by Victor Koman
Death’s Dimensions a psychotic space opera
Victor Koman
Victor Koman, three-time Prometheus Award-winning author of Kings of the High Frontier, finally releases his long-suppressed first novel. Based on his Galaxy Magazine short story, Death's Dimensions tells the tale of a stunningly unusual and startlingly original hero worthy of the New Wave novels of Norman Spinrad or Robert Silverberg.His death wish exceeded that of any other mortal. Only his lust for oblivion gave him the strength to survive the Valliardi Transfer, the key to the Universe.He was Virgil Grissom Kinney, and he was insane beyond hope.Caged and bound in a madhouse she found him. She rescued him, reprogrammed him, forged him into a test pilot, then abandoned him to the trackless stars.She was Delia Trine, his angel of Death.She filled him with the memories of a man already dead. When that man lived again inside Virgil, she tried to shatter their souls, to possess both her dead lover and her lover of death. But the dead man inside Virgil would stop at nothing for a chance to live again.The Universe was their ballroom, madness their song, and death the dance they danced.
Victor Koman
Death’s Dimensions a psychotic space opera
For Sam, Neil, Andy, Charles, Chris, John, and Bob,who put up with me at the AnarchoVillagewhile I wrote this pæan to madness.And also for Bernie,who probably should not read this a second time.
Chapter One
7 March, 2107
His death wish surpassed that of any mortal. And yet it bestowed upon him-and only him-the power of flight between the stars.
He was Virgil Grissom Kinney, and he was insane beyond hope.
Caged and bound in a madhouse he festered like a scorned, feared animal. In an age when madmen were almost unknown, he was a ranting exception. Sometimes he raged against his restraints with muscle-tearing fury. Other times he retreated into catatonic silence, conducting a silent, internal war.
Drugs, nutrition, therapies from Freud to Szasz to Bhodhota all proved useless.
Virgil Grissom Kinney wanted only one thing from life.
Death.
At a time when people left one another alone to do as they pleased, no one would have cared or interfered if Virgil wanted only to kill himself, yet in an era without police or prisons, Virgil Grissom Kinney lay locked behind padded walls, screaming without sound, tortured without pain.
“You’ve never seen a bad paraschiz, have you?” the MentTech asked.
The woman walking beside him adjusted the white labcoat thrown hastily over her shoulders.
“Only in history scrims,” she said.
“Then listen carefully. Treat him exactly as you would a feral genesplice you might encounter in an alley. You don’t have any way of knowing who he thinks you are or why he suspects you’re speaking to him, so never start up a casual conversation. If he thinks you’re the Horned God, you could be talking about the weather and he’d read hidden meanings into it. Never stare him in the eye. Never touch him. And most important-”
“Yes?” The woman’s face lost any color it had.
“If and when he speaks, you listen.”
She nodded gravely. The corridor they walked down radiated a soothing, cool blue glow. The woman drew no calm from the psychological color cue. She strode toward an appointment with the destiny of the human race and saw little pleasure and even less comfort in the knowledge that Earth’s best hope was entombed in an asylum.
“One more thing,” the huge orderly added. “If he frightens you, tell him so. Be firm and polite and exceedingly honest.”
“Straight,” she said in agreement.
He touched his scan finger to the lockscrim. “And never turn your back on him.”
She swallowed. Her throat scraped like sandpaper against brick.
He had spent so many years in the same creme-white room that he thought he could detect sounds through the soundproof padding.
The familiar footsteps of the orderly intermingled with another lighter set.
Two sets of footsteps, Virgil thought. Mad images and personalized symbols trickled through his fragmented thoughts like rain through desert sands.
Marsface is coming here. He still favors the right leg I bit so long ago. He clumps and slides beside a pair of feet that move lightly and quickly.
He twisted about to face the door. Wrapped more than snugly in gauze bandages that restrained him from head to toe, Virgil Grissom Kinney squirmed on the floor with all the grace of an arthritic caterpillar. His psychotic mind picked through an alien host of archetypes in a frenzied effort to make sense of his narrow world.
The other walks on soft, quick feet. Sent by Master Snoop. Master Snoop knows I’ve figured the way out. The machinery inside the ceiling is up there watching me. Master Snoop never slumbers. The wires in my head spy for him.
Kinney rolled about to stare at the blank wall. Indirect lighting bathed the room in a soft, soothing golden glow. A slender trapezoidal shadow suddenly cut across the surface of the padding. Silently, the room’s only door opened inward.
Mental Health Technician William Bearclaw entered, scrimboard in hand. His short black hair crested in a delta-sweep cut that was three years out of style. Tall and husky, he ducked his head to clear the lintel of the thickly padded doorway.
Virgil had no knowledge of styles, fads, or even dates. He only saw madness and tried to make sense of it.
Marsface. I knew it, didn’t I? Same Marsface-head like a red planet with its ridges and craters and mole-mountains, a nose like Olympus Mons.
Virgil stared at the other visitor, puzzled.
Though tall, she stood a head shorter than Bearclaw; high heels plus long black hair piled up Grecian style failed to bring her up to his height. A single thick rope of hair extended from the plaits to wrap once around her neck. The roughsects hair-style had grown in popularity from its origin in a small sado-masochistic sex cult to its fashionable apex in polite society. The roughsects, seeing their style embraced by outsiders, had long since abandoned it for new coifs, which were also working their way up the fashion escalator in competition with other bizarre looks.
Kinney peered at the woman, his impressions filtered through the dark glass of insanity.
Death Angel doesn’t look the way he’s supposed to. Where is the scythe? Death Angel disguises as a woman. Master Snoop’s trying to screw me up. It won’t work. I know how to get out and I don’t need them.
He listened to them as carefully as he could, weighing every nuance.
They’re speaking in their Language again. Got to concentrate and break their code.
Bearclaw, though he used the proper term of address required by devoir, spoke to her with casual authority. “Yes, tovar Trine, you can see the lengths we had to go through to restrain him. A man can kill himself against a padded wall if he keeps pounding it continually. Dies of exhaustion and dehydration.”
Delia Trine observed the form wrapped from head to toe in gauze that had once been white. Two tubes, mercilessly transparent, extended from the overlays of cloth around his crotch. The wastes they carried away both displayed sickeningly unhealthy colors.
The woman took a deep breath, tried to calm her stomach’s reaction to the sight. The vaguely rotten odor from the bandages did not help.
“What is his specific class?”
Bearclaw did not need to scroll through the scrimsheet in his hand. “Psychotic. Paranoid-schizophrenic. With a good dose of manic depressive, though I’ve never seen him manic in this place.”
“Any record of treatment with Duodrugs?” She knelt down to take a closer look at the prisoner’s face, to gaze coolly into Kinney’s green eyes, practically the only part of him
not wrapped in restraining sheets.
Bearclaw cleared his throat loudly.
She realized that she was staring, and stood quickly. A shudder raced through her.
She had never seen eyes that glared with such furious intensity.
The MentTech shook his head. “Duodrugs have no effect on him. The Pharmaceutics are mystified, but I think Virgil here has a highly compartmentalized multiple personality. We can drug one or two of them, but he always has one that surfaces unaffected.” His expression grew concerned. “Don’t tell anyone that, though. He’s never displayed any symptoms of that. Drugs are supposed to affect the physical brain, anyway, not the mind.”
Kinney lay near the center of the room-on his side-looking like the huge, stained cocoon of some mysterious creature that might suddenly break free to attack with terrible fury and unfathomable insect logic.
His gaze returned hers, sharp and startlingly alert. A curl of sweaty, greasy blonde hair looped out from under his bandages to hang over one eyebrow. Kneeling again and trying not to stare, Delia tucked the stray hairs back under the wraps with her long, blood-red fingernails.
Virgil strained, trying to roll back from her. To his tortured mind, the simple gesture set off a wave of terror.
What’s she trying? To claw inside my head? I want to die with my brain inside. Must map my escape but don’t think about it. Think about death to hide my plan. Death death death to the Master Snoop.
He glared back at the woman.
Death Angel’s midnight hair wraps a snake around her ivory throat. Isn’t she afraid they’ll strangle her? Stupid-Death Angel has no fear of her master. I haven’t heard her upstairs before, have I? Think, stupid, think.
Bearclaw knelt beside the woman. “If this were the twenty-first century,” he said, “Virgil would’ve been declared certifiably insane. He’d have been put in an institution against his will.”
Trine frowned as she stood. “He’s not quite part of the joy division here, is he?”
Bearclaw nodded and rose. “It’s a fine line, isn’t it? Because his insurance policy had an insanity care clause, he was put away morally and legally.”
“So the difference between the way the Fets might once have treated him and the way he’s being treated now is his signature on some old scrim.” The woman tried not to watch Kinney’s eyes as they gazed mutely up at her.
The MentTech smiled. “The difference between DuoLab and the Fetters is that if Virgil’s bill isn’t paid, he’s out on his retro.”
“Who funds his upkeep?” she asked.
“Paid in advance by Tri-World Life, for life plus rejuvenation. The circumstances are unu-”
“Could I have a gurney brought in now?”
“Yes, tovar.” Bearclaw scribbled the instruction onto his scrimsheet. The dispatching computer acknowledged with a green glow on the upper bar of the notepad.
Trine folded her arms and considered her find. “He’s never tried to use a seppukukit?”
Bearclaw shook his dark head, pulling a viewscrim from the file folder to hand to her. “Here’s his file. You’ll see that his personality doesn’t run in those directions. Quiet and private is not the way he wants to die. He wants to go down in flames. Are you sure you can use him?”
Without answering, she held out her hand to receive the thin viewscrim. She slipped it into her notebook, frowning at a thought. “Who put him away here in the first place?”
“The perpetual care clause was activated by his insurance company when his last suicide attempt demolished about a kilauro worth of property and killed a family of four tourists.” Noticing the curious expression growing on Trine’s angular face, he added, “He’s a threat, tovar. A genuine threat. He’s not an intentional murderer. It’s just that when he tries suicide, innocent people are in harm’s way.”
“Does he talk about it?”
Bearclaw’s black eyes gazed back at hers. “We’ve never been able to get him to say a word.”
She nodded. “The Brennen Trust has a place for him.”
“I can’t imagine where, tovar Trine.”
She smiled with studied warmth. “Glad to be rid of him?”
The big man said nothing.
Green eyes watched the exchange with uncomprehending panic. Bandaged ears strained but heard only the rush of blood.
Death Angel and Marsface leave me without devouring my soul. No death today, but beware of tricks. I’ll have to meet the man in the nightsheet on my own terms. Cleanse myself with fire. If only I could touch my pain. Crush my brain. Aladdin sane.
Virgil closed his eyes.
Virgil’s eyes opened in a different room. His body trembled and sweated within its constraints.
I’ve made it! It worked and I didn’t even have to think about it! Free! Almost. Why did I bring the sheets with me? Stupid- they were too close to you. I’ll get out, though. Did Master Snoop follow me? Can’t tell. Too noisy. Is this the Control room? Did I escape right into their clutches?
“He’s awake, Dee.” The graying Pharmaceutic sat near a bank of indicators flashing red, turquoise, yellow, and orange.
Delia Trine needed no brain wave analyzers to see Kinney open his eyes. He lay at the center of the lab on a wide table with raised edges, white and mummylike against soft black sudahyde. Wires from the electrodes on his head emerged like vines from under his wrappings to drape over the couch and flow into the equipment surrounding him. The few sections of wall that lacked machinery displayed soothing mahogany-toned fauxwood paneling.
Virgil shuddered, his gaze darting about to see the others.
Lights. Sounds. Operators. I escaped, all right. Right up into the ceiling with Master Snoop. Death Angel, too. They wouldn’t let Marsface in here, though-he’s just a tool. Damn.
The woman whispered toward the Pharmaceutic. “Lock the eyetrace on his gaze, Steve. I don’t think he’s a paraschiz as DuoLab thought.”
Ignoring what Bearclaw had told her, she deliberately pinioned Kinney’s abstracted stare with a stern glare of her own. “Virgil Grissom Kinney,” she said in a level tone. She waited for the eyes to focus on her before she continued. “Good. Virgil, I’m going to give you something you were never given at DuoLab. I’m going to give you a choice. Do you remember what a choice is?”
The pupils of Kinney’s green eyes constricted slightly. Death Angel hovers over me as I lay in my coffin. Soft, stupid coffin with no lid. Red lips move cunningly. I can almost break her code. She wants something. I’ll agree, go along with it for now. The roar hasn’t been broken yet. Break the roar and I can crack her code. Easy, easy. Take it easy.
He nodded slowly. His gaze narrowed into something less fearful, something more focused.
The woman watched his reactions the way a cat observes the motions of stalked prey. “Good,” she said, straightening up. “Virgil, they tell me you like to kill yourself.”
She knows about them! She must-she’s one of them. Remember that. He twitched in amazement. The roar is quieter now. Words pass through Master Snoop’s jamming with greater frequency.
“I’m going to offer you a choice,” Trine continued. “I have two IVs here.” She gestured toward a cart on which lay a pair of clear plastic sacks filled with opaque gray liquid, one labeled with a skull and crossbones, one with a bright yellow happy face. “This one”-she picked up the death’s head bag- “is a poison that will kill you in a matter of seconds. This other”-she showed him the smiling bag-“will help you overcome your… predicament. Blink your eyes once for poison or twice for salvation.”
His mouth opened slightly, teeth pressing against his lower lip.
“Fuh-”
“What?” She leaned closer to him, picking up a pair of bandage scissors and delicately snipping away the gauze from his throat and jaw. Saliva drooled across his cheek.
“Fff… Fuh-false dichotomy.”
She laid the scissors aside and frowned.
The Pharmaceutic smiled. “I think that means he doesn’
t want to play.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she said to Virgil. “I’d have switched labels to make sure you’d get this one.” She held up the bottle with the happy face. “The other’s just colored water.”
She pulled an IV stand over to the table. “I’m injecting this into you, false dichotomy or not. The Brennen Trust bought out the premium on your insurance policy. We’ve bailed you out for a reason and we want a return on our investment. Or would you prefer to remain wrapped and strapped forever?”
Virgil lay absolutely still, every muscle locked in rigid tension. What’s the dance she’s treading? I thought I had her code. Maybe all I have is her cipher. Yes. Cipher to know what she’s saying, no code to know what she means. If I could get out of my room, maybe I can escape from this one, too. Three, four, five times I’ll try.
Slowly, his gaze never leaving hers, Virgil nodded as far as his swathing allowed. Then he stopped, reconsidered the question, and shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Fine,” Trine said. “Steve, you can take it now.”
The Pharmaceutic brought a needle kit over to Virgil’s side. He wore an impeccably benign smile. The IV package unsealed with a crackle of plastic. In the corner of the room, a videoscrim panel fluxed to zoom in on the operation.
The only patch of Kinney’s flesh other than his face to lay open and exposed was the injection port in his left wrist surgically sewn and laser welded to skin and vein. The old man pushed the blunted needle into the plastic valve. It clicked bayonet-style into place.
Steve draped the tubing through the flow regulator and switched it on. The murky gray serum trickled slowly toward Virgil’s arm. The electroencephalograph and brain wave topograph registered the imperceptible changes in Kinney’s brain. These appeared as shifting colors on an output scrim visible only to the Pharmaceutic.
It’s not working, Virgil thought. Whatever they’re trying is failing. I don’t feel any different. Should I gloat? No. Play along. How should I act, though? I need to find something to finish Master Snoop and Nightsheet once and for all. Something big. Straight, straight.