The door slammed as she left. I spent the next half-hour picking up the credit notes, counting and shuffling them into neat piles. In my opinion, whatever a man finds in his own house is his.
This party was even more opulent than the one the night before. It had to be, because it was Hansa’s party.
I looked into her eyes as she held my hands in hers. She smiled slyly, gripping my fingers hard in greeting. I had had a private death before coming, and its sensations dully remained. I glanced away from her gaze and started counting eyes around the room. People always paid attention to what Hansa did, and there were almost as many looking at her as there were watching me. I shrugged to myself. Did it matter what a lifer thought of me? Hansa pointed out the city councilman and the area’s fingertouch pusher, making sure I knew who they were. They were to have the best possible view when I died, she told me.
Fingertouch was drifting around the room, as if it were ash left on the ground after a fire. I actually saw one man, already zoned into oblivion, throw a small bowl of the stuff into the air and watch it float to the carpet. The press of people around Hansa and me was too thick to get through, and so I had to wait until a waiter went by with a tray of touch and a single glass on it. Hansa had remembered my eccentric taste for alcohol.
I could feel her thigh press against mine as she talked to some of her guests. I let her do what she wanted. It was her party, and she had paid me enough to keep me quiet for the night. I looked at her again and noticed the scars around her neck where she had once tied a rope around it. That was the only time she had tried to kill herself, as far as I knew. Hansa threw parties for the lifers, but she didn’t take the final step with them at night’s end. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why I was glad whenever she hired me.
I turned to look at the crowd again and saw Lynx, that little bitch. She was on the other side of the room, and so I couldn’t see whether her eyes were glossy or not, but I knew she had been watching me. I saw her turn her head quickly when I spotted her. I rubbed the palms of my hands down the sides of my pants. Somehow she made me nervous.
The fingertouch pusher stood in front of me, blocking my view of Lynx. “How can I be a DeadMan?” he asked. “I heard I can be one if I die right. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
His forehead was gray from the overdose of fingertouch he had pressed into his skin. He wouldn’t die tonight; he was too zoned to do anything lethal to himself.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
“But Hansa said you’d talk to me.”
“Hansa was wrong. No lifer can be a DeadMan.” Suddenly I wished it were true. Hansa wasn’t paying me enough for this.
After a half-hour of small talk with her guests, Hansa got them to clear a circle for me. The ones in front pressed a final bit of fingertouch into their skin. I smiled to them all, knowing that three-quarters of them were having a hard time focusing on me. I had counted on that when I had planned my deaths for this party. I had an attention-getter to lead things off.
I sat in the cleared spot, the legs of the lifers encircling me. I pulled out a small glass bottle from my tunic pocket, took out the stopper and poured the liquid over my head and shoulders. The fumes were overpowering and smelled somewhat sweet. I looked at the legs around me through a shimmering wave of fumes. Then I pulled out the match.
I always seem to hesitate before I go through with it, wondering why I cannot be satisfied with my private deaths. This time was not unlike any other. Perhaps it was in my mind, the certainty that I felt more, tasted more, when I died in front of them. We had spoken of it, Kiel, Sarreen, Fede, Langley, Tonner, and I, when we discovered the extent of the damage to our senses caused by the disease. They all felt more, too, in front of the lifers. The meds could not find a reason, but it was true. So we died for them in order to feel more and feel it longer.
I held the small piece of wood that I had found in an antiques store and studied it for several minutes, taking in the colors of the wood and the blue tip. Then the hesitation passed, and I could only hope that the thing would light when I struck it.
It did. I heard myself screaming as the gasoline caught and I burst into flame.
My God, I hadn’t known it would be like this. Stop it, please, stop it. Not my eyes, no, no, not my eyes. Oh, God damn it, it’s gotten into my eyes.
But the sense of being alive in every cell, every particle, was the same as always when I awoke. I saw the brilliant colors with eyes that were untouched and watched the room flicker, frame by frozen frame. I was sure at that instant that the lifers expected something like this when they killed themselves. But most would never see and feel this. Most would never resurrect, as I did.
I died for them twice more that night, killing myself again before the nausea came. After each death, lifers kissed my hand, said their words, and then some killed themselves. Their numbers diminished, but it was a large party. Each time I awoke was better than the last. The rust in front of my eyes got more detailed after each death. The lifers became quieter each time I awoke from the dead. By the end of the third death, the ones still left stood four meters from me. They looked at me, of course. They never stop doing that. But they would not talk to me or touch the charred fragments of my clothing. They touched their faces with the gray dust from the bowls that still circulated around the room. Not even Hansa dared stand next to me after I died that third time.
“Good work, DeadMan,” someone giggled from a corner. Everyone in the room turned to see who it was. Lynx stepped through the small assemblage and came toward me. She had a blaster in her hand, which she pointed at me. An uncontrollable chill swept up my back.
“Won’t you talk to me?” she asked, moving the dark end of the blaster in a small circle, its circumference my skull. Hansa made a movement forward, and Lynx edged the blaster to let her know she could swing it fast enough. Hansa backed away.
I had been silent the whole time, watching Lynx and the weapon she held. If she pulled the trigger, it would be an inconvenience to me, nothing more. But she had no right to threaten me, much less kill me. Only a DeadMan may kill a DeadMan.
“Now we’ll talk, DeadMan,” she said quietly, her fingers tracing the curves of her breasts as she stared at me.
“No deals,” I said.
“I haven’t even asked you anything yet.” She seemed to be pouting. The expression made her hideous. Her fingers still played with the fabric of her blouse.
“You’re going to ask me if I’ll help you walk off the window ledge, or if I’ll light the match for you. I told you before, no deals with lifers. I kill only myself.”
“What have you got against me?” She let the mouth of the blaster droop, and I stepped forward. She flicked it back up and melted a hole in the floor a few centimeters from my feet. I stopped. Her voice was so casual that she might have been holding a drink in her hand. “I can’t do it by myself. I need someone to guide me through. You’ve been there before; you can show me. I want to do it while I’m young. I don’t want to live forever in an old body.” She looked up expectantly. They all believe they will be the one to steal the disease and resurrect after their suicide. “Not one of us,” she said, moving the blaster slightly to indicate the lifers in the room, “has been there before. They can’t help me. You can.”
I looked at her, letting rage build up.
“You have no right to touch me!” I bellowed the words, and the crowd backed away. Lynx stood her ground. She looked at me with surprise, as if she didn’t know what she had done. “None of you can touch me. You want to die? Here, let me show you how to do it, lifer!”
I went right up to her, grabbing the end of the blaster, as if I were going to twist it toward her. I could hear the other lifers in the room screaming when I brought the mouth of the weapon to Lynx’s face. I thought she’d let go then, thinking I meant to kill her. But she couldn’t let go of her life—or else she knew I didn’t mean to go through with it.
She was faster than I was. Why should I ha
ve learned to be clever in a struggle? She moved her wrist back, then twisted it around, using my movements to strengthen her own, and pointed the blaster at my belly. I still held on to the weapon, but I couldn’t help looking down at the point where the blaster’s mouth disappeared into the flesh of my abdomen.
I felt no nervousness, no last hesitation in my mind, as I watched her finger tighten on the trigger. She was going to kill me.
There was no pain, perhaps because the blaster was so quick in its destruction. Neither was there the unique pleasure that I was used to experiencing when I resurrected. I saw no sweeping range of impossible colors, nor did I watch the room freeze itself into individual frames. I didn’t even feel the warming in my belly. I had my senses still, but they were bland. Was this what the lifers hunted for?
Lynx was sitting on the floor in front of me, cradling the blaster in her hands, hugging it. She was crooning to herself in a voice too low for me to hear the words. The room was still full of Hansa’s guests, but they were pressed back near the walls, as far away from Lynx as they could get.
The interruption had not quieted the hatred in me. I felt it in the slamming of my pulse in my throat. I walked to her and stood over her. She looked up, but her eyes were vacant. Had she had time to press herself with fingertouch? Had I been dead that long this time?
“You killed me, lifer,” I whispered so that only she could hear me. She didn’t look up. I grabbed her by the throat and pulled her to her feet. My fingers were creating white patterns in her skin.
“Look at me.” I paused. “How will you pay me? You owe me for one death.” I tightened my grip, then loosened it so that she could answer. “How will you pay me? I don’t die cheaply, lifer.”
“Kill me,” she spat, “and we’re even.”
“No deal. I want my fee. I want money for my death.”
“I don’t have any. You can check with the banks. Ask Hansa. She knows. Ask her. Go ahead. I’m tapped, not a credit.”
“You worthless little bitch!” I shouted. The lifers moved even closer to the walls. “You killed me and you can’t pay?” I strengthened my grip on her neck, watching her mouth flutter as she tried to draw air into her lungs. “You won’t pay? You want to die? Feel it then, lifer, feel it.” My voice was out of control now, loud enough to frighten even Hansa. I saw her from the corner of my eye, and she was white-faced. No one was pressing fingertouch anymore. No one had to. I was giving them a zone they hadn’t experienced before.
I pressed both hands around Lynx’s neck and squeezed until her tongue began to inch out of her mouth. Her face was turning colors. First red, then rust, then an indigo that reminded me of ink. I shook her the way a dog shakes a piece of meat.
“How does it feel, lifer? Good? Let me know when you see the pretty colors, lifer.”
Then I saw her smile. Through the grotesqueness of her mottled skin, even through her thrusting tongue, I could see her smile. She was getting what she wanted. I was giving it to her. She wanted to die, and I was doing all the work.
I let my hands fall from her neck, dropping her to the carpet. I could hear her body hit the floor and her gasping breath as if from a long distance. I stood still and stared at her for a long time. Then I looked at the lifers in the room and at Hansa. Some were dipping into the gray bowls and pressing fingertouch into their cheeks and foreheads. Hansa’s face had resumed its normal color. She wasn’t even looking at me. She was talking to three of her guests, gesturing widely as she made her point or finished her witticism.
Lynx was crumpled on the carpet, her face pale but her breathing almost normal. She had torn her high-necked blouse away from her throat, and it hung around her waist. She was sobbing.
“Almost, lifer,” I whispered. “You almost made me do it.”
She looked up at me. “Why did you stop? You goddamned DeadMan, why did you stop when it was so close?”
I wanted to ask her whether she had seen the merest of shifting colors, the briefest freeze-framing of the room. But I couldn’t overcome my disgust.
“Because I hate you, lifer. I hate you.” I knew it was true as I said it. I knew that I depended on them for the feel of skin on skin, the taste of sweetmeats, the sound of the wind through my clothes.
But I felt contaminated, soiled by the girl’s obscene use of me. Perhaps I had always known that the lifers consumed me, as they consumed their gray drug, but I had refused to acknowledge it. Lynx’s use of my death, once so exquisite, had made me see the lifers for what they were.
They used me as I used them. But I could still feel without them, while they could not live forever without the DeadMan and his disease. I was more necessary.
“I hate you all,” I said. I wanted to shout it, but my control had returned and a DeadMan doesn’t shout to lifers. He talks. They listen. I turned and strode out of the room. I didn’t even stop to collect my fee from Hansa. She would send it to me.
The night air was clean and smelled of a storm coming over the mountains. I pulled a silvered flask from my tunic pocket and drank deeply of the burning liquor. I heard a scream in the distance. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the towering building, where Hansa’s apartment was. Perhaps they were already throwing themselves from her windows.
When the scream ended, I knew how to get back at them. The silence told me how.
The lifers wanted to die; I would make them live, as I lived. Maybe I could nail every window shut. Maybe I could dull every knife in the city. Maybe I could buy all the rope and matches in all the shops.
I’ve died nearly four hundred times for them. I will save four hundred of them to get even. Or maybe save one, four hundred times. I could follow Lynx, protect her from herself. Every time she’d try to plunge a blade into herself or fuse her body with a blaster, I would be there. I would stop her.
I will miss the shifting colors and the feeling of warmth in my belly I get from dying in front of them. I will not quit dying; I don’t think I could do that. But I will stop dying for them. I know I can do it this time. I have the image of Lynx’s smile to keep me away from that kind of death forever.
I drank the last drop from the flask and put it back in my pocket. I thought I heard another scream from around the corner of the building. I hurried back inside and began to take the stairs two at a time.
Pretty Boy Crossover
by Pat Cadigan
Introduction
Pat Cadigan, now of Kansas City, Missouri, has been so closely identified with the Cyberpunk movement that when she gave birth to “Bobzilla, scourge of the Midwest,” she was quickly dubbed “Cybermom.” It’s a delightfully appropriate sobriquet for her, since her punkish, counter-culture heroes live in a world that is constantly evaluated by an author who wants her children to become a little better than they are. The world of her stories is often—usually—dark and forbidding, and her characters tend to be people that I wouldn’t want to invite over for Sunday dinner. Yet each time I read one of her tales, I find a powerful kinship with these lost-and-found-again souls. She refuses to allow aliens to remain completely alien.
I came to know Cadigan when we served together on the Nebula Jury a few years ago. Her letters were full of wit and intelligence; it was impossible not to like her at once. “Pretty Boy Crossover” was published in a January issue of F&SF. I knew at once that this tale of identity at risk was one of those emotional, unforgettable stories that inevitably winds up on award ballots. I told her so. When she expressed some skepticism, I made some outlandish wager with her. Fortunately, I won. I think my victory required her to eat some inedible substance. In the interest of keeping her healthy to write many more stories—and to continue civilizing Bobzilla—I released her from the obligation. Such are the sacrifices we make for literature.
Writers often find strange training grounds in which to practice and develop the craft of writing. I was an editor for a religious magazine. Gene Wolfe edited trade journals. Many, many writers wrote pornography until they learned en
ough craft to graduate to truly sophisticated literature—like science fiction.
Pat Cadigan writes greeting cards for Hallmark.
So if you someday get a Valentine that sears your fingers, don’t sue Hallmark. Just lick the scars and think of Cadigan.
First you see video. Then you wear video.
Then you eat video. Then you be video.
—The Gospel According to Visual Mark
Watch or Be Watched.
—Pretty Boy Credo
“Who made you?”
“You mean recently?”
Mohawk on the door smiles and takes his picture. “You in. But only you, okay? Don’t try to get no friends in, hear that?”
“I hear. And I ain’t no fool. I got no friends.”
Mohawk leers, leaning forward. “Pretty Boy like you, no friends?’
“Not in this world.” He pushes past the Mohawk, ignoring the kissy-kissy sounds. He would like to crack the bridge of Mohawk’s nose and shove bone splinters into his brain but he is lately making more effort to control his temper and besides, he’s not sure if any of that bone splinters in the brain stuff is really true. He’s a Pretty Boy, all of sixteen years old, and tonight could be his last chance.
The club is Noise. Can’t sneak into the bathroom for quiet, the Noise is piped in there, too. Want to get away from Noise? Why? No reason. But this Pretty Boy has learned to think between the beats. Like walking between the raindrops to stay dry, but he can do it. This Pretty Boy thinks things all the time—all the time. Subversive (and, he thinks so much that he knows that word subversive, sixteen, Pretty, or not). He thinks things like how many Einsteins have died of hunger and thirst under a hot African sun and why can’t you remember being born and why is music common to every culture and especially how much was there going on that he didn’t know about and how could he find out about it.
And this is all the time, one thing after another running in his head, you can see by his eyes. It’s for def not much like a Pretty Boy but it’s one reason why they want him. That he is a Pretty Boy is another and one reason why they’re halfway home getting him.
Future on Fire Page 21