Rhapsody in Black
Page 16
‘And you intend to go on doing that?’
Of course. What’s the point of letting you get tired when you want to stay awake? What’s the point of letting you take ineffective evasive action when you could be effective? What’s the point in my sitting back and letting you fail when I can help you succeed? I know you don’t take a blind bit of notice of any advice I give you, but I can at least let you do things your own way efficiently. There’d be no sense in my just sitting here like a vegetable.
‘Can’t you get it into your head—your mind, I mean—that I don’t want any help? I’d rather be inefficient my own way. I don’t want to be a superman.’
I’m not making you into a superman. I’m just making you into an efficient man.
‘I want to be my own man.’
But you are!
‘Leave my metabolism alone.’
Grow up, Grainger. You’re behaving like an idiot. What I can do to help you is no different at all from what your clothing does, or what physical fitness does. You have a body and it works. Why do you want it to work badly? Would you be better off if your reflexes were too slow to enable you to fly a ship? If your legs were too weak to let you walk?
‘I only want to live by my own efforts.’
And you can. I can’t stop you. Anything you can do, I can’t. I can only let you do it a little bit better. You’ve got to live with it. If you continue in your present vein, you’ll go completely insane. At least accept the realities.
I couldn’t argue with him. I had no argument to use. That was the moment when the inevitability and totality of our association finally came home to me. It was late, I know, but I always had a lot of resistance to ideas I didn’t want to accept. I don’t think it was a turning point in my career as a host. I didn’t change direction. He was still an unwelcome tenant. But while he was there he was what he was, and there was no use in fighting it. If rape is inevitable, as Confucius is reputed to have advised, lie back and enjoy it.
That argument took place in the caves, in Rhapsody’s insistent darkness. At the end of three days, we were back in the sky, in company with the stars, and light had been let back into our lives.
I wasn’t in great shape after the physical hardship I’d endured in the warren, but the wind’s help as regards my involuntary faculties extended to fast healing. My hands recovered from their skinning sufficiently for me to lift the Swan and I was thus saved from the humiliation of taking the passenger seat while Eve flew the bird.
I was very careful, and we made transfer at the first attempt. I found a good, fast groove with no difficulty, and slid us into it as soon as humanly possible. Then I settled back and left the Swan to take care of herself.
‘You should have let me lift her,’ said Eve.
‘Not on your life,’ I said. It didn’t need explaining.
We were alone in the control room. Charlot and Nick were down below nursing our ever-so-precious-cargo. Charlot was worried sick despite all his precautions. The worms were sealed in lightless containers, and had never been touched by human hand. Even so, the project looked unsafe. But Charlot was no fool, and if the worms could be saved, he would save them.
‘You must have had a very bad time down there in the caves,’ she said. We hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to talk while Charlot was clearing things up on Rhapsody, and this was the first real chance she’d had to voice her concern.
‘It’s a hell of a place to get lost,’ I told her. ‘But once back into the daylight, all that darkness just fades away like so much nightmare. It hardly seems real, now that I’m back where I belong.’
‘You haven’t seen any real daylight yet,’ she reminded me.
‘The stars are all I need to reassure me,’ I said. ‘Maybe we ought to bring the passengers up for a look at the universe.’
‘You want fifteen cave-men in your control room?’
‘Hardly. I didn’t mean it literally. It wouldn’t do Bayon any good, in any case. He won’t ever see the universe. He’ll be in the black caves of Rhapsody for the rest of his fife.’
‘I was surprised that you brought him along,’ she said. ‘He tried to kill you.’
‘Charlot’s decision,’ I pointed out. ‘I only work here. But we couldn’t leave him on Rhapsody. They couldn’t do anything with him. He has to stay with Tob and the rest, because no one else can know that he exists.’
I’d offered Angelina a free ride to wherever she wanted to go, as well as the outcasts. But she’d elected to stay behind, and support Mavra for Hierarch. I didn’t fancy their chances much. Akim Krist might be old but he was tough. He’d last for years.
‘Besides,’ I added, ‘they were all different down in the caves. With darkness in the way that they lived their lives, in their voices and in their eyes. They’ll be different men altogether once they’re on a different world. Perhaps they can change Bayon, too.’
‘You sound almost sympathetic,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t really become you.’
I shrugged. ‘I was down there a long time. You don’t understand what it was like.’
‘I was down there too. In jail.’
‘A prison is a prison,’ I told her. ‘It isn’t life.’
‘I thought you’d forgotten all about it,’ she said.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It’s splitting up and dissolving. I can look back and wonder how I ever got to be involved in it. Its logic is becoming illusory. Reason aren’t reasons any more. Give me a day or two and it will be all cancelled out. Dead.’
But I was wrong. I was only trying to forget. I never really did.
But all this is retrospective. The story really ended where I made it begin: down in the caves, in darkness....
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In a dark covert, within the capital but beyond the feeble gleam of the apologetic city lights, I finally ran Sampson down. He’d not been easy to find. He was unpopular and had barely survived an extended stay in the city jail. He was just about to leave, to face the inevitable wrath of his superiors.
‘You almost got us killed,’ I told him.
‘It was no part of my plan,’ he assured me. ‘I just agreed to Alpart’s terms to try to cut myself back in. I didn’t know what he had planned for you. I swear it’
‘OK,’ I said, not much interested in his protests. ‘I didn’t run down to start a fight. I’ve got some of the worms. If you want them, the price is twenty thousand.’
He didn’t leap for joy. It was dark, so I couldn’t see his expression, but I was getting used to darkness. I could tell that he wasn’t interested. He was tired.
‘You’re a little late, Grainger,’ he said.
‘Somebody else had a secret stash,’ I said—I’d been half expecting it. ‘You already got supplied.’
‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘I’ve had offers from more than one source. I set up deals, too. But there’s more to it than that. When I say you’re late, I mean you’re late. I guess nobody told you the bad news?’
I put my hand in my pocket and fingered the coppery dendrites. It had, of course, been far too good to be true. I just couldn’t be carrying a fortune in my pocket. No chance. Charlot hadn’t attempted to stop anyone stealing from the grotto. He’d acted as if it simply didn’t matter.
It obviously didn’t.
‘All right,’ I said, sounding as tired as he did. ‘What’s the catch?’
‘That stuff’s been locked in a stone coffin for millions of years,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit much to expect that you can go barging into a set-up like that and not upset things somewhat. They were lucky, I suppose, not to have destroyed the whole thing before they found out what it was.
‘But there’s more to a life-system than heat and light, as you damn well know. The ringworms are half-and-half organisms. They’re walking a physiological tightrope. Each one is as sensitive and as delicate as hell. And not just to heat and light and air. Each worm is a protocoenocyte and each one manifests one hell of an allergy problem. They sensi
tise to human proteins and human-associated proteins in a matter of minutes. They don’t turn bright green or writhe in agony, or anything like that, but those worms you have in your pocket have a probable life-span of a couple of days. No matter how many times they divide in the meantime.
‘You don’t have to believe me, of course. But we ran a check on board the ramrod the moment Gimli gave us the first consignment. Your boss knows as well—he’s down in the grotto right now with four-foot forceps and as much sterile equipment as he can raise or improvise. You’ve been out of touch while you were catching up with your beauty sleep.
‘You were right, you know. We should all have stayed in jail. The kid and I only stayed free for a matter of minutes anyhow.’
I took the dendrites out of my pocket and held them in the palms of my hands. I couldn’t see the worms. I was feeling a mite sick, but I’d never really believed that it was going to come off.
‘The others felt just as bad,’ Sampson assured me, as if it helped. ‘Gimli lost his fortune too, and one or two of the others.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Just great.’
‘You can’t win them all,’ he said.
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but it would be nice to win one now and again.’
He laughed drily, and then he was gone, leaving me alone in the shadow.
I shivered.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Stableford was born in Yorkshire in 1948. He taught at the University of Reading for several years, but is now a full-time writer. He has written many science-fiction and fantasy novels, including The Empire of Fear, The Werewolves of London, Year Zero, The Curse of the Coral Bride, The Stones of Camelot, and Prelude to Eternity. Collections of his short stories include a long series of Tales of the Biotech Revolution, and such idiosyncratic items as Sheena and Other Gothic Tales and The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels. He has written numerous nonfiction books, including Scientific Romance in Britain, 1890-1950; Glorious Perversity: The Decline and Fall of Literary Decadence; Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia; and The Devil’s Party: A Brief History of Satanic Abuse. He has contributed hundreds of biographical and critical articles to reference books, and has also translated numerous novels from the French language, including books by Paul Féval, Albert Robida, Maurice Renard, and J. H. Rosny the Elder.
BORGO PRESS FICTION BY BRIAN STABLEFORD
Alien Abduction: The Wiltshire Revelations
The Best of Both Worlds and Other Ambiguous Tales
Beyond the Colors of Darkness and Other Exotica
Changelings and Other Metaphoric Tales
Complications and Other Stories
The Cosmic Perspective and Other Black Comedies
The Cure for Love and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
The Dragon Man: A Novel of the Future
The Eleventh Hour
Firefly: A Novel of the Far Future
Les Fleurs du Mal: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution
The Gardens of Tantalus and Other Delusions
The Great Chain of Being and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
Halycon Drift (Hooded Swan #1)
The Haunted Bookshop and Other Apparitions
In the Flesh and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels
Kiss the Goat
Luscinia: A Romance of Nightingales and Roses
The Mad Trist: A Romance of Bibliomania
The Moment of Truth: A Novel of the Future
An Oasis of Horror: Decadent Tales and Contes Cruels
The Plurality of Worlds: A Sixteenth-Century Space Opera
Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine
Promised Land (Hooded Swan #3)
The Quintessence of August: A Romance of Possession
The Return of the Djinn and Other Black Melodramas
Rhapsody in Black (Hooded Swan #2)
Salome and Other Decadent Fantasies
The Tree of Life and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution
The Undead: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution
Valdemar’s Daughter: A Romance of Mesmerism
The World Beyond: A Sequel to S. Fowler Wright’s The World Below
Xeno’s Paradox: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution
Zombies Don’t Cry: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution