The Man Who Melted

by Jack Dann

  Don't compare me with her, you bastard, Joan thought. “You've a nasty bent.” Pfeiffer was a cipher, a bundle of facts, a storehouse of Raymond Mantle trivia distorted for television. No wonder Ray was always so frustrated around him, especially since his loss of memory. There was something in everything Pfeiffer said that seemed to tease rather than explain. But Joan would not give up.

  “Ray hardly ever talks about his Indian heritage,” Joan said. “Do you know anything about that?”

  Pfeiffer looked disgusted. “Raymond's about as much an Indian as I am.”

  “Well, he told me—”

  “He's got some Sioux in him, on his father's side, but all you need is a drop to play the game. His father was a failure who turned to religion; that's not surprising. But he shouldn't have pressed it on Raymond. All that nonsense about sweat lodges and fasting on top of a hill to find God. It was the worst thing that could have happened to Raymond, and is probably responsible for his being where he is right now.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “He was fascinated by the Screamers, anything that smelled of the mysticism of his youth.”

  “You don't seem to really care that he has amnesia and has lost his sister,” Joan said. It was easier for her to think of Josiane as Mantle's sister. She turned her glass in her hands as if she could read her future in the bottom.

  “I am concerned for him,” Pfeiffer said, “whether you believe it or not.”

  “Do you believe his amnesia's real?”

  “Yes, that I know is real. I checked.”

  “Of course,” Joan said in a nasty whisper.

  “But there's something wrong with all of it,” Pfeiffer continued, warming once again to the subject. He clenched his hands together, thumbs sticking up like stone dolmens. “You think that he was dependent on his sister, don't you; that he couldn't get by very well without her?”

  “I think he loved her very much.”

  “Don't hedge.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I think that was his game.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Raymond is, and always was, a loner. He's happiest by himself.”

  “He told you that?”

  “I've lived with him, I know him; that's never changed. He uses people—not maliciously, perhaps—but he uses them just the same.”

  “And you don't?”

  “I try not to,” he said, and Joan wondered how much he had to do with the problems between Ray and Josiane.

  “Are you saying that Ray knows more than he's letting on?” Joan asked. “Do you think he's lying?”

  “I don't think he's lying, or realizes that he's lying, anyway. It's something else.”

  “And what do you think it is?” A real question. Answer it.

  But Pfeiffer didn't answer. He looked down at his glass, examined his hands, then combed back a lock of gray-blond hair that had dropped across his forehead. At that instant, Joan desired him. For all his boorishness, there was something attractive about him. He was almost pretty. Her thoughts wandered: Ray I love you lying beside a dead Crier, maybe lost in a dying mind, never to find your way out, you bastard. Damn the church.

  Stop it, she told herself.

  The bar had filled up, three-head deep, mostly reporters and diplomatic ’crats, although there were a few students and tourists standing about in groups. Joan knew most of the people, either from here or through the profession. A tall man nodded to her, was about to step out of the press and come over for an introduction, then thought better of it, winked at her, and melted back into the crowd. There were few women, even in the booths, which was unusual. Boys’ night out, Joan thought sourly.

  “Do you want another drink?” Pfeiffer asked Joan. She shook her head, and he waved the robot away.

  Someone in the next booth lit up a joint, and the sickly sweet smoke wafted over Joan and Pfeiffer.

  “I hate that smell,” Pfeiffer said. “Don't they have a ventilation system? Jesus! And there's enough people in here to make me claustrophobic.” He tapped a switch on the wall above the table to activate the privacy guard.

  “Don't do that,” Joan said. She tapped the switch, disappearing what looked to be gray, vibrating walls, which would have made her claustrophobic.

  “Well, excuse me,” Pfeiffer said nastily.

  “Just a local custom,” Joan said. “Anyway, it gives me a headache.”

  Pfeiffer grumbled. There was something of the old fart about him, Joan thought. But, according to Ray, he had always been that way. He was of the type, she thought, that aspires to authority and claims the potbelly, balding pate, and varicose veins as badges of success, of having arrived.

  “This place is a dump,” Pfeiffer said, looking around quickly then hunching over toward Joan as if he were trying physically to block out the room. “Christ, you can't use the privacy guards—and it amazes me that they work at all—there's no ventilation, and the goddamned robot looks like it was stuck together with spit and paste.”

  “The ventilation system does work, sometimes.”

  Something passed between them, a look, a feeling; and they both started laughing—nervous laughter, but even that was a touching of sorts. She had seen into Pfeiffer just a little, seen that there could be a wryness to his complaining, that perhaps he did not take himself so seriously all the time, after all. Perhaps it was because they both had something in common: nervous flutters about Ray, who might either be finding his dream's end or losing his way in the mazed mind of the dying Screamer.

  When they stopped laughing, Joan found that Pfeiffer had taken her hand—but no, that wasn't true: she had instead reached across the table seeking his. There was an instant of embarrassment. She let go of his hand, but he held hers tightly for a beat before letting go. She felt the urge to laugh again, but bit her lip. The laughter was a release; she remembered an assignment in Washington, a park gathering which had turned into a riot. The image was before her now as if it were on video: she remembered faces, faces she would never see again, and the carnage of unrecognizable bits of bodies strewn about all the familiar places like the red and yellow leaves of that bloody autumn. Afterward, in a hole-in-the-wall bar like this, she had sat with her friends and other reporters making jokes about the riot until hysteria finally turned to fatigue. She had gone home with someone that night; she could remember being passive, too tired and numbed to satisfy him; but now she couldn't remember his name.

  “Let's get out of here,” Pfeiffer said, his hands clasped together again.

  “We're waiting for Ray, remember?”

  “He won't show up; you know that as well as I.”

  “He might, and it was you who suggested we meet him.”

  Pfeiffer rubbed the edge of the table, looked around the club but would not meet Joan's stare. “I didn't want to be by myself,” he finally confessed, “knowing what Raymond was going to do.”

  “You could have tried to stop him.”

  “It wouldn't have made any difference, no matter what I said or did. I would have made a fool of myself and, worse, him. He hates me enough as it is.”

  “Deserved?”

  “Well,” he said, “I've had enough of this. I can't sit here any longer.”

  “Why are you so nervous for him?” Joan asked. “Somehow it seems out of character. You two haven't seen each other for quite some time, haven't really been friends for longer still.”

  Suddenly, almost guiltlessly, he said, “I had nowhere else to go. It doesn't matter if we're friends or not, we've been through enough together to take advantage of each other.” Joan believed that; it rang true.

  “It sounds like something from The Ghost Sonata: psychic vampires.”

  “More like the spider and the fly,” Pfeiffer said. Joan let that pass. “And, somehow, we're connected too, Joan, you, and me. You can wait for him alone or with me.”

  “We could meet him at Darmont.”

  “No,” Pfeiffer said instantly, as if afraid. “T
hat would muddy the waters. This much I can tell you: if you want to keep him, he's got to return on his own time. Do you want to keep him?”

  Joan nodded. She was being sucked in too quickly; already, she had offered that they travel together to find Ray. But she wanted to find Ray alone, without this misery from the past. No, that's wrong, she thought, looking at Pfeiffer, realizing how difficult it must have been for him to say what he had said. She began to get a feeling for Pfeiffer, touch a surface that wasn't smooth and oiled, find something about him that didn't repel her, that she could like—but never love. “Then what do you want to do?” she asked.

  “Something exciting and dangerous.”

  “Like what?” she asked, surprised at his manner.

  “Organ gambling, for instance,” he said, then slid out to the edge of the booth and deposited his credit card into an available slot. “Will you come with me?”

  Joan sat, watching him and thinking. He had a nervous, hot-eyed look, just as Mantle had had at the carnival when he was trying to get away from her; there was something feral and frightened in that look. “I don't know of any casinos with that kind of game hereabout,” she said.

  “There are some in Paris Undercity.”

  “You and Ray are alike—you're both self-destructive.”

  Pfeiffer's face turned red, but he didn't reply.

  “And what about Ray? Do we just forget about him?”

  Pfeiffer replaced his card in his wallet, and Joan suddenly felt clumsy, as she always did when her mind and emotions were at odds, when she was in an unpredictable situation. Her hands felt hot and overly large.

  “No, we don't forget about him,” Pfeiffer said sharply. “I'm sorry I said it”—his shoulders seemed to lower slightly—“I should have known better. I'll give you my key to Raymond's flat, and you can wait for him there.”

  “Do you know that I've never been inside his flat?”

  Pfeiffer stood up rather stiffly. “I just can't sit here and wait, especially since I don't believe he'll show up tonight. I can't explain it—I'm sorry,” he said, looking awkward and embarrassed.

  But Joan felt that something was amiss, as if the idea of Mantle plugging into a Screamer had touched off something in Pfeiffer, something irrational and dangerous, perhaps something suicidal. She did not imagine that he loved Mantle and was afraid for him, but that he was afraid for himself; and the only relief was to embrace danger and rush headlong into the controlled world of either/or, the gambler's microcosm. That was just the sort of mathematical, ideal world Pfeiffer would desire: a world where personal grief and fear could be transformed, where one could either win or lose and not have to face the tragedies of the in-between. If Pfeiffer was to succeed over Raymond, he had to walk the edge, outdo him, even now.

  Joan felt the lure. She could not help Ray, but she could go with Pfeiffer, perhaps watch him be unmasked….

  “Okay,” Joan said, “I'll come with you…but only to keep you away from the more dangerous forms of sport.” She forced a smile. “Ray doesn't use an implant, but he does use a computer plug. We can leave a message on the Network for him. I hope he hasn't taken out the plug.”

  They left the crowded club immediately. Several people tried to speak to Pfeiffer on the way out, recognizing his face from teevee, but he dutifully ignored them. Outside it was sticky and oppressive. The wind was hot; mercifully, the streets were less crowded than before. Those still walking about looked like wraiths, ghost figures in a videotect. There was hardly any noise, and the occasional yowl or shout was cause for turned heads. Someone dressed as a plumed bird staggered out of an alley and mumbled something to Joan in pidgin French; Pfeiffer asked what he said, but Joan only shook her head.

  It was as if night had claimed the carnival; and the people, dressed in shabby costumes, were wending their way home, embarrassed by the revelry of an hour ago. One would think that the curfews had not been lifted. But tomorrow was a workday. By dawn, the vendors would be out sweeping the streets, even though the machines would do the same job a half hour later. It was a safe way of resisting the system, of tribalizing, enjoying the familiar and expected. While the vendors called to one another, dickered, displayed unsold produce, the world would seem wiped clean, as if there was nothing new under the sun.

  “Do you believe in sympathetic magic?” Joan asked Pfeiffer. She smiled as she said it, but they were on a dark street and Pfeiffer couldn't see her face.

  After a few steps, he said, “Yes. Tonight I do.”

  They would take a transpod to Mandelieu, and from there take a flyer to Paris. A quick shuttle.

  FIVE

  The ceremony was not being held on Dramont Beach, which was tar-soaked and dead, but around the ruins of the old watchtower that had been built during the reign of Queen Jeanne. Semaphores blinked on and off to warn passing ships of land. Clouds boiled about the moon, shadows flicked here and there, a ghostly mist pervaded. The ruins looked like natural formations, as natural as the monsters made of porphyry rock that guarded the Gulf of Frejus, or the rocks of Cap Roux, or Mount Vinaigre lost in the mists. Wind and pounding surf created a background of white noise that somehow made one imagine that there was no sound in this place, only the flittering of ghosts and gods. A perfect place for an oracle: here nature itself was dreaming.

  There were at least two hundred people, mostly women, gathered in and around the ruins. They stood so still that one might mistake them for rocks in the veiling mist. Only the children moved about.

  Pretre had left Mantle with Roberta, who had met them at the watchtower. She was a large-boned woman, tall and awkward-looking and attractive. Her face was rather long, yet delicate; its hard, sharp features were relieved by a full mouth and a halo of frizzy blonde hair.

  “The ceremony will take place over there,” Roberta said, pointing west toward what looked to be dolmens at the edge of the olive trees.

  “Why is everyone standing still as statues?” Mantle asked.

  “They're praying, preparing a bridge from this world to the dark spaces.”

  Mantle frowned and asked, “And why so many women?”

  Roberta squeezed his hand and asked, “Do you have something against women?” Mantle smiled, in spite of himself. “Women are not as laterialized as men,” she said. “Unlike most men, we retain some residual language function in the right hemisphere of our brains. You work for the fax; you should be aware of that. Why do you think most of the Nouveau Oracles are women, as were the old? It's purely practical, I assure you. Women learn it easier.” Her accent was light and her voice mellifluous, soothing as the drone of the surf and the sliding of shadows.

  They walked toward the dolmens, and Mantle had the disquieting sensation that someone, or something, unseen was watching him.

  “I know you believe we're all crazy,” she continued, “but you should try to put yourself in the right mind for this if you want it to work. You'll have to let go, let everything that happens take you over, block yourself out—”

  “I can't,” Mantle said roughly, surprised at himself for blurting out the words. But the anxiety was growing inside him—that feeling of being watched by demons and devils as solid as stone who would collect him somewhere in the night, as if he were in a great maze. “I feel as if I'm being watched. I can't shake it.”

  “Then let yourself be watched,” she said. “There are Criers hereabouts. Some alive and some dead, hovering between our world and the dark spaces. Their presence can be a comfort, as if you're riding on their thoughts. That's what those around us are doing. The Criers alone can induce visions, without any hook-in or—”

  Mantle shuddered at the thought of so many Screamers, and something opened up inside him. He remembered. He flashed back to New York City. Remembered fighting the mind of the crowd. Being rent by screams and by thoughts as sharp and clear as breaking crystal. The crowd was telepathic, a many-headed beast trying to devour him.

  “Come on,” she said, pulling Mantle's arm around her waist,
just as Joan often did. “You're thinking bad thoughts, I can feel it.” She smiled, as if to make light of it, and said, “Let the Criers guide your thoughts. You'll be safer that way, and I'll stay with you, even hook-in with you, if you like.”

  “So I'm your ticket to hook-in,” Mantle said, regretting his words and tone of voice. Even against his will, he had to admit that he felt safer with her. He had thrown Joan away—Wasn't that enough? he asked himself. But, like Pretre, Roberta had a slippery mind, which frightened him.

  Mantle thought about Joan. Now he wanted her, now he needed her. I love you, I know you….

  “It's my time to hook-in,” Roberta said. “With or without you.”

  “What's the danger of being discovered by locals?” he asked, changing the subject. They passed a group of long-haired boutades, faces rouged and lined. The boutadniks were naked, so as to expose the male and female sex organs implanted on their chests and arms. Standing beside the boutades were several children and a few locals in costume, probably the children's parents. Mantle gave the boutades a sour look and then turned his face, as if they represented everything he hated about the modern world.

  “This is a religious area, and most of the gentlefolk protect us,” Roberta said. “We have used this place since the incorporation of the church. It's holy.

  There are many Criers hereabouts, for death is a friend in holy places, and the police usually leave us alone. With the locals on our side, it's more difficult for them…. But, of course, there is always danger for us. We've been raided before and will probably be raided again. The police have sent some of us to the other side.”

  “You mean during a raid.”

  Roberta nodded, as if the words “safety” and “danger” could easily mean the same thing to her.

  “Then why return to this place?” Mantle asked.

  “Because the voices of the Criers are strong here. Why was there an oracle at Delphi, at Dodona, at Ptoa, at Branchidae, at Patara?”