“My life…was wrong. Don’t go to bed…with anyone unless you love them. Get married. Just one partner. I brought this on myself. You can’t…don’t let this happen to you. Even if they find a cure, there are so many other diseases…it’s just not safe. Find one person…get tested…get married if you love each other. Being a homosexual…is wrong…it’s a lie…it’s unnatural. I’m sorry now.”
The man’s despair seemed to be the only strength holding these bones together now. Despair and utter self-loathing.
But Black knew what this was by now, and cursed under his breath. It was very much like a confession…sins admitted to be forgiven, and the soul thus cleansed for death.
Four hours later, read a caption on a black screen, Martin died.
“Scum,” Black said, but not to Martin, feeling like he was the one who had been exploited.
Sure enough, a new face filled the screen. This one appeared shockingly broad and fleshy by comparison, so much so that the man’s black little eyes were almost swallowed up in it. It seemed to contain a colossal fury, and Black recognized it, had seen it twisted and raging, spitting its venom as its owner—the Reverend Matt Cotton—paced his stage on VT.
“Martin did not die in vain. Martin realized his life’s mistakes, and luckily our ministers found him out in his need and were there to guide him in his final months. He did not die in vain if he could be of help…to you. But what about you? Martin was able to free his soul from its shackles—you saw him. But he was lucky…”
A caption explained how the vid of this program, containing the interview with Martin, was available for a fifteen-munit contribution to Matt Cotton’s ministry.
They had found him out, Black thought, like vultures found out a starving cow. Angels of mercy with buzzard wings.
“We can’t magically be there at the last minute to save all of you, can we? So what about you?”
“Shut the fuck up.” Black didn’t change the channel; he shut the VT off entirely, pressing the button with such force that he might have been launching an atomic bomb on Matt Cotton’s ministry. The colossal face vaporized.
He couldn’t feel disgust with Martin for cooperating with them. The man was facing death without solace, and obviously with little hope of an afterlife until they came along and offered him that hope…for a price. The price of telling his story, so that others might come forward to be saved before death, be redeemed, they told him. And mostly, to prevent people from catching the virus in the first place.
But to do that they had to first make him resent himself, hate himself for the lifestyle that had brought him to this. He had to renounce his former self, like a criminal. Being a homosexual had been the crime.
And being promiscuous, too. Those were the two diseases Matt Cotton sought to save people from; M-670 was just a related consequence. A curse from God, Black had remembered seeing Cotton call it before, delivered to punish those sinners who were stupid and immoral enough to open up their arms and invite its embrace. Didn’t they bring it on themselves, as Martin had been taught to say? Sure, thought Black. These people deserved to die of M-670…they wanted to die of it. Right down to the children born of M-670-infected parents, right down to doctors accidentally infected during their contact with victims. Oh, these people hadn’t brought it on themselves? Well, that couldn’t be helped. God had his work to do; he had sinners to gun down with his machine-gun, and it was regrettable if innocent bystanders were standing too close. Hey, it wasn’t God’s fault—it was the sinners who were spreading this thing.
Matt Cotton didn’t want to stop M-670, Black mused, he loved it. It was the righteous wrath of God, it was God’s golden sword, and no doubt Cotton would have loved to personally wield that sword. The disease was good, as Martin’s eagerly exhibited suffering illustrated…it would help cut down on casual sex and prostitution and discredit homosexuality more effectively than Matt Cotton’s fifteen years of televised preaching ever had.
Yes, Black thought, people did need to be warned about casual sex, prostitution. But there were promiscuous homosexuals and there were monogamous homosexuals—homosexuality in itself was no more a dangerous or immoral condition than heterosexuality. And it wasn’t even rampant promiscuous sex alone that Cotton railed against, but premarital sex, living together out of religious wedlock, just sex in general. Repressed, frightened little maggot. Probably dressed up in women’s underwear while he watched kiddie porn vids. His business wasn’t preaching love and brotherhood (Jesus? Jesus who?), but bullying people into hating themselves as much as he hated them, and as much as he hated himself.
The third piece he chanced upon (when he reactivated the VT) lifted Black’s spirits a little, helped him to feel not so alone in his disgust and cold, steaming hatred. It was more than the plastic concern of newscasters, some of whom might really deeply care though it wasn’t their job to show it. It was another magazine review of Toll Loveland’s show Pandora’s Box…and this critic, Yancy Mays, had attended the Greenberg plant performance in person.
He had attended The Godfucker, too, Black soon realized, and he knew then who Yancy Mays was—the man Nedland had mentioned who had been checked for abnormalities resulting from his attendance at The Godfucker, but who had only tested positive for one thing…the M-670 he contracted from a moth bite while viewing Pandora’s Box.
Black wondered if he’d recognize his face if he met him. He began reading.
“I know what you’re thinking…this guy isn’t exactly unbiased, here. The show was so bad it killed him. Assuming a cure can’t be found in time to undo Toll Loveland’s artistry, but there’s no sign of that yet and I’ve seen too many scary death tolls to feel much optimism. However, I’m going to leave the moral issue out of it. Yes, tempting as it is to vent my own individual fury and fear, I’ll leave the outrage to others. It’s obvious how I feel anyway, isn’t it? I will try to be as detached as I can be. Not objective—I’m a critic of art, not a judge of a court trial. Criticism should be approached and thought of as subjective, not objective…a personal viewpoint based on the critic’s opinions and tastes, not an attempt to manipulate the reader into the role of a programmed sheep. But I will do my best to approach Toll Loveland’s piece as art, as he intended it, and not as an act of mass murder, which it is but which he obviously also intended it to be. It may be best to remember that I also hated The Godfucker, at which I wasn’t murdered, and I would encourage doubters of my integrity as a critic to search out that previous review.
“To detach Pandora’s Box entirely from its evil is impossible. Killing is not an art. The martial arts are not art but a way to defend yourself at best, to kill people at their worst. A horse accidentally killed in a movie battle is a sad thing. A horse killed purposely in a movie changes the movie into news footage of an atrocity being committed. No film of a woman being actually raped, even if filmed by the finest director and camera crew, could be art. I attended a play entitled Shit for Breakfast (also to be found reviewed in a previous issue, in which I did vent my full fury), during the course of which a goat that had been standing at the back of the stage for a half hour was hoisted up by its rear legs and had its throat cut. The naked actors stood under the pouring blood, and I’m told the goat was hanging there throughout the remaining three and a half hours of the show. Normally I wouldn’t think it fair to review a play or film I’d walked out on, but I was too busy summoning police and animal rights groups. (That performance was not stopped, nor was the next night’s, but there was no third performance of Shit for Breakfast in Punktown. Did I, a mere critic, overstep my boundaries by preventing a piece of art from reaching an audience? Perhaps to some. I’d prefer to think I intervened to prevent a criminal act from taking place. What if it had been a cow that would have been slaughtered anyway? I eat meat. I don’t know—don’t confuse me with questions like that.)
“But Toll Loveland seems to have really felt that Pandora’s Box was art. The moral issue aside—or at least viewing in a dispassionat
e way the use of M-670 as an extension of his art—and my own feelings as a victim of a murderer put aside, Pandora’s Box is still bad art. Pretentious as it is pompous (you have to be a little bit pompous to think you have a right to kill people for the sake of your art). The use of Screaming Pink Nazis cereal as representative of society’s ridiculous and obnoxious products, especially those aimed at the young, was tired even when spoofed in Dop Limzy’s recent film Uh-oh. It’s a cliché and I groaned when I saw the monolithic box on Toll Loveland’s stage.
“Cupid of Death was no more than a snuff film shot with an expensive trick camera. The moths as symbols of the evils unleashed from Pandora’s (Auretta’s) box? An offensive myth to begin with, as offensive as Eve plucking the apple: it is women who invited evil (Eve-ill) into the garden, those rotten bitches. Mr. Loveland doesn’t love women. That isn’t an angry observation on my part—it’s what he’s saying in his art, isn’t it? He fears them, so he must act in such a way as to feel he’s in control of his fear. By cowardly firing an arrow (or activating a robot probe—same thing) into a woman’s back. By reaching out and killing women in his audience.
“He obviously fears and hates critics. They hadn’t been too kind, in general, with The Godfucker and others before that. So why not reach out and get some of them, too? Even that’s a cliché. Search out, if you can, a twentieth century horror film called Theater of Blood, starring Vincent Price as a mad actor out to kill his many negative critics.
“The use of VT as a symbol of the impersonal nature of society, as suggested by certain enthusiastic critics who did not, I must stress, view the performance in person? Oh come on! Cliché after cliché. The show was short. It had no focus but to serve as a smug, self-amused prelude to Loveland’s crime—merely the grandiose gesturing and brandishing of a madman’s gun before he finally uses it.
“The Auretta Here VT messages? Merely broken-up bits of the snuff film run as a series building up to the finale. Somewhat clever. (I’m shocked to say that, but I did say I’d be detached.)
“And the use of M-670 as a continuance of the show…of his creation? Original, I suppose…if feeding a baby to a pack of starved dogs could also be considered art. I’ve heard of a snuff film, shot in slow motion, featuring this—but I shouldn’t mention that. Some of you will want to seek it out.
“I hope to be around for a follow-up review, in which I might include as final a death toll as can be determined (right now I hear it stands at about ninety infected by Toll Loveland’s art—no deaths yet, and I can only pray there won’t be.) But like I said, I’m not sure I’ll be around long enough to see the conclusion of Pandora’s Box.
“As I stated earlier, I hate to review a play or film if I haven’t seen the entire thing. But his time I may have no choice.”
Black thought: I’d like to meet this Yancy Mays.
Ninety people.
Black ran a computer search to seek out more reviews. He copied the articles from every magazine and major newspaper on Oasis and Earth, even from every local paper consisting of ninety percent advertisements, that had reviewed Pandora’s Box. There were too many to read for now. Some had liked it. Most didn’t—reviewed it as a criminal act, not as art as Yancy Mays had attempted (with only partial success, Black felt, but he’d tried.)
One reviewer who liked the show had been to Greenberg, and had been bitten and infected. He seemed rather proud to be part of the notoriety. Black was sickened. But Yancy Mays stayed with him…an encouragement.
Ninety people…no doubt more to come. Infected…maybe killed. By bad art.
Black thought about Shit for Breakfast. The goat. And Yancy Mays stepping over his boundaries.
SIX
Vern Woodmere lived in a basement apartment beneath the parking garage to an immense movie and holograph theater. It was all one long room but seemed to be more, broken up as it was by four pillars of bright yellow plastic marbled with black clouds and veins, each so thick around that four men could have easily hidden behind each one. The walls and floors were tiled in a checkerboard of yellow and black, though Black remembered that the pillared parking lot above had tiles on its walls only. The mortar between the glossy tiles was a grimy black, the floor tiles sticky (perhaps due to the proximity of sticky theater floors), and a bucket in a shadowy corner caught a slow drip of oil from a ceiling so low that Black’s head nearly brushed it.
Vern had been expecting him; he’d called, but hadn’t elaborated. Still, Vern had employed the camera eye and microphone outside his door before admitting him. “Damn, man,” Vern had drawled in his Outback Colonies accent, looking genuinely haunted for Black’s sake, “it’s terrible what happened…I’m sorry, man. I’m an old fart—I shoulda gotten it instead of a kid like you.”
“How are you doing, Vern? You need a shave.”
“I always need a shave.”
“Especially now.”
“You’ve never been to my place before, have you?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Never. I like it. No—really.” He did. He liked the eccentric layout and its décor…it made him imagine how Vern must live, made him feel like Vern a little. Black had artistic inclinations, sketched a little, though not for almost a year now. While he and Opal had combined their tastes in furnishing and decorating their apartment, Black’s tastes had usually dominated and often overruled Opal’s, even in the kitchen, though he didn’t cook. Art was one thing, cooking another. Black liked the torn movie posters (war films) pasted around two of the squat, broad pillars, and the framed lobby stills from one of Vern’s favorite films about the Red War. The fold-out sofa was still unfolded and covered with clothes, the VT played in spite of the bullet hole through the screen. On the tiled wall in the area designated as the kitchen, a giant slug was glued, orange and yellow like a huge mushroom, a flower-like red blossom on its back. Big as a big cat. Black was very surprised—he had never taken Vern to be a pet owner.
Black liked his solitude—when it was chosen, of course, not forced as lately—and this secret subterranean place was very homey to him. He did feel like he’d been here before.
“You want a drink or something?” Vern held a can of Zub.
“No thanks—I’m fine.”
“How do you feel? You feel alright so far?”
“I’ve got some cold sores. I bite them when I eat. They hurt so bad it’s hard to sleep. Very sudden. They gave me some medication at HAP…with all their technology, you’d think they could find something that doesn’t bring tears to your eyes when you put it on.”
“I thought you were talking funny. Man.” The haunted shadow patches on Vern’s face must have been absorbed from the shadows of his lair, the way others tanned from the sun. His concern made Black feel good—he hadn’t really seen anyone but for the HAP people, and not even Nedland for a while. He and Woodmere had never been close, either. Now they had more in common, it seemed. They weren’t friends, but felt like old friends. “How do you feel otherwise?”
“Weak, tired, physically depressed. Nauseous, headaches. But then I haven’t been eating or sleeping right.”
“Stress, man; you’ve got to be good to your body, you’ve got to last. Right now it’s probably emotional depression more than physical.”
“True.” Black glanced around the sprawling crawlspace of an apartment. A red parachute meant to blend with the red sky Vern had fought in and under hung from the ceiling to partition off the bathroom area. “You keeping busy?”
“No. Busy at what? Waxing my trophy? I’m lost, man. What am I gonna do now, become a security guard? Freakin’ accident, man, I’m sorry—you know?”
“I believe you.”
“I’m lost. What am I gonna do?”
“I’ve got something you might wanna do for a while.”
“What’s that?”
“Help me find Toll Loveland.”
For a few moments Woodmere stared dazedly, his eyes half-bulging, though that was a common exp
ression for him. This wasn’t his first Zub of the day. Then a smile sparked up and spread fast. It was a nasty one.
“I’m your man, kid. Damn right I’ll help you find Toll fucking Loveland. I already thought about it. Together we stand a better chance.”
“That’s my thinking.”
Something about Black’s manner gave Vern pause. Vern was an explosion ever rumbling to get out of a weary skin. Black was an electric hum twitching inside a cool shell. Right now he seemed positively cold. It was almost scary even to Vern. His sculpted-bone face looking at home camouflaged in these shadows. Those heavy-lidded, far-spaced eyes looking flat, dispassionate…dead.
Vern got a little sober. “Look…I know you wanna kill him, but that’s not a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Premeditated murder, that’s why.”
“No one has to know it was us.”
“Everyone’s looking for him. If we’re close to him, chances are good we’ll be seen…”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble—just help me find him and I’ll do it.”
“No. Look. Say you kill him…they cuff you…toss you in a cell…”
“I’m dying, Vern.”
“Listen! They toss you in a cell. A month later they find the cure for M-670.”
“Owing to my state of mind at the time, I’d plead extenuating circumstances.”
“You’d be a hero, but the law doesn’t give a fuck! Look…Christ, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I sound like you and you sound like me. I thought you played it by the books.”
“I’m not a health agent any more…am I?”
“Kid, I don’t wanna see you destroy yourself! They could find a cure tomorrow, but you’ve already given up! Come on! I know you broke up with your girl, I heard—but when you both get cured you can try to work it out, right? Right? So why go to prison when we can catch this freak and turn him over to HAP and that’ll be just as good? You know if he’s caught this psycho isn’t gonna hit the streets again in this lifetime.”
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