by Jack Martin
“Now what is? Sho’, this is one helluva ’script you got here. Very tricky grind. Can’t imagine you’d see things too clear without them, you know. But don’t worry at all. My man get you fixed up in no time . . .”
Max took advantage of the diversion to slip around the end of the counter. The clerk was writing up the woman’s order and the cop was spit-polishing his one-way aviators. Max escaped into the stockroom and sealed the door shut behind him.
Harlan was alone with his work, busy stuffing cartons with excelsior and taping them for shipment.
The door clicked and he glanced up.
An inkling of panic crossed his face, then was replaced by a controlled smile.
Max smiled back. “Where’s Convex?”
“Ah, he’s setting up his trade show. Gotta introduce the spring line . . .”
Max strolled up to him, a member of the club now. “What’s in the box?”
“Your head.” Harlan gave out with his phony hipster’s chuckle. The carton he was working on was specially reinforced, larger and more durable than the others. About the size of a space helmet. “I’ve got your head in this box.”
Max laughed.
“You’ve been busy, Max. Been readin’ about you in the papers. Have you been to see Bianca O’B?”
“I saw her,” said Max casually. Reporting in, comrade, he thought.
“And did she give you any trouble?”
“No.”
“Well.” Harlan was relieved. “That’s good. I’m glad you finally got with the program, patrón. Maybe you’d like to visit somebody else now. Is that why you’re here?”
“Maybe,” said Max. “Who have you got in mind?”
“You’ve been very useful to us, Max. We’d like to keep using you until you’re all gone.”
He set his tools aside and pushed his wire rims up on his nose. He reached under his jacket liner and came out with a new cassette.
To Max, this one appeared so deformed it lay respirating on Harlan’s palm as if it couldn’t get its breath. Its reels puckered and shrank away from the light.
“What’s that, my latest set of instructions?”
“Yeah. You might say so. Barry left it for you. I was going to deliver it personally.”
Harlan approached with his handful of medicine.
Max grinned and raised his arms like a good boy so Harlan could get at his buttons.
But Harlan only slapped the tape against Max’s chest. “Take it home and play it first chance you get. I imagine it’s pretty important.”
“What do you mean?” said Max. “I don’t have to take it anywhere to play it. Remember?”
“What are you talking about?”
Max opened his jacket and shirt.
“God, Max! What have you done to yourself?”
“You haven’t seen this before?”
“I—I know you hallucinated some kind of cavity in your guts. That was part of the delusion we designed for you. We played along. That’s how we related to you, so you’d get the message. We, ah, played along with your visions. But this . . . !”
“You see it now, don’t you? It’s real, isn’t it? Really real?”
“You’ve been mutilating yourself. You’ve sliced yourself open. It’s—”
“No, no. It’s part of my body. Long live the new flesh.” Max laughed.
Harlan was scared.
“Max, you’d better get out of here like that before—before somebody walks in. We’ll get help for you. But for now, here. Take the tape. Do what it—”
“Aren’t you going to do it my way?”
“Max . . .”
“Come on, Harlan. For old times’ sake. Just this once. Play along one more time. It’ll keep me happy.”
“I—I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you supposed to humor me? Barry wouldn’t like it if I told him you weren’t being cooperative.”
“Well . . .”
“My world is the real world now. It’s much closer to the truth. Go on. Put it in. Just for a minute. I want you to. You’ll see. It won’t hurt a bit. I promise.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay, if that’s what you want, then I guess . . .”
He came up to Max, tapping the cassette nervously.
Max held Harlan’s eyes with his own as he let his body open to receive the latest directive. He spread his arms to lay himself open even wider, presenting himself as utterly passive and receptive, a mere vehicle.
“Give it to me now, Harlan. Give me your tape. That’s it . . .”
He sucked Harlan in.
Harlan felt around inside. “This is weirding me out, Max. Biology isn’t my field. But everything seems to be okay . . . If I didn’t know better I’d swear I was hallucinating, myself. I don’t know what this means, but I guess there are some parts of the Big Picture I haven’t been told about yet . . .”
Max ceased playing the vessel. He lowered his arms and concentrated on taking control of his own body at last, on becoming one with it.
Inches from Max’s face, Harlan’s eyes sprung wide.
“Open up again, Max, a little bit wider. I can’t get my hand out—Max! I said—”
Max bore down with every fiber of his being and took in Harlan’s message, digested it, rendered it harmless. He was able to stomach a lot now. It went down smooth.
“Max, my hand! My—”
He relented and allowed Harlan, whom he had permitted such easy entry, to pull out. But he made sure to keep a little souvenir for himself, a token of affection to be left behind in this moment of incomparably intimate access.
Harlan raised his hand. Or rather he raised his arm. There was now no longer a hand on this particular wrist. The end of the arm came out a bloody stump. In place of the hand was a shank of bone with a round potato-masher charge of TNT on the end.
A hand grenade.
Harlan bleated in mortal agony as the new appendage, dripping blood and incipient tissue, began ticking.
A great energy wind emanated from Max and caught Harlan full force, driving him across the room. Harlan’s glasses blew off and smashed to the floor. His jacket liner vest inflated like a sail as he landed against the wall.
“See you in Pittsburgh,” said Max, a second before the hand grenade exploded.
Brolley rushed in.
“What you doin’ back here, man? My God, you blowin’ de place right up! What that I hear, a bomb? Man, you stay right where you are. I got policeman. You—”
Smoke and plaster dust settled around Max. He walked calmly to the other side of the room, stepped over Harlan’s scattered remains and out through the opening in the wall.
In the alley outside, people were coughing and running through the smoke that was pouring out of the hole, their eyes offering irrefutable verification of what had happened. Max smiled. A mother pushing a shopping cart yanked her little girl to her side and clattered away to the street. Bums shouted and cursed at the disturbance as Max sauntered past.
But nobody tried to stop him.
“WELL, YOU KNOW ME . . .”
Bright lights as blue-white as daylight shone down from an unseen source.
“. . . AND I SURE KNOW YOU. EVERYONE OF YOU!”
Somewhere behind the lights faces shifted, rustling for position.
Then the audience broke into applause.
Onstage, Convex waved at a man at a front table.
“HI, PETE! GOOD TO SEE YOU. NOW THEN . . .” He cleared his throat and formally began his speech, reciting it as faithfully as a litany. “WE’RE HERE TO CELEBRATE THE ARRIVAL OF OUR NEW SPRING COLLECTION. AREN’T THESE KIDS WONDERFUL?”
He turned like an m.c. and called attention to the troupe of dancers who were waiting patiently behind him, catching their breaths from the number that had just ended.
Again the audience broke into applause.
The stage was decorated with huge sequined prop eyeglasses done up in Vegas-style glitter, with flashy all-purpose neon backdrops dresse
d to suggest some vague sixteenth or seventeenth-century reference. The dancers in their powdered wigs and eyeglass masks panted and perspired, the women’s unnaturally full bosoms heaving under their push-up bodices. One of the costumes had torn in the previous dance number, and a spangled disco leotard showed through under the chintzy hoop skirt.
“THE MEDICI LINE!” announced Convex. “AND OUR THEME THIS YEAR IS BASED ON A QUOTATION FROM THAT FAMOUS RENAISSANCE STATESMAN AND PATRON OF THE ARTS, LORENZO DE MEDICI—‘LOVE COMES IN AT THE EYE.’ NOW I THINK EVEN PETE OUGHTA BE ABLE TO SELL THE HELL OUT OF A CLASSY CAMPAIGN LIKE THAT . . . !”
The spate of applause swept Convex to new heights of glory. He lifted and opened his arms in supplication, waggling his microphone over the heads of the conventioneers.
“BLESS YOU,” he said without embarrassment.
Throughout the ballroom hands clapped together vigorously.
A man was moving down front to get a better view. Convex shaded his eyes and cracked a smile, leaning over to see who it was.
Then he shielded the microphone and said in a stage whisper, “What are you doing here, Max?”
“Hi, Barry,” said Max cheerily.
“Max, I don’t think this is the place to—”
Max’s grin vanished. “I disagree, Barry. I think it’s a good time. Perfect, in fact. The best of all possible worlds.”
He took his hand out of his jacket pocket.
“Jesus, Max, what happened to your hand? You better get some first aid. Wait backstage while I—”
Max raised his gun hand, now thoroughly deformed, leprous beyond recognition, so that the audience could get a good look at what was really there.
“Really, Barry, it’s nothing. Surprised? You shouldn’t be upset about it—it’s only a small example of your latest handiwork.”
He took careful aim at Convex’s head, sighting squarely between the eyes.
Convex tripped over the speaker cord as he scrambled to the other end of the stage.
Max moved with him, holding him in his sights.
“Are you crazy?” said Convex, backing up to a gigantic pair of cut-out spectacles. “You can’t just come in here and—”
“I used to be, Barry. For awhile. But not anymore.”
“What do you want? I’m sure we can work something out. I have plenty of—”
“I want you to take a bite off this, Barry,” said Max.
He squeezed his hand closed, and fired.
Not bullets now but airborne gobbets of flesh sprang out and smacked Convex in the side of the head. They clung to his skin and burrowed into his skull, spreading hungrily.
Convex fell apart. He dropped to the stage, writhing, as his face and the bones behind his face disintegrated in full public view, masses of pearlescent tumors sprouting and devouring him from the inside out.
Pandemonium broke loose. The audience went wild. Salesmen and their wives with matching helmets of sprayed hair scattered in every direction.
Max stayed where he was a few seconds longer, long enough to give Convex a big hand, a final round of applause that was his alone.
Though it was mid-afternoon, the edge of the city already seemed to be preparing for dusk. Here it was perpetually turning late in the day; the air was full of suspended moisture, and the slant of the light where the land mass met the waters of the great lake was oblique, without glare and inexplicably melancholy.
Max tested the chain link fence, found the stretched place and stole into the dockyard.
Once inside, he crouched and ran for the ELIZABETH DANE II.
As he squirreled his way below deck, he brushed against an old chain that was swinging from the engine compartment. It marked him with a rusty red smear, ringing like an ancient bell calling him to school or to prayer.
Down in the hold, the waters were rising faster then ever.
He slewed the garbage as far aft as possible, discovered an old mattress and staked out a relatively dry spot for himself. He even found a cup and a plate and what was left of a hollowed candle. Almost enough to set up housekeeping.
Somewhere over his head, the once so promising world seemed to break loose on the tide and float away into the distance until it no longer mattered. The profit-taking and the losses, the living and the dying and being born into it, staying or going away, fighting or running—what was the point? Or was there one?
He sank down on the mattress with his head in his hands and wondered whether anything he had ever done had been worth it.
He felt a pair of eyes very close by, behind and above him.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw the broad, pink face of a woman. She was somehow familiar. He had never known her like.
“I was hoping you’d be back.” he said.
“I’m always here when you need me,” said Nicki.
The TV set sat there. He couldn’t stop it. The TV set sat there and he couldn’t stop it. Nothing had ever stopped it and nothing ever would stop it. He should have known.
“I’m here to guide you, Max. I’ve learned a lot since I last saw you. I’ve learned that death is not the end. I can help you.”
He said, in a voice so lacking in energy that it was not much more than a whisper, “I don’t know where I am now. I’m having trouble . . . finding my way around.”
Nicki nodded compassionately and moved in close to the screen. Her voice was soft, soothing, more comforting than he remembered it ever being in life. “That’s because you’ve gone just about as far as you can with the way things are. VIDEODROME still exists. It’s very big, very complex. You’ve hurt them but you haven’t destroyed them. To do that, you have to go on to the next phase.”
The boat tipped further and chains clanked in the shadows. Water sloshed through the timbers at his feet. He heard a high-voltage arcing from the back of the set. The old TeleRanger had been good for a lot of years; but its time was almost used up.
He spoke to her with growing urgency so as to get it all said, everything, before it was too late.
“What phase is that?”
“Your body has already done a lot of changing. But that’s only the beginning. The beginning of the new flesh. You have to go all the way now. A total transformation. Do you think you’re ready?”
What else was there? “I guess I am. How—how do we do it?”
“To become the new flesh, you first have to kill the old flesh. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to let your body die. Just come to me, Max. Come to Nicki . . .
“Watch. I’ll show you how. It’s easy.”
Nicki’s nineteen-inch face was replaced by a reverse-angle of the hold in which he sat.
Unexplainably, a small bonfire was burning on the wet planks. The planks were raised, ribbed, constructed to create the semblance of a gridwork beneath his feet. The water had not yet splashed up to douse the flames. Through the rising smoke, he saw a man kneeling before the fire. The camera zoomed in through the flames.
The man was Max Renn.
Onscreen, he was holding a highly-evolved, organic handgun to his head.
“Long live the new flesh,” said the voice of the man on TV.
His eyes were looking at Max.
Then the gun discharged.
The TV screen blew up, throwing bits of bloody flesh out into the hold.
Max sat there on the mattress, seeing all this. The exploded TeleRanger sizzled and popped, gushing smoke. Rats chittered away; they seemed more frightened than Max was. The knowledge pleased him.
He left the mattress and knelt before the demolished console cabinet, straining for release. In the firelight the floor became red beneath his knees as the flames reflected in the water.
He drew his gun hand out of his pocket for comparison. It was curved and shaped, balanced perfectly, as if it had always been there. He raised his arm and rested his hand against his temple, lining up the position, and was filled with a great peace.
The fire crackled and flared higher over the electrically charge
d water. The smoky air became warm, moist, and began to distort into grainy bands of light and darkness.
A great weight seemed to hold him to his knees, firm but not unkind. Its pressure was almost loving, its gentle insistence almost cruel.
He had no choice.
But that was all right. There were so many little dyings that it didn’t matter which of them was death. After all, how else could it end?
It would be a new experience. The ultimate one. Wouldn’t it?
He thought: And the last of the old shall become the first of the new.
This is it.
Do it. The trick was not to stop until it was done. Do it.
Do it now.
He looked at his surroundings, as though awakening from a dream. Like himself, it was a place he had never known.
Until now.
His hand closed as he prepared for the first thrust.
He could no longer see Nicki’s face. He needed a witness. He closed his eyes. He wanted her to be looking at him.
“Long live the new flesh,” he said.
There was a roar of thunder.