You discover that you have finished taking form yourself, only to find that you’re one of them. You are a floating mass of wet and sticky rope; when you try to move your hands and feet you feel a pseudopodal wriggle beneath the basket of your torso. This is not the shape you have grown used to, but that one doesn’t seem to be an option here.
Just when you’re adjusting to the idea of this physical conformation, you feel yourself begin to compress. Your boneless body squashes down as though the atmospheric pressure is doubling every moment. Boneless or not, the new body cannot compress this way. The other creatures hover near, unaffected by the pressures warping you. You have a mouth but not for screaming. For what then? You’ll never know. It’s unbearable, like drowning while being on fire, having joints and sockets wrenched apart, in all directions at the same moment. Pain, it grows louder than existence.
“This will be hard,” he said. “Hard” doesn’t measure this, is your answer.
You’ve finally figured it out. The hard part hasn’t begun yet.
You still have to go back.
***
Bruised, bloodied, achy, and as tired as he had ever been, Mingo leaned against the Free Quaker Meeting House, Ingram 30 dangling in his hand, and grimly watched the conflagration. It wasn’t particularly satisfying, coming as it did after so many successive failures—more an expression of his frustration than of real anger.
His leg hurt as if the bone had split, his cheek was inflamed, his left eye swelling, and there was a ringing harmonic in his ear that had him worried. On top of that he had once more lost the Angel. They had beaten him—the homeless, thoughtless, malodorous swine. They had beaten him bloody. Well, the last laugh would be his. He would go down in history right next to Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.
He maintained a tiny, ridiculous hope that his prey was trapped somewhere in the flames along with the hundreds of others. At least that was what he would tell the damned CEOs. If the truth ever came to light , well, by then it would be old news and he would simply shrug it off. So many charred bodies, so little to work with. If they were lucky, maybe the whole place would ignite, and SC could sweep in and raze it before more squatters moved in.
He had played a complicated game. It should not surprise him that it had failed; and yet he had been so certain. He had considered every variable in advance—or at least every variable he had known in advance. They all looked rock solid.
The company couldn’t have kept Rueda on the Moon. There was nowhere he wouldn’t have been noticed. Employees would have made the connection between him and … other bad business. The story would have leaked—on that point he knew absolutely that he was right. Stories always leaked. Angel Rueda had had to come down to Earth. But they, the asinine quartet, had wanted him alive, as if he were a hostage, an endangered species, a bargaining chip. They actually thought they could trade him for some technological marvel such as a Buckyball opener.
He found his reverie interrupted at that point. A short, squalid man was tugging at his sleeve. The guy had a little tuft of hair on top of his head, like a greasy ski jump.
Mingo decided he needed a vacation. Someplace where ScumberCorp didn’t own the works. New Zealand maybe. The little man tugged again. “What?” he snarled.
“Mr. Mingo, my name’s Mad Bucca.”
“How appealing.”
“I found him, Mr. Mingo.”
“Found whom?”
“The one that got away. Machine Man.”
A bag woman wearing four layers of clothing ran past. Her hair was alight. Mingo thought affectionately of the Statue of Liberty.
He shook his head. He would have liked a nap before his brain dried up. Even the security bozos had gotten to take naps. They didn’t have to maintain their façade of superior intellect. Anyway, in all this screaming chaos, where could he sleep?
“What’s a Machine Man?” he asked, disinterestedly.
“You know—a alien.”
Mingo focused on the little man. Yes, he remembered this turnip from the feeding frenzy in the plaza. He dared not hope. Not yet. But energy was seeping back into him, charging him, as he asked, “Where?”
“Down there,” Bucca said. He pointed along the wall behind the meeting house.
“What, he’s down the street?”
“Naw, he went down the rabbit hole. C’mere, I’ll show youse. No, really, come on.” And he led Mingo to an old chained ramp that had once had a semaphore at the top.
“A parking garage for people who live in boxes,” Mingo commented. He paused to listen to the screams, like Dracula immersed in the howling of the wolves. “Or used to. How long ago was it that you saw him?”
“Dunno. Half hour, maybe longer. I couldn’t find ya, and then the fire broke out and I had to go rescue my house.”
“‘House’ overstates the matter somewhat, doesn’t it?”
“You see, mine’s fireproof an—”
“Yes, all right.” He grabbed Bucca by the shirt and stuck the muzzle of the gun under his chin. “You were given a dime. By some miracle of the ages, did you happen to use it?”
Bucca intended to describe his ingenuity but the words tumbled out in a panic. “I slipped it in his pocket at the Liberty Bell, when he wasn’t looking, like you wanted, right? What you said, when we did lunch.”
Liquid was spattering on the little man’s foot. His bladder had given way.
Mustering control over absolute loathing, Mingo released him and stepped away. He holstered the gun. “What was your year?” he asked.
“Nineteen eighty-four.”
“An amusing vintage.” He tilted back his head and to the sky cried, “I’m not undone yet!”
Bucca said very quietly, “I was wondering, Mr. Mingo—”
The blond head snapped down like the visor on a helmet. “Your reward. Yes. I have to follow up what you’ve told me first—make sure everything’s as you say. Then, when I’ve finished, I’ll come back for you.”
“That’s good, ’cause, like, there might not be no place left here tomorrow. Box space’ll be a premium, ya know?”
“I think I have the picture.” He was thinking: In the darkest hour of the darkest day, all is not lost. The plan was going to work as he’d intended after all. One program covered the contingency of another; better still, they coalesced. He was going to triumph! If Rueda was in the tunnels below, then so were his companions. Mingo had them; he had them all.
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Evil That Men Do
The 1984 coin fairly sang to Mingo as he tracked its signal through levels of concrete and iron. Everywhere he went, he found bodies. He covered his mouth with a cloth as he passed them. Some had been gnawed on, and not by rats. There was hardly a living one in the bunch, although he did occasionally hear the echo of running feet. The living had withdrawn before he could catch them. They had learned their lesson well.
He wore goggles displaying a 3-D security map of all the tunnels with his position and that of 1984 brightly pinpointed. He could view them in either or both eyes, from above or in cross section, as a solid grid or a transparent overlay against the night vision lenses of the goggles. The map designated platforms and stairs, doors and even disused fire hose nozzles, by which he could confirm his position on the tracks.
The coin had not moved for a while. Maybe Rueda was asleep. After all, the man had been through hell. Mingo had kept the fires going. They were, he thought, like two men on opposite sides of a mirror. Both of them shot, beaten, running against the clock—the only real difference was that Mingo knew why. He had to credit Rueda for remarkable survival instincts in the face of such incalculable odds. He could afford to be magnanimous now that the game was ending.
A subway platform loomed up beside him. A noise caught his attention, and he had the gun out as he turned.
He saw a derelict shuffling toward him, begging. Mingo shook his head but the Boxer continued toward him. Did the idiot think he was on the street someplace?
Rather than w
aste time arguing, Mingo shot him. The gun roared, the blast rocketing down the tunnel like a train. He pursed his lips and decided shooting wasn’t such a clever idea—it might warn someone that he was coming. The pathetic beggar toppled headlong into the cinders, and Mingo kept going.
1984 was very strong now.
***
According to the map, he had crossed beneath the Schuylkill River. He arrived before an old subway security door. The map showed a hallway behind it leading to a sealed up area—what had once been a local subway stop for 30th Street Station. It had been closed off in the last century. Now it was just a vast underground cavern under the old train station, a concrete ruin accessible from at least five different directions, according to the goggles. The coin was in there. He switched off the map.
Alert for anything now, he tried the door, confirming that it was not locked. He eased it open. No one waited for him on the other side. He glided along the musty concrete hall, avoiding a heap of collapsed ceiling. A stairway to the right joined the hall, and he swung around its metal rail, gun at the ready; but the metal-edged stairs ended in a solid ceiling. They had not led anywhere in decades. He followed the map back down.
Mingo reached the opposite end and opened the door a crack. He peered down upon a large makeshift tent. The glare of it made his eyes water. He turned down the goggles. The tent looked as though a lantern were burning inside of it and the canvas was intensifying the light. That was quite a trick. He liked it, though; liked it fine. Anyone inside there would be blind to the darkness and an easy target.
He eased like oil around the doorjamb, then paused again, bringing up the map for a moment, double-checking as he always did. The map marked his position accurately, showing the doorway, the hall behind him; but in that case the coin wasn’t in the tent. Its blip was far off to the right, not far from a secondary tunnel.
He turned up the goggles’ penetrating power. Scanning wide, he spotted the shape of the lotus, and almost gasped aloud.
Lotus was what he had tagged the first one, the one they had found and inadvertently destroyed inside the aliens’ enclosure on the Moon. It had been as brittle as blown glass. At the first touch it had shattered in a chain reaction that, in a matter of moments, reduced the whole structure to a pile of gritty black dust. He knew it had been some special device, a weapon possibly. Yet analysis of the dust revealed it to have been composed of carbon.
This one had bright dots moving on it. They swirled and danced in an intricate, unfathomable pattern from petal to petal. He had not seen that on the other one—this one was still … alive. As if to prove it, the thing moved.
To his dismay, the map placed Rueda right there beside it. And there was someone there, standing so motionless that he hadn’t noticed before. He held the gun up. His heartbeat hammered. He took each step carefully, placing each foot deliberately. His feet seemed to make no sound; in fact, in all the world there was nothing but the sound of his heart. No one could know he was coming.
The person ahead continued watching the lotus. Mingo moved as close as he dared. From this distance he could not miss, and Angel Rueda could not escape again. No tricks, no surprises, no crowd to shield him. Raising the gun, sighting down the barrel, he said gently, “Adios, muchacho.”
The man turned, showing no surprise, no fear. It was not Rueda, and the utter disregard in the man’s blue eyes, even upon seeing the gun, unstrung Mingo. He balked. “No,” said the man, “ you must get back.” Mingo, wavering in his resolve, could not stand the calmness in those eyes. He lowered his head and saw, at his feet, the cranial bypass unit. It lay on its back like a horseshoe crab, revealing an intricate, greasy underbelly lined with tiny pins and two studs, like legs, that had affixed it to Rueda’s skull. He could even make out the indentation where he had planned to put in a tracer. This was worse than impossible. To remove the bypass was to kill Rueda. He stared questioningly at the other man. Perhaps it was all over.
Beside him the lotus fluttered again. The tepal stretched back, opening up the center. A shiny mucosa there bulged outward. Something like a thick gray mucilage spilled out around it. A shrill, rising sound nearly drove him to his knees—a shriek like that of a thousand harpies or the gathered agony of all the tortured souls of history, pressed into one devastating wail. His hand, holding the gun, shook so hard that he could barely keep from dropping it. He felt his bowels unplug. He was crying, sobbing, his teeth grinding.
The discharge gathered, transformed. It pushed out hard, like toothpaste being crushed out of the end of a tube. One instant it was gray, indefinable; in the next it had become human, and the bone-crushing scream of agony was erupting from its lungs. The scream not of birth, but of formation.
Mingo wrapped his arms around his head. He collapsed to his knees.
Angel Rueda, naked and slick and whole, fell quivering like a fish beside him.
Mingo shook off his tears of pain. He saw his prey, the cause of his agony and his befouled state, shivering in the aftermath of pain.
Now! Mingo’s brain urged. He squeezed his hand around the gun, dragged its awful weight to bear.
The blond man who had not moved till then took one step forward, and Mingo hastily pointed the weapon at him. “Back off,” he snapped. The man hesitated; he didn’t move back, but seemed confused by the order. Mingo got up shakily. “You just went into the Underworld for nothing,” he said to them both, then stepped over Angel and, with both hands to steady it, pointed the gun straight down.
In the last instant, he had a premonition of motion at his back and tried to twist around.
A length of pipe caught him squarely across the chin. The point of his jaw shattered, and he tripped over Angel Rueda and fell into the black heart of the thing on the wall. Tepals folded over him. He screamed.
A force like suction took him, tore him off his feet.
His view of the world sparkled around the edges. It began to slow down. He saw—recognizing the enormity of a fate that would allow it—the blue-turbaned character he’d beaten up on the steps of the quadrangle. A band of light emitted by the tent glistened off the jewel in her nose, split for an instant into a dozen colorful prismatic rays. Her! he realized. It was a woman! A woman in disguise. It had to be the woman, of course, the one who’d escaped detection, the one who’d defeated him at ICS-IV. At last he had her and he yearned to dispatch her, but he couldn’t feel the gun, or his fingers or his arm. Blood was in his mouth. The sparks sround the edge ignited across the center of his view, and fire seared every thought he had ever had. For Mingo, vision ceased altogether, along with all thought and all being, other than a torment eternal.
***
“He can’t go through,” the Orbiter told Lyell, “without the drug his tissues aren’t realigned. It won’t accept him.”
All the same, the flower-shaped conveyance tried. It absorbed what it could of its captive and spat out what it could not.
Before anyone could react, the black tepals opened up and Mingo slid down the wall to the ground. He was barely recognizable. The lotus had reduced him to a glassy-eyed, drooling shell. Above his eyebrows, his head had been squashed in like lumpy dough. Only a few strands remained of his fine mane of hair. A few bubbles of bloody spit popped between his broken lips.
Lyell dropped the length of pipe and turned away.
The man said, “But we have to help—”
Lyell shook her head. She couldn’t even look at him.
Angel Rueda groaned and rolled over. Dirt stuck to him like patchy fur, sprinkling when he moved. Groggily, he looked up at Lyell’s back and at Glimet, then caught sight of what remained of Mingo. For a minute he stared, motionless. Then he sat up. His hand nudged the bypass unit. It rocked back and forth. He grinned: he was free.
His hair was a short black stubble, the way it had been cut for the crab. His body smelled of the sticky substance on it, an odor not unlike that of cilantro.
He got to his feet, testing his balance. “Lyell?” he said.
Wiping at her eyes, she turned around. He stood unabashedly naked. Lyell tried to keep her eyes on his brown face. She remembered the lost look on his face that had claimed her involvement right from the first, and she remarked to herself how out of place it would have seemed on this man. She had to remind herself that he was dead.
“Who are you, Angel?” she asked.
He glanced sidelong at Glimet. “That is a little complicated.”
***
They sat in the bright tent—Thomasina Lyell now shed of her disguise, a groggy Amerind Shikker, and Glimet and Angel. He had wiped off the sticky substance and put on his shed clothing.
Lyell checked the disk recorder harness above her left breast, then sealed up the seam on her jacket. “Okay,” she said. “We have five hours left on this disk. Let’s try to get it all. Tell me first, who are you?”
“He’s Glimet, back from the dead,” said Shikker, pointing.
She thought again of the woman Odie had interviewed, Akiko Alcevar. Her husband had been back from the dead. “Is that true?”
“In effect,” replied Glimet. “Glimet was an Orbiter, who met his final decay right here in my camp. He was deadly addicted but couldn’t see it, even at the end. But that’s the nature of your kind and your drug. What is also the nature of the drug, but has gone undocumented, is that it is not killing those addicts—not as you imagine it.”
“Wait a minute, don’t we all know it is?”
The Pure Cold Light Page 25