It was beautiful, of course. First a tiny stream of fire, like a scratch made on a wall painted black, revealing a white undercoat. This grew smaller and smaller, and eventually disappeared; but mere seconds after its disappearance, what looked to be an iridescent crack began to spread across the blackness, reaching from the place where Sojourner had gone superluminal to its point of departure, widening to a finger’s breadth, then a hand’s, and more, like an all-coloured piece of lightning hardened into a great jagged sword that was sundering the void, and as it swung toward us, widening still, I thought I saw in it intimations of faces and forms and things written, as one sees the images of circuitry and patterns such as might be found on the skin of animals when staring at the grain of a varnished board, and the sight of these half-glimpsed faces and the rest, not quite decipherable yet familiar in the way a vast and complex sky with beams of sunlight shafting down through dark clouds appears to express a familiar glory…those sights were accompanied by a feeling of instability, a shivery apprehension of my own insubstantiality which, although it shook me to my soul, disabling any attempt to reject it, was also curiously exalting, and I yearned for that sword to swing through me, to bear me away into a thundering genesis where I would achieve completion, and afterward, after it had faded, leaving me bereft and confused, my focus upon it had been so intent, I felt I had witnessed not an exercise of intricate technology but a simple magical act of the sort used to summon demons from the ready rooms of Hell or to wake a white spirit in the depths of an underground lake. I turned to Bill. His faceplate was awash in reflected light, and what I could make out of his face was coloured an eerie green by the read-outs inside his helmet. His mouth was opened, his eyes wide. I spoke to him, saying I can’t recall what, but wanting him to second my amazement at the wonderful thing we had seen.
‘Somethin’s wrong,’ he said.
I realized then that he was gazing in another direction; he might have seen Sojourner’s departure, but only out of the corner of his eye. His attention was fixed upon one of the modules—the avionics lab, I believe—from which a large number of barnacles had detached and were drifting off into space.
‘Why’re they doin’ that?’ he asked. ‘Why’re they leavin’?’
‘They’re probably sick of it here,’ I said, disgruntled by his lack of sensitivity. ‘Like the rest of us.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, must be somethin’ wrong. They wouldn’t leave ’less somethin’s wrong.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Something’s wrong. Let’s go back in.’
He followed me reluctantly into the airlock, and once we had shucked off our suits, he talked about the barnacles all the way back to my quarters, insisting that they would not have vacated the station if there had been nothing wrong.
‘They like it here,’ he said. ‘There’s lots of dust, and nobody bothers ’em much. And they…’
‘Christ!’ I said. ‘If something’s wrong, figure it out and tell me! Don’t just blither on!’
‘I can’t.’ He ducked his eyes, swung his arms in exaggerated fashion, as if he were getting ready to skip. ‘I don’t know how to figure it out.’
‘Ask Mister C.’ We had reached my door, and I punched out the entry code.
‘He doesn’t care.’ Bill pushed out his lower lip to cover the upper, and he shook his head back and forth, actually not shaking it so much as swinging it in great slow arcs. ‘He thinks it’s stupid.’
‘What?’ The door cycled open, the front room was pitch-dark.
‘The barnacles,’ Bill said. ‘He thinks everything I like is stupid. The barnacles and the CPC and…’
Just then I heard Arlie scream, and somebody came hurtling out of the dark, knocking me into a chair and down onto the floor. In the spill of light from the corridor, I saw Arlie getting to her feet, covering her breasts with her arms. Her blouse was hanging in tatters about her waist; her jeans were pushed down past her hips; her mouth was bloody. She tried to speak, but only managed a sob.
Sickened and terrified at the sight of her, I scrambled out into the corridor. A man dressed all in black was sprinting away, just turning off into one of the common rooms. I ran after him. Each step spiked the boil of my emotions with rage, and by the time I entered the common room, done up as the VR version of a pub, with dart boards and dusty, dark wood, and a few fraudulent old red-cheeked men slumped at corner tables, there was murder in my heart. I yelled at people taking their ease to call Security, then raced into the next corridor.
Not a sign of the man in black.
The corridor was ranged by about twenty doors, the panel of light above most showing blue, signalling that no one was within. I was about to try one of the occupied apartments when I noticed that the telltale beside the airlock hatch was winking red. I went over to the hatch, switched on the closed-circuit-camera. On the screen above the control panel appeared a grainy black-and-white picture of the airlock’s interior; the man I had been chasing was pacing back and forth, making an erratic humming noise. A pale, twitchy young man with a malnourished look and bones that seemed as frail as a bird’s, the product of some row-house madonna and her pimply king, of not enough veggies and too many cigarettes, of centuries of a type of ignorance as peculiarly British as the hand-rolled lawns of family estates. I recognized him at once. Roger Thirwell. I also recognized his clothes. The tight black satin trousers and shirt of the Strange Magnificence, dotted with badges proclaiming levels of spiritual attainment and attendance at this or that function.
‘Hello, Roger,’ I said into the intercom. ‘Lovely day for a rape, isn’t it, you filthy bastard?’
He glanced around, then up to the monitor. Fear came into his face, then was washed away by hostility, which in turn was replaced by a sort of sneering happiness. ‘Send me to Manchester, will you?’ he said. ‘Send me down the tube to bloody Manchester! I think not! Perhaps you realize now I’m not the sort to take threats lying down.’
‘Yeah, you’re a fucking hero! Why don’t you come out and show me how much of a man you are.’
He appeared distracted, as if he had not heard me. I began to suspect that he was drugged, but drugged or not, I hated him.
‘Come on out of there!’ I said. ‘I swear to God, I’ll be gentle.’
‘I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘You want to see the man I am, I’ll show you.’
But he made no move.
‘I had her in the mouth,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s got a lovely, lovely mouth.’
I didn’t believe him, but the words afflicted me nevertheless. I pounded on the hatch. ‘You beady-eyed piece of shit! Come out, damn you!’
Voices talking excitedly behind me, then somebody put an arm on my shoulder and said in a carefully enunciated baritone, ‘Let me handle this one, John.’
It was Gerald Sessions, my superior, a spindly black man with a handsome, open face and freckly light complexion and spidery arms that possessed inordinate strength. He was a quiet, private sort, not given to displays of emotion, understated in all ways, possessed of the glum manner of someone who continually feels themselves put upon; yet because of our years together, he was a man for whom I had developed some affection, and though I trusted no one completely, he was one of the few people whom I was willing to let watch my back. Standing beside him were four guards, among them his bodyguard and lover, Ernesto Carbajal, a little fume of a fellow with thick, oily yet well-tended black hair and a prissy cast to his features; and behind them, at a remove, was a grave-looking Menckyn Samuelson, nattily attired in dinner jacket and white trousers. Apparently he had been called away from a social occasion.
‘No, thank you,’ I told Gerald. ‘I plan to hurt the son of a bitch. Send someone round to check on Arlie, will you?’
‘It’s been taken care of.’ He studied me a moment. ‘All right. Just don’t kill him.’
I turned back to the screen just as Thirwell, who had moved to the outer hatch and was gazing at the control panel, burst into song.
‘Night, my brother, gather round me,
Breed the reign of violence,
And with temptations of the spi-i-rit
Blight the curse of innocence.
Oh, supple daughters of the twilight,
Will we have all our pleasures spent,
When God emerges from the shadows,
Blinding in his Strange Magni-i-fi-i-cence…’
He broke off and let out a weak chuckle. I was so astounded by this behaviour that my anger was muted and my investigative sensibilities engaged.
‘Who’re your contacts on Solitaire?’ I asked. ‘Talk to me, and maybe things will go easier for you.’
Thirwell continued staring at the panel, seemingly transfixed by it.
‘Give it up, Roger,’ I said. ‘Tell us about the Magnificence. You help us, and we’ll do right by you, I swear.’
He lifted his face to the ceiling and, in a shattered tone, verging on tears, said, ‘Oh, God!’
‘I may be wrong,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe he’s going to answer you. You’d best brace it up in there, get your head clear.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Sure you do. You know. It was your brains got you here. Now use them. Think. You have to make the best of this you can.’ It was hard to make promises of leniency to this little grout who’d had his hands on Arlie, but the rectitude of the job provided me a framework in which I was able to function. ‘Look here, I can’t predict what’s going to happen, but I can give you this much. You tell us what you know, chapter and verse, and I’ll speak up for you. There could be mitigating circumstances. Drugs. Coercion. Blackmail. That strike a chord, Roger? Hasn’t someone been pushing you into this? Yeah, yeah, I thought so. Mitigating circumstances. That being the case, it’s likely the corporation will go lightly with you. And one thing I can promise for certain sure. We’ll keep you safe from the Magnificence.’
Thirwell turned to the monitor. From the working of his mouth and the darting of his eyes, I could see he was close to falling apart.
‘That’s it, there’s the lad. Come along home.’
‘The Magnificence.’ He glanced about, as if concerned that someone might be eavesdropping. ‘They told me…uh…I…’ He swallowed hard and peered at the camera as if trying to see through to the other side of the lens. ‘I’m frightened,’ he said in a whispery, conspiratorial tone.
‘We’re all frightened, Roger. It’s shit like the Magnificence keeps us frightened. Time to stop being afraid, don’t you think? Maybe that’s the only way to stop. Just to do it, I mean. Just to say, the hell with this! I’m…’
‘P’rhaps if I had a word with him,’ said Samuelson, leaning in over my shoulder. ‘You said I had some influence with the boy. P’rhaps…’
I shoved him against the wall; Gerald caught him on the rebound and slung him along the corridor, holding a finger up to his lips, indicating that Samuelson should keep very quiet. But the damage was done. Thirwell had turned back to the control panel and was punching in the code that would break the seal on the outer hatch.
‘Don’t be an ass!’ I said. ‘That way’s no good for anyone.’
He finished punching in the code and stood staring at the stud that would cycle the lock open. The Danger lights above the inner hatch were winking, and a computer voice had begun repeating, Warning, Warning, The outer hatch has been unsealed, the airlock has not been depressurized, Warning, Warning…
‘Don’t do it, Roger!’
‘I have to,’ he said. ‘I realize that now. I was confused, but now it’s okay. I can do it.’
‘Nobody wants this to happen, Roger.’
‘I do, I want it.’
‘Listen to me!’
Thirwell’s hand went falteringly toward the stud. ‘Lord of the alley mouths,’ he said, ‘Lord of the rifles, Lord of the inflamed, Thou who hath committed every vileness…’
‘For Christ’s sake, man!’ I said. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you. Not the Magnificence, not anyone. I’ll guarantee your safety.’
‘…every sin, every violence, stand with me now, help me shape this dying into an undying love…’ His voice dropped in volume, becoming too low to hear.
‘Goddamn it, Thirwell! You silly bastard. Will you stop jabbering that nonsense! Don’t give in to it! Don’t listen to what they’ve taught you. It’s all utter rot!’
Thirwell looked up at the camera, at me. Terror warped his features for a moment, but then the lines of tension softened and he giggled. ‘He’s right,’ he said. ‘The man’s dead on right. You’ll never understand.’
‘Who’s right? What won’t I understand?’
‘Watch,’ said Thirwell gleefully. ‘Watch my face.’
I kept silent, trying to think of the perfect thing to say, something to foil his demented impulse.
‘Are you watching?’
‘I want to understand,’ I said. ‘I want you to help me understand. Will you help me, Roger? Will you tell me about the Magnificence?’
‘I can’t. I can’t explain it.’ He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. ‘But I’ll show you.’
He smiled blissfully at the camera as he pushed the stud.
Explosive decompression, even when viewed on a black-and-white monitor, is not a good thing to see. I looked away. Inadvertently, my eyes went to Samuelson. He was standing about fifteen feet away, hands behind his back, expressionless, like a minister composing himself before delivering his sermon; but there was something else evident in that lean, blank face, something happening beneath the surface, some slight engorgement, and I knew, knew, that he was not distressed in the least by the death, that he was pleased by it. No one of his position, I thought, would be so ingenuous as to interrupt a security man trying to talk in a potential suicide. And if what he had done to Thirwell had been intentional, a poorly disguised threat, if he had that much power and menace at his command, then he might well be responsible for what Thirwell had done to Arlie.
I strolled over to him. His eyes tracked my movements. I stopped about four feet away and studied him, searching for signs of guilt, for hints of a black satin past, of torchlight and blood and group sing-alongs. There was weakness in his face, but was it a weakness bred by perversion and brutality, or was it simply a product of fear? I decided that for Arlie’s sake, for Thirwell’s, I should assume the worst. ‘Guess what I’m going to do next?’ I asked him. Before he could answer I kicked him in the pit of the stomach, and as he crumpled, I struck him a chopping left to the jaw that twisted his head a quarter-turn. Two of the guards started toward me, but I warned them back. Carbajal fixed me with a look of prim disapproval.
‘That was a stupid damn thing to do,’ said Gerald, ambling over and gazing down at Samuelson, who was moaning, stirring.
‘He deserves worse,’ I said. ‘Thirwell was coming out. I’m certain of it. And then this bastard opened his mouth.’
‘Yeah.’ Gerald leaned against the wall, crossed his legs. ‘So how come you figure he did it?’
‘Why don’t you ask him? Be interesting to see how he responds.’
Gerald let out a sardonic laugh. ‘Man’s an altruist. He was trying to help.’ He picked at a rough place on one of his knuckles. ‘The real question I got is how deep he’s in it. Whether he’s involved with the Magnificence, or if he’s just trying to convince everyone he is, I need to know so I can make an informed decision.’
Barnacle Bill The Spacer and Other Stories Page 5