Her thin, sweet voice echoed the way voices do in empty buildings. Crispin slumped against the wall of the stairwell, closing his eyes. It was dark inside the house and hot. Outside, the sun bathed the blackened streets, and the Dead looters rampaged surreptitiously.
But I sang a song as I carried my load
Because I had a dream about Rainbow Road...”
Crispin brushed his fingers over his most recently acquired gun—it was a Disciple’s Creddezi-made 26 Nen Shiki Kenju, firing rimmed .9 cartridges—and tiptoed upward. At the top of the house the heat was suffocating. Others had been here and taken the most valuable furnishings, leaving carpets torn-up, chairs overturned, family portraits ripped from walls. Outside the door of the master bedroom Crispin paused again to listen.
“Then one day
My chance came along
A man heard me singing and playing these old songs
He bought me fine clothes
Paid the money I owed
Started me on my way down Rainbow Road...”
He pushed open the door. She stood on the far side of the room in front of a full-length mirror. Her face was painted as if she were going to a party. Her flounced silk gown was too big for her: she held it gathered over her bosom with one hand and had been pinning it to size with the other. “Keep on singing,” Crispin told her. “You may have lost your lo-lute, but apparently you never needed it.”
“But I—I—found others,” she said after a moment, and pointed to the four-poster bed. On the ripped mattress were stacked more than three dozen lo-lutes, expensive and cheap, large and small, in different states of repair, their plump curved bodies cuddled together like puppies. So Ashie hadn’t been immune to the looter’s impulse either! This shocked Crispin unreasonably. But in light of the story she told him and Fumia and Mickey later, sitting around the refugees’ campfire in the suburbs, it made a good deal more sense. She’d fought like an animal to survive, and as a result come through in one piece.
Crispin tore his gaze from the waltz of lights in the window and focused on a pink peacock girl as a point of reference, following her swaying progress between the tables. He’d forgotten for a moment where he was. It unnerved him. Why was he able mentally to transport himself back to Okimako so easily? It was over, finished, done!
The fact was that his mistakes still gnawed at him. He’d wanted to do the best he could for his friends, but he’d gone about it all wrong. Civilians simply couldn’t obey orders, he knew that, and so he should have adopted the tones of a nursemaid instead of a drill sergeant. But he hadn’t had the patience to play games. He gave it to them straight, refusing to make light of the situation, and Fumia recoiled in horror, and Ashie dragged her feet, and Mickey took their side. Mickey, too, seemed to have been changed by the cataclysm from a friend into a stranger: a burden and an opponent in one.
In fact, his allying himself with his sisters hadn’t been a matter of course, but the result of a good deal of soul-searching. If only, Crispin thought, I’d realized that before it was too late for anything to make a difference!
On the first night they arrived in Swirling, he and Mickey had left the girls at Mme. Dunni’s and gone out, ostensibly in search of cheaper lodgings. Knowing how unlikely they were to find any—they’d been lucky to get rooms at all—they agreed, an hour into their inquiries, to give up and get drunk. They deserved to celebrate; they’d made it here; they were the champions, the survivors. Crispin remembered a sense of accomplishment, as if the decision to become inebriated was as great a feat as having survived the Fire of 1212. After carousing at six different bars in the Yellow Depths district, they stumbled euphorically out into the street.
“You’re a real friend,” Mickey choked. “Never had a better. Never repay you.”
“Don’t talk ‘bout repayment. I owe ‘s much to you ‘s you do to me.”
“S’pose it does all even out in the end, doesn’it? Still alive. That’s what counts.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway.” Crispin was impatient with this talk of debts. He feared losing his tenuous hold on happiness. It was so late that nobody was about except for tipplers stumbling out of the taverns. Sleep enforced a temporary truce between the folk of Swirling and the refugees who had crowded into their city. The voice of the Yellow, which never paused for breath, drowned out all other noise: Crispin felt as if he were suspended in time, cocooned in nothingness. Drink thickened the flesh of Mickey’s face. Anxiety showed on his every feature.
“You’re not really gonna leave, are you, Cris? You were just bullshitting.”
“I don’t bullshit.” Crispin saw blurrily that he’d hurt Mickey when he hadn’t meant to. “Course I’m not gonna leave. I’d have to be crazy to leave my—my only friend.”
Mickey grimaced. “You’d have to be crazy to stay here when you don’t have to! Not like me!”
“Hush!”
“If only it wasn’t for my sisters!”
Crispin had completely forgotten the girls. But for Mickey it was a different story: he never stopped being conscious of his obligations to them, and Crispin knew that no matter how he complained, he never stopped loving them. Sadness and frustration washed through him. “Why’ve you always got to drag them into it, huh?”
“I wasn’t dragging them into it!” Mickey groped for him, pulled him close with his single arm. Crispin felt him shiver, the length of his body pressed against him. “I was just saying it was a pity we couldn’t—couldn’t...”
“Time was you wouldn’t tell me anything about them. You used to be as close-mouthed as a fucking deaf-mute.”
“I never,” Mickey protested, his head hanging, his arm slipping opportunistically around Crispin’s waist. “I never. I would have told you anything you wanted to know. You know me. I’d do anything for you.”
It was the truth. He had, and probably still would. If Crispin had been drunker, he might have tried to extract a promise from him. But his conscience (that plaguey voice of self-criticism which not even alcohol could quite silence anymore) wouldn’t let him. In this strange city, in this dark street filled with the disembodied voice of the river, his freedom was sharply circumscribed. He couldn’t think of any way to show Mickey how much he meant to him. Fumbling, he reached for Mickey’s chin, turned his face to him and kissed him, pressuring Mickey’s lips open with his tongue, kissing him deeper than he’d ever kissed a girl. He knew it was the worst imaginable falseness, but he couldn’t pull away because now Mickey was wrapping his whole body around him in a belated, stunned reciprocation. The embrace felt like a contest of erotic aggression, and Crispin, caught up in the moment, thrust himself against Mickey. Mickey’s arousal felt like a lump of hot metal.
“Having a good time, boys?” Laughter came from the shadows.
“Damn straight,” Crispin shouted, his voice cracking. “You should be so lucky!”
He gave them the finger, then bent his head, breathing Mickey’s breath. Now he had some idea of what it would be like to be alone with him in the dark, taking new liberties. He couldn’t wait. He was afraid that if he waited he would lose his nerve. “Let’s go home.”
“Home. Hah. But—but at least we’ll have it to ourselves.” Mickey’s lips were parted. His breath came fast. His arm around Crispin’s shoulders spasmed.
Crispin wetted his forefinger, touched it to Mickey’s lower lip, then reached down and curled his hand briefly around Mickey’s erection. It was all he could do not to slide his hand inside Mickey’s breeches. He could imagine the hot, ridged skin. He could almost taste it. As they hurried back to the lodging house he had very little idea of where they were going. His head whirled with sick excitement and liquor. It must have been some thread of sanity remaining to Mickey that brought them eventually to Mme. Dunni’s, and to their room on the fifth floor. At that time they had it to themselves. The elderly baronet was already staying in the lodging house, but the landlady hadn’t yet come to grips with the fact that by cramming three people into a room,
she could double her profits. So it was Crispin and Mickey alone with the bed. The splintery floor didn’t even enter Crispin’s consciousness, it could have been a mile down through clouds from the soft platform on which they fought. How should he have known that that was where he would end up sleeping on every subsequent night in Swirling? Desire knew how to fulfill itself. And it didn’t feel as different from normal sex as Crispin had expected. A climax was a climax. And promises were promises. Mouths used in other ways than to form words. Gasped confessions. I love you. I need you. I’ve never cared about anyone as much as I do about you. This makes it perfect, perfect—if I died tonight I’d die happy—
How on earth could I have been so selfish? he wondered in the Pink Peacock, his cheeks burning with shame, his body warm with the memory of his participation in that folly.
He remembered waking in the night, abruptly wide-awake and clearheaded. He was too hot. Mickey lay sprawled naked under the covers, his arm and one of his legs lying over Crispin’s body. Crispin said aloud, “I am leaving, you know.”
Mickey rolled away and said, “What?” Crispin realized, sickeningly, that he hadn’t been asleep. Perhaps he hadn’t gone to sleep at all, but had lain awake, surreptitiously cuddling, cherishing the afterglow. The thought turned Crispin’s stomach.
“I’ll have to leave now,” he said bitterly.
“Is that why you did it?” Mickey’s voice was sharp with pain. “So you’d have an excuse?”
“Queen! Give me some credit.”
“I had been going to.”
“I was drunk.”
“Oh, please, That’s the oldest one in the book.”
“You can’t have failed to realize by now that there’s no way we could all live together without killing each other.” Crispin strove to keep himself from sounding bitter. “Second fiddle isn’t my style.”
“You come first with me,” Mickey said defiantly, and tried to kiss him.
“Don’t make me sick,” Crispin said. “Anything I may have said last night was the wine talking. I had assumed it was the same with you.”
“So I’m not allowed to take anything you say seriously when you have liquor in you. Notify me, will you, when that isn’t the case—next year, maybe? But of course, I should have guessed.” Mickey dropped, startlingly, into Ferupian. “The esteemed Captain Kateralbin would never tell anyone he loved him. Or her. Beneath his dignity, quite. Honor demands iron-fisted control of the passions. Of a surety it was the wine talking.”
“You know what I mean!” Crispin rolled over. With his face to the wall he said, trusting Mickey to know what he meant, “Ashie and Fumia will have heard every last creak, you know. These walls are as thin as air.”
“I hope they did,” Mickey said. “I do hope they did. Fumia in particular. That should take her down a notch or two!”
Crispin rolled over again—he was starting to feel frenzied—and glanced at the pale face whose lips were tightened as they had once been when Mickey paraded for inspection with the other regulars. Crispin had called him close-mouthed. He’d forgotten what Mickey was really like when he was close-mouthed. “You do—you do love her, don’t you, Mick? Fumia, that is. I know you love Ashie, but Fumie—well, sometimes I think it’s all an act.”
“She’s my sister!”
Mickey had not answered the question. Had he done it deliberately, or was the answer supposed to be self-evident? What was supposed to be self-evident?
“And that’s the hell of it! Because—oh, I’ve told you and told you what I wish were possible. What’s the point?”
“Feeling the pricks of responsibility, eh?” Crispin said absently.
“Shut up!”
Why can’t I tell what he’s thinking anymore? Crispin wondered in the silence. I don’t even feel like I know him anymore. Did I ever know him? The uncertainty was horrible, and if they’d lain there much longer in silence, it might have driven him to honesty. But sleep, the original traitor, betrayed him. And the next thing he knew, light was flooding through the uncurtained window, and they were dressing side by side and washing in the same basin, flicking water over each other as they always did. And it was all over.
And sometimes Crispin could still persuade himself it had been a dream.
But if that was a dream, what was real?
Nothing’s been real since I lost them. Akele Belamis Favis Kendris Mishime Indele, the double-crossing little gorgon-fuckers.
He tipped his brandy glass to his lips. The liquor had somehow disappeared. Just to wet his throat, he reached for an empty on a neighboring table and drained the dregs. Then he lit a cigarette. The tobacco, southern paperweed, was so harsh it made his throat ache, but he welcomed any stimulation. He was still very drunk. He rested his head on his cigarette hand and stared down at the table. Someone was calling his name from a great distance, over the hubbub of talk, laughter, and steel music. He looked up.
One of the Lamaroons was coming across the room, waving and grinning. He stood over Crispin’s table, pumping his hand. He wore clothes that looked like Okimakoan summer wear at first glance, but were dyed in southern-bright pastels and had a foreign drape, especially in the long coat, which was more of a dashiki. “My dear old friend! How absurdly fortuitous! I repeat: how fantastically fortuitous!”
Crispin’s nose prickled with the metallic scent of daemons. It cleared his head in a matter of seconds. He stood up. “Who would ever have thought it? You sneaky bastard, Beiin!”
It couldn’t be, it was. Beiin, the Lamaroon Genius Player, con man and survivalist extraordinaire!
“Come and meet my friends—your countrymen!”
This autumn —
Why have I aged?
A bird in the clouds
gathering in the west, in the direction of Rouen, twisting rapidly in black swirls; out from behind them shot great sun rays, like the golden arrows of a hanging trophy; sunset was an omen of evil; it ran in deep tinctures of iodine.
—Matsuo Basho; Gustave Flaubert; Yukio Mishima
Another Sky
Novambar 1896 A.D. The Likreky Sea.
The Parrot Girl was a tramp turbine eighty feet in length. Her cargo remained a mystery although she was down in the water, both her big holds filled. She had two masts, but Crispin never saw them rigged; her skipper, Hasp Jiharzii, had no qualms about using as many barrels of splinterons as necessary to make the crossing on daemon power alone. Demogorgons named Tamine and Heletheris strove day and night in the ship’s transformation engines. It seemed to Crispin that they were the only two on board who did any work. Beiin went below, occasionally, to give them pep talks; by Crispin’s standards the Myrhhean was neglecting his duties as a handler, but perhaps his skills as a trickster enabled him to bypass the silver collars and shackles and go straight for the daemons’ withered minds. And, of course, as Beiin well knew, persuasion was more efficient than force.
The crew’s main duty was to keep the daemons fed. The rest of the time they lounged in the fo’c’sle, smoking dazeflower, drinking, and swapping stories of their conquests. The Parrot Girl was overall in a sad, dirty state of disrepair. When you touched a handle it fell off; when you hauled on a rope it broke. At first Crispin tried to make himself useful by doing repairs, but every cupboard that might have held supplies was locked, and the keys hung on Jiharzii’s belt, next to the keys of the cargo holds. The skipper countered all attempts to procure them with a smile and an invitation for Crispin to come have a drink and tell another story of his wanderings.
The skipper seemed excessively interested in the places Crispin had been and the things he had done. Crispin asked Beiin why this might be. The genius player looked shifty and averred that all islanders liked tales. Condescendingly, he added that Crispin would soon get used to the ways of “his countrymen.”
Crispin doubted this. He doubted, too—as the Parrot Girl continued her slow, roachlike progress across the uneasy sea—whether the ship’s peculiarities had anything to do with the fact tha
t she was Lamaroon-owned and operated. Not all Likreky ships were shabby—one sight of the Sjintang seaport in daylight had been enough to confirm that. And not all Lamaroons were lazy. Most of the longshoremen at Sjintang were Likreky men. That morning, as Crispin and Beiin walked out to the tug that was to take them to the Parrot Girl, Crispin had looked around and thought that he might have been able to find work after being laid off from the Oilflower, after all, without having to break his anti-daemon vow. Beiin’s emphasis on Likreky solidarity had assured him that it would serve, in a pinch, as a contact: that was how the genius player had introduced him to Jiharzii, as a Lamaroon, a daemon handler only incidentally.
But even in the teeth of a hangover, he’d shuddered at the thought of staying an hour longer in Sjintang. And anyway they’d shaken hands on it. He was to work for his passage to Redeuiina.
At the time he had believed that he’d become a slave-hire. He’d even commented wryly on it. Jiharzii had given his all-purpose guffaw. But once the Parrot Girl got under way, Crispin was allowed—required, even—to be as idle as the rest of the crew. The southern manifesto, that nothing was worth exerting oneself for, seemed to govern their behavior even when a storm hit four days out. The men holed themselves up in the fo’c’sle and watched the seas boil over the cargo decks. Now and then they moved to the portholes to comment (presumably) on the weather. They spoke Lamaroon almost all the time. Since this appeared to be nothing more than force of habit, as opposed to a deliberate maneuver to exclude Crispin, there wasn’t much he could do about it. He listened, trying to get the hang of the language, hoping for some buried childhood memory of it to surface; but all Anuei had ever taught him were the obscenities she taught everyone in the circus.
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