The Man Who Melted

by Jack Dann

  ‘A hell of a way to start—’ Pfeiffer said.

  ‘Keep yourself closed,’ Joan said, turning into mist, then dark rain, pure sunlight and rainbows, a perceptual kaleidoscope to conceal Pfeiffer from his enemies. ‘Look now, he'll be more vulnerable when he speaks. I'll cover you.’

  ‘Your choice,’ said the gamesmaster. The thought was directed to Pfeiffer's opponent, who was staring intently at Pfeiffer.

  ‘Look now,’ Joan said to Pfeiffer.

  “Since we both turned up hearts, perhaps there is where we should begin,” Pfeiffer's opponent said, speaking for the benefit of the dealer. His words felt like shards of glass to Pfeiffer. “They're the seats of our emotions, so we'd best dispose of them quickly.” Pfeiffer felt the man smile. “Do you assent?”

  “It's your choice,” Pfeiffer said tonelessly.

  ‘Don't let anything out,’ Joan said.

  Pfeiffer couldn't pick up anything from his opponent and the woman with him; they were both empty doppelgängers of himself and Joan. ‘Pretend nothing matters,’ she said. ‘If you're to see his cards and look inside him for weaknesses, you must be removed.’

  She's right, Pfeiffer thought. He tried to relax, smooth himself down; he thought white thoughts and ignored the knot of anxiety that seemed to be pulling at his groin.

  “Cartes,” said the dealer, dealing two cards from the shoe, facedown: one to Pfeiffer, the other for his opponent. Another two cards, and then a palpable silence; not even thoughts seemed to cut the air. It was an unnatural waiting….

  Pfeiffer had a natural nine, a winning hand (a Queen and a Nine of Diamonds), and he looked up, about to turn over his cards, when he saw the furry boy sitting across the table from him.

  ‘What the hell—’

  ‘Call your hand,’ Joan said, feeling his glands open up, a warm waterfall of fear. But before Pfeiffer could speak, his opponent said, “My friend across the table has a natural nine. A Queen and a Nine, both diamonds. Since I called his hand—and I believe I am correct, then…”

  The dealer turned Pfeiffer's cards over and said, “Monsieur Deux is correct, and wins by call.” If Pfeiffer's opponent had been mistaken about the hand, then Pfeiffer would have won automatically, even if his opponent held better cards.

  The dealer then dealt two more cards from the shoe.

  ‘You're supposed to be covering my thoughts,’ Pfeiffer said, but he was composed, thinking white thoughts again.

  ‘I'm trying,’ Joan said. ‘But you won't trust me. You're trying to cover yourself from me as well as your opponent. What the hell can I do?’

  ‘I'm sorry,’ Pfeiffer thought.

  ‘What are you so afraid I'll see? Your memories of Ray?’

  ‘This is neither the time nor the place.’ His rhythm of white thought was broken; Joan became a snowstorm, aiding him, lulling him back to white blindness. ‘I think the gamesmaster is making me nervous, having him hooked in, privy to all our thoughts….’

  ‘Forget the gamesmaster,’ Joan said.

  “Monsieur Un, will you please claim your cards,” said the dealer. The gamesmaster nodded at Pfeiffer and thought neutral, papery thoughts.

  Pfeiffer turned up the edges of his cards. He had a Jack of Diamonds—which counted as zero—and a Two of Spades. He would need another card.

  ‘Don't think about your cards,’ Joan exclaimed. ‘Are you picking up anything from the other side of the table?’

  Pfeiffer listened, as if to his own thoughts. He didn't raise his head to look at his opponent, for seeing his own face—or that of the furry boy—staring back at him from across the table was disconcerting, and fascinating. An image of an empty hollow without any organs, formed in his mind. He imagined her as a bag somehow formed into human shape.

  ‘Keep that,’ Joan said. ‘It might be usable.’

  ‘But I can't see his cards.’

  ‘Just wait.’

  “Does Monsieur wish another card?” the dealer asked Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer took another card, and so did his opponent.

  Pfeiffer had no idea what cards his opponent was holding; it promised to be a blind play. When the cards were turned over, the dealer announced, “Monsieur Deux wins, six over five.” Pfeiffer had lost again.

  ‘I'm playing blind,’ Pfeiffer said anxiously to Joan.

  ‘He couldn't see your cards, either,’ she replied.

  But that gave him little satisfaction, for by losing the first two hands, he had lost the first game. And if he lost the next game, he would lose his heart, which, white thought or not, seemed to be beating in his throat.

  ‘Calm yourself,’ Joan said, ‘or you'll let everything out. That was the easy part….’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you trust me, and stop throwing up your defenses, I can help you. But you've got to let me in; as it is, you're giving our friends quite the edge. Let's make a merger.’ There was laughter in that thought, but Pfeiffer was in no mood. His fear was building, steadily, slowly.

  ‘You can fold the game,’ Joan said. ‘That is an alternative.’

  ‘And give up organs I haven't yet played for!’ The smooth surface of Pfeiffer's sphere cracked, and Joan let herself be swallowed into it. The surface of the sphere changed, grew mountain chains, lush vegetation, flowers, deserts, all the mingled moods of Joan and Pfeiffer.

  Pfeiffer was no longer isolated: he was protected, yet dangerously exposed. Inside him, in the human, moist dark, Joan promised not to take advantage of him. She caught a fleeting thought of Pfeiffer's dead mother, who had been a fleshy, big-boned, flat-faced woman. She also saw that Pfeiffer hated his mother, as much now as when she was alive.

  In the next hand—the opening hand of the second game—Pfeiffer held a Five of Clubs and a Two of Spades, a total value of seven points, which wasn't bad. He would not take another card unless he could see his opponent's. But when he looked up, Pfeiffer saw the furry boy, who blew him a kiss.

  ‘You're exposed again,’ Joan said, and they thought themselves inside their world, thought protective darkness around themselves, except for one tiny opening through which to see into the enemies.

  ‘Concentrate on that image of the empty woman,’ Joan said to Pfeiffer. ‘She has to be Monsieur Deux's wife or woman. I can't quite visualize it as you did.’ But Pfeiffer was trying to smooth down his emotions and the dark, dangerous demon that was his memory. The image of the furry boy sparked memories, fears, guilts. Pfeiffer remembered his father, who had been a doctor. There was always enough money, but his father extracted emotional dues for every dollar he gave his son; and, as a result, the young Pfeiffer had recurrent nightmares that he was sucking off his father. Those nightmares began again after his mother died: she had seen that homosexual fantasy when Pfeiffer hooked into her on her deathbed.

  Pfeiffer still had those nightmares.

  And now, the image of him sucking off the furry boy passed through his mind, drawing its train of guilt and revulsion. The boy and his father—somehow one and the same.

  ‘You're leaking,’ Joan said, her thoughts an ice storm. She could see her way into Pfeiffer now, into those rooms of buried memories. Rather than rooms, she thought of them as subterranean caverns; everything inside them was intact, perfect, hidden from the harmful light and atmosphere of consciousness. But she could not find any memories of Ray.

  Pfeiffer collected himself and peered into his opponent's mind. He thrust the image of the organless woman at the man.

  It was like tearing a spiderweb.

  Pfeiffer felt the man's pain as a feather touching flesh: the organless woman was Monsieur Deux's permanent wife. Pfeiffer had broken through and into his thoughts; he could feel his opponent's name, something like Gayah, Gahai, Gayet, that was it, and his wife was used up. Gayet saw her, in the darkness of his unconscious, as an empty bag. She was the compulsive gambler who had spent her organs; and Gayet hated gambling, but she possessed him; and he hated her and loved her and was just beginning his self-destructive slide.

/>   Now she was using him up. She was gambling his organs.

  ‘She's used up,’ Pfeiffer thought at Gayet. But Pfeiffer could only glimpse Gayet's thoughts. His wife was not exposed.

  Nor was she defenseless.

  She thrust the image of the furry boy at Pfeiffer, and Pfeiffer felt his head being forced down upon the furry boy's lap. But it suddenly wasn't the furry boy anymore. It was Pfeiffer's father!

  There was no distance now. Pfeiffer was caught, tiny and vulnerable. Gayet and his wife were swallowing him, thoughts and all.

  It was Joan who saved him. She pulled him away, and he became the world again, wrapped in snow, in whiteness. He was safe again, as if inside Joan's cold womb.

  ‘Look now,’ Joan said an instant later, and like a revelation, Pfeiffer saw Gayet's cards, saw them buried in Gayet's eyes with the image of his aging wife. In that instant, Pfeiffer saw into Gayet and forgot himself. Gayet's wife was named Grace, and she had been eroded from too many surgeries, too many deformation games. She was his Blue Angel (yes, he had seen the ancient film), and Gayet the fool.

  The fool held an Ace of Hearts and a Five of Diamonds.

  Now Pfeiffer felt that the odds were with him. It was a familiar sensation for gamblers, a sense of harmony, of being a benevolent extension of the cards. No anger, no fear, no hate, just victory. Pfeiffer called Gayet's hand, thereby preventing Gayet from drawing another card, such as a Lucky Three, which would have given him a count of nine.

  Pfeiffer won the hand, and he thanked Joan, who was a constant presence, part of his rhythm and harmony; and she dreamed of the victorious cats that padded through the lush vegetation of Pfeiffer's sphere.

  The cats that rutted, then devoured each other.

  Pfeiffer won the next hand. Thus he won the second game; Pfeiffer and his opponent were now even. The next game would determine the outcome. Pfeiffer felt that calm, cold certainty that he would take Gayet's heart. This obsession to expose and ruin his opponent became more important than winning or losing organs; it was bright and fast flowing, refreshing as water.

  He was in a better world now, a more complete, fulfilling plane of reality. All gamblers dreamed of this: losing or winning everything, but being inside the game. Even Joan was carried away by the game. She, too, wanted to rend, whittle away at the couple across the table, take their privacies, turn over their humiliations like worry beads.

  Joan knew it as Junkie's Revenge, this harmonizing of destructiveness. Pfeiffer blocked out her thought, for she was also thinking about Ray. Deep down, in the quick of his unconsciousness, Pfeiffer knew he would lose joyously and follow his friend Raymond to a dark, mutual epiphany.

  Everyone was exposed now, battle-weary, mentally and physically exhausted, yet lost in play, lost in perfect, concentrated time. Pfeiffer could see Gayet's face, both as Gayet saw himself and as Grace saw him. A wide nose, dark complexion, low forehead, large ears; yet it was a strong face, and handsome in a feral, almost frightening way—or so Grace thought. Gayet saw himself as weak; the flesh of his face was too loose.

  Gayet was a failure, although he had made his career and fortune in the Exchange. He had wanted to be a mathematician, but he was lazy and had lost the “knack” by twenty-five. Gayet would have made a brilliant mathematician, and he knew it.

  And Grace was a whore, using herself and everyone else. Here was the woman with great religious yearnings, who had wanted to join a religious order, but was blackballed by the cults because of her obsession for gambling and psyconductors, who would never plug-into another Crier. Who yearned for the dead, for the dark spaces. But Pfeiffer could only see into her a little. She was a cold bitch and, more than any of the others, had reserves of strength.

  This last game would be psychological surgery. Tearing with the knife, pulping with the bludgeon. Pfeiffer won the first hand. This was joy; so many organs to win or lose, so little time. Let Raymond have his corpses, he still won't find Josiane.

  Pfeiffer lost the next hand. Gayet exposed Joan, who revealed Pfeiffer's cards without realizing it. Gayet had opened her up, penetrated all that efficiency and order to expose anger and lust and uncontrolled, oceanic pity. Joan's emotions writhed and crawled over her like beautifully colored, slippery snakes.

  Pfeiffer had been too preoccupied to protect her.

  Joan's first thought was to expose Pfeiffer, but Pfeiffer opened up to her, buried her in white thought that was as cold and numbing as ice, and apologized without words, but with soft, rounded, comforting thoughts. She accepted it, but couldn't trust him; he was hard inside, and as damaged as Ray.

  The dealer gave Pfeiffer a Three of Diamonds and an Ace of Clubs. That only gave him four points; he would have to draw again. He kept his thoughts from Joan, for she was covering him. She could attack Gayet and his whore, expose them for their cards. Gayet's heart was not simply his organ, not now, not to Pfeiffer. It was his whole life, life itself. To rip it away from him would be to conquer life, if only for a moment. It was life affirming. It was being alive. Suddenly he thought of Raymond, who was embracing a corpse to find his past.

  ‘Close yourself up.’ Joan said, ‘You're bleeding.’ She did not try to penetrate his thoughts of Mantle—that would have exposed Pfeiffer even more dangerously.

  ‘Help me,’ Pfeiffer asked Joan. This hand would determine whether he would win or lose the game…and his heart. Once again she became his cloak, his atmosphere, and she weaved her icy threads of white thought into his.

  Pfeiffer couldn't see Gayet's cards, and nervously asked Joan to do something. Gayet was playing calmly, well covered by Grace, who simply hid him. No extravagance there.

  Joan emptied her mind, became neutral, unseen; yet she was a needle of cold, coherent thought. She prodded, probed, touched her opponents’ thoughts. It was like swimming through an ever-changing world of dots and bars, tangible as iron, fluid as water. As if Gayet's and Grace's thoughts were luminous points on a fluorescent screen.

  And still she went unnoticed.

  Gayet was like Pfeiffer, Joan thought. Seemingly placid, controlled, but that was all gingerbread to hide a weak house. He was so much weaker than Grace, who was supporting and cloaking him. But Grace was concentrating her energies on Gayet; and she had the fever, as if she were gambling her own organs once again. Undoubtedly, Grace expected Joan and Pfeiffer to go for Gayet, who had read the cards.

  So Joan went for Grace, who was in the gambler's frenzy as the hand was being played. Joan slipped past Grace's thoughts, worked her way into the woman's mind, through the dark labyrinths and channels of her memory, and into the dangerous country of the unconscious. Invisible as air, she listened to Grace, read her, discovered:

  A sexual miasma. Being brutally raped as a child. After a riot in Manosque. Raped in a closet, for God's sake. The man tore her open with a rifle barrel, then inserted himself. Taking her, just as she was taking Gayet, piece by bloody piece. Just as others had taken her in rooms like this, in this casino, in this closet.

  And Gayet…. Now Joan could see him through Grace: imperturbable Gayet who had so much money and so little life, who was so afraid of his wife's past, of her lovers, and the liberations he called perversions. But he called everything a perversion.

  How she hated him beneath what she called “love.”

  But he looked just like the man who had raped her in that closet so long ago. She could not remember the man's face—so effectively had she blocked it out of her mind—yet she was stunned when she first met Gayet. She felt attracted to him but also repelled; she was in love.

  Through Joan, Pfeiffer saw Gayet's cards: he had a Deuce and a Six of Clubs. He could call his hand, but he wasn't sure of the Deuce. It looked like a Heart, but it could just as easily be a Diamond. If he called it wrong, he would lose the hand, and his heart.

  ‘I can't be sure,’ Pfeiffer said to Joan, expecting help.

  But Joan was in trouble. Grace had discovered her, and she was stronger than Joan had imagined. Joan was tr
apped inside Grace's mind, and Grace, who could not face what Joan had found, denied it.

  And snapped.

  Joan, realizing she was fighting for her life, screamed for the gamesmaster to deactivate the game. But her screams were lost, for Grace instantly slipped into the gamesmaster's mind and caught him, too. She had the psychotic's strength of desperation, and Joan realized that Grace would kill them all rather than face the truth about herself and Gayet.

  Instantly Grace went after Pfeiffer. To kill him. She blamed him for Joan's presence, and Joan felt crushing pain as if she were being buried alive in the dirt of Grace's mind.

  Grace grasped Pfeiffer with a thought, wound dark filaments around him which could not be burned away by white thought or anything else; and like a spider, she wrapped her prey in darkness and looked for physiological weakness, any flaw, perhaps a blood vessel which might rupture in his head….

  Joan tried to bring herself away from the pain, from the concrete weight crushing her. Ironically, she wondered if thought had mass. What a stupid thought to die with, she told herself, and she suddenly remembered a story Ray had once told her about a dying rabbi who was annoyed at the minions praying around him because he was trying to listen to two washerwomen gossiping outside. Later, Ray had confessed that it wasn't a Jewish story, it was Buddhist.

  She held onto that thought, remembered Ray laughing like a little boy after his confession. The pain eased as she followed her thoughts.

  …If thought had mass.

  She was thinking herself free, escaping Grace by finding the proper angle, as if thought and emotion and pain were mathematical.

  That done in an instant.

  But if she was to save Pfeiffer's life, and her own, she had to do something immediately. She showed Grace her past. Showed her that she had married Gayet because he had the face of the man who had raped her as a child.