by Clive Barker
He went one more time to the window and looked out at the glittering sea. The sight of its waves beating at the rocks below brought back the terror of his drowning. He felt the living waters squirming around him, pressing at his lips like N'ashap's prick, demanding he open up and swallow. In horror, he turned from the sight and crossed the room at speed, striking his brow like a bullet. Returning into his substance with the images of N'ashap and sea on his mind, he comprehended instantly the nature of his sickness. Sco-pique had been wrong, all wrong! There was a solid—oh, so solid—physiological reason for his inertia. He felt it in his belly now, wretchedly real. He'd swallowed some of the waters and they were still inside him, living, prospering at his expense.
Before intellect could caution him he let his revulsion loose upon his body; threw his demands into each extremity. Move! he told them, move! He fueled his rage with the thought of N'ashap using him as he'd used Pie, imagining the Oethac's semen in his belly. His left hand found power enough to take hold of the bed board, its purchase sufficient to pull him over. He toppled onto his side, then off the bed entirely, hitting the floor hard. The impact dislodged something in the base of his belly. He felt it scrabble to catch hold of his innards again, its motion violent enough to throw him around like a sack full of thrashing fish, each twist unseating the parasite a little more and in turn releasing his body from its tyranny. His joints cracked like walnut shells; his sinews stretched and shortened. It was agony, and he longed to shriek his complaint, but all he could manage was a retching sound. It was still music: the first sound he'd made since the yell he'd given as the Cradle swallowed him up. It was short-lived, however. His wracked system was pushing the parasite up from his stomach. He felt it in his chest, like a meal of hooks he longed to vomit up but could not, for fear he'd turn himself inside out in the attempt. It seemed to know they'd reached an impasse, because its flailing slowed, and he had time to draw a desperate breath through pipes half clogged by its presence. With his lungs as full as he had hope of getting them, he hauled himself up off the ground by clinging to the bed, and before the parasite had time to incapacitate him with a fresh assault he stood to his full height, then threw himself face down. As he hit the ground the thing came up into his throat and mouth in a surge, and he reached between his teeth to snatch it out of him. It came with two pulls, fighting to the end to crawl back down his gullet. It was followed immediately by his last meal.
Gasping for air he dragged himself upright and leaned against the bed, strings of puke hanging from his chin. The thing on the floor flapped and flailed, and he let it suffer. Though it had felt huge when inside .him, it was no bigger than his hand: a formless scrap of milky flesh and silver vein with limbs no thicker than string but fully twenty in number. It made no sound, except for the slap its spasms made in the bilious mess on the cell floor.
Too weak to move, Gentle was still slumped against the bed when, some minutes later, Scopique came back to look for Pie. Scopique's astonishment knew no bounds. He called for help, then hoisted Gentle back onto the bed, question following question so fast Gentle barely had breath or energy to answer. But sufficient was communicated for Scopique to berate himself for not grasping the problem earlier.
"I thought it was in your head, Zacharias, and all the time—all the time it was in your belly. This bastard thing!"
Aping arrived, and there was a new round of questions, answered this time by Scopique, who then went off in search of Pie, leaving the guard to arrange for the filth on the floor to be cleaned up and the patient brought fresh water and clean clothes.
"Is there anything else you need?" Aping wanted to know.
"Food," Gentle said. His belly had never felt emptier.
"It'll be arranged. It's strange to hear your voice and see you move. I got used to you the other way." He smiled. "When you're feeling stronger," he said, "we must find some time to talk. I hear from the mystif you're a painter."
"I was, yes," said Gentle, adding an innocent inquiry. "Why? Are you?"
Aping beamed. "I am," he said.
"Then we must talk," Gentle said. "What do you paint?"
"Landscapes. Some figures."
"Nudes? Portraits?" "Children."
"Ah, children... do you have any yourself?"
A trace of anxiety crossed Aping's face. "Later," he said, glancing out towards the corridor, then back at Gentle. "In private."
"I'm at your disposal," Gentle replied.
There were voices outside the room. Scopique returning with N'ashap, who glanced down into the bucket containing the parasite as he entered. There were more questions, or rather the same rephrased, and answered on this third occasion by both Scopique and Aping, N'ashap listened with only half an ear, studying Gentle as the drama was recounted, then congratulating him with a curious formality. Gentle noted with satisfaction the plugs of dried blood in his nose.
"We must make a full account of this incident to Yzord-derrex," N'ashap said. "I'm sure it will intrigue them as much as it does me."
So saying, he left, with an order to Aping that he follow immediately.
"Our commander looked less than well," Scopique observed. "I wonder why."
Gentle allowed himself a smile, but it went from his face at the sight of his final visitor. Pie 'oh' pah had appeared in the door.
"Ah, well!" said Scopique. "Here you are. I'll leave you two alone."
He withdrew, closing the door behind him. The mystif didn't move to embrace Gentle, or even take his hand. Instead it went to the window and gazed out over the sea, upon which the suns were still shining.
"Now we know why they call this the Cradle," it said.
"What do you mean?"
"Where else could a man give birth?"
"That wasn't birth," Gentle said. "Don't flatter it."
"Maybe not to us," Pie said. "But who knows how children were made here in ancient times? Maybe the men immersed themselves, drank the water, let it grow—"
"I saw you," Gentle said.
"I know," Pie replied, not turning from the window. "And you almost lost us both an ally."
"N'ashap? An ally?"
"He's the power here."
"He's an Oethac. And he's scum. And I'm going to have the satisfaction of killing him."
"Are you my champion now?" Pie said, finally looking back at Gentle.
"I saw what he was doing to you,"
"That was nothing," Pie replied. "I knew what I was doing. Why do you think we've had the treatment we've had? I've been allowed to see Scopique whenever I want, You've been fed and watered. And N'ashap was asking no questions, about either of us. Now he will. Now he'll be suspicious. We'll have to move quickly before he gets his questions answered."
"Better that than you having to service him."
"I told you, it was nothing."
"It was to me," Gentle said, the words scraping in his bruised throat.
It took some effort, but he got to his feet so as to meet the mystif, eye to eye.
"At the beginning, you talked to me about how you thought you'd hurt me, remember? You kept talking about the station at Mai-ke, and saying you wanted me to forgive you, and I kept thinking there would never be anything between us that couldn't be forgiven or forgotten, and that when I had the words again I'd say so. But now I don't know. He saw you naked, Pie. Why him and not me? I think that's maybe unforgivable, that you granted him the mystery but not me."
"He saw no mystery," Pie replied. "He looked at me, and he saw a woman he'd loved and lost in Yzordderrex. A woman who looked like his mother, in fact. That's what he was obsessing on. An echo of his mother's echo. And as long as I kept supplying the illusion, discreetly, he was compliant. That seemed more important than my dignity."
"Not any more," Gentle said. "If we're to go from here—together—then I want whatever you are to be mine. I won't share you, Pie. Not for compliance. Not for life itself."
"I didn't know you felt like this. If you'd told me—"
"I
couldn't. Even before we came here, I felt it, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything."
"For what it's worth, I apologize."
"I don't want an apology."
"What then?"
"A promise. An oath." He paused. "A marriage."
The mystif smiled. "Really?"
"More than anything. I asked you once, and you accepted. Do I need to ask again? I will if you want me to."
"No need," Pie said. "Nothing would honor me more. But here? Here, of all places?" The mystif s frown became a grin. "Scopique told me about a Dearther who's locked up in the basement. He could do the honors."
"What's his religion?"
"He's here because he thinks he's Jesus Christ."
"Then he can prove it with a miracle."
"What miracle's that?"
"He can make an honest man of John Furie Zacharias."
The marriage of the Eurhetemec mystif and the fugitive John Furie Zacharias, called Gentle, took place that night in the depths of the asylum. Happily, their priest was passing through a period of lucidity and was willing to be addressed by his real name, Father Athanasius. He bore the evidence of his dementia, however: scars on his forehead, where the crowns of thorns he repeatedly fashioned and wore had dug deep, and scabs on his hands where he'd driven nails into his flesh. He was as fond of the frown as Scopique of the grin, though the look of a philosopher sat badly on a face better suited to a comedian: with its blob nose that perpetually ran, its teeth too widely spread, and eyebrows, like hairy caterpillars, that concertinaed when he furrowed his forehead. He was kept, along with twenty or so other prisoners judged exceptionally seditious, in the deepest part of the asylum, his windowless cell guarded more vigorously than those of the prisoners on higher floors. It had thus taken some fancy maneuvering on Sco-pique's part to get access to him, and the bribed guard, an Oethac, was only willing to turn a hooded eye for a few minutes. The ceremony was therefore short, conducted in an ad hoc mixture of Latin and English, with a few phrases pronounced in the language of Athanasius' Second Dominion order, the Dearthers, the music of which more than compensated for its unintelligibility. The oaths themselves were necessarily spare, given the constraints of time and the redundance of most of the conventional vocabulary.
"This isn't done in the sight of Hapexamendios," Athanasius said, "nor in the sight of any God, or the agent of any God. We pray that the presence of our Lady may however touch this union with Her infinite compassion, and that you go together into the great union at some higher time. Until then, I can only be as a glass held up to your sacrament, which is performed in your sight for your sake."
The full significance of these words didn't strike Gentle until later, when, with the oaths made and the ceremony done, he lay down in his cell beside his partner.
"I always said I'd never marry," he whispered to the mystif.
"Regretting it already?"
"Not at all. But it's strange to be married and not have a wife."
"You can call me wife. You can call me whatever you want. Reinvent me. That's what I'm for."
"I didn't marry you to use you, Pie."
"That's part of it, though. We must be functions of each other. Mirrors, maybe." It touched Gentle's face. "I'll use you, believe me."
"For what?"
"For everything. Comfort, argument, pleasure."
"I do want to learn from you."
"About what?"
"How to fly out of my head again, the way I did this afternoon. How to travel by mind."
"By mote," Pie said, echoing the way Gentle had felt as he'd driven his thoughts through N'ashap's skull. "Meaning: a particle of thought, as seen in sunlight."
"It can only be done in sunlight?"
"No. It's just easier that way. Almost everything's easier in sunlight."
"Except this," Gentle said, kissing the mystif. "I've always preferred the night for this...."
He had come to their marriage bed determined that he would make love with the mystif as it truly was, allowing no fantasy to intrude between his senses and the vision he'd glimpsed in N'ashap's office. That oath made him as nervous as a virgin groom, demanding as it did a double unveiling- Just as he unbuttoned and discarded the clothes that concealed the mystif s essential sex, so he had to tear from his eyes the comfort of the illusions that lay between his sight and its object. What would he feel then? It was easy to be aroused by a creature so totally reconfigured by desire that it was indistinguishable from the thing desired. But what of the configurer itself, seen naked by naked eyes?
In the shadows its body was almost feminine, its planes serene, its surface smooth, but there was an austerity in its sinew he couldn't pretend was womanly; nor were its buttocks lush, or its chest ripe. It was not his wife, and though it was happy to be imagined that way, and his mind teetered over and over on the edge of giving in to such invention, he resisted, demanding his eyes hold to their focus and his fingers to the facts. He began to wish it were lighter in the cell, so as not to give ease to ambiguity. When he put his hand into the shadow between its legs and felt the heat and motion there, he said, "I want to see," and Pie dutifully stood up in the light from the window so that Gentle could have a plainer view. His heart was pumping furiously, but none of the blood was reaching his groin. It was filling his head, making his face bum. He was glad he sat in shadow, where his discomfort was less visible, though he knew that shadow concealed only the outward show, and the mystif was perfectly aware of the fear he felt. He took a deep breath and got up from the bed, crossing to within touching distance of this enigma.
"Why are you doing this to yourself?" Pie asked softly. "Why not let the dreams come?"
"Because I don't want to dream you," he said. "I came on this journey to understand. How can I understand anything if all I look at is illusions?"
"Maybe that's all there is."
"That isn't true," he said simply.
"Tomorrow, then," Pie said, temptingly. "Look plainly tomorrow. Just enjoy yourself tonight. I'm not the reason we're in the Imajica. I'm not the puzzle you came to solve."
"On the contrary," Gentle said, a smile creeping into his voice. "I think maybe you are the reason. And the puzzle. I think if we stayed here, locked up together, we could heal the Imajica from what's between us." The smile appeared on his face now. "I never realized that till now. That's why I want to see you clearly, Pie, so there're no lies between us." He put his hand against the mystif s sex. "You could fuck or be fucked with this, right?"
"Yes."
"And you could give birth?"
"I haven't. But it's been known."
"And fertilize?"
"Yes."
"That's wonderful. And is there something else you can do?"
"Like what?"
"It isn't all doer or done to, is it? I know it isn't. There's something else."
"Yes, there is."
"A third way."
"Yes."
"Do it with me, then."
"I can't. You're male, Gentle. You're a fixed sex. It's a physical fact." The mystif put its hand on Gentle's prick, still soft in his trousers. "I can't take this away. You wouldn't want me to." It frowned. "Would you?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"You don't mean that."
"If it meant finding a way, maybe I do. I've used my dick every way I know how. Maybe it's redundant."
Now it was Pie's turn to smile, but such a fragile smile, as though the unease Gentle had felt now burdened the mys-tif instead. It narrowed its shining eyes.
"What are you thinking?" Gentle said.
"How you make me a little afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of the pain ahead. Of losing you."
"You're not going to lose me," Gentle said, putting his hand around the back of Pie's neck and stroking the nape with his thumb. "I told you, we could heal the Imajica from here. We're strong, Pie."
The anxiety didn't go from the mystif s face, so Gentle coaxed its face towards his and k
issed it, first discreetly, then with an ardor it seemed reluctant to match. Only moments before, sitting on the bed, he'd been the tentative one. Now it was the other way around. He put his hand down to its groin, hoping to distract it from its sadness with caresses. The flesh came to meet his fingers, warm and fluted, trickling into the shallow cup of his palm a moisture his skin drank like liquor. He pressed deeper, feeling the elaboration grow at his touch. There was no hesitation here; no shame or sorrow in this flesh, to keep it from displaying its need, and need had never failed to arouse him. Seeing it on a woman's face was a sure aphrodisiac, and it was no less so now.
He reached up from this play to his belt, unbuckling it with one hand. But before he could take hold of his prick, which was becoming painfully hard, the mystif did so, guiding him inside it with an urgency its face still failed to betray. The bath of its sex soothed his ache, immersing him balls and all. He let out a long sigh of pleasure, his nerve endings—starved of this sensation for months—rioting. The mystif had closed its eyes, its mouth open. He put his tongue hard between its lips, and it responded with a passion he had never seen it manifest before. Its hands wrapped around his shoulders, and in possession of them both it fell back against the wall, so hard the breath went from it into Gentle's throat. He drew it down into his lungs, inciting a hunger for more, which the mystif understood without need of words, inhaling from the heated air between them and filling Gentle's chest as though he were a just-drowned man being pumped back to life. He answered its gift with thrusts, its fluids running freely down the inside of his thighs. It gave him another breath, and another. He drank them all, eating the pleasure off its face in the moments between, the breath received as his prick was given. In this exchange they were both entered and enterer: a hint, perhaps, of the third way Pie had spoken of, the coupling between unfixed forces that could not occur until his manhood had been taken from him. Now, as he worked his prick against the warmth of the mystif's sex, the thought of relinquishing it in pursuit of another sensation seemed ludicrous. There could be nothing better than this; only different.