball of paper across the room towards a wastebasket, and smiled when it went in. “Two points,” he said loudly to himself, drunk and self-satisfied. He went to the bar and began to mix himself a drink.

  But something was wrong.

  Ted stopped stirring his drink, and listened. The water was running, he realized. She’d left the water running in the bathroom.

  “Christ,” he said, and then an awful thought hit him; maybe she hadn’t gone after all. Maybe she was still in the bathroom, taking a shower or something, freaked out of her mind, crying, whatever. “Melody!” he shouted.

  No answer. The water was running all right. It couldn’t be anything else. But she didn’t answer.

  “Melody, are you still here?” he yelled. “Answer, dammit!”

  Silence.

  He put down his drink and walked to the bathroom. The door was closed. Ted stood outside. The water was definitely running. “Melody,” he said loudly, “are you in there? Melody?”

  Nothing. Ted was beginning to be afraid.

  He reached out and grasped the doorknob. It turned easily in his hand. The door hadn’t been locked.

  Inside the bathroom was filled with steam. He could hardly see, but he made out that the shower curtain was drawn. The shower was running full blast, and judging from the amount of steam, it must be scalding. Ted stepped back and waited for the steam to dissipate. “Melody?” he said softly. There was no reply.

  “Shit,” he said. He tried not to be afraid. She only talked about it, he told himself; she’d never really do it. The ones who talk about it never do it, he’d read that somewhere. She was just doing this to frighten him.

  He took two quick strides across the room and yanked back the shower curtain.

  She was there, wreathed in steam, water streaming down her naked body. She wasn’t stretched out in the tub at all; she was sitting up, crammed in sideways near the faucets, looking very small and pathetic. Her position seemed half-fetal. The needle spray had been directed down at her, at her hands. She’d opened her wrists with his razor blades, and tried to hold them under the water, but it hadn’t been enough, she’d slit the veins crosswise, and everybody knew the only way to do it was lengthwise. So she’d used the razor elsewhere, and now she had two mouths, and both of them were smiling at him, smiling. The shower had washed away most of the blood; there were no stains anywhere, but the second mouth below her chin was still red and dripping. Trickles oozed down her chest, over the flower tattooed on her breast, and the spray of the shower caught them and washed them away. Her hair hung down over her cheeks, limp and wet. She was smiling. She looked so happy. The steam was all around her. She’d been in there for hours, he thought. She was very clean.

  Ted closed his eyes. It didn’t make any difference. He still saw her. He would always see her.

  He opened them again; Melody was still smiling. He reached across her and turned off the shower, getting the sleeve of his shirt soaked in the process.

  Numb, he fled back into the living room. God, he thought, God. I have to call someone, I have to report this, I can’t deal with this. He decided to call the police. He lifted the phone, and hesitated with his finger poised over the buttons. The police won’t help, he thought. He punched for Jill.

  When he had finished telling her, it grew very silent on the other end of the phone. “My God,” she said at last. “How awful. Can I do anything?”

  “Come over,” he said. “Right away.” He found the drink he’d set down, took a hurried sip from it.

  Jill hesitated. “Er—look, Ted, I’m not very good at dealing with corpses,” she said. “Why don’t you come over here? I don’t want to—well, you know. I don’t think I’ll ever shower at your place again.”

  “Jill,” he said, stricken. “I need someone right now.” He laughed a frightened, uncertain laugh.

  “Come over here,” she urged.

  “I can’t just leave it there,” he said.

  “Well, don’t,” she said. “Call the police. They’ll take it away. Come over afterwards.”

  Ted called the police.

  “IF THIS IS YOUR IDEA OF A JOKE, IT ISN’T FUNNY,” THE PATROLMAN said. His partner was scowling.

  “Joke?” Ted said.
>
  “There’s nothing in your shower,” the patrolman said. “I ought to take you down to the station house.”

  “Nothing in the shower?” Ted repeated, incredulous.

  “Leave him alone, Sam,” the partner said. “He’s stinko, can’t you tell?”

  Ted rushed past them both into the bathroom.

  The tub was empty. Empty. He knelt and felt the bottom of it. Dry. Perfectly dry. But his shirt sleeve was still damp. “No,” he said, “no.” He rushed back out to the living room. The two cops watched him with amusement. Her suitcase was gone from its place by the door. The dishes had all been run through the dishwasher, no way to tell if anyone had made pancakes or not. Ted turned the wastebasket upside down, spilling out the contents all over his couch. He began to scrabble through the papers.

  “Go to bed and sleep it off, mister,” the older cop said. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “C’mon,” his partner said. They departed, leaving Ted still pawing through the papers. No cartoon. No cartoon. No cartoon.

  Ted flung the empty wastebasket across the room, and it caromed off the wall with a ringing metallic clang.

  He took a cab to Jill’s.

  IT WAS NEAR DAWN WHEN HE SAT UP IN BED SUDDENLY, HIS HEART thumping, his mouth dry with fear.

  Jill murmured sleepily. “Jill,” he said, shaking her.

  She blinked up at him. “What?” she said. “What time is it, Ted? What’s wrong?” She sat up, pulling up the blanket to cover herself.

  “Don’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?” she asked.

  He giggled. “Your shower is running.”

  That morning he shaved in the kitchen, even though there was no mirror. He cut himself twice. His bladder ached, but he would not go past the bathroom door, despite Jill’s repeated assurances that the shower was not running. Dammit, he could hear it. He waited until he got to the office. There was no shower in the washroom there.

  But Jill looked at him strangely.

  AT THE OFFICE, TED CLEARED HIS DESK, AND TRIED TO THINK. HE WAS a lawyer. He had a good, analytical mind. He tried to reason it out. He drank only coffee, lots of coffee.

  No suitcase, he thought. Jack hadn’t seen her. No corpse. No cartoon. No one had seen her. The shower was dry. No dishes. He’d been drinking. But not all day, only later, after dinner. Couldn’t be the drinking. Couldn’t be. No cartoon. He was the only one who’d seen her. No cartoon. I LEFT YOU SOMETHING TO REMEMBER ME BY. He’d crumpled up her cable, and flushed her away. Two years ago. Nothing in the shower.

  He picked up his phone. “Billie,” he said, “get me a newspaper in Des Moines, Iowa. Any newspaper, I don’t care.”

  When he finally got through, the woman who tended the morgue was reluctant to give him any information. But she softened when he told her he was a lawyer, and needed the information for an important case.

  The obituary was very short. Melody was identified only as a “massage parlor employee.” She’d killed herself in her shower.

  “Thank you,” Ted said. He set down the receiver. For a long time he sat staring out of his window. He had a very good view; he could see the lake and the soaring tower of the Standard Oil building. He pondered what to do next. There was a thick knot of fear in his gut.

  He could take the day off and go home. But the shower would be running at home, and sooner or later he would have to go in there.

  He could go back to Jill’s. If Jill would have him. She’d seemed awfully cool after last night. She’d recommended a shrink to him as they shared a cab to the office. She didn’t understand. No one would understand…unless…he picked up the phone again, searching through his circular file. There was no card, no number, they’d drifted that far apart. He buzzed for Billie again. “Get me through to Random House in New York City,” he said. “To Mr. Michael Englehart. He’s an editor there.”

  But when he finally connected, the voice on the other end of the line was strange and distant. “Mister Cirelli? Were you a friend of Michael’s? Or one of his authors?”

  Ted’s mouth was dry. “A friend,” he said. “Isn’t Michael in? I need to talk to him. It’s…urgent.”

  “I’m afraid Michael’s no longer with us,” the voice said. “He had a nervous breakdown, less than a week ago.”

  “Is he…?”

  “He’s alive. They took him to a hospital, I believe. You know. Maybe I can find you the number.”

  “No,” Ted said. “No, that’s quite all right.” He hung up.

  Phoenix directory assistance had no listing for an Anne Kaye. Of course not, he thought. She was married now. He tried to remember her married name. It took him a long time. Something Polish, he thought. Finally it came to him.

  He hadn’t expected to find her at home. It was a school day, after all. But someone picked up the phone on the third ring. “Hello,” he said. “Anne, is that you? This is Ted, in Chicago. Anne, I’ve got to talk to you. It’s about Melody. Anne, I need your help.” He was breathless.

  There was a giggle. “Anne isn’t here right now, Ted,” Melody said. “She’s off at school, and then she’s got to visit her husband. They’re separated, you know. But she promised to come back by eight.”

  “Melody,” he said.

  “Of course, I don’t know if I can believe her. You three were never very good about promises. But maybe she’ll come back, Ted. I hope so.

  “I want to leave her something to remember me by.”

  SANDKINGS

  SIMON KRESS LIVED ALONE IN A SPRAWLING MANOR HOUSE AMONG the dry, rocky hills fifty kilometers from the city. So, when he was called away unexpectedly on business, he had no neighbors he could conveniently impose on to take his pets. The carrion hawk was no problem; it roosted in the unused belfry and customarily fed itself anyway. The shambler Kress simply shooed outside and left to fend for itself; the little monster would gorge on slugs and birds and rockjocks. But the fish tank, stocked with genuine Earth piranha, posed a difficulty. Kress finally just threw a haunch of beef into the huge tank. The piranha could always eat one another if he were detained longer than expected. They’d done it before. It amused him.

  Unfortunately, he was detained much longer than expected this time. When he finally returned, all the fish were dead. So was the carrion hawk. The shambler had climbed up to the belfry and eaten it. Simon Kress was vexed.

  The next day he flew his skimmer to Asgard, a journey of some two hundred kilometers. Asgard was Baldur’s largest city and boasted the oldest and largest starport as well. Kress liked to impress his friends with animals that were unusual, entertaining, and expensive; Asgard was the place to buy them.

  This time, though, he had poor luck. Xenopets had closed its doors, t’Etherane the Petseller tried to foist another carrion hawk off on him, and Strange Waters offered nothing more exotic than piranha, glow-sharks, and spider squids. Kress had had all those; he wanted something new.

  Near dusk, he found himself walking down the Rainbow Boulevard, looking for places he had not patronized before. So close to the starport, the street was lined by importers’ marts. The big corporate emporiums had impressive long windows, where rare and costly alien artifacts reposed on felt cushions against dark drapes that made the interiors of the stores a mystery. Between them were the junk shops—narrow, nasty little places whose display areas were crammed with all manner of offworld bric-a-brac. Kress tried both kinds of shop, with equal dissatisfaction.

  Then he came across a store that was different.

  It was quite close to the port. Kress had never been there before. The shop occupied a small, single-story building of moderate size, set between a euphoria bar and a temple-brothel of the Secret Sisterhood. Down this far, the Rainbow Boulevard grew tacky. The shop itself was unusual. Arresting.

  The windows were full of mist; now a pale red, now the gray of true fog, now sparkling and golden. The mist swirled and eddied and glowed faintly from within. Kress glimpsed objects in the window—machine
s, pieces of art, other things he could not recognize—but he could not get a good look at any of them. The mists flowed sensuously around them, displaying a bit of first one thing and then another, then cloaking all. It was intriguing.

  As he watched, the mist began to form letters. One word at a time. Kress stood and read:

  WO. AND. SHADE. IMPORTERS. ARTIFACTS. ART. LIFEFORMS. AND. MISC.

  The letters stopped. Through the fog, Kress saw something moving. That was enough for him, that and the word “Lifeforms” in their advertisement. He swept his walking cloak over his shoulder and entered the store.

  Inside, Kress felt disoriented. The interior seemed vast, much larger than he would have guessed from the relatively modest frontage. It was dimly lit, peaceful. The ceiling was a starscape, complete with spiral nebulae, very dark and realistic, very nice. The counters all shone faintly, the better to display the merchandise within. The aisles were carpeted with ground fog. In places, it came almost to his knees and swirled about his feet as he walked.

  “Can I help you?”

  She seemed almost to have risen from the fog. Tall and gaunt and pale, she wore a practical gray jumpsuit and a strange little cap that rested well back on her head.

  “Are you Wo or Shade?” Kress asked. “Or only sales help?”

  “Jala Wo, ready to serve you,” she replied. “Shade does not see customers. We have no sales help.”

  “You have quite a large establishment,” Kress said. “Odd that I have never heard of you before.”

  “We have only just opened this shop on Baldur,” the woman said. “We have franchises on a number of other worlds, however. What can I sell you? Art, perhaps? You have the look of a collector. We have some fine Nor T’alush crystal carvings.”

  “No,” Simon Kress said. “I own all the crystal carvings I desire. I came to see about a pet.”