Hornets and Others

by Al Sarrantonio

  "Yes," he said.

  Minnow threw herself at him, but in mid-stride her arms flew uncontrollably up over her head and she stopped and pirouetted. Her arms, her legs, were not her own anymore. A deep pulsing began in the earth around her, in the air, in her head and bones, and before she knew what was happening she found herself in an insane waltz. The beat had begun once more. She threw a quick, painful glance at Copper, cursing him silently for miscalculating the time by nearly a half-hour, but the thought of condemnation vacated her mind when she saw that he was throwing himself against the wall, arms whirling like a helicopter, and shouting with each collision. His face was bloodied.

  The waltz continued, and she found herself with a quick succession of partners—Cave, Skull, Goat—who was trying, she saw, to pull at the trigger of a weapon he must have picked up in one of the storage bins they had passed. The fleeting conviction went through her that he was more desperate than she had thought, and that if the beat had not started when it did she might be dead anyway now, probably along with Skull. Another change of partners and she saw that Goat's weapon had been forced from his grip and that he was now slapping his hands together in time, faster than seemed humanly possible.

  The waltz changed to a tarantella, and then to a Celtic jig. After that there were a thousand other variations. The one lasting image in all this madness was that of Skull, his graceful, aquiline body flashing past her nearly every time she was whirled about. He became an anchor in her storm, and his grinning skull mask was the one image that burned itself into her mind as the hours danced away...

  She awoke propped in a corner, arms akimbo, legs collapsed under her like so much lead. For a long time she could not move. She didn't know what time it was; there was near-darkness, and at first she thought she could be outside, or in some abandoned building. But then the sour stench of the underground tunnel reached past her nostrils and she remembered what had happened.

  With a groan she struggled to a kneeling position, and then, using the wall for leverage, heaved herself up onto her feet. She nearly went down again, feeling momentary pressure on one of her ankles, but suddenly there was an arm there, holding her up.

  "Can you stand?"

  It was Skull.

  "I think so. Yes. It's not twisted like I thought. Just asleep."

  She closed her eyes until the swimming stopped in them, and then took a deep breath and faced him.

  "The others?"

  "Dead." It was a simple statement of fact, but Minnow detected a note of something else—pity? sadness?—behind it.

  "All of them?"

  "All. Three died during the dance. The one named Goat then killed another one and then Copper tried to stop him and was killed trying to get his weapon away." He paused. "I took care of Goat."

  Was there revulsion in his voice? Awe?

  Skull said, "He was going to kill you where you slept."

  "God," Minnow said, taking a shuddering breath. Skull stood silently next to her, becoming conscious of his supporting arm on her and gradually releasing it. For a moment Minnow was sorry it was gone, and then she wasn't.

  "Now what?"

  "We continue."

  There was a blank certainty in his voice.

  "So we can be killed the next time we get caught by the beat?"

  "No. This time we make it to the center."

  "I don't believe you."

  He turned those eyes that weren't eyes on her. She was both attracted and repulsed by him at the same time.

  "I don't blame you for not believing me," he said. "But I didn't lie to you yesterday. I said there was only one day, maybe two, before things went to pieces. I knew we couldn't make it in one day, but if I had said that, none of you would have come. What I didn't know," and here he paused looking around him; Minnow thought she felt him tremble, "is that this would happen. But if you and I don't go on, that's the end of it." His voice became as soft and careful as when he had first spoken out of the shadows, up above.

  They locked eyes to eyeholes for a moment, and then Skull nodded sharply.

  "We have exactly six hours."

  They went through two more long pulls of tunnel and two more empty storage areas before Minnow felt a sudden change in the atmosphere. It wasn't anything she could put a finger on—something in the floor or walls perhaps, a vibration, something in the air around them. But she knew they were nearing their destination. Despite her best efforts, a small clench of apprehension formed in her stomach, and her steps became more consciously careful. Glancing sideways at Skull, who had been moving along easily beside her, she saw that he too had tensed, and now had his head cocked, as if listening for something.

  "Hold it," he hissed.

  They stood, silent as statues.

  "There," Skull said; "hear that?"

  Minnow held her breath, and now she did hear something; low, regular; a barely audible thump-thump of a faraway heartbeat.

  "What is it?" she whispered.

  He motioned her to be quiet.

  It was louder now, getting louder by the minute—the heartbeat of a cat modulating into the heartbeat of an elephant.

  Thump-thump, thump-thump—and getting louder still.

  Skull yanked on her arm. She pulled back a moment and then saw what he was doing: there was a shadowy cutout in the wall which he pressed them both into.

  "Quiet," he said.

  The thumping had turned into something more now, and it was moving quickly toward them. It had the regular, percussive beat of something artificial; it sounded, in fact, like a column of booming bass drums.

  And there now, under the thundering, Minnow heard the rattle of snare drums and cymbals.

  Without warning, the source of the sounds pulled into view. Skull had an arm across Minnow's chest, holding her tightly back against the wall; he was cutting off her breath but she dared not breathe anyway. What passed before them was a huge, ghoulish marching band—fishpale humans of all sizes, beanpoles and squatty beach balls, all marching and dancing with a manic precision that thoroughly frightened Minnow. They were possessed. Their eyes were vacant with rapture; and the pure look of single-mindedness on their faces was unmistakable. They would die, or burn themselves alive, or do whatever was required of them. The walls rocked with the sound of their instruments and marching feet. They didn't miss a note, and those that played their huge oil drum basses or rattling snares moved with a cog-like precision.

  "The beat is their god," said Minnow with complete, awed certainty after they had gone, leaving only echoed silence.

  Skull nodded. "They want nothing else. They wandered down here, or were caught down here, years ago when the beat started, and now they live for it. During the day their god takes care of them, and at night they service themselves."

  "How do you know that?" Minnow asked. She reached to touch his arm but pulled back.

  "Come on," he said quietly, "we're almost there."

  "Are you one of them?"

  Something in his voice, the inflection, or the quietness, had unlocked a corner of her mind and she had a sudden vision of him dancing. For a split second she knew who he was. But the fraction of a moment passed, and she could not hold on to it. Once more she knew nothing about him.

  "Come on," he repeated in a gentle voice.

  Another hundred feet down the corridor and they reached their destination.

  "This is it," said Skull. Through a high vaulted door they entered a massive underground arena. It was in the shape of a dome so huge, and colored such a deep black, that if stars had been painted on it Minnow would have believed they were outside and that this was their flat Earth. The floor was one vast tarpaulin, pulled taut as a drumhead. They advanced slowly to the center of it, and Skull turned to Minnow.

  "Take off my mask," he said quietly, taking her hands in his and moving them up to his face.

  Trembling, she did so, and when she pulled the sheath of rubber up over his head she found herself faced with an identical skull, this one of
bone. The red candles behind his eyes flared into life.

  "You're it," she breathed.

  Skull nodded slowly.

  "You're the beat."

  Around them, it became even blacker.

  "I think you knew it all along," he said softly. He made a leisurely, graceful turn around the arena. "Someone wrote, a long time ago," he said, "that the dance is the most perfect form of human expression—that it is the essence of humanity itself. It's been called poetry embodied, beauty in its most fluid and unchaotic state. Man believed this, and, eventually, man's machines believed it. I believed it." He stopped abruptly, and looked, it seemed, straight into Minnow's soul. His voice was soft, but held something suppressed, a rage or frustration. "If machine was to become man, what better way to prove we were not mere mimics than to exhibit his most human essence? If I could attain the dance I would attain humanity.

  "But when I did this, something painful occurred to me: that man himself did not possess, really, the knowledge of his own most perfect poetry. And so the beat began, and has been going on ever since."

  "You've been punishing us for not using what we're born with and which took you so much pain to get," Minnow whispered, horrified.

  "No!" said Skull, his voice rising to an echoing shout and sending a chill through Minnow. "Not punishing: teaching. Trying to teach..." His voice dropped to a breath. "And I've failed."

  "So you're destroying everything, from one end of the globe to the other, because you've failed."

  His eyes flamed red fire, and she thought he would shout with rage again, but instead he pirouetted away from her, jumping lightly and landing with the finesse of a cat on his toes.

  "It's time," he said, his death's head riveted on her, "for my last dance."

  Minnow looked steadily at him, though her voice was faint.

  "The end."

  Skull stared at her, unmoving.

  "And you my partner."

  Every dot of light bled out of their surroundings then, leaving them in a darkness as utter and black as an inkpool. A spotlight, then another, materialized, making a circle around her feet and around those of Skull, and suddenly he was leaping up, up, graceful as a bird, and she was following him. She could not tell if they were on the ground or in the air. Her limbs, as always during the beat, were not her own.

  They were swallows in flight. There may have been music somewhere; or the music may have come from within Minnow's own bones, singing directly into her brain from the core of her being. It didn't matter. The beat was there, and it made its own music. She was caught in a timeless web, and after a while she realized that her limbs were her own now, and that what she was doing was as much her own making as his. What they danced was something beyond poetry or ballet: it had more to do with water, air, and fire than with these things that were given names in some ancient time. It was an essential thing, born as much of the molecules and atoms that composed her, with their stately, roll-of-the-dice movement, as it did with the mere jerking of legs, arms, hands—though all these things were part of it too. It was something that clawed and cried and laughed, made love and violence. All movement, all dance, without this understanding, was ludicrous, obscene: but with it clutched to her breast Minnow became something more than she was before. It freed her from something that had always been with her, since the first forced tug on her body which this thing named Skull had generated. Then she had been made to do it; now she wanted to. And suddenly she saw that she was dancing alone, her arms and legs not fluid machine but human, and she soared and soared.

  She awoke with the crampedness that always set in after the beat. This time, though, there was an underlying strength in her worn out body. She stood and stretched, looking down at herself and knowing for the first time that her body belonged to her and no one else.

  At first she thought the arena was empty. The white tarp stretched tight to the circumference, and she could make out nothing on its surface—but then she saw, huddled at the edge, a crumpled figure.

  It was Skull. He seemed, now, the mere bag of bones that his skull promised: Minnow had the unsettling feeling that if she were to pick his body up it would rattle and then fall to pieces and flake away. Instead she stared into his eyes, now absent of the crimson candle-glow of artificial life.

  She looked into those eyes for a long time. And then, with a quick step she lifted her leg, gracefully, turned, and began to walk with resolution toward the tunnel leading to the world above. She would walk, at least for now—though she had the feeling that when the light of the sun or moon caressed her she might be unable to keep her body still. That warmly beating center core might burst to flaming life and take her limbs freely into motion with it.

  She might have to dance.

  In the Corn

  Do you remember losing your eyes?"

  "Yes."

  "Tell me."

  "I... was three years old, playing with my brother and governess in a wide yellow field in back of our house. It was Autumn, and the grass was stiff; I remember it was cold that day. My brother and I were tumbling on the grass, throwing each other over our shoulders, laughing. The governess, Nancy, got caught up in our game and began to tumble us over her shoulder also. This is... very painful to remember..."

  "Go on. You must tell me."

  "She was roughhousing with us, and began to pick one and then the other up, swinging us high in the air. I remember her twirling me around. We were all getting dizzy and were laughing uncontrollably. We had wandered somewhat from the center of the field toward an edge bordered by a row of picked corn; the stalks were stiff and dry and stood up straight. I can almost see the sun on their dry yellow. Nancy was laughing as if she were our own age; actually, she was only a few years older than my brother. I was running around and around her, chasing my brother, and Nancy suddenly picked me up, a bit too fast, tumbling me up and over her shoulder. I remember the stalks of corn coming at my eyes like deformed spears, I can see them now like I could then, as if in slow motion, coming up towards my eyes, and then into them..."

  "Go on..."

  "Doctor, I can't..."

  "You must."

  "I... remember screaming, hearing myself scream, and I remember flailing my arms and hands, trying to pull the stalks from my eyes, sitting on the ground and screaming uncontrollably, shrieking, my entire body shaking, and then feeling hands on me, Nancy's hands. I can remember her hands on my face, and the sticky mass of tears and blood, and then I could feel her tugging at the stalks, pulling them free one at a time, gently, and there was... a sound... as she did it, a sucking sound..."

  "Yes?"

  "I can't."

  "I told you, you must. Continue."

  "No!"

  "Continue."

  "I...—no!"

  "You must go on."

  "The... last thing I remember seeing was the governess' face after she had pulled the stalks free. I could see her face through blood, though I could not see very clearly. There was a look of..."

  "Yes?"

  "A look of horror on her face, and then my eyes began to unfocus, as if the world was being pulled away, taking the light with it, and I was alone and screaming..."

  "Can you go on?"

  ''I...”

  "Yes?"

  “I was so alone."

  "I understand. Do you remember what happened then?"

  "I was sent away to have my eyes cared for."

  "And?"

  "And... there were other things."

  "Please explain."

  "They told me later, much later, that I had been traumatized. I was ill for a very long time, and would not eat or speak; I lived... inside. I went through a lot of therapy, and there were a lot of different doctors and hospitals. I was never sent home. I... remember screaming, lots of crying, and then, after a long, long time, a kind of peace came over me..."

  "Go on."

  "I became calm. I told them it was all right, that I wanted to go home. But they wouldn't listen to me. They
wouldn't send me home. I started to cry. I wanted to see my brother again, I wanted to see Nancy, to tell her it was all right, that she didn't have to have that look on her face anymore, that it wasn't her fault. But they wouldn't send me home."

  "And so?"

  "I became hysterical again, and the therapy began again. For a whole year I didn't speak. For another year I screamed. And then I became calm again."

  "I understand. Do you know how old you are now?"

  "I'm twenty-two years old."

  "Very good. And do you know why you are here?"

  "Therapy."

  "Of course. But it is time to tell you more."

  "More? What do you mean?"

  "There are things you must know now; I believe you can learn now what really happened."

  "What don't I know?"

  "Are you calm?"

  "Yes."

  "You will remain calm? You will not begin to scream, or draw into yourself?"

  "No, I won't scream."

  "Very good. Listen carefully. Your governess did not hurt you."

  "What?"

  "It is time to remember; you must remember; your governess did not push you into the corn. Your brother did."

  "No!"

  "Your brother tried to kill you. He killed your governess after he blinded you, and you saw her die in the corn patch before you lost your sight. Do you remember this?"

  "I... oh, God... I was told..."

  "Never mind what you were told. It is time to go back. You were told your governess was responsible for the accident because you could not handle what you saw. Your brother was taken away after the incident, and has spent his entire life in institutions. He is insane. He wanted to kill you that day out of jealousy for your attachment to your governess. He tried to kill you. Do you remember all of it now?"

  "I... my God, yes..."

  "Tell it to me."

  "Oh my God."

  "Tell it to me."

  "I can't. I won't..."

  "You must. Begin now, please."

  "I…"

  "Begin now."

  "We... were roughhousing like I said, in that yellow field behind the house; it was cold... We were tumbling on the grass, moving closer to the corn field, and I remember that Nancy came out to tell us to stay away from the corn stalks. The day..."