I sidestepped. “Come on! It’s not even my clone! What do I care what you do to it?”
He threw what was left of it back over his shoulder, down the passageway toward the singularity, where it vanished. “Why such a dumb lie?” he asked.
“Unfortunately for you, it’s the truth. Why such a dumb fight?”
“I wanted to kill you coming into full possession of your memories, so you’d understand exactly why it had to be done.”
“Sort of like the guy in Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’?”
“Exactly. I was sure you’d appreciate it, Alf.”
“I don’t. You’re wrong.”
“… And back in full possession of your fighting prowess—Kaleideion against colosodian. We’re both supposed to be the best, you know? Haven’t you wondered who really is?”
“Not particularly, Adam. How’s about I just yield, you win, and then we talk?”
He spat again and bounded toward me. He did have the advantage, though he didn’t know it. He could do anything he wanted because he was trying to kill me. I couldn’t because I wanted to keep him alive.
Throwing techniques were about as effective on him as on a basketball. And I knew we could both take a hell of a beating. I wondered who could take the worse one. Then I realized that it didn’t matter.
I ducked his first punch and caught him in the armpit with my first one. “A hit! A hit! A very palpable hit!” he announced.
Spinning, he caught me on the side with a hard elbow strike. I tried for the back of his neck, his temple, his nose, his jaw, the side of his neck with five near-invisible strikes while he was low, but he avoided them all. Then he rushed me, arms extended, and I let him catch me about the waist. As I retreated through hanging daisy chains of Lilliputians, I slammed both of my elbows into his temples with sufficient force to kill almost anybody else. Then I did a backward roll and he went away.
I rose quickly and turned, ready to block, evade, parry. But he’d been a little slow in recovering. He grinned as he shook his head, however. “You’re better than my colosodian practice units,” he said.
“I should hope so,” I responded, avoiding or sweeping away a few desultory low kicks he threw just to keep the action going. “We made a bundle marketing the things, but it would be too depressing if they were for real.”
I made as if to catch at his foot. As he snapped it back I was already moving in, throwing rapid strikes at every possible target. He dodged and parried and blocked, but that was all right. They were only meant to be annoyances. I had decided on a tradeoff.
I landed a rock-shattering blow against his right rib cage. As I did, I felt a similar one against my own. I let him push me away after that, and I caught him on the right thigh with my heel, hard, as I went. “That smarts, Alf. That does smart,” Adam remarked, leaning for a moment against the wall and touching his side, shifting his weight to his left leg.
If I had to wear him down with tradeoffs, that was fine with me. I made as if to move in again and watched him wince as he shifted his weight. “I just wanted that sense impression in your files,” I said, backing off again.
“I can block it.”
“But you won’t, any more than I will mine. We’ve got to keep track of these things to know how the structure’s holding up.”
“Nailing me would be a big feather in your cap, wouldn’t it?”
“Not really. I’ve nothing to prove.”
“I’d always heard you guys were terribly arrogant. It’s true.”
“Look who’s talking: ‘Kaleideion against colosodian.’”
Three corpses drifted between us—one dismembered, one with her throat slashed, the other torn almost in half.
“I don’t deny it,” he said. “There is something glorious about a pair of champions of different persuasions facing each other at the heights of their powers, battling toward that final moment of defeat or triumph.”
“If you think this is the fucking Iliad you’ve wandered into the wrong story,” I said. “Be a sport. Give me five minutes and I can clear everything up between us.”
“I don’t want to,” he said as he pounced.
He caught me a blow to the side of the head that might have blacked me out for a moment. I remember getting him twice in the abdomen as he did so, though.
Then he had me by the shoulders and slammed me back into a work area. As my head struck against something very hard, I decided, “Okay. Alf’s had enough.”
Dizzily, I reached.
I rose from the heap, refreshed, wearing the body of Lars, the Etruscan warrior. Quickly, I moved back toward the entranceway where Adam was banging my Alf body against the tabletop.
Coming up to him quickly, I clipped his jaw with a left, as hard as I could, knocking him back toward the doorway. Then I pushed my Alf-self into the space beside the work area.
“Not fair! Not fair!” Adam cried. “Switching bodies in midstream!”
“To quote you again,” I said, “fuck you.”
An elephantine dick lumbered by as Adam ran up the wall and onto the ceiling, racing toward me upside down.
He began striking as soon as he was within reach. I didn’t have to worry about kicks, though, as he had slowed and lost some measure of control. I stood there ducking and swinging. I felt his nose break beneath my fist. His jaw seemed already broken. A company of bright red cocks passed through us singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” I caught him inside both elbows and forced his arms back beyond his shoulders. He bit at me as I did, but I avoided his teeth. .With a downward jerk and a full transfer of my weight, I pulled him from the ceiling, which immediately began to drip come upon us. A posse of aggressions raced by, mounted on tired-looking repressions. They pursued the most unusual unicorn I’d ever seen.
Adam landed on his feet, but he was turned partly away from me and he swayed. I nailed him twice on the face again before he adjusted his stance and raised his arms. Then his left hand lashed out with something of his old speed, and his claws took away most of my right cheek.
I kicked him in his right thigh again—same place as earlier—and the leg gave way.
Off to my right, a burning man flickered into existence, looked around, shook his head, and vanished.
I drew several deep breaths. “Somewhere down the line,” I said, “I’m going to look up the Kaleideion-makers and tell them what a jerk you’ve been.”
“It took two of you to take me down,” he said.
Then, suddenly, his right hand shot forward, resting lightly on the inner surface of my shin bone. His grip was only as strong as it needed to be. The bones at the base of his index finger had fallen unerringly upon the spot about a third of the way up, where a minuscule movement of his hand was about to cause excruciating pain, taking me over backwards, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about—
Well, I did a breakfall as I hit, during which time he had also caught hold of my other ankle. He pulled and surged forward. “Most fights do wind up on the ground, don’t they?” he said.
Then he drew himself higher and began savaging my big right thigh muscle with his teeth.
I sat up quickly, seized hold of him by the hair, tore his head free of my leg, then bashed it downward against the floor between my legs. As he went still I turned him over and drew him up toward me. I fitted my legs about him from the rear and locked my ankles, holding him in a scissors while I slipped my arms beneath his own and interlocked my fingers on the back of his neck in a full nelson. “All right. On the ground then,” I said. “Wake up quick so I can talk to you. It’s important.”
Suddenly, there was more light than there had been, and I realized that the door had been opened.
I started to turn in that direction, but she moved quickly. I felt her presence at my back, her hands upon my shoulders. “Release him, Alf, or I’ll bite,” she said. “Ssso help me, I will.” Her mouth touched the left side of my neck.
“Glory,” I said, “I have to hold him like this lo
ng enough to explain things. Otherwise he’ll go wild again. Believe me. Please.”
She raised her lips from my neck. “Release him,” she repeated.
The light came again, and a voice reached us from the threshold. “Interesting threesome,” he said. “Can anyone join in?”
She drew away to look back. I looked, also.
The sharpened studs on his wristbands gleamed, and the colored stripes on his shirt were fluorescent. His hair was the color of blood. Glory rose and stood beside me, facing back. I felt Adam beginning to stir, and I released him. “He is one of the things I wanted to warn Adam about,” I said, rising, turning.
He moved forward and I advanced to meet him. At my back, I heard Adam groan.
“It’s not nice to jump claims, Orion,” the newcomer stated.
I halted before him and raised my right hand, moved it toward him. He raised his right hand and advanced it, also. Protocol gave him the initial pattern. He was my senior, though hardly by much. Immediately, he struck ten death blows at me. I was not allowed to move from my position. I could only block or parry. He was done in an instant, and I threw ten at him. To most normal eyes it would appear as if we had only fluttered our hands by each other in weak salute. This is how colosodii shake hands.
There came a sharp intake of breath from Adam, followed by several coughs.
“I haven’t jumped your claim, Eryx,” I said.
He gave a brief laugh, then dropped his gaze to my feet and raised it slowly. Then he studied Adam. “Looks as if he actually gave you a good fight,” he said. “You would deprive me of everything, wouldn’t you?”
He turned and walked on back, then stood looking at Adam. “Can you hear me, Macavity?” he asked.
Adam coughed again, then nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“You are under arrest,” Eryx said. He drew a sheet of shining white material from his pocket and unfolded it. “This is a copy of the warrant. Care to see it?”
Adam extended his hand. His gaze moved to one place on the sheet. Then he smiled and said, “It hasn’t even been written yet.”
“Come on. Look at paragraph three. The last great crime in the history of the universe and you think they wouldn’t throw in a temporal clause?”
“Always worth a try,” Adam said, passing it back.
“I can bring you in alive. I can bring you in dead. Your choice. It’s nothing to me.”
Adam studied him, then looked at me.
“This is the box and you’re Schrodinger’s cat,” I said. “You’re dead, you’re alive, you’ve been arrested, and you’ve escaped. Nobody outside will know till it’s opened again. Whatever happens, though, you go out of business today. We do know that.”
Adam drew himself slowly to his feet and leaned heavily on the bench. Eryx faced me again. “As you must know, his is the biggest bounty ever offered in the history of the known universe,” he said. “I don’t really want to share it. I’d like to know your intentions.”
“I’d no intention of getting involved in this thing,” I told him. “I was hired by a lady named Pranda Rhadi to locate her boyfriend, who’d skipped town.”
Glory hissed and Adam took a deep breath.
“I followed the time-trail to Etruscan Italy,” I went on, “and I’d no idea till I ran the ID after I’d found him that it was the same guy who’d stolen the last singularity from the people in the box. When I learned that, I’ll admit I was tempted. Who wouldn’t be? But I didn’t know of your involvement then, and I was curious as to why he’d done it. So I ran the time-line on the Buoco Nero, and I learned that it closes today. He stuck with it for damn near three millennia. How come? What was he up to? I wanted to find out. So I decided to create a full identity here—hypnotic memory suppression and the generation of a totally new personality—that would permit me to fit in with the times and be in a position to observe just what happened in the final days.”
Eryx nodded. “I was curious, too, but not that curious,” he said. “I ran the time-line, also, and decided it would be just as easy to pick him up at the end as at the beginning. So, did you discover what’s going on—learn why he drove off in the singularity to open a psycho hockshop?”
I shook my head. “Still not sure,” I said. “I learned of your involvement while I was running the line, and I took measures to conceal myself from you. I wasn’t sure what I wanted my part in things to be.”
“Why didn’t Prandy recognize you?” Glory asked.
“Well, I grew a beard and a mustache and I put on some weight,” I said. “Mainly, though, I figured that my new personality would provide me with a whole new horde of mannerisms and that they would make the real difference. But I’m not sure that it mattered. She only had eyes for Adam when she turned up here.”
Eryx chuckled. “You put in a lot of work on this one,” he said. “Now you tell me you’re not after the action?”
“I was more interested in understanding Adam’s motives.”
“If you don’t know now, I don’t think you’ll ever know,” he told me. “He’s not about to give us anything, and it doesn’t really matter. I don’t see any special action, and I’m closing the hunt. Schrodinger’s box is about to be opened. Now, are you after a piece of the reward or aren’t you?”
“What would you give me?”
“Standard finder’s fee, just because you kept an eye on him all this time, plus a bonus for softening him up for me— though I didn’t ask you to do it.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I just want to see how it all turns out.”
“It’s over,” he said. “There’s nothing to see.”
I brushed myself off and stretched.
“I’m not so sure of that,” I said.
“What’s left?” he asked.
“Ezra Pound’s thirtieth Canto.”
“What?”
“It’s a poem that affected me profoundly when I was in college. I spent days meditating on it. Even went back and read Schiller on naive and sentimental poetry. At that time, I didn’t know why it was reaching me that way. Now, of course, I do. You take Adam back, and even if he is the Kaleideion they’re going to kill him, or its equivalent.”
He nodded.
“So? He knew the chance he was taking when he did what he did.”
“I know. But I dislike killing things now. So I decided not to take him in.”
“You’re a colosodian! We don’t have to like or dislike killing. We just have to do it when the time comes.”
“Oh, I can do it if I have to, and I still like the hunt as much as ever. I might just become a temporal private eye.”
Eryx shook his head. “Do whatever you want. You’ll snap out of it one of these days. In the meantime, I’m going to secure the cat-man and take him and this whole damn place back to the end of everything.”
Two quick steps and I stood between him and Adam. Eryx halted and stared at me. “You planning on opposing me in this?” he asked.
“Afraid so,” I said.
“Then you are jumping my claim.”
“Damn! I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said. “Okay. I am.”
“You know I can’t let you get away with it.”
“No.”
He sighed. Then, “All right,” he said. “Let’s have it out.”
A studded wrist strap swept through the air where my head had been but a moment before. I landed a light blow to his throat, avoided three body strikes, and had my left cheek grazed by studs. I was surprised when a double-handed thumb shot to his solar plexus connected and I was able to club the back of his neck, bring my knee up into his face, and deliver a palm strike to the crown of his head. As I did so, I recited:
“Compleynt, compleynt I heard upon a day,
Artemis singing, Artemis, Artemis
Agaynst Pity lifted her wail:”
Rising suddenly, he caught my wrist and threw me across the room. More sophisticated than earlier, I landed upon the wall, ran up it and across the ceiling, and
delivered a half-dozen blows to his face before he assimilated the stunt and began fending me off. Moments later, he was attacking, and he caught me on the point of the chin with a blow that knocked me over backwards. Fortunately, it laid me flat upon the ceiling and out of his reach.
He ran up the nearest wall and came racing toward me. But I had recovered by then and regained my footing. I feigned lack of full coordination until he was upon me.
“Pity causeth the forests to fail,
Pity slayeth my nymphs,
Pity spareth so many an evil thing.
Pity befouleth April,
Pity is the root and the spring.”
I swept his feet. I kicked him in the stomach twice before he curled into a ball, caught me behind the knees, took me over backwards and rolled over me, trying for my larynx with his forearm. I caught the arm, though, and took him off to my right, following and trying for a choke. I overextended my left arm, however, and he continued turning, locking it straight against him and breaking it at the elbow with a strike he managed by bringing his right foot up, out, around, and in.
“Now if no fayre creature followeth me
It is on account of Pity,
It is on account that Pity forbideth them to slaye.”
I attacked his eyes with my right hand and was able to free myself, spring into the air, somersault, and land below. Moments later, he followed, raining blows upon me. I knew that I couldn’t hold up much longer.
… So I didn’t even bother defending against the death grip he was reaching to apply. I simply transferred into the emptied body of Pietro, the artist.
He saw me rise, farther back in the tunnel. “Now that’s a low trick, to use a man’s own clones against him,” he said.
I smiled.
“All things are made foul in this season,
This is the reason, none may seek purity
Having for foulnesse pity
And things growne awry;”
He threw Lars at me and followed with a rush. I retreated, past the place of clones, farther than I’d ever been into the Hellhole. I felt a powerful tugging at my back and determined not to move another inch in that direction. I threw myself flat, and in a moment Lars passed over me like a bullet.
Psychoshop Page 15