by John Shirley
Only much later, after Carl had arrived and taken her home, did she see the blood. It was funny—but she hadn’t felt it. She saw it running down her leg, and it might just as well have been someone else’s blood, someone else’s thigh. The doctor had told her it was a mild uterine hemorrhage, and by the next evening the pain had become a distant throb.
But now there were other kinds of hurts. Loneliness and fear. She missed Lanyard. She couldn’t talk to him, without explaining her behavior toward him. And she just couldn’t explain. And fear? She was very much afraid the psychic flashes would come back.
Joey had told her that cocaine would insulate her from the flashes, and he was right. She’d had a gram he’d given her—he’d slipped it into her purse so she’d find it later—and she’d been snorting it, little by little, all day.
He’d given her coke—but so far, no contract for a role, no script. She regretted lying to Lanyard about the script. But she was sure that soon, any day, tomorrow perhaps, Minder would give her the part.
She sat staring, depressed, and snapped her head around to scowl at the kitchen sink when the damn pipes began to wail. She’d written to the landlord twice about the noisy pipes. The super said that it was a pressure problem that couldn’t be repaired without a new pump, and the landlord would have to pay for that. Which wasn’t likely. But the whining of the pipes was sometimes so loud it woke her out of sleep. She seemed to feel the keening—in her sinuses; she rose and padded into the kitchen to turn the faucet handles. She let the water run for a while, and the pipes’ wailing subsided into a low, disappointed moan. She found herself staring at the drain in the sink. There were sodden, multicolored scraps of food clinging to the chrome lip of the drain; she brushed the garbage hastily into the gurgling hole, and watched the water sweep it away.
She put a plate over the drain, so that the water rattled on the china.
The drain. It went down, through all the building’s stories, and down farther to the basement, and farther than that; it went into the secret places under the city’s skin where tubular infinities of liquefied civilization pumped through crumbling pipes, gurgling.
She went to the dressing table for another toot. The gold vial was open, the gold coke spoon on the glassy tabletop beside it. She knew her depression was made worse by crashing from cocaine. She knew that more coke would make her feel worse, in the long run. She’d have trouble sleeping, at the very least. But she went to it without hesitation and performed the act automatically.
She spent the next hour cleaning house; tidying always made her feel better. It was as if she were putting the components of her life in order. In her sparely furnished rooms it didn’t take long, and she was almost disappointed when the place was clean. Thoroughly clean, almost painfully spick-and-span. Ah—but there was dust coating the white crucifix on the white wall. She found a clean rag, put it to the tiny Jesus face, and screamed. Screamed, when the flash hit her—it came to her through the fingers touching the crucifix. She somehow that something, not God, was punishing her for the crucifix. Was claiming her. You don’t belong to Him, but to Me…
Madelaine was on her knees, screaming, when the door opened.
(In some part of her she thought: But I locked that door. Where did he get a key?) Joey Minder and Tooley came into the living room and helped her to stand. When he touched her the maddened flashings in her head—ceased. Instantly. His touch was like water extinguishing flame. Her scream became a relieved whimper.
She let him enfold her in his soft, heavy arms though. His aftershave was so pungent she thought she’d gag. Her ears were ringing; there was a thudding in her temples. But she had come back from the brink. Minder had pulled her back. She could learn to like his after-shave.
“Hey,” Minder was saying, “what’s going on? What’s wrong? We were just going to drop in on you and we heard you yell….” He was uncharacteristically solemn.
How had he got in without the doorman announcing him?
She was too exhausted to challenge him. She was afraid he might let her go, and the howling in her head would return. The howling, and the pictures of people in pain. A girl in restraints in a madhouse, chewing away her own shoulders; an old lady starving to death in an unheated apartment because she was afraid to go out; two ambulance attendants sodomizing a woman with a broken leg and dumping her in an alley. Somehow, Madelaine knew she’d seen things that were real.
What sort of God let all this suffering go on? And on and on?
A small boy tied to a bed, dying of rabies. Anesthesia doesn’t work against rabies. And after two weeks of unspeakable pain, as his brain explodes inside its skull, the boy convulses in death.
She sobbed, burying her face in Minder’s cushy chest. The pictures no longer came, but the memory was fresh.
“You’d better come with us,” said Joey Minder. “What do you say, hm?” Some of his jolliness was restored. He helped her into her coat and led her out the door.
TEN
SHE’S TRYING TO talk herself into joining us, Krupp thought. All this other stuff is bull. Just playing coy.
There were five of them in the refurbished subway car. The car was stationary, the air a little close; they’d pulled into a deserted side tunnel, once used for emergency repairs.
Krupp watched Madelaine Springer closely, and listened raptly. He felt the same way she did, but he hadn’t known how to say it. Now she was saying it all for him. She was putting into words all the gnawing maybes and what-ifs floating in his head since he’d come to realize who owned him.
Minder and Tooley were there, too, and a woman, a skinny fashion model of some kind he’d recognized from the last group rite. He wondered bow real her blond hair was. She sat coolly smoking a Virginia Slim and now and then sipping a gin and tonic.
Krupp thought: Why us? There were more than a dozen Blood Initiates. Why did Minder call us here, why us three?
Maybe we’re the ones he has doubts about.
“It’s the long-term consequences a person has to think about,” Madelaine was saying. “They’re what get you in the long run, man.” She spoke in a monotone. She had a blank, sad look on her face. “But on the other hand,” she went on, leaning back against the couch, her eyes on the small chandelier anomalously dangling from the old subway car’s ceiling, “I can’t stand it much more. The screeching in my brain.”
“Is that really what it is?” Tooley’s voice was soothing. “Let’s put our cards on the table. You have a career you’re concerned about. You want to be an actress. You want to be a big actress. That’s never easy. You need every break you can get.”
“Not the kind…” Now there was a little heat in her tone. “Not the kind that comes with the things…with killing.”
“Americans who complain about the morality of selfish killing make me laugh,” Minder said, chuckling. “Never mind Viet Nam, never mind Hiroshima. There are people starving to death right now, in various parts of the world. If the morally snobbish are so upright, why don’t they send, say, two thirds of their income to the people dying of hunger? They could get by on the remaining one third. They would have to do without their second color TV and their daily cab fare and their new stereo with the special noise-reduction components and their weekends on Fire Island. But they’d never consider giving up their luxuries for the hungry. Middle-class liberals sit in their brownstones shaking their heads about cutbacks in the antipoverty programs—but right below their windows old ladies are poking through their garbage can, sniffing at wax paper, looking for a morsel. The liberals know those people are out there. Do they go out and offer them something from their overflowing refrigerators? Maybe some of their gourmet fromage chimérique? Maybe, once a year, they write a check for fifty bucks to United Way.”
“A person can’t take responsibility for the whole world. But you can at least attempt to keep from making it worse,” said Madelaine wearily.
Smiling, Minder shook his, head. “Frankly, I don’t think it could get much
worse, short of nuclear holocaust. Do you know how many people starved to death in Cambodia a year or two back? Circumstances cut off the flow of food to the cities there, and hundreds of thousands of people had to try to walk to Thailand. And most of them starved to death. The deaths from violent crime in New York last year—well, life is cheap. Life is truly cheap, Madelaine. People are insubstantial as soap bubbles, and they’re drifting through a hostile universe. It’s worse than dog-eat-dog, most places. In El Salvador the government troops perform mind-boggling acts of butchery on anyone who looks at them funny; and the guerrillas do monstrous things to the families of those who collaborate with the government.”
Madelaine took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Minder finished quietly, “And that’s what kind of world this is, Madelaine. But we in the Fraternity don’t believe in hurting people unless it’s necessary for the rites….”
Madelaine shook her head. “No, you can rationalize it any way you want. But that doesn’t make it right. It’s all for nothing, anyway….”
“All for nothing?” Tooley sat up straighter and spread his hands. “What about all this? Just one example: Do you have any idea how much it cost us to acquire and conceal and refurbish this subway car? Do you think the money for that comes from Joey’s investments? It was given to us. Through the Strength. He is that strong, and He is stronger. You’ve felt the Strength. You said so. You felt it in the air. Why do you think none of us have been caught? Because as we give Him strength, through the rites, He multiplies it, and uses it to control events in the upper world. Luck can be manipulated. And that alone should remove any immature notions you have about justice.’ The only justice is in Strength. Those who have the greater Strength make things Just—for themselves.”
“Do you know what sociobiology is, Madelaine?” Minder asked suddenly.
Madelaine nodded. “Sociobiology…I read about it in Time. It’s the notion that almost everything we do, all of our behavior—uh—has some basis in instinct.”
Minder was nodding, smiling gently. “You see, every behavioral impulse has—something to do with…with survival, the survival of the species or, more likely, of the individual. It’s something instilled by nature. And what is this ‘nature’? It’s Life Itself. It’s DNA, yes—but that’s just the bottom line of Life Itself. And what else is there, really, that is God, if not Life Itself? So if you deny the voice that tells you to survive at any cost, then you disobey the edict of Life Itself. And so you disobey God, Itself. Life is God.”
“I think there’s more to it than that. I don’t see why making yourself rich and successful with human sacrifice is something you do ‘for survival’.”
“You don’t?” Tooley asked, pretending surprise. “But life is very uncertain. Obviously, the more money and power you have, the more likely you are to survive—you can hire the best doctors, you can hire bodyguards, you eat the best food and live in the safest, cleanest places, and you have fewer worries and less stress. You are simply more free, and more happy—never mind that asinine poem about Richard Corey, that’s bullshit. Richer people are generally happier people. And the happier you are, the healthier you are. And so the more likely to survive.”
How likely am I to survive? Krupp wondered, watching Madelaine, admiring her wavy fall of dark hair, wondering at the sadness in her; he could see her defenses crumbling, although her face showed no expression at all. As if that blandness on her face were her last, thin bulwark against giving in.
A low rumble built up in the car, at first entirely sonic; then they began to feel it in their fingers, their teeth, in the walls around them, until the chandelier rattled and the bottles clicked in the liquor cabinet. It was just a train passing somewhere nearby, but to Krupp it was the voice of the Head Underneath, arising from the hidden place, rumbling a warning through His realm. A sound that was part sob and part sigh escaped Krupp, and his hand tightened on his glass. He closed his eyes and swallowed, trying to nerve himself up. You’re a rich man, and you’ve got powerful friends, said the rumble, diminishing.
When Krupp opened his eyes he saw that Minder and Tooley and the blond, modelesque woman were watching him. Madelaine was staring at the ceiling, her head tilted back onto the cushion, her neck arched oddly backward.
There was a grating but translucent tension in the rectangular chamber; for a moment Krupp thought that the tension was strongest in Madelaine, as if it had moved to dwell in her; she seemed close to bursting into tears. Her hands were clenched on her knees; looking at her black-Danskin-covered knees, his eyes were drawn to her thighs, thighs gently deformed by the seat, just glimpsible under the skirt of her soft blue-cotton dress. He found himself picturing Madelaine masturbating on a bed, in that same dress but without underwear, her legs spread for his whirring camera.
The image disturbed him; he felt what he supposed must be shame. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt that way.
Maybe it was the steady, calm gazes of the other three.
They were making him self-conscious. That woman—what was her name? Miss Chancery, Tooley’d called her at the rite—she was the one who disturbed Krupp most. She was blond and long and slender and her features doll-perfect. But the look in her blue eyes…he saw no warmth there. He could imagine contempt in her eyes, or dull disrespect—that was what she held there now. As if Krupp didn’t rate contempt.
Krupp somehow feared her more than he feared Minder and Tooley.
She wore a red taffeta ball gown, gushy, lots of fabric, right to the floor, with a semitransparent bodice to show her small pointed breasts.formally.
“Something wrong, Mr. Krupp?” she said suddenly, smiling without amiability.
“No, I—uh—I was just thinking about all what was talked about here. I didn’t really follow a lot of it.” He smiled sheepishly. “But—it’s interestin’.”
“Oh, it’s interestin’?” she said, tilting her head, her smile widening till he thought she would burst out laughing at him.
He knew then that he hated her. You fucking cunt, he thought. You’ll get yours. With the rest of us. He cut the thought short.
“The rite,” said Minder softly, addressing Madelaine, “will be at eleven-thirty sharp. The preparatory makeup should be applied by eleven.”
“I don’t care to attend, thank you,” said Madelaine, blankly.
The rumble went through the car again. But this time there was no train passing. The rumbling receded.
The Strength is real, Krupp thought. I have to do… what it says.
A picture flashed through his mind, and to keep from seeing it again, he went to the small refrigerator by the liquor cabinet where Minder kept ice and snacks. “Mind if I get some munchies?” he asked nervously, avoiding their eyes, bending to open the door and peer inside. He wasn’t hungry, but he thought if he had a little something to eat it would ease the nervous fluttering in his stomach. He often ate when he was nervous. Or afraid.
“Help yourself,” said Minder.
“Anyone else care for a snack?” Krupp asked, trying to be relaxed and affable.
“No,” said Madelaine softly. She hadn’t taken her eyes from the ceiling.
“No. No, thanks,” said Tooley, rattling the ice in his glass with a swizzle stick.
“No,” said Miss Chancery, as if turning down an invitation to wallow in mud.
“Cut me a slice of that cheese there, friend,” said Minder, to Krupp’s great relief.
Krupp made a small plate of crackers and grapes and cheese. There was a butter knife on the cheese tray; he decided to add some sausage to the snack tray. Kneeling by the half-console refrigerator, he pressed the dull knife-blade through the waxy skin of the sausage. The sensation it brought to his hand sparked an unwelcome memory: He was kneeling in the subway in the spray-painted magic circle, over the body of the girl, trying to concentrate without looking too closely at what he was doing; carving her, pressing the knife through her skin. At first the knife seemed reluctan
t to penetrate the flesh of her abdomen; it made a deep dent but didn’t cut. He put his weight on it, and the blade slashed through, transmitting to his fingers the resistance-and sudden-release sensation that meant he was breaking skin, sliding into the spongy inner tissues…Nearly the same sensation he experienced now when he forced the butter knife through the skin of the sausage. The sausage: ground-up cattle, butchered in a slaughterhouse, squalling.
He jumped back as if he’d touched a live wire.
“Ungh!” he said, standing now, shaking, staring at the quivering butt of the butter knife in the meat. Tears burned in his eyes.
He knew the others were staring at him. He didn’t look to be certain. He knew.
“You get an electric shock?” Minder asked evenly.
Without taking his eyes from the butter knife—the quivering slowed, as Krupp’s heart gradually slowed its thudding Krupp nodded, said, “Yeah. Must be a…loose wire in the fridge.”
“I’ll have it checked.”
As if still afraid of an electric shock, Krupp gingerly picked up the snack tray, closing the refrigerator door with his foot. He put the tray in the empty space on the couch between him and Minder. Neither of them touched the food.
For the first time, Miss Chancery addressed Madelaine. “I suppose you think you’re a little too spiritually pristine to come to the rite?” Miss Chancery said. “You weren’t so pristine the other night when we used the—”
“No need to get mean, Miss Chancery,” said Tooley in his friendliest tone.