by Damon Knight
“Oh, yes. In a thousand years our progress might be seen clearly, to one with sharp eyes,” Silvester Sureman said dismally.
“At least we still have each other, Sharon,” Crispin Babcock wheezed, and he pressed Sharon’s hand.
“Aw, ugh, ugh, ugh,” Sharon said with a complete lack of enthusiasm. “Don’t, Crispin. It’s like being touched by a reptile.”
But it was a pleasantly contrived world that they had made for themselves in the sly hall. The great skylights let the sunlight in during the daylight hours; and there was profuse greenery and striking garden arrangements. Otters played in the stream and in the fountain. The bright weavers were everywhere. Salamanders ran like quicksilver and fire over everything. There were cascades of ivy. Eagles perched on the entrance posts, and there was a certain architecture of pride in the big building and in its people.
“We are all celebrities now, you know,” Conchita Montez mumbled. “People everywhere in the world know us and know who we are. It isn’t much, but it is something. We are valid characters, even if we are only characters for the popular hate-culture.”
“The ultimate pornography, hatred,” Crispin said piously. “Yes, that’s so,” Silvester agreed. “The Projection Lords are not really superior to ourselves any more than an ax murderer is superior to his victims. But there’s no denying that they have the advantage over us, and it may be the ultimate advantage. You do know why they keep a few of us alive?”
“Oh, it’s necessary for the balance of their system that the people and themselves have something to hate intensely,” Baluster said. “And it’s quite true that hating is fun, that it’s a deep and furious pleasure. But we ourselves can’t hate the Projector Lords, and we can’t hate the populace whom they control. They simply are not programmed to be hated, and the Lords have the control of the programming. But we can hate ourselves and others of the outcasts; we can and we do. It’s the last pleasure left to us. That’s what is behind our scapegoat trick that we have agreed upon. By it, some of us will be saved when our company is stricken. We don’t yet know who our scapegoat will be. Whomever the lightning of our hatred strikes first, .that will be the one.”
“They want us out in the open where they can have cleaner shots at hating us,” Conchita said. “Oh well, I guess I want us out in the open too. It’s stifling in here.”
“A three-point-oh-five meter pole, two pairs of mittens, a couple of tin cans, and a length of wire,” said Crispin Babcock. “Who would believe that they would be last-chance things? I don’t know how we will use them yet (it will be given to us in that hour how to use them), but this is the list that comes to my mind for Sharon and myself. And all these things are here among the ritual objects of our own sly hall.”
“It’s remarkable how little hardware they have to use in Person-Projecting,” Silvester Sureman said. “It’s just a combination of coded frequencies to express a displeasure, to contain a person-identification, and to call for an echo, all formed into a wave transmission and set to travel around the world on a common carrier wave. And there is filtering as needed and amplification as needed. And behold! a person is smeared to destruction, forever and to all the world. It’s the Dynasty of Hatred that now obtains in the world.
“And also there is very little software that they have to use in Person-Projecting. A repertoire of hatreds is maintained; it is added to from the residues of broken persons, and it is dispensed freely and rather imaginatively. A person-smear will be manifest to almost every sense including the unorganed intuitive senses. Except smell. Smell is transmitted only by actual physical particles from the smelled object reaching one.
“But could not smell-reminders be triggered electronically? Could not smell be transmitted in some coded fashion? Nothing comes into our minds without a reason, and the sense of strong and murderous smell has just come into my mind. People, is smell the new technique? Is it the attack out of the new dimension? I feel that it is, and I feel that it’s upon us now.”
Wisteria Manford burst into the sly hall. Wisteria had long since fallen into the outcast condition. She had run out of money for her personality maintenance. It is very dangerous to run out of money. And it takes a lot of money to maintain a borderline personality.
“Garden City has fallen!” Wisteria cried. “Exaltation Heights has fallen! Beggar on Horseback has fallen! Snug Harbor and Bright Shores and Citadel and Gold Beach and Pleasant Gardens and Tomorrow Land have all been shattered. All the sly halls are being emptied by this new attack, and we’re next. It’s a stink that they use to split up the people, a killing stink. And it’s coming to us right now.”
Indeed, the first heavy wave of stench had come into the sly hall with Wisteria. They shrank away from her. Through the holes in the walls they shrank away from her. The stench shattered the company, and it changed the sly hall itself completely.
In the light of, in the odor of the new and overpowering stench, the sly hall changed. It does not matter whether the change was subjective or objective. In the new order, there is no difference between the two conditions. The great skylights of the hall—what great skylights?—were sky holes, roof holes. The roof itself was fallen-in and gappy: that’s why there was always sunlight during the daylight hours. The famous greenery of the hall was not so very green. The plants growing there were stinkweed and sick fungus. The otters playing in the stream and the fountain were seen to be rats skulking out of the stagnant water. The bright weavers were uncommon spiders of unusual size and malevolence. The salamanders were snakes. The quicksilver-and-fire was a slimy decay lit up by methane-rot. The ivy was poison ivy. The perched eagles were vultures and buzzards. And the only pride to be found in the hall was the stubborn pride of carrion flesh. The people wanted out of that hateful hall at once. How had they ever gathered in such an offensive place?
With the second heavy wave of stench the people did all burst out of the hall. It was necessary that they get away from their rotten refuge, but it was even more necessary that they get away from each other and the foulness of their former company. The supreme necessity was that they should get away from their stinking selves, but how was that to be accomplished? But Crispin Babcock, in spite of the furious urge to be gone, did pick up certain ritual objects.
With the third heavy wave of killing stench, the scapegoats were chosen blindly by the scattering company. And those scapes whom the lightning of hatred struck first and most violently were—
4
We are the stenchy actors cast
In the reeky, smelliferous role.
We are the folks that nobody dast
To touch with a ten-foot pole.
—Rotten People's Rollicks
* * *
Those scapegoats whom the lightning of the hatred struck first and hardest were Crispin and Sharon Babcock. All the people broke away from Crispin and Sharon in revulsion, and they looked at each other in sniggering horror.
“At least we still have each other,” Crispin said sickly.
“If you say that once more I’ll scream my head off!” Sharon wailed.
“Small loss if you did. Gahl What a head!” Crispin shouted.
And yet they were still in accord, a little bit. People truly in love will always be a little bit in accord. There was something valiant about their response. Both of them realized at the same time what to do with the ritual objects. Each of them put one mitten on his end of the 3.05 meter pole and the other mitten on his hand to hold it. They rigged the length of wire between the two tin cans and made a kids’ telephone. Crispin and Sharon had been children together and had talked on tin-can phones before. They still cared for each other mightily, but oh, how they both did stink! Was there any possible way that the 3.05 meter pole would be long enough?
But when they talked to each other on the tin-can telephone much of the ugly, sound-clashing horror had gone out of their voices. Here was a sound filter that nobody knew about except themselves. Their words had a rusty sound, but they were not ot
herwise offensive. Here was something that all the Person-Projector companies had overlooked. If they had known about it they would have done a job on tin cans also, to make any sound coming through them repellent.
The two Babcocks headed into a stiff wind that blew the smell off them pretty well. Why, this would be almost bearable, this life together-apart! Only ten feet apart, and they could breathe. They were hooded and shrouded, of course, and could never actually see each other again, but remembered appearances came to them that were a little less horrible than they had been used to in more recent times. Each pressed his end of the pole with a mittened hand, and it was almost like holding hands again.
They even became a little bit jocular in their rusty-voiced banter back and forth.
“Ship to shore, ship to shore! My wife is a rot-head, smelly bore,” Crispin bawled into his tin can, and they both laughed. “Ship to shore” and “Shore to ship” had been their tin-can telephone code when they were children.
“Shore to ship, shore to ship! With his wobbly brains and his wobbly lip.” Sharon laughed a rusty jeer.
Oh, somehow things would still be tolerable between them, despite the fact that they were the smelliest and lowest outcasts in the land! Even the birds veered away from them in the air. But if they kept a firm grip on the pole they could keep from flying apart. If the strong breeze held forever (they needed that to keep their smell from building to critical intensity), if they didn’t begin to think about the situation again, if there was not another assault to drive them finally into sick insanity, if—
There was another assault, the fourth heavy wave of killing stench and hatred. And both fell to the ground. This would be the death of them, and the joy of many millions of people who had picked up the tang and rhythm of the drama and disintegration.
But the last problem of Crispin and Sharon was holding off that ultimate hatred. Could they delay the mortal hatred for each other until merciful death should have taken them?
No, of course they couldn’t delay it. It was the mortal hatred that killed them. The Hand with One Hundred Fingers will not be cheated by any last-minute tricks.
MEATHOUSE MAN
His hands were machines, his heart a nuclear furnace, and he stripped the planet bare, looking for love.
George R. R. Martin
1. IN THE MEATHOUSE
They came straight from the ore fields that first time, Trager with the others, the older boys, the almost-men who worked their corpses next to his. Cox was the oldest of the group, and he’d been around the most, and he said that Trager had to come even if he didn’t want to. Then one of the others laughed and said that Trager wouldn’t even know what to do, but Cox the kind-of leader shoved him until he was quiet. And when payday came, Trager trailed the rest to the meathouse, scared but somehow eager, and he paid his money to a man downstairs and got a room key.
He came into the dim room trembling, nervous. The others had gone to other rooms, had left him alone with her (no, it, not her but it, he reminded himself, and promptly forgot again). In a shabby gray cubicle with a single smoky light.
He stank of sweat and sulfur, like all who walked the streets of Skrakky, but there was no help for that. It would be better if he could bathe first, but the room did not have a bath. Just a sink, a double bed with sheets that looked dirty even in the dimness, a corpse.
She lay there naked, staring at nothing, breathing shallowly. Her legs were spread, ready. Was she always that way, Trager wondered, or had the man before him arranged her like that? He didn’t know. He knew how to do it (he did, he did, he’d read the books Cox gave him, and there were films you could see, and all sorts of things), but he didn’t know much of anything else. Except maybe how to handle corpses. That he was good at, the youngest handler on Skrakky, but he had to be. They had forced him into the handlers’ school when his mother died, and they made him learn, so that was the thing he did. This, this he had never done (but he knew how, yes, yes, he did); it was his first time.
He came to the bed slowly and sat, to a chorus of creaking springs. He touched her and the flesh was warm. Of course. The body was alive enough, a heart beat under the heavy white breasts, she breathed. Only the brain was gone, replaced with a deadman’s synthabrain. She was meat now, an extra body for a corpse handler to control, just like the crew he worked each day under sulfur skies. She was not a woman. So it did not matter that Trager was just a boy, a jowly frog-faced boy who smelled of Skrakky. She (no, it, remember?) would not care, could not care.
Emboldened, aroused and hard, the boy stripped off his corpse handler’s clothing and climbed in bed with the female meat. He was very excited; his hands shook as he stroked her, studied her. Her skin was very white, her hair dark and long, but even the boy could not call her pretty. Her face was too flat and wide, her mouth hung open, and her limbs were loose and sagging with fat.
On her huge breasts, all around the fat dark nipples, the last customer had left toothmarks where he’d chewed her. Trager touched the marks tentatively, traced them with a finger. Then, sheepish about his hesitations, he grabbed one breast, squeezed it hard, pinched the nipple until he imagined a real girl would squeal with pain. The corpse did not move. Still squeezing, he rolled over on her and took the other breast into his mouth.
And the corpse responded.
She thrust up at him, hard; her meaty arms wrapped around his pimpled back to pull him to her. Trager groaned and reached down between her legs. She was hot, wet, excited. He trembled. How did they do that? Could she really get excited without a mind, or did they have lubricating tubes stuck into her, or what?
Then he stopped caring. He fumbled, found his penis, put it into her, thrust. The corpse hooked her legs around him and thrust back. It felt good, real good, better than anything he’d ever done to himself, and in some obscure way he felt proud that she was so wet and so excited.
It took only a few strokes; he was too new, too young, too eager to last long. A few strokes was all he needed—but it was all she needed too. They came together, a red flush washing over her skin as she arched against him and shook silently.
Afterward she lay again like a corpse.
Trager was drained and satisfied, but he had more time left, and he was determined to get his money’s worth. He explored her thoroughly, sticking his fingers everywhere they would go, touching her everywhere, rolling her over, looking at everything. The corpse moved like dead meat.
He left her as he’d found her, lying face up on the bed with her legs apart. Meathouse courtesy.
The horizon was a wall of factories, all factories, vast belching factories that sent red shadows to flicker against the sulfur-dark skies. The boy saw but hardly noticed. He was strapped in place high atop his automill, two stories up on a monster machine of corroding yellow-painted metal with savage teeth of diamond and duralloy, and his eyes were blurred with triple images. Clear and strong and hard he saw the control panel before him, the wheel, the fuel-feed, the bright handle of the ore scoops, the banks of lights that would tell of trouble in the refinery under his feet, the brake and emergency brake. But that was not all he saw. Dimly, faintly, there were echoes: overlaid images of two other control cabs, almost identical to his, where corpse hands moved clumsily over the instruments.
Trager moved those hands, slow and careful, while another part of his mind held his own hands, his real hands, very still. The corpse controller hummed thinly on his belt.
On either side of him, the other two automills moved into flanking positions. The corpse hands squeezed the brakes; the machines rumbled to a halt. On the edge of the great sloping pit, they stood in a row, shabby pitted juggernauts ready to descend into the gloom. The pit was growing steadily larger; each day new layers of rock and ore were stripped away.
Once a mountain range had stood here, but Trager did not remember that.
The rest was easy. The automills were aligned now. To move the crew in unison was a cinch; any decent handler could do that. It was only
when you had to keep several corpses busy at several different tasks that things got tricky. But a good corpse handler could do that, too. Eight-crews were not unknown to veterans— eight bodies linked to a single corpse controller, moved by a single mind and eight synthabrains. The deadmen were each tuned to one controller and only one; the handler who wore that controller and thought corpse-thoughts in its proximity field could move those deadmen like secondary bodies. Or like his own body. If he was good enough.
Trager checked his filtermask and earplugs quickly, then touched the fuel feed, engaged, flicked on the laser knives and the drills. His corpses echoed his moves, and pulses of light spat through the twilight of Skrakky. Even through his plugs he could hear the awful whine as the ore scoops revved up and lowered. The rock-eating maw of an automill was even wider than the machine was tall.
Rumbling and screeching, in perfect formation, Trager and his corpse crew descended into the pit. Before they reached the factories on the far side of the plain, tons of metal would have been torn from the earth, melted and refined and processed, while the worthless rock was reduced to powder and blown out into the already unbreathable air. He would deliver finished steel at dusk, on the horizon.
He was a good handler, Trager thought as the automills started down. But the handler in the meathouse—now she must be an artist. He imagined her down in the cellar somewhere, watching each of her corpses through holos and psi circuits, humping them all to please her patrons. Was it just a fluke, then, that his fuck had been so perfect? Or was she always that good? But how, how, to move a dozen corpses without even being near them, to have them doing different things, to keep them all excited, to match the needs and rhythm of each customer so exactly?