by Tanith Lee
The mailman, who again required my thumbprint, stared at my wrapper, and in the lenses of my black glasses.
“Sorry to wake you, Miss Quey.”
He pivoted against the fragile sky, gazing long and hard, at Sand’s car parked on the scrub grass by the track.
“Long time since I seen one of them. Ares I.D. digit panel.”
He went on gazing. I held the packet in my hand.
There’s menace here. He means me to feel menaced. But what can he do, what is he insinuating he can do?
“Visitor?” he said to me.
I could keep quiet, which might goad him further, though to what?
“Yes.”
“You don’t get so many of those.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Thank you,” he repeated automatically. “That’s a nice car. Old model. Self-drive or auto. Nice.”
“Thank you.”
“Some morning,” he said, “I’m going to buzz this door and you’re going to come out with your clothes on.”
I buttoned the door shut, but he went on grinning at me through the smoked glass. I walked away before he did, and his grin was focused on my spine as I passed through the blood splash of the big window.
Sand was lying on one elbow, reading, among the cushions on the bed. The house was cool and sweet with the air-conditioning. The blinded room was blue, and Sand’s body and hair filtered blue. Even his eyes, the pages of the paper book.
He glanced up and he smiled at me. “She walks in beauty like the night,” he said, “and all that’s best of dark and bright, meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
I sat beside him, and he let go the book, and laid his head in my lap and looked up at me.
“I’ve never felt like this before. And I’ve known some trips.”
“How do you feel, Sand?”
“Floating. And as if,” he smiled once more, pondering, “as if I’m a pane of window glass. What are we on, Sabella?” I didn’t answer and he didn’t seem to need the answer, and next he said, “Last time we made it, did I black out? I think I did for a moment. But it was wonderful, Sabella. As good for you?”
“Yes.”
“I keep thinking,” he said, “I haven’t been honest with you. Jace—did I tell you about him?” Jace was the big invented brother. “Yes, I did. Did I tell you about my father? My father was incredible. Daniel. He was like being alive. He was so full of life, he was like—some kind of sun. And he was crazy. I loved that man. And Jace, he’s like that man all over. . .” He fell asleep, and the fiery jewel, swinging above him, reflected on his cheek, which now was hollow.
A little after sunset, he wanted me. I tried not to take anything from him, but he dragged my mouth to his neck. Dragged me. It isn’t the same without, you understand, not after it’s begun. Finally, I am as incapable of resisting as he.
After midnight, he started to die.
He wasn’t scared. He was floating, as he’d put it. The heart gets lethargic, its sluggishness compounded by the loss of blood. I’d seen it happen quickly, in a single night, or less. But with Sand, I’d had the chance to preserve him, keep him alive. I’d never had that chance before. To watch it happen, slow, then steady and sure, like light going from the sky.
He had opened his eyes as far as they would open, which was only now a third of the way, the pried lids like heavy shutters. But at his neck the snake was still alert. Those watching, knowing, unsensual eyes would never close.
I could kill him now, simple as turning out a lamp. We didn’t need to couple. His body had learned the connected responses. If I took from him now, he’d spasm anyway, and die in bliss, not guessing.
He seemed to love to say my name, a thing I’d noticed with the others.
“Sabella,” he murmured, holding my hand, “Sabella—Bella—Bella.”
After Frank, I’d tried to cut my wrists. I say tried. I couldn’t do it. When your whole process is geared to survival, as in the hunter it has to be, calculated suicide is as hard to accomplish as to kill in cold blood would be for someone else.
Sand was young, and he had been strong. It was so stupid to realize that transfusions, cardiac assist, rest and sedation, could save this life which was trickling steadily out of him. Seventeen miles away, this side of Hammerlake, there was a hospital. It sat on a rise among palm trees, a hideous white cube that saved lives. It would be straightforward. Sand’s car with its auto-drive on the night-clear road could cover the ground in less than ten minutes. Next, I’d leave the car and Sand in it, hit the emergency button on the hospital gate, and run. Who could run better than Sabella?
Oblivion might cure him of his obsession. If he came after me again. I could go up into the hills. The longer he was away from me, the easier it would be for him. For him.
But there wasn’t much time.
I broke the plasti-cover on two of the vitamin shot dermics and pumped the goodness through his pores. At the same instant I was smoothing the heal-fast jel over his throat. At the touch, he roused.
“Sabella,” he said drowsily, “have you been drinking my blood?”
O.K. To a medic bending over him: “I met a lady who sucked my blood.” The medic wouldn’t believe him.
“Darling,” I said, “we’re going for a drive.”
“Sure,” he said, smiling. I helped him to sit up, and I dressed him as best I could. He had no more stamina now than the floppy doll my mother had held to her, kneeling on the floor. “I don’t mind,” he said. “Eternal life. Beautiful Sabella.”
I carried him down the stairs. I’m unusually strong, but it was awkward.
“Why, Sabella,” he marveled dreamily, “You’re carrying me. Jace used to carry me,” he said, “but Jace is built like a gladiator.”
I got him through the door, over the porch. I opened the car, and managed to angle him onto the rear seat. Not every car has a rear seat. It was lucky Sand’s car was a throwback model.
“Sabella,” he said, “there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Later, Sand. There’ll be lots of time later.”
I got in and shut the car. I switched on the auto and keyed in the directions. The car revved itself, exploding the framework of the night.
“I’m cold,” he said.
Miserere mei, Domine . . . conturbata sunt omnia ossa mea. . . .
Forgive me, God. Let him live. Let me be quick enough.
Sabella, you’re insane.
The car spun itself around, and flared down the track toward the road, going so swiftly you scarcely felt the bumps.
“Where are you, Sabella?”
“I’m here, honey.”
“If I tell you something about myself, don’t start hating me.”
“There’s nothing to hate.”
“Please don’t hate me. Your aunt Cassilda Koberman —right? She had a guy who worked for her, an old guy, a servant, John Trim.”
“Sand, don’t talk.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“That he told you how to find me, because Cassi knew.”
“Not—not quite. Christ, I’m cold, Sabella. I feel terrible, Sabella.”
Horror fills me. If I’d let him die in the house he’d have died without pain.
“It’ll be better soon,” I said. It will. It will.
I could hear him shivering then, his teeth chattering as he pushed the phrases out. We were on the concrete road, racing east to Hammerlake. The speedometer showed one hundred and forty.
“I kept wanting to tell you, Bella. Once I understood how wrong they were, and how I—felt about you.”
“Hush.”
“No, listen—Cassilda Koberman was your enemy. She left you a handful of credits in her will, like bait, to draw you out of hiding. Then she primed old Trim with stories abou
t you. She never told him what it was you were supposed to have done, but she implied plenty. The death of your mother was suspicious, you were a whore—old John Trim got the notion he was meant to hunt you down, bring you to justice. They both had this godawful Revivalist thing. She left him a stack of cash, privately, the way she left it to her bloody church. I told that fat man at the cemetery that I was a relation of Trim, but Trim had hired me to get friendly with you, to suss you out. Can you hear me, Bella? I’ve run a little private investigation agency in Dawson for about a year. Business was poor till this stunt came up. You see, Bella, that’s how I was on the plane to Ares. I was watching for you, and the checkout tipped me when your name came through the machine. That’s how I always knew where you’d be: the funeral, Cassilda’s house. I even found you here on Hammerhead. But that wasn’t—I knew straight off on the plane it wasn’t my job anymore, that they had it wrong.” He stopped, gasping for breath. Then he said, “Am I dying? What have you done to me?”
The car streamed over the concrete, speedometer at one hundred and fifty-one, maximum.
I remembered the Hog marching to Sand across the lawns, returning to me with a congested face, boasting no triumph. I remembered John Trim’s frail brown leaf hands shutting me in with Cassi’s casket of bane.
I had to make a decision. This is the nearest to the abyss I’ve ever been. I ought to let him die.
But I can’t.
And then the road bent into a tunnel of rock, and as the dark of the tunnel clambered over the car, I saw something beyond the tunnel about a hundred yards along the road. I slammed the brake button, and the car threw itself to a halt three feet from the tunnel’s end. And in the dark I sat and stared out through the windscreen at a bar of light dividing the road, and the bright gems of neon that spelled the words RANDOM ROADBLOCK.
* * *
* * *
Sand asked me if I was angry, and if that was why I’d stopped the car. Then he asked where we were going. He seemed to have forgotten what he’d said previously, he seemed to assume he had a virus, influenza, something like that. Then he told me his father, Daniel, had never had influenza and then he asked me when Jace would arrive.
All during this, I was looking at the roadblock sign, and the barrier across the road. Such checks on traffic across the deserts are irregular but thorough, carried out on suspicion, or just precaution to see what’s going where, and when, and why, and with what cargo. They’d search the car and ask questions about Sand, the state he was in. And who was I and what was my involvement. I’d taken chances in my adolescence, chances that made me shake when I recalled them, and I’d been fortunate. (Oh I don’t mean the law would react to what I was. But pervert, murderess, to all of that.) And now trouble was on every side of me, on every side one slip and the precipice yawned.
I said I’m geared toward survival. I was like someone with half vision, and what I could see was my own life, and just a blur by it that was the life of Sand.
I grasped quite suddenly what I had to do.
I opened the car door.
“Sand, it’s just a little way. Will you help me? It won’t be for long.”
I carried him back down the rock tunnel out into the night on the other side, the way we’d come a minute ago. I laid him in the still-warm dust just out of sight of the road. The night-morning was black, cool, not cold. The stars were friendly above. He was out, all the time I carried him. But he was breathing, shallowly. I took off my jacket and spread it over him.
“I won’t be long, baby.”
I ran back to the car. I jammed the auto button with the self-drive, the thing they say idiots often do. It was dim in the tunnel, but I scooped up the dust and smeared the digit panel. Maybe they wouldn’t bother to check it, anyway, if they checked the car and it wasn’t packed with anything illegal.
I walked out of the tunnel and straight toward the roadblock and into the light.
There were three automatic electric flash-guns set half charge on the barrier. Two men in the uniform of the Hammerhead road patrol sprawled on the roadside bank with a bottle and a box playing out softly live news, weather, and slow-beat music from the Montiba Smokey Impulse Tower. Both men got to their feet.
“You know,” I said as I came up, “God and his angels must have sent you to me.”
The men grinned.
“What’s the problem?”
“I’ve jammed my damn car button again. And there isn’t a fixit place for thirty miles.”
“Oh, we can fix it, lady,” said one of the men. “But I’ll have to check your car, too.”
I saw the roadblock for the first time.
“You after me again? What did I do this time?”
“Not you, lady. At least, I hope not you.”
They offered me a drink from their bottle and even a plasti-cup to go with it, but I explained I was desperate to get to Canyon where my man would experience apoplexy when I told him about the car buttons.
Still grinning, but with one of the auto guns unlinked from the barrier and trundling after to cover me, the bigger man strolled with me into the tunnel. He didn’t check the digit panel, just the seats, the seat storage and the rear compartment. He did it all humorously, showing his powers of search but not supposing they were necessary. He untangled the jam on the dash with a device from his pocket. He told me where I could buy such a device in Hammerlake. Then he extracted a pack of cigarettes. He demonstrated no wish to leave me. I thought of Sand beyond the tunnel, his strained heart struggling through each pulse.
“You know,” said the patrol man, “you’re kind of nice looking.”
“Am I?”
“I’d say you were. I’d say you might be nice all over.”
“Hey,” I said, “do you have something to write with?”
Once we got over the double entendre of this, I gave him an invented call number.
“Any time after ten. If a man answers, say you’re the Hammerhead police. That’ll knock the oxygen out of him.”
He might never take me up on this anyway, the boredom of the roadblock being over. If he did, either he’d get the unlisted tone, or a surprise.
He said I could drive on now, they’d open the block up for me to go through, and he walked away out of the tunnel. As soon as he was twenty yards down the concrete, I turned and ran in the other direction. My plan was to bring Sand back to the car just as I’d unloaded him, in the tunnel’s cover, lay him on the floor and drive straight through the block. They wouldn’t flag me down again, and if they did, they wouldn’t check the car.
I reached the tunnel and crossed to the dust-floor, and Sand wasn’t there any longer.
My jacket was, but nothing else. Only the scuffed dust, and a slur that might have been a footprint, before the patchy shrubs took over.
I’d been with the patrolmen about ten minutes. Sand had been comatose. But presumably the air had brought him to. Either he’d panicked, or he had just started moving automatically, to find me, or someone. Maybe he was looking for Daniel or for Jace. Maybe he hurt too much to lie quiet. But he hadn’t the strength to go far.
I called him, softly. I didn’t want the men by the block to hear me. In any case, I only had a few minutes at most before one of them came back into the tunnel to see why I hadn’t driven on out.
The wind blew like a lake’s ripples across and across the wilderness. I picked up the jacket and put it on.
I went out over the plain, one way, now another. Even in the dark the stars were bright and there the land was almost flat, apart from the ridge that ran down to form the tunnel. Sand couldn’t have climbed that ridge, but he could have wandered among the shrubs, the slender, dryly flowering clumps of trees. A parched watercourse, long abandoned, was cut like a scar in the soil. I stared into and along it, because he could have fallen there. But it wasn’t there that he fell.
The roa
d was two hundred, two hundred and thirty yards away. I could see the flush of the roadblock’s light beyond the arched shapes of the ridge and the tunnel. They must have been going into the tunnel by then. It was too late. I couldn’t get back to the car, even when I found Sand.
Then I found him. Of course, then.
He’d come quite a way, as if there were really something out there on that flat easel of earth and night that he had to get to. The wind stroked his hair as he lay there on his face. He was dead. I could have saved him, even with the roadblock, I could have, if he’d waited.
“Why didn’t you wait for me,” I said to him and I crouched by him, as if for an answer. One of his cheeks was pressed in the dust, the other half turned upward, and luminous, or so it seemed, and the lid of the eye was luminous as if the eye shone through, looking at me. Somehow the snake rope had twisted so that its eyes could look at me too. The dead are always in league against me.
Naturally, the men would have reentered the tunnel then, found the empty car. They’d search for me, then or the next day. They’d stumble on Sand. They’d think that strange, a magic trick, a girl into boy. The digit panel of the car is an Ares registration. A call to Ares could tell them who bought or hired the car. Then they would trace Sand to John Trim and discover who Trim wanted investigated and it was me. Then they’d remember the girl on the road was like Trim’s description of Sabella Quey.
It didn’t matter what they could tie on to me, or can’t. One connection with one of these deaths, these men who die in the darkness, one connection could trigger others. Easterly. The wolves. A spark spinning along a fuse. But not without evidence.
I gathered Sand up in my arms. It was harder, much harder since I had to run with him.
Back there in the tunnel, I heard Sand’s car cough as someone manually revved the engine.
Run, Sabella. And Sabella ran.
* * *
* * *
The incinerator came with the house. It was fashionably antiquated but functional, a five-foot square black drum with a chemical filter chimney that odorlessly smoldered day and night in my mother’s time, that didn’t often smoke in mine. But it had been at work the past day or so, because Sand had been with me. Leftovers, cartons, wrapping, the incinerator had been busy. The press-button chute was large enough to take an item a whole four feet around. Back before my mother and me, the chute had obviously had to serve larger objects than are common to domestica. And now. Now it had to serve a man.