by Clive Barker
Lamar worked the room, kissing the beauties, acknowledging the studs, shaking the hands of the hirers and firers of both. He imagined Buddy's revulsion at this ritual. Time and time again during their years together he'd had to coax Buddy out of a party just like this one because he couldn't keep his insults to himself. Time and time again he'd failed.
"You're looking good, Lam."
The overnourished face in front of him was Sam Sagan-sky, one of Hollywood's most successful power-brokers. At his side stood a big-breasted waif, one in a long line of big-breasted waifs Sam had raised to glitterdom then parted from in public dramas that had left the women's careers destroyed and his reputation as a ladykiller enhanced.
"What does it feel like?" Sagansky wanted to know, "being at his funeral?"
"It's not exactly that, Sam."
"Still, he's dead, and you're not. Don't tell me it doesn't make you feel good."
"I guess so."
"We're survivors, Lam. We've got a right to scratch our balls and laugh. Life's good."
"Yeah," Lamar said, "I suppose it is."
"We're all winners here, eh, honey?" He turned to his wife, who displayed her dental work. "Don't know any better feeling than that."
"I'll catch you later, Sam."
"Are there going to be fireworks?" the waif wondered. Lamar thought of the Jaff, waiting upstairs, and smiled.
Once round the room, then he headed up to see his master. "Quite a crowd," the Jaff said. "You approve?"
"Wholly."
"I wanted a word before things got too . . . busy."
"About what?"
"Rochelle."
"Ah."
"I know you're planning something heavy-duty, and believe me I couldn't be happier. If you wipe them all off the face of the fucking earth you'll be doing the world a favor."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you," said the Jaff. "They won't all be joining the great Power Breakfast in the sky. I may take a few liberties with them but I'm not interested in death. That's more my son's area of endeavor."
"I just want to be certain Rochelle can be kept out of it."
"I won't lay a finger on her," the Jaff replied. "There? Does that satisfy you?"
"It does, yes. Thanks."
"So. Shall we begin?"
"What are you planning?"
"I just want you to bring the guests up to see me, one by one. Let them get a little liquor in their systems first, then . . . show them the house."
"Men or women?"
"Bring the men first," the Jaff said, wandering back over to the window. "They're more pliable. Is it my imagination or is it getting dark?"
"Just clouding over."
"Rain?"
"I doubt it."
"Pity. Ah, more guests at the gate. You'd better go down and welcome them in."
VI
IT WAS an empty gesture, Howie knew, to go back to the woods on the edge of Deerdell. There could be no repetition of the meeting he'd had there. Fletcher had gone, and with him, so much clarification. But he went back anyway, vaguely hoping that returning to the place he'd met his father would spark some memory, however vestigial, which would help him dig through to the truth.
The sun was veiled with a hazy layer of cloud, but it was as hot beneath the trees as it had been on the other two occasions he'd come here. Hotter perhaps; certainly clammier. Though he'd intended to make directly for the place where he'd met Fletcher his route became as wandering as his thoughts. He didn't try to correct it. He'd made his gesture of respect, coming here; figuratively tipped his hat to his mother's memory, and to the man who'd reluctantly fathered him.
But chance, or some sense he was not even aware of, brought him back on to his intended course, and without even realizing it at first he stepped from the trees into the circle of clear ground where, eighteen years before, his life had been conjured. That was the right word. Not conceived; conjured. Fletcher had been a magician, of a kind. That was the only word Howie had been able to find to describe him. And he, Howie, had been a trick. Except that instead of applause and bouquets all they'd got—Howie, his mother and the magician—was misery and pain. He'd wasted valuable years in failing to come here sooner, and learning this essential fact about himself: that he was no desperado at all. Just a rabbit pulled from a hat, held up by the ears, and squirming.
He wandered towards the cave entrance, which was still fenced off and marked with police notices warning adventurers away. Standing at the barricade he peered down into the gaping hole in the ground. Somewhere down there in the dark his father had waited and waited, holding on to his enemy like death itself. Now there was only the comedian down there, and from what he'd gathered the corpse would never be recovered.
He looked up, and his whole system somersaulted. He wasn't alone. On the far side of the grave stood Jo-Beth.
He stared, convinced that she was going to disappear. She couldn't be here; not after last night. But his eyes kept seeing her.
They were too far apart for him to ask what she was doing here without raising his voice, which he didn't want to do. He wanted to hold the spell. And besides, did he really need an answer? She was here because he was here because she was here; and so on.
It was she who moved first, her hand going up to the button of the dark dress she wore, and undoing it. The expression on her face didn't seem to change, but he couldn't be certain he wasn't missing nuances. He'd taken off his spectacles when he'd stepped among the trees, and short of digging for them in his shirt pocket he could only watch, and wait, and hope the moment would come for them to approach each other. Meanwhile, she had unbuttoned the top of her dress, and now she slipped the buckle of the belt. Still he resisted making any approach, though it was barely within his power to control himself. She was letting the belt of her dress drop now, and, crossing her arms, took the hem in her hands to pull it up over her head. He didn't dare breathe, for fear he miss an instant of this ritual. She was wearing white underwear, but her breasts, when they came into view, were bare.
She had made him hard. He moved a little to adjust his position, which motion she took as her cue, dropping the dress to the ground and moving towards him. One step was enough. He started to walk towards her in his turn, each keeping close to their barricade. He shrugged off his jacket as he walked, and dropped it behind him.
As they came within a few feet of each other she said:
"I knew you'd be here. I don't know how. I was driving up from the Mall with Ruth—"
"Who?"
"That doesn't matter now. I just wanted to say I'm sorry."
"About what?"
"Last night. I didn't trust you and I should have."
She put her hand to his face.
"Do you forgive me?"
"Nothing to forgive," he said.
"I want to make love to you."
"Yes," he said, as though she hadn't needed to tell him, which was true.
It was easy. After all that had happened to separate them, it was easy. They were like magnets. However or whoever pulled them apart they were bound to come back together, like this; they couldn't help themselves. Didn't want to.
She started to pull his shirt from his trousers. He helped her, hauling it over his head. There were two seconds of darkness while it covered his face, in which her image, face, breasts and underwear, was as sharp in his head as a scene lit by lightning. Then she was there again, unbuckling his belt. He heeled off his shoes, then performed a monopodal dance to pull his socks off. Finally, he let his trousers drop and stepped out of them.
"I was afraid," she said.
"Not now. You're not afraid now."
"No."
"I'm not the Devil. I'm not Fletcher's. I'm yours."
"I love you."
She put her palms on his chest, and ran them outwards, as if smoothing pillows. He put his arms around her and pulled her towards him.
His dick was doing push-ups in his shorts. He placated it by kissing her, moving his hands down her
back to the band of her panties, then sliding beneath. Her kisses were moving from his nose to chin, he licking at her lips when her mouth crossed his. She pressed her body against him.
"Here," she said softly.
"Yes?"
"Yes. Why not? No one to see us. I want to, Howie."
He smiled. She stepped away from him, going down on her knees in front of him and pulling his shorts down far enough that his dick sprang into view. She took hold of it gently, then suddenly harder, using her hold to bring him down to ground level. He knelt in front of her. She still didn't relinquish her hold, but rubbed him until he put his hand over hers and coaxed her fingers away.
"Not good?" she said.
"Too good," he breathed. "I don't want to shoot."
"Shoot?"
"Come. Spurt. Lose it."
"I want you to lose it," she said, lying down in front of him. His dick was now solid against his belly. "I want you to lose it in me."
He leaned over and put his hands on her hips, then began to pull her panties down. The hair around her slit was a darker blonde than her hair, but not much. He put his face to her, and licked between the lips. Her body tensed beneath him, then relaxed.
He ran his tongue up from her cunt to her navel, from her navel to her breasts, from her breasts to her face, until he was lying on top of her.
"I love you," he said, and entered her.
VII
IT WAS only as she was washing the bloodstains from the woman's neck that Tesla came to look more closely at the cross around her neck. She recognized it instantly, as a companion to the medallion Kissoon had shown her. The same central figure, spreadeagled; the same four lines of variations on the human spreading from it.
"Shoal," she said.
The woman opened her eyes. There was no period of coming-to. One moment she was to all intents and purposes asleep. The next her eyes were wide and alert. They were dark gray.
"Where am I?" she said.
"My name's Tesla. You're in my apartment."
"In the Cosm?" the woman said. Her voice was frail; eroded by heat, wind and fatigue.
"Yes," Tesla said. "We're out of the Loop. Kissoon can't get us here."
This she knew was not altogether true. The shaman had twice reached Tesla in this very apartment. Once in her sleep; once while coffee-making. There was nothing, presumably, to stop him doing the same again. But she'd felt no touch from him, nothing at all. Perhaps he was too concerned that she get about her labors on his behalf to interfere. Perhaps he had other plans. Who knew?
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Mary Muralles," she said.
"You're one of the Shoal," Tesla said.
Mary's eyes flickered towards Raul, who was at the door.
"Don't worry," Tesla said. "If you can trust me you can certainly trust him. If you won't trust either of us then we're all lost. So tell me . . ."
"Yes. I'm one of the Shoal."
"Kissoon told me he was the last."
"He and I."
"The rest were murdered, like he said?"
She nodded. Again her gaze went to Raul.
"I told you," Tesla began.
"Something strange about him," Mary said. "He's not human. "
"Don't worry, I know," Tesla said.
"Iad?"
"Ape," she said. She turned to Raul. "Don't mind me telling her do you?"
Raul said and did nothing by way of response.
"How?" Mary wanted to know.
"It's quite a story. I thought maybe you'd know more about it than me. Fletcher? A guy called Jaffe; or the Jaff? No?"
"No."
"So . . . we've both got things to learn."
Back in the wastes of the Loop, Kissoon sat in his hut and called for help. The Muralles woman had escaped. Her wounds were surely profound, but she'd survived worse. He had to reach her, which meant stretching his influence into real time. He'd done it before of course. He'd brought Tesla to him that way. Before her, there'd been a few others who'd strayed along the Jornada del muerto. Randolph Jaffe had been one such wanderer, whom he'd been able to guide into the Loop. It wasn't so difficult. But the influence he wished to exercise now was not upon a human mind, it was upon creatures who had no mind, nor in any legitimate sense were even alive.
He pictured the Lix now, lying inert on a tile floor. They'd been forgotten. Good. They weren't particularly subtle beasts. To work their mischief best they needed the victims distracted. That, at the moment, they surely were. If he was quick he could still silence the witness.
His call had been answered. Help was coming, in crawling hundreds, under the door. Beetles, ants, scorpions. He unlocked his crossed legs and drew his feet up to his body, to give them free access to his genitals. Years ago he'd been able to achieve erection and ejaculation by will alone, but age, and the Loop, had taken its toll. He needed help now, and given that the laws of this suit explicitly forbade the conjuror to touch himself a little artificial aid was required. They knew their business, crawling up over him, the motion of their limbs, and their bites and stings, arousing him. This was the way he'd made the Lix, ejaculating on to his own excrement. Seminal suits had always been his favorite kind.
Now, as they worked on him, he let his thoughts return to the Lix on the tiles, allowing the rolls of sensation climbing his thronged perineum and balls to push his intention out towards the place where they lay.
A little life was all they needed, to bring a little death . . .
Mary Muralles had asked to be told Tesla's story before she told her own, and for all her quiet voice she spoke like a woman whose requests were seldom denied. This one certainly wasn't. Tesla was happy to tell her story, or rather the story (so little of it was hers), as best she could, hoping that Mary would be able to throw some light on its more puzzling details. She held her silence however, until Tesla had finished, which—by the time she'd told what she knew about Fletcher, the Jaff, the children of both, the Nuncio and Kissoon—was close to half an hour. It might have been much longer but that she'd had practice in the craft of concision preparing plot summaries for studios. She'd practiced with Shakespeare (the tragedies were easy, the comedies a bitch) until she'd had the trick of it down pat. But this story was not so easily pigeonholed. When she started to tell the tale it spilled out in all directions. It was a love story and an origin of species. It was about insanity, apathy and a lost ape. When it was tragic, as in Vance's death, it was also farcical. When its settings were most mundane, as at the Mall, its substance was often visionary. She could find no way to tell all this neatly. It refused. Every time she thought she had a clear line to a point something would intersect.
If she said, "It's all connected . . ." once in her telling she said it a dozen times, though she didn't always know (in fact seldom) how or why.
Perhaps Mary could furnish the connections.
"I'm about done," Tesla said. "It's your turn."
The other woman took a moment to gather her strength. Then she said:
"You've certainly got a good grasp of recent events, but you want to know what happened to shape those events. Of course. They're a mystery to you. But I have to say much of it's a mystery to me too. I can't answer all the problems. There's a lot I don't know. If your account proves anything, it's that there's a good deal neither of us knows. But I can tell you some facts straight off. First, and simplest: it was Kissoon who murdered the rest of the Shoal."
"Kissoon? Are you kidding me?"
"I was one of them, remember?" Mary said. "He'd been conspiring against us for years."
"Conspiring with whom?"
"At a guess? The Iad Uroboros. Or their representatives in the Cosm. With the Shoal dead, he might have intended to use the Art, and let the Iad through."
"Shit! So what he told me about the Iad, and Quiddity . . . all of that's true?"
"Oh yes. He only tells lies when he needs to. He told you the truth. That's part of his brilliance—"
"I don't see
what's so brilliant about hiding in a hut—" Tesla said, then: "Wait a minute. This doesn't figure. If he's responsible for the deaths of the Shoal, what's he got to fear? Why's he hiding at all?"
"He isn't hiding. He's trapped there. Trinity's his prison. The only way he can get out—"
"Is by finding another body to get out in."
"Exactly."
"Me."
"Or Randolph Jaffe before you."
"But neither of us fell for it."
"And he doesn't get many visitors. It takes a very extraordinary set of circumstances to bring anyone within sighting distance of the Loop. He created it to hide his crime. Now it hides him. Once in a while somebody like the Jaff—driven half insane—gets to the point where Kissoon can take control, and guide him in. Or you, with the Nuncio in your system. But otherwise, he's alone."
"Why's he trapped?"
"I trapped him. He thought I was dead. Had my body brought into the Loop with the others. But I rose. Confronted him. Angered him to the point where he attacked me, putting my blood on his hands."