The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction

by Ashley, Mike;

  Thieves they were called, for no other name applied so well, bore in its single syllable such sadness and sense of resignation. They were called Thieves, and they were never seen, were not understood, had never given a clue to their nature or their purpose or even their method of theft. And so nothing could be done about their depredations. They were as Death: handiwork observed, but a fact of life without recourse to higher authority. Death and the Thieves were final in what they did.

  So the known universes – the Star Court and the Galactic Index and the Universal Meridian and the Perseus Confederacy and the Crab Complex – shouldered the reality of what the Thieves did with resignation, and stoicism. No other course was open to them. They could do no other.

  But it changed life in the known universe.

  It brought about the existence of soul-recruiters, who pandered to the needs of the million billion trillion worlds. Shanghaiers. Graverobbers of creatures not yet dead. In their way, thieves, even as the Thieves. Beings whose dark powers and abilities enabled them to fill the tables-of-organization of any world with fresh souls from worlds that did not even suspect they existed, much less the Court, the Index, the Meridian, the Confederacy or the Complex. If a key figure on a fringe world suddenly went limp and soulless, one of the soul-recruiters was contacted and the black traffic was engaged in. Last resort, final contact, most reprehensible but expeditious necessity, they stole and supplied.

  One such was the Succubus.

  He was gold. And he was dry. These were the only two qualities possessed by the Succubus that could be explicated in human terms. He had once been a member of the dominant race that skimmed across the sand-seas of a tiny planet, fifth from the starsun labeled Kappel-112 in Canes Venatici. He had long-since ceased to be anything so simply identified.

  The path he had taken, light-years long and several hundred Terran-years long, had brought him from the sand-seas and a minimum of “face” – the only term that could even approximate the one measure of wealth his race valued – to a cove of goldness and dryness near the hub of the Crab Complex. His personal worthiness could now be measured only in terms of hundreds of billions of dollars, unquenchable light sufficient to sustain his offspring unto the nine thousandth generation, a name that could only be spoken aloud or in movement by the upper three social sects of the Confederacy’s races, more “face” than any member of his race had ever possessed. . .more, even, than that held in myth by Yaele.

  Gold, dry, and inestimably worthy: the Succubus.

  Though his trade was one publicly deplored, there were only seven entities in the known universe who were aware that the Succubus was a soul-recruiter. He kept his two lives forcibly separated.

  “Face” and graverobbing were not compatible.

  He ran a tidy business. Small, with enormous returns. Special souls, selected carefully, no seconds, no hand-me-downs. Quality stock.

  And through the seven highly-placed entities who knew him – Nin, FawDawn, Enec-L, Milly(Bas)Kodal, a Plain without a name, Cam Royal and PI – he was channelled only the loftiest commissions.

  He had supplied souls of all sorts in the five hundred years he had been recruiting. Into the empty husk of a master actor on Bolial V. Into the waiting body of a creature that resembled a plant aphid, the figurehead of a coalition labor movement, on Wheechitt Eleven and Wheechitt Thirteen. Into the unmoving form of the soul-emptied daughter of the hereditary ruler of Golaena Prime. Into the untenanted revered shape of an arcane maguscientist on Donadello Ill’s seventh moon, enabling the five hundred-zodjam religious cycle to progress. Into the lusterless spark of light that sealed the laocoonian group-mind of Orechnaen’s Dispassionate Bell-Silver Dichotomy.

  Not even the seven who functioned as go-betweens for the Succubus’s commissions knew where and how he obtained such fine, raw, unsolidified souls. His competitors dealt almost exclusively in the atrophied, crustaceous souls of beings whose thoughts and beliefs and ideologies were so ingrained that the souls came to their new receptacles already stained and imprinted. But the Succubus . . .

  Cleverly-contrived, youthful souls. Hearty souls. Plastic and ready-to-assimilate souls. Lustrous, inventive souls. The finest souls in the known universe.

  The Succubus, as determined to excel in his chosen profession as he was to amass “face,” had spent the better part of sixty years roaming the outermost fringes of the known universe. He had carefully observed many races, noting for his purpose only those that seemed malleable, pliant, far removed from rigidity.

  He had selected, for his purpose:

  The Steechii

  Amassanii

  Cokoloids

  Flashers

  Griestaniks

  Bunanits

  Condolis

  Tratravisii

  and Humans.

  On each planet where these races dominated, he put into effect subtle recruiting systems, wholly congruent with the societies in which they appeared:

  The Steechii were given eternal dreamdust.

  The Amassanii were given doppelganger shifting.

  The Cokoloids were given the Cult of Rebirth.

  The Flashers were given proof of the Hereafter.

  The Griestaniks were given ritual mesmeric trances.

  The Bunanits were given (imperfect) teleportation.

  The Condolis were given an entertainment called Trial by Nightmare Combat.

  The Tratravisii were given an underworld motivated by high incentives for kidnapping and mind-blotting. They were also given a wondrous narcotic called Nodabit.

  The Humans were given Euthanasia Centers.

  And from these diverse channels the Succubus received a steady supply of prime souls. He received Flashers and skimmers and Condolis and ether-breathers and Amassanii and perambulators and Bunanits and gill-creatures and . . .

  William Bailey.

  Trapped in the lens of the Succubus.

  I 3/4

  Bailey, cosmic nothingness, electrical potential spread out to the ends of the universe and beyond, nubbin’d his thoughts. Dead. Of that, no doubt. Dead and gone. Back on Earth, lying cold and faintly blue on a slab in the Euthanasia Center. Toes turned up. Eyeballs rolled up in their sockets. Rigid and gone.

  And yet alive. More completely alive than he had ever been, than any human being had ever conceived of being. Alive with all of the universe, one with the clamoring stars, brother to the infinite empty spaces, heroic in proportions that even myth could not define.

  He knew everything. Everything there had ever been to know, everything that was, everything that would be. Past, present, future . . . all were merged and met in him. He was on a feeder line to the Succubus, waiting to be collected, waiting to be tagged and filed even as his alabaster body back on Earth would be tagged and filed. Waiting to be cross-indexed and shunted off to a waiting empty husk on some far world. All this he knew.

  But one thing separated him from the millions of souls that had gone before him.

  He didn’t want to go.

  Infinitely wise, knowing all, Bailey knew every other soul that had gone before had been resigned with soft acceptance to what was to come. It was a new life. A new voyage in another body. And all the others had been fired by curiosity, inveigled by strangeness, wonder-struck with being as big as the known universe and going somewhere else.

  But not Bailey.

  He was rebellious.

  He was fired by hatred of the Succubus, inveigled by thoughts of destroying him and his feeder-lines, wonder-struck with being the only one – the only one! – who had ever thought of revenge. He was, somehow, strangely, not tuned in with being rebodied, as all the others had been. Why am I different} he wondered. And of all the things he knew . . . he did not know the answer to that.

  Inverting negatively, atoms expanded to the size of whole galaxies, stretched out membraned, osmotically breathing whole star-systems, inhaling blue-white stars and exhaling quasars, Bailey the known universe asked himself yet another question, even
more important:

  Do I WANT to do something about it?

  Passing through a zone of infinite cold, the word came back to him from his own mind in chill icicles of thought:

  Yes.

  And borne on comets plunging frenziedly through his cosmic body, altering course suddenly and traveling at right angles in defiance of every natural law he had known when “alive,” the inevitable question responding to a yes asked itself:

  Why should I?

  Life for Bailey on Earth had been pointless. He had been a man who did not fit. He had been a man driven to the suicide chamber literally by disorientation and frustration.

  I was called to the office of the Social Director of my residence block. Frankly, I was frightened. I knew I hadn’t done anything to be afraid about, but ever since I’d been a child, ever since I’d been called to the office of the school principal, just the being summoned had made my gut tight, made me feel like i wanted to to the bathroom.

  He mae me wait half an hour, on a bench, damn him, with a gaggle of weirdos who looked like they hadn’t had their heads scrubbed and customized in seven months.

  Finallu, the box called my name and I dropped to his office, and he was sitting in one of thos informal conversation-groupings of chairs and coffee table that instantly put me off.

  “Mr. Bailey,” he said. Smiled. Hearty bastard. I walked over and sat down even before he suggested I sit. He didn’t drop the smile for a second. He was up to anything.

  “Why don’t we get right to it,” he said. I smiled back at him, but I felt trapped, really hemmed-in.

  “I’ve been looking at your tag-chart, Mr. Bailey, and well, I hesitate to make any jump conclusions here, but it appears you’ve been neglecting your relaxation periods.”

  Damn him! Damn him!

  “I see here, during the month of September, that you worked overtime at least . . . what is it . . . uh . . . eleven hours.”

  Is there a law against that?”

  “Oh, no . . . no, of course not. It just seems to us here at the block that you’re perhaps, uh, overdoing it a bit.”

  “Working.”

  “Yes. Working.”

  “has my block steward complained? Has my EEG been erratoc? Am I being accused of something?”

  “No, of course not! My Lord, man, there’s no need to be so defensive! We’re only trying to find out if something is, well, disturbing you.”

  If I’d been able to, I’d have killed sonofabitch; right then and right there. In his damned conversation grouping. It would have made fine conversation for his office staff. Come in and find him brained to death with his own coffee urn.

  “Nothing’s disturbing me.”

  “Then you’ll pardon me if I feel it relaxation periods, Mr. Bailey.”

  “I feel like keeping busy.”

  “Ah, but all work and no play—”

  The omnipresent melancholy that had consumed him on an Earth bursting with over-population was something to which he had no desire to return. Then why this frenzy to resist being shunted into the body of a creature undoubtedly living a life more demanding, more exciting – anything had to be better than what he’d come from – more alive} Why this fanatic need to track back along the feeder-lines to the Succubus, to destroy the one who had saved him from oblivion? Why this need to destroy a creature who was merely fulfilling a necessary operation-of-balance in a universe singularly devoid of balance?

  In that thought lay the answer, but he did not have the key. He turned off his thoughts. He was Bailey no more.

  And in that instant the Succubus pulled his soul from the file and sent it where it was needed. He was certainly Bailey no more.

  2

  Subaltern Pinkh squirmed on his spike-palette, and opened his eye. His back was stiff. He turned, letting the invigorating short-spikes tickle his flesh through the heavy mat of fur. His mouth felt dry and loamy.

  It was the morning of his fiftieth assault mission. Or was it? He seemed to remember lying down for a night’s sleep . . . and then a very long dream without substance. It had been all black and empty; hardly something the organizer would have programmed. It must have malfunctioned.

  He slid sidewise on the spike-palette, and dropped his enormous furred legs over the side. As his paws touched the tiles a whirring from the wall preceded the toilet facility’s appearance. It swiveled into view, and Pinkh looked at himself in the fulllength mirror. He looked all right. Dream. Bad dream.

  The huge, bearlike subaltern shoved off the bed, stood to his full seven feet, and lumbered into the duster. The soothing powders cleansed away his sleep-fatigue and he emerged, blue pelt glistening, with bad dreams almost entirely dusted away. Almost. Entirely. He had a lingering feeling of having been . . . somewhat . . . larger . . .

  The briefing colors washed across the walls, and Pinkh hurriedly attached his ribbons. It was informalwear today. Three yellows, three ochres, three whites and an ego blue.

  He went downtunnel to the briefing section, and prayed. All around him his sortie partners were on their backs, staring up at the sky dome and the random (programmed) patterns of stars in their religious significances. Montag’s Lord of Propriety had programmed success for today’s mission. The stars swirled and shaped themselves and the portents were reassuring to Pinkh and his fellows.

  The Montag-Thil War had been raging for almost one hundred years, and it seemed close to ending. The dark star Montag and the Nebula Cluster in Thil Galaxy had thrown their might against each other for a century; the people themselves were weary of war. It would end soon. One or the other would make a mistake, the opponent would take the advantage, and the strike toward peace would follow immediately. It was merely a matter of time. The assault troops – especially Pinkh, a planetary hero – were suffused with a feeling of importance, a sense of the relevance of what they were doing. Out to kill, certainly, but with the sure knowledge that they were working toward a worthwhile goal. Through death, to life. The portents had told them again and again, these last months, that this was the case.

  The sky dome turned golden and the stars vanished. The assault troops sat up on the floor, awaited their briefing.

  It was Pinkh’s fiftieth mission.

  His great yellow eye looked around the briefing room. There were more young troopers this mission. In fact . . . he was the only veteran. It seemed strange.

  Could Montag’s Lord of Propriety have planned it this way? But where were Andakh and Melnakh and Gorekh? They’d been here yesterday.

  Was it just yesterday?

  He had a strange memory of having been – asleep? – away? – unconscious? – what? – something. As though more than one day had passed since his last mission. He leaned across to the young trooper on his right and placed a paw flat on the other’s. “What day is today?” The trooper flexed palm and answered, with a note of curiosity in his voice, “It’s Former. The ninth.” Pinkh was startled. “What cycle?” he asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “Third,” the young trooper said.

  The briefing officer entered at that moment, and Pinkh had no time to marvel that it was not the next day, but a full cycle later. Where had the days gone? What had happened to him? Had Gorekh and the others been lost in sorties? Had he been wounded, sent to repair and only now been remanded to duty? Had he been wounded and suffered amnesia? He remembered a Lance Corporal in the Throbbing Battalion who had been seared and lost his memory. They had sent him back to Montag, where he had been blessed by the Lord of Propriety himself. What had happened to him?

  Strange memories – not his own, all the wrong colors, weights and tones wholly alien – kept pressing against the bones in his forehead.

  He was listening to the briefing officer, but also hearing an undertone. Another voice entirely. Coming from some other place he could not locate.

  Wake, you great ugly fur-thing, you! Wake up, look around you. One hundred years, slaughtering. Why can’t you see what’s being done to you? How dumb can
you be? The Lords of Propriety; they set you up, you yokel, you naive idiot. Dolt! Yeah, you, Pinkh! Listen to me. You can’t block me out. . . you’ll hear me. Bailey. You’re the one, Pinkh, the special one. They trained you for what’s coming up . . . no, don’t block me out, you imbecile . . . don’t I’ll be here, you can’t ignfl

  The background noise went on, but he would not listen. It was sacrilegious. Saying things about the Lord of Propriety. Even the Thil Lord of Propriety was sacrosanct in Pinkh’s mind. Even though they were at war, the two Lords were eternally locked together in holiness. To blaspheme even the enemy’s Lord was unthinkable.

  Yet he had thought it.

  He shuddered with the enormity of what had passed in his thoughts, and knew he could never go to release and speak of it. He would submerge the memory, and pay strict attention to the briefing officer who was

  “This cycle’s mission is a straightforward one. You will be under the direct linkage of Subaltern Pinkh, whose reputation is known to all of you.”

  Pinkh inclined with the humbleness movement.

  “You will drive directly into the Thil labyrinth, chivvy and harass a path to Groundworld, and there level as many targets-ofopportunity as you are able, before you’re destroyed. After this briefing you will re-assemble with your sortie leaders and fully familiarize yourselves with the target-cubes the Lord has commanded to be constructed.”

  He paused, and stared directly at Pinkh, his golden eye gone to pinkness with age and dissipation. But what he said was for all of the sappers. “There is one target you will not strike. It is the Maze of the Thil Lord of Propriety. This is irrevocable. You will not, repeat not strike near the Maze of the Lord.”