The thief materialized in the shadow of a conversing waterfall. The air sparked like a dust circuit for a moment, and then he was there; back flat to the wall, a deeper black against the shadow, a stretch fabric suit and hood covering every inch of his body from feet to fingertips. Only his eyes were naked to the night. He stood there, motionless, as the waterfall talked to itself. It had been programmed to deter suicides, and it was reciting reassurances.
“You don’t really think you’ll find peace in killing yourself, do you?” the waterfall bubbled. “Who knows what lies on the other side? Perhaps it’ll be just the same, and you’ll be aware of yourself as an entity, but you’ll be dead, and helpless to save yourself, and you’ll spend who-knows-how-long—perhaps an eternity—suffering the same anguish you knew when you were alive. But you’ll be trapped in death, and unable to get out. Wouldn’t that be awful? Instead, why don’t we talk about what’s troubling you—”
The thief dematerialized; the waterfall splashed on to itself.
He reappeared on the fiftieth level, in a frozen park. Standing beside a juniper encased in luminescent blue ice, he came into existence, checked the bag of electronic alarm-confounders, satisfied himself it was tied on securely, and started to wink-out again. He paused, half dematerialized, and stared across the park at the diorama of the Neanderthalers driving a herd of ibex off a cliff. The ice block was enormous, holding the cliff, the chasm, thirty of the graceful horned beasts, and half a hundred cavemen. It had been quarried from a site in Krapina, Yugoslavia by a timelock team that had frozen the moment 110,000 years before. It was an excellent display, art-directed by someone prestigious, perhaps Boltillon under a grant from Therox.
For a moment longer he considered the great scene, thinking how trapped they were, thinking how free he was, not even walls of ice to contain him. Then he vanished.
He came back to existence, brute matter, on the three-quarter-inch ledge outside a dreamcell apartment on the ninetieth level. He was flattened against the force screen that served as its outer wall. It was opaque, and he lay against it like a smear of rainbow oil. He could not be seen from inside, where the wealthy ones he intended to rob lay quietly, dreaming. But he could be seen by the scanning tower at the top of the Westminster Cathedral complex. Invisible beams blanketed London from the tower, watching. Registering intrusive action. He smiled and withdrew one of the confounders from the bag. It was a ladybug deranger; he palmed it onto the force screen wall and it tapped into the power source, and he felt the tension ease. Then he diffused himself, and reappeared inside the dreamcell.
The family lay in their pods, the gel rippling ever so slightly at every muscle spasm. The inner walls were a dripping golden lustrousness, molten metal running endlessly down into bottomless depths where the floor should have been. He had no idea what they were dreaming, but the women were lying moistly locked together in soixante-neuf and the men were wearing reflective metal headache bands over their eyes. The men were humming in soprano tones.
He vanished and reappeared in the lock room. The force screens were up, protecting the valuables, and the thief went down on his haunches, the bag of confounders dangling between his thighs. He whistled softly to himself, considering the proper tool, and finally withdrew a starfish passby. It scuttled across the floor and touched a screen with its dorsal cirri. The screens sputtered, changing hue, then winked out. The thief dematerialized and reappeared inside the vault.
He ignored the jewelry and the credit cards and selected the three pressure-capped tubes of Antarean soul-radiant, worth, on the black market, all the jewels in the lock room.
He disassembled himself and winked back into existence outside the force screen perimeter, retrieved the starfish, and vanished again, to appear on the ledge. The ladybug went into the bag, and he was gone once more.
When he materialized on the fifty-first level, in the Fuller Geodex, the Catman was waiting, and before the thief could vanish again, the policeman had thrown up a series of barriers that would have required everything in the bag to counteract, plus a few the thief had not considered necessary on this job.
The Catman had a panther, a peregrine falcon and two cheetahs with him. They were inside the barrier ring, and they were ready. The falcon sat on the Catman’s forearm, and the cats began padding smoothly toward the thief.
“Don’t make me work them,” the Catman said.
The thief smiled, though the policeman could not see it. The hood covered the thief’s face. Only the eyes were naked. He stared at the Catman in his skin cape and sunburst eagle’s helmet. They were old acquaintances.
The cheetahs circled, narrowing in toward him. He teleported himself to the other side of the enclosed space. The Catman hissed at the falcon and it soared aloft, dove at the thief, and flew through empty space. The thief stood beside the Catman.
“Earn your pay,” the thief said. His voice was muffled. It would make a voice-print, but not an accurate one; it would be insufficient in a court of law.
The Catman made no move to touch the thief. There was no point to it. “You can’t avoid me much longer.”
“Perhaps not.” He vanished as the panther slid toward him on its belly, bunching itself to strike.
“But then, perhaps I don’t want to,” he said.
The Catman hissed again, and the falcon flew to his armored wrist. “Then why not come quietly. Let’s be civilized.”
The thief chuckled deep in his throat, but without humor. “That seems to be the problem right there.” The cheetahs passed through space he no longer occupied.
“You’re simply all too bloody marvelous civilized; I crave a little crudeness.”
“We’ve had this conversation before,” said the Catman, and there was an odd note of weariness in his voice…for an officer of the law at last in a favorable position with an old adversary. “Please surrender quietly; the cats are nervous tonight; there was a glasscab accident on the thirty-sixth and they wafted a strong blood scent. It’s difficult holding them in check.”
As he spoke, the pavane of strike and vanish, hold and go, pounce and invisibility continued, around and around the perimeter ring. Overhead, the Fuller Geodex absorbed energy from the satellite power stars Day Dusk&Dawn Co, Ltd. had thrown into the sky, converted the energy to the city’s use, providing from its silver mesh latticework the juice to keep London alive. It was the Geodex dome that held sufficient backup force to keep the perimeter ring strong enough to thwart the thief. He dodged in and out of reach of the cats; the falcon tracked him, waiting.
“It’s taking you longer to do it each time,” said the Catman.
The thief dematerialized five times rather quickly as the two cheetahs worked an inwardly spiraling pattern, pressing him toward a center where the panther waited patiently. “Worry about yourself,” he said, breathing hard.
The falcon dove from the Catman’s shoulder in a shallow arc, its wingspread slicing a fourth of the ring at head-height. The thief materialized, lying on his back, at the inner edge of the ring behind the Catman.
The panther bunched and sprang, and the thief rolled away, the stretch suit suddenly open down one side as the great cat’s claws ripped the air. Then the thief was gone…
…to reappear behind the panther.
The thief held the ladybug deranger in his palm. Even as the panther sensed the presence behind him, the thief slapped the deranger down across the side of the massive head. Then the thief blinked out again.
The panther bolted, rose up on its hind legs and, without a sound, exploded.
Gears and cogs and printed circuits and LSI chips splattered against the inside of the perimeter ring…bits of pseudoflesh and infra-red eyeballs and smears of lubricant sprayed across the invisible bubble.
The empty husk of what had been the panther lay smoking in the center of the arena. The thief appeared beside the Catman. He said nothing.
The Catman looked away. He could not stare at the refuse that had been black swiftness moments before. The thief said, “I’m sorry I had to do that.”
There was a piping, sweet note in the air, and the cheetahs and the falcon froze. The falcon on the Catman’s shoulder, the cheetahs sniffing at the pile of death with its stench of ozone. The tone came again. The Catman heaved a sigh, as though he had been released from some great oppression. A third time, the tone, followed by a woman’s voice: “Shift end, Officer. Your jurisdiction ends now. Thank you for your evening’s service. Goodspeed to you, and we’ll see you nextshift, tomorrow at eleven-thirty P.M.” The tone sounded once more—it was pink—and the perimeter ring dissolved.
The thief stood beside the Catman for a few more moments. “Will you be all right?”
The Catman nodded slowly, still looking away.
The thief watched him for a moment longer, then vanished. He reappeared at the far side of the Geodex and looked back at the tiny figure of the Catman, standing unmoving. He continued to watch till the police officer walked to the heap of matted and empty blackness, bent and began gathering up the remnants of the panther. The thief watched silently, the weight of the Antarean soul-radiant somehow oppressively heavy in the bag of confounders.
The Catman took a very long time to gather up his dead stalker. The thief could not see it from where he stood, so far away, but he knew the Catman was crying.
The air sparked around him…as though he had not quite decided to teleport himself…and in fact he had not been able to make the decision…and the air twinkled with infinitesimal scintillae…holes made in the fabric of normal space through which the displaced air was drawn, permitting the thief to teleport…the sparkling points of light actually the deaths of muons as they were sucked through into that not-space…and still he could not decide.
Then he vanished and reappeared beside the Catman.
“Can I help you?”
The Catman looked away quickly. But the thief saw the tears that had run down the Catman’s black cheeks. “No, thank you, I’ll be all right. I’m almost finished here.” He held a paw.
The thief drew a deep breath. “Will you be home for dinner tonight?”
The Catman nodded. “Tell your mother I’ll be along in a little while.”
The thief went away from there, in twenty level leaps, quickly, trying not to see a black hand holding an even blacker paw.
They sit silently at the dinner table. Neil Leipzig cannot look at his father. He sits cross-legged on the thin pneumatic cushion, the low teak table before him; the Estouffade de boeuf on his plate vanishes and reappears. It is wallaby, smothered in wine sauce and “cellar vegetables” from sub-level sixteen-North. It continues to appear and disappear.
“Stop playing with your food,” Neil Leipzig’s mother says, sharply.
“Leave me alone; I’m not hungry,” he says.
They sit silently. His father addresses his food, and eats quickly but neatly.
“How was your shiftday?” Neil Leipzig’s mother says.
Neither of the men looks up. She repeats the question, adding, “Lew.” His father looks up, nods abstractedly, does not answer, returns to his plate.
“Why is it impossible to get a civil word out of you in the evening,” she says. There is an emerging tone in her voice, a tone of whitewater rapids just beyond the bend. “I ask: why is it impossible for you to speak to your family?”
Keep eating, don’t let her do it to you again, Neil Leipzig thinks. He moves the cubes of soybean curd around in the sauce madère until they are all on the right side of the plate. Keep silent, tough up, he thinks.
“Lewis!”
His father looks up. “I think I’ll go downstairs and take a nap, after dinner.” His eyes seem very strange; there is a film over them; something gelatinous; as though he is looking out from behind a thick, semi-opaque membrane; neither Neil nor his mother can read the father’s thoughts from those eyes.
She shakes her head and snorts softly, as though she is infinitely weary of dealing with those who persist in their arrogance and stupidity; there was none of that in what the father had said. Let him alone, can’t you? Neil Leipzig thinks.
“We’re out of deeps,” the mother says.
“I won’t need them,” the father says.
“You know you can’t sleep without a deep, don’t try and tell me you can. We’re out, someone will have to order more.”
Neil Leipzig stands up. “I’ll order them; finish your dinner.”
He goes into the main room and punches out the order on the board. He codes it to his mother’s personal account. Let her pay, he thinks. The confirmation tones sound, and he returns to the table. From the delivery chute comes the sound of the spansules arriving. He stands there staring down at his parents, at the top of his father’s head, black and hairless, faintly mottled; at his mother’s face, pale and pink, heavily freckled from the treatment machine she persists in using though the phymech advises her it is having a deleterious effect on her skin: she wants a tan for her own reasons but is too fair and redheaded for it to take, and she merely freckles. She has had plasticwork done on her eyes, they slant in a cartoon imitation of the lovely Oriental curve.
He is brown.
“I have to go out for a while.”
His father looks up. Their eyes meet.
“No. Nothing like that,” he lies. His father looks away.
His mother catches the exchange. “Is there something new between you two?”
Neil turns away. She follows him with her eyes as he starts for the tunnel to his own apartments. “Neil! What is all this? Your father acts like a burnout, you won’t eat, I’ve had just about enough of this! Why do you two continue to torment me, haven’t I had enough heartache from the both of you? Now you come back here, right here, right now, I want us to have this out.” He stops.
He turns around. His expression is a disguise.
“Mother, do us both a favor,” he says, quite clearly, “kindly shut your mouth and leave me alone.” He goes into the tunnel, is reduced to a beam of light, is fired through the tunnel to his apartments seven miles away across the arcology called London, is retranslated, vanishes.
His mother turns to her husband. Alone now, freed of even the minor restraints imposed on her by the presence of her son, she assumes a familiar emotional configuration. “Lewis.”
He wants to go lie down. He wants that very much.
“I want to know!”
He shakes his head gently. He merely wants to be left alone. There is very little of the Catman now; there is almost too much of Lewis Leipzig. “Please, Karin…it was a miserable shiftday.”
She slips her blouse down off one perfect breast. The fine powder-white lines of the plasticwork radiate out from the meaty nipple, sweep down and around and disappear under the lunar curve. He watches, the film over his eyes growing darker, more opaque. “Don’t,” he says.
She touches a blue-enameled fingernail to the nipple, indenting it slightly. “There’ll be bed tonight, Lewis.”
He starts to rise.
“There’ll be bed, and sex, and other things if you don’t tell me, Lewis.”
He slumps back into his round-shouldered dining position. He can hear the whine of generators far back in his memory. And the odor of dead years. And oil slicks across stainless steel. And the rough sensuality of burlap.
“He was out tonight. Robbery on the ninetieth level. He got away with three tubes of the Antarean soul-radiant.”
She covers her breast, having won her battle with nasty weaponry, rotted memories. “And you couldn’t stop him.”
“No. I couldn’t stop him.”
“And what else?”
“I lost the panther.”
Her expression is a combination of amazement and disgust. “He destroyed it?” Her husband nods; he cannot look at her. “And it’ll be charged against your account.” He does not nod; she knows the answer.
“That’s it for the promotion, and that’s it for the permutations. Oh, God, you’re such a burnout…I can’t stand you!”
“I’m going to lie down.”
“You just sit there. Now listen to me, damn you, Lewis Leipzig. Listen! I will not go another year without being rejuvenated. You’ll get that promotion and you’ll get it bringing him in. Or I’ll make you wish I’d never filed for you.” He looks at her sharply. She knows what he’s thinking, knows the reply; but he doesn’t say it; he never does.
He gets up and walks toward the dropshaft in the main room. Her voice stops him. “You’ll make up your mind, Lewis.”
He turns on her. The film is gone from his eyes. “It’s our son, Karin. Our son!”
“He’s a thief,” she says. The edge in her voice is a special viciousness. “A thief in a time when theft is unnecessary. We have everything. Almost everything. You know what he does with what he steals. You know what he’s become. That’s no son of mine. Yours, if you want that kind of filth around you, but no son of mine. God knows I have little enough to live for, and I’m not going to allow your spinelessness to take that from me. I want my permutation. You’ll do it, Lewis, or so help me God—”
He turns away again. Hiding his face from her, he says, “I’m only permitted to stalk him during regulation hours, you know that.”
“Break the regs.”
He won’t turn around. “I’m a Catman. I can’t do that. I’m bound.”
“If you don’t, I’ll see that someone else does.”
“I’m beginning not to care.”
“Have it your way.”
“Your way.”
“My way then. But my way whichever way.”
He vanishes into the main room and a moment later she hears the dropshaft hiss. She sits at the table staring into the mid-distance, remembering. Her face softens and flows and lines of weariness superimpose themselves over her one-hundred-and-sixty-five-year-old youthful face. She drops her face into her hand, runs the fingers up through her thick coppery hair, the metal fingernails making tiny clicking noises against the fibers and follicles. She makes a sound deep in her throat. Then she stiffens her back and rises. She stands there for several moments, listening to the past; she shrugs the robe from her slim, pale body and follows her husband’s path to the dropshaft.
The dining salon is empty. From the main room comes the hiss of the dropshaft. Menials purr from the walls and clean up the dining area. Below, punishment and coercion reduce philosophies to diamond dust and suet.
Seven miles away, the thief reappears in his cool apartments. The sights and sounds of what he has overheard and seen between his parents, hidden in the main room till his father left his mother, tremble in his mind. He finds himself rubbing the palm of his left hand up the wall, rubbing over and over without control; his hand hurts from the friction but he doesn’t stop. He rubs and rubs till his palm is bloody. Then he vanishes, illegally.
Sub-level one: eleven-Central was converted to ocean. Skipboats sliced across from Oakwood on the eastern shore to Caliban on the western cliffs. In the coves and underwater caves sportsmen hunted loknesses, bringing home trophies that covered large walls. Music was bubblecast across the water. Plankton beaneries bobbed like buoys near the tourist shores. Full Fathom Five had gotten four stars in The Epicure and dropshafts carried diners to the bottom to dine in elegance while watching the electro stims put on their regularly scheduled shows among the kelp beds. Neil Leipzig emerged into the pulsing ocher throat of the reception area, and was greeted by the maître d’.
“Good evening, Max. Would Lady Effim and her party be here yet?”
The maître d’ smiled and his neck-slits opened and closed to reveal a pink moistness. “Not yet, Mr. Leipzig. Would you care to wait at the bar? Or one of the rooms?”
“I’ll be at the bar. Would you let them know I’m here when they arrive?”
The thief let the undulant carry him into the bar and he slid into a seat beside the great curved pressure window. The kelp beds were alive with light and motion.
“Sir?”
The thief turned from watching the light-play. A domo hovered at the edge of the starburst-shaped table. “Oh. A chin-chin, please, a little heavier on the Cinzano.” The domo hummed a thankyou and swirled away. Neil Leipzig turned back to the phantasmagoria beyond the pressure window. A bubble of music struck the window and burst just beyond the thief’s nose. He knew the tune.
“Neil.”
The thief saw her reflection, dimly, in the window. He did not turn around for a moment, gathering his feelings. “Joice,” he said, finally. “Nice to see you again.”
“Then why don’t you turn around so you can.”
He let the seat turn him toward her.
She was still remarkable. He wanted to see dust marks on her loveliness, product of treachery and floating ethics, but he knew she had not really been treacherous, and if there had been an ethical failure, it had been his.
“May I sit?”
“I’m going to be joining a party in a few minutes, but please…” He waved her to the seat beside him. She settled into it, crossing her legs. The chiton opened and revealed smooth thigh vanishing up into ivory fabric. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been excellent, Neil. Breve sends his best.”
“That was unnecessary.”
“I’m trying to be reasonable, Neil. It’s been a long time and I’m uncomfortable with it this way between us.”
“Be comfortable. I’ve got it all straight.”
“I’m trying to be friendly.”
“Just be reasonable, that’ll be enough.”
The domo came bobbing through the room and hovered beside the table. It set the chin-chin down. The thief sipped and nodded acceptance. “Lady?” the domo hummed.
“Nothing for me, thanks.”
The domo shot straight up and went away just below ceiling height.
“Are you still doing dust?” she asked.
He stiffened and his eyes came to her face with anger as he stopped watching the domo. “Your manners haven’t improved any with time.”
She started to say I’m sorry. But his anger continued to sheet: “If we run out on that topic, we can always discuss Breve’s throat!”
“Oh, God, Neil, that’s unfair…unfair and lousy!”
“I understand from one of the twinkle boys that Breve’s using some new steroid vexing agent and a stim-sensitive synthetic that lets him vibrate it like mad. Must be terrific for you…when he’s not with twinkles.”
Joice pressed a fingertip against the room-call plate set into the surface of the starburst-shaped table. Near the reception area Max heard the tone on his console, noted it was Neil Leipzig’s table, punched up an empty, and made a mental note to let Lady Effim know the thief was in a room, when she and her party arrived. At the starburst-shaped table, the number 22 pulsed in the translucent face of the room-call plate.
“All right. Neil. Enough already. Overkill doesn’t become you.”
She stood up.
“And mealy-mouth attempts at bonhomie don’t become you.”
He stood up.
“It’s simply I see no reason why we have to be on the outs. There are still some good memories.”
Side by side, they walked across the enormous dining room of the Full Fathom Five, toward the curving wall of glass-fronted private rooms.
“Look, Joice: I don’t want to talk about it. You stopped to talk to me, remember? I didn’t force myself on you.”
“Just now, or three years ago?”
He couldn’t help laughing. “Point for you,” he said, opening the door to the private room. The magnifying glass of the room’s front wall curved the diners beyond into a mere smear of moving color. From outside, the tableau in the room was cast large for anyone to watch.
“I’m sorry I said that about the dust,” Joice said, slipping the soft fabric of the chiton off her shoulders. It floated to the floor like fog.
“I’m not sorry about my comments where Breve is concerned,” Neil replied. Naked, he moved his shoulder blades in a loosening movement, realizing the scene with his parents had made him unbelievably tense. He slid into the free-fall cumulus fizz and lay on his back.
“Gardyloo!” she said, and dove into the mist beside him. Her long auburn hair floated wildly around her head.
“What the hell’s all this in aid of, Joice?” the thief said. She rolled him under her, sitting astride his thighs, positioning herself above his erect penis.
“Peaceful coexistence,” she said, and settled down slowly till he was deep up inside her.
“Has he filed for you?”
“No.”
“Does he intend to?”
“I have no idea.”
“You’ve gotten more laissez-faire since we were a pair. I can’t recall a week when you weren’t badgering me to file.”
“I loved you.”
“And you don’t love Breve.”
She moved her hips in a circular pattern. He contracted and expanded his penis in a steady pulse. She leaned back and rested her hands on his upper thighs, sliding up and down smoothly.
“I didn’t say I don’t love Breve. He just hasn’t filed and it isn’t a problem at the moment.”
“Why don’t you file for him?”
“Don’t be cruel; you know Breve isn’t in the Pool.”
“So what is the problem? Twinkles?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He freed one hand and, pressing her lower lips, very gently sought out and stroked the mercury heaviness of her clitoris. She shuddered and opened her eyes, then they slid closed once more.
“Then what is?”
“There’s nothing wrong between us. He’s doing very well, his work is going well, and I’m fulfilled. It’s a good merging.”
She spasmed, from deep in her stomach muscles, and he felt her contracting around him. When she climaxed it was with a succession of small ignitions. He continued touching her, maintaining a rhythm, and she spiraled upward through a chain of multiple orgasms till she dropped her upper body onto him, reached under to grasp his buttocks, and thrust herself up and down rapidly. He thought of metal surfaces.
She forced air through her clenched teeth and groaned from low in her throat, and he felt her rising for the final ascent. When it came, Neil held his breath and could feel the sudden cessation of her heartbeat. Then rolled and turned in the free-fall mist, and Joice spasmed for half a minute.
They lay locked together for a time, and then she raised her head and looked down at him. “Nothing happened.”
“For me. You’re fine.”
“Too much dust, Neil?”
“Too little interest.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Life is filled with little disappointments.”
“You make me feel sad.”
“Life is filled with little disappointments.”
She pulled off him and reached for a moist and scented serviette in a dispenser on the wall. She dried herself between her legs and swam out of the fizz. Neil Leipzig lay on his back, at a forty-five degree angle to the floor, hanging artfully in mid-air, and watched her. “I don’t regret losing you, Joice. I have more to work with, now that your appetites are satisfied at other groaning boards.”
“Spare me the metaphors, Neil. Are you aware that in most circles you’re considered ridiculous?”
“I seldom travel in those circles. It must get you dizzy.”
“Hurting each other won’t make the past more liveable.”
“I don’t live in the past.”
“That’s right, I forgot. You live in tin cans.”
He felt his face getting hot. Too close, she’d come too close with that one. “Goodbye, Joice. Don’t slam the door.”
She draped the chiton over her arm, opened the door and stepped partially into the dining room proper. “Don’t get metal splinters in your cock.” She smiled a smile of victory and closed the door behind her. Softly.
He watched her striding across the Full Fathom Five to join a group of Twinkles, Dutchgirls, a Duenna…and Breve. As she moved, she was comically distorted by the magnifying window. It was like watching her stride through rainbows. She sat down with them and Breve helped her into the chiton. Neil smiled and with a shrug reached for a serviette.
The door opened, and the maître d’ stuck his head in. “Mr. Leipzig, Lady Effim and her party have arrived. The coral room. Would you like your drink sent over?”
“Thank you, Max. No, a fresh one, please. Chin-chin, a little heavier on the Cinzano. And tell Lady Effim I’ll be there in a moment.”
He lay in the fizz for a few minutes, thinking of metal surfaces, his eyes closed, fists clenched.
The thief had no real, concrete data on what Lady Effim’s side-boys did to earn their keep, but he was gut certain it was at least partially sexual in nature; and Neil Leipzig did not dismiss the possibility that another part of their services dealt with various deaths; and that another substantial expenditure of their time in her behalf was legitimately connected with the continent she owned and exploited; and that other time was spent in illegitimate pursuits; and darker times spent in places, and doing things, the thief did not wish to dwell on.
The side-boys numbered three this time. Sometimes Lady Effim had six, sometimes eight, sometimes a squad. Never less than three. This time there were three.
One was obviously a twinkle: fishtailed hair parted in the middle, tinted blue-black like the barrel of a weapon, giving off the warm odor of musk and jasmine. Very slim; hands delicate and skin of the hands so pale Neil could see the calligraphy of blue veins clearly outlined; large nostrils that scooped air so the twinkle’s chest rose and fell noticeably; skintight weskit suit with metal conchos and leather thongs down both sides; heavy on the jewelry.
“Neil, I’d like you to meet Cuusadou…”
The second was some kind of professional student: his like were to be found in the patiently seated waiting lines of the career bureaus, always ready to file for some obscure and pointless occupation—numismatist, dressage instructor, Neurospora geneticist, epitaphologist, worm rancher. His face was long and horsy; his tongue was long and he could bend its tip back on itself; he wore the current fashion, velvet jodhpurs, boots, rhodium manacles with jeweled locks, dark wrap-around glasses. He had bad skin and his fingernails were long, but the quicks were bitten and bloody down around the moons.
“…and Fill…”
The third was a killer. He made no movement. His eyes stared straight ahead and Neil perceived the psychotic glaze. He did not look at the third man for more than a second. It was painful.
“…and Mr. Robert Mossman.”
She invited him to join them, and Neil took the empty formfit where the domo had set his chin-chin. He settled into the chair and crossed his legs. “How’ve you been?”
Lady Effim smiled a long, thin smile of memories and expectations. “Warm. And you?”
“All right, I suppose.”
“How is your father?”
“Excellent. He sends his best.”
“That was unnecessary.”
Neil laughed. “Less than an hour ago I said the same thing to someone. Excuse me; I’m a little cranky tonight.”
She waved away his apology with a friendly, imperious gesture. “Has the city changed much?”
“Since when?”
“Last time.” That had been six years earlier.
“Some. They turned the entire fourteenth level into crystal cultures. Beautiful. Peculiar. Waste of space. Helluva controversy, lot of people making speeches, the screens were full of it. I went off to the Hebrides.”
She laughed. The crepe texture of her facial skin made it an exercise in origami. Neil gave it a moment’s thought: having sex with this creature, this power, this force of nature. It was more than wealth that kept three such as these with this woman. Neil began to understand the attraction. The cheekbones, the timbre of her voice, ice.
“Still vanishing, Neil?” She said it with amusement.
“You’re playing with me.”
“Only a little. I have a great affection for you, darling. You know that. You amuse me.”
“How are things in Australia?”
Lady Effim turned to Fill. For the answer.
“Cattle production is up two hundred percent, trawling acreage is yielding half a million barrels of lettuce a month, tithes are up point three three over last year at this time, and Standard & Poor’s Index closed up eight points today.”
Neil smiled. “What about all the standard poor bastards who were wiped out when the tsunami hit two weeks ago?”
Everyone stopped smiling. Lady Effim sat straighter and her left hand—which had been dangling a gold-link chin and baited fish-hook in her jeroboam snifter of brandy in an attempt to snag the Antarean piranha before it bellied-up—the hand made a convulsive clenching movement. The killer’s eyes came off dead center and snapped onto the thief with an almost audible click: the sound of armaments locked into firing position. Neil held his breath.
“Mr. Mossman,” Lady Effim said, slowly, “no.”
The air began to scintillate around Neil.
“Neil,” said Lady Effim.
He stopped. The air settled. Mr. Robert Mossman went back to rigidity.
Lady Effim smiled. It reminded the thief of an open wound. “You’ve grown suicidal in six years, Neil darling. Something unpleasant is happening to you; you’re not the sweet, dashing lad I used to know. Death-wish?”
Neil smiled back, it seemed the thing to do. “Getting reckless in my declining years. I’m going to have to come visit your continent one of these days, m’Lady.”
She turned to the twinkle. “Cuusadou, what are we doing for the company peasants who were affected by the disaster?”
The twinkle leaned forward and, with relish, said, “An absolutely splendid advertising campaign, Lady Effim: squawk, solids, car-cards, wandering evangelists, rumors, and in three days a major holo extravaganza. Our people have been on it since almost before the tide went out. Morale is very high. We’ve established competition between the cities: The one that mounts the most memorable mass burial ceremony gets a new sports arena. Morale is very high.” He looked pleased.
“Thank you, darling,” she said. She turned back to Neil. “I am a kind and benevolent ruler.”
Neil smiled and spread his hands. “Your pardon.”
It went that way for the better part of an hour.
Finally, Lady Effim said to Fill, “Darling, would you secure the area, please.” The professional student fiddled with the jeweled lock on the right-wrist manacle, and a sliding panel in the manacle opened to reveal a row of tiny dials under a fingernail-sized meter readout window. He turned the dials and a needle in the meter window moved steadily from one side to the other. When it had snugged up against the far side, he nodded obsequiously to Lady Effim.
“Good. We’re alone. I gather you’ve been up to some nasty tricks, Neil darling. You haven’t been teleporting illegally when you were off-shift, have you?” She wore a nasty smile that should have been on display in a museum.
“I have something you want,” Neil said, ignoring the chop. She knew he was breaking the regs at this very moment:
“I have to go out for a while.”
His father looks up. Their eyes meet.
“No. Nothing like that,” he lies. His father looks away.
He rubs and rubs till his palm is bloody. Then he vanishes, illegally.
“I’m sure you do, Neil mon cher. You always do. But what could I possibly have that would interest you? If you want something you go to the cornucopia and you punch it up and those cunning little atoms are rearranged cunningly and there you have it. Isn’t that the way it’s done?”
“There are things one can’t get…”
“But those are illegal, darling. So illegal. And it seems foolish to want one of the few things you can’t have in a world that permits virtually everything.”
“There are still taboos.”
“I can’t conceive of such a thing, Neil dear.”
“Force yourself.”
“I’m a woman of very simple tastes.”
“The radiant.”
It was only the most imperceptible of movements, but Neil Leipzig knew the blood had stopped pumping in Lady Effim’s body. Beneath her chalky powder she went white. He saw the thinnest line of the biting edges of her teeth.
“So you did it.”
Now the smile was Neil Leipzig’s.
“A thief in a time of plenty. So you did it. You clever lad.” Her eyes closed and she was thinking of the illegal Antarean drug. Here was a thrill she had never had. Farewell to ennui. She would, of course, have it, at any cost. Even a continent. It was a seller’s market.
“What do you want?”
She would have it at any cost. Human lives: these three, his own. His father’s.
His mother’s.
“What do you want, Neil?”
His thoughts were a million miles away. A lie. They were only arcology levels above and across London.
“You! What do you want?”
So he told her.
He would have preferred the other three not be there. The look of revulsion on their faces—even the zombie Mr. Robert Mossman’s—made him defensive.
Lady Effim sneered. It did not become her. “You shall have it, Neil. As often as you care to go, God help you.” She paused, looked at him in a new way. “Six years ago…when I knew you…were you…”
“No, not then.”
“I never would have thought—of all the people I know, and you may be assured, dear boy, I know oddnesses beyond description—of all I know, I would have thought you were the last to…”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“Of course not, how gauche of me. Of course, you shall have what you need. When I have. What. I. Need.”
“I’ll take you to it.”
She seemed amused. “Take me there? Don’t be silly, dear boy. I’m a very famous, very powerful, very influential person. I have no truck with stolen merchandise, not even any as exotic and lovely as soul-radiant.” She turned to the killer. “Mr. Mossman. You will go with Neil and obtain three tubes from where he has them secreted. No, don’t look suspicious. Neil will deliver precisely what he has said he would deliver. He understands we are both dealing in good faith.”
The twinkle said, “But he’s…”
“It is not our place to make value-judgments, darling. Neil is a sweet boy, and what he needs he shall have.” To Mr. Robert Mossman: “When you have the three tubes, call me here.” To the thief: “When I receive Mr. Mossman’s call, Fill will make the arrangements and you’ll receive very explicit instructions where to go, and when. Is that satisfactory?”
Neil nodded, his stomach tight, his head beginning to hurt. He did not like their knowing.
“Now,” Lady Effim said, “goodbye, Neil.
“I don’t think I would care to see you again. Ever. You understand this contains no value-judgment, merely a preference on my part.”
She did not offer her hand to be kissed as he and Mr. Robert Mossman rose to leave the table.
The thief materialized on the empty plain far beyond the arcology of London. He was facing the gigantic structure and stared at it for minutes without really seeing it: eyes turned inward. It was near sunset and all light seemed to be gathered to the ivory pyramid that dominated the horizon. “Cradle of the sun,” he said softly, and winked out of existence again. Behind him, the city of London rose into the clouds and was lost to sight. The apartments of the Prince of Wales were, at that moment, passing into darkness.
The next materialization was in the midst of a herd of zebra, grazing at tall stands of deep blue grass. They bolted at his appearance, shying sidewise and boiling away from him in a mass of flashing lines of black and white. He smiled, and started walking. The air vibrated with the smell of animal fur and clover. Walking would be a pleasure. And mint.
His first warning that he was not alone came with the sound of a flitterpak overhead. It was a defective: he should not have been able to hear its power-source. He looked up and a woman in torn leathers was tracking his passage across the veldt. She had a norden strapped to her front and he had no doubt the sights were trained on him. He waved to her, and she made no sign of recognition. He kept walking, into the darkness, attempting to ignore her; but his neck itched.
He vanished; to hell with her; he couldn’t be bothered.
When he reappeared, he was in the trough of a dry wash that ran for several miles and came to an end, when he had vanished and reappeared again, at the mouth of a cave that angled downward sharply into the ground. He looked back along the channel of the arroyo. He was in the foothills. The mountains bulked purple and distant in the last fading colors of dusk. The horizon was close. The air was very clear, the wind was rising; there were no sounds but those of insects fore-telling the future.
He approached the cave mouth and stopped. He sat down on the ground and leaned back on his elbows. He closed his eyes. They would come soon enough, he was certain.
He waited, thinking of nothing but metal surfaces.
In the night, they came for him.
He was half-asleep. Lying up against the incline of the arroyo, his thoughts fading in and out of focus like a radio signal from a transmitter beyond the hills. Oh, bad dreams. Not even subtle, not even artful metaphors. The spider was clearly his mother, the head pink and heavily freckled, redheaded, and slanting Oriental cartoon eyes. The Mameluke chained between the pillars was bald and old, and the face held an infinite weariness in its expression. The Praetorian with the flame thrower was himself, the searing wash of jellied death appearing and vanishing, being and being gone. He understood. Only a fool would not understand; he was weary, as his father was weary, but he was no fool. He burned the webbing. Again and again. Only to have it spring into existence each time. He came fully awake before the cone-muzzle of the weapon touched his shoulder.
Came awake with the web untouched, covering the world from horizon to horizon, the spider crawling down the sky toward the weary black man hanging between the pillars.
“You were told I’d be coming,” he said. It was only darkness in front of him, but darkness within a darkness, and he knew someone stood there, very close to him, the weapon pointed at his head.
He knew it. Only a fool would not have known. Now he was awake, and he was no fool.
The voice that answered from the deeper darkness was neither male nor female, neither young nor old, neither deep nor high. It sounded like a voice coming from a tin cup. Neil knew he had been honorably directed; this was the place, without doubt. He saluted Lady Effim’s word of honor with a smile. The voice from the tin cup said, “You’re supposed to giving me a word, isn’t it?”
“The word you want is Twinkle.”
“Yeah, that was to being the word. I’m to your being took downstairs now. C’mon.”
The thief rose and brushed himself off.
He saw movement from the corner of his eye. But when he turned to look, there was nothing.
He followed the shadow as it moved toward the cave mouth. There was no Moon, and the faraway ice-chips of the stars gave no heat, gave no light. It was merely a shadow he followed: a shadow with its weapon carried at port arms.
They passed into the mouth of the cave, and the dirt passage under their feet began to slope down sharply almost at once. There were two more shadows inside the mouth of the cave, hunkered down, looking like piles of rags, features indistinct, weapon barrels protruding from the shapeless masses like night-blooming flowers of death.
One of them made a metallic sound when it brushed against the wall. It. Neither he nor she. It.
Neil Leipzig followed the shadow down the steep slope, holding on to the rock wall for support as his feet sought purchase. Ahead of him, his guide seemed to be talking to himself very, very softly. It sounded like a mechanical whirring. The guide was not a domo.
“Here you’ll stop it,” the guide said, when they had descended so deep into the cave passage that the temperature was cool and pleasant. He moved in the darkness, and the thief saw a heat-sensitive plate in the rock wall suddenly come to life with light as the guide touched it. Then a door irised open in the rock wall, and light flooded out, blinding him for a moment. He covered his eyes. The guide gave him a shove through the iris. It was neither polite help nor surly indignity. He merely shoved Neil through to get him inside. It was an old-style elevator, not a dropshaft and not a light-ray tunnel. He had no idea how long it had been here, but probably before the arcology of London.
He looked at his guide in the full light.
He felt, for the first time since…he felt for the first time that he wanted to go home, to stop, to go back, to return to himself before…to return to the past…
The guide was a gnome of spare human parts and rusting machinery. He was barely four feet tall, the legs bowed with the enormous weight of a metal chest like the belly of an old-time wood-burning stove. The head was hairless and the left half was a metal plate devoid of eyes, or nose, or mouth, or skin, or sweat, or pore. It was pocked and flaking metal, riveted through in uneven lines to the bone of the half of the head that was still flesh-covered. His left arm was fastened at the shoulder by a pot-metal socket covered with brazing marks. Depending from the socket were long, curved, presumably hollow levers containing solenoids; another ball socket for elbow, another matched pair of hollow levers, ball socket wrist, solenoid fingers. His right arm was human. It held the cone-muzzled weapon: an archaic but nonetheless effective disruptor. Input sockets—some of them the ancient and corroded models housewives had found in the walls of their homes, into which they had plugged vacuum cleaners and toasters—studded both thighs, inside and out. His penis was banded with expansible mesh copper. He was barefoot; the big toe was gone on the right foot; it had been replaced with a metal stud.
Neil Leipzig felt sick. Was this—?
He stopped the thought. It had never been like this before, no reason to think it would be like this here. It couldn’t be. But he felt sick. And filthy.
He was certain he had seen movement out of the corner of his eye, up there in the arroyo.
The elevator grounded, and the door irised open. He stepped out ahead of the gnome. They were in an underground tunnel, higher and wider than the one above, well lit by eterna lamps set into the tunnel’s arched roof. The guide set off at a slow lope, and the thief followed him; illegal, yes…but how did they live down here, like troglodytes; was this the look of his future…he erased the thought…and could not stop thinking it.
They rounded a bend and kept going. The tunnel seemed to stretch on indefinitely. Behind him, around the bend, he thought he heard the elevator door close and the cage going back up. But he could not be certain.
They kept on in a straight line for what seemed an eighth of a mile, and when it became clear to Neil that they were going to keep going for many miles in this endless rabbit run, the guide took a sudden right turn into a niche in the right-hand wall the thief had not even suspected was there.
The niche opened into a gigantic cavern. Hewn from solid rock for a purpose long forgotten, decades before, it stretched across for several miles and arched above them in shadows the thief’s eyes could not penetrate. Like the pueblo Amerinds of old, whoever lived here had carved dwellings from the rock faces and ledges. From the floor of the cavern below them, all the way up into the shadows, Neil could see men and women moving along the ledges, busy at tasks he could not name. Nor would he have bothered:
All he could see, all he could believe, was the machine that dominated the cavern floor, the computer that rose up and up past the ledge on which they stood, two hundred feet high and a quarter mile in diameter.
“Mekcoucher,” the half-human gnome said, his voice filled with—
Neil looked down at him. The expression was beatific. Love. Awe, love, desire, respect, allegiance, love. The blasted little face twisted in what was supposed to be a sigh of adoration. Love. Mek-coo-shay. The French had invented the word, but the dregs of the Barcelona arcology had conceived the deed. Mekcoucher.
The thief touched the gnome’s head. The guide looked up without surliness or animosity. His eye was wet. His nose, what there was of his nose, was running. He sobbed, and it came from deep in his stove chest, and he said again, a litany, “Mekcoucher. This am all I be here about, dearest shine bright. Fursday, this Fursday, I me I get turn.” Neil felt a terrible kinship and pity and recycling of terror. This little thing, here beside him on this ledge, this remnant of what had once been a man, before it had begun dreaming of metal surfaces, of electric currents, of shining thighs, this thing had been no better than Neil Leipzig. Was this the future?
Neil could understand the gnome’s orison to the machine. It was an installation to inspire homage, to lift up the heart; it was so large and so complex, it inspired deification, idolatry; it was a machine to engender devotion.
It was a sex-partner to consume one such as Neil Leipzig with trembling lust.
They started down the ledge toward the floor of the cavern, the thief with his arm around the gnome’s shoulders, both of them moist-eyed and finding it difficult to breathe. At one point, Neil asked the gnome if they could stop, if they could sit down with their backs to the rock wall and just look at the incredible bulk and shapes and shining metal surfaces of the machine in the center of their world.
And they sat, and they watched.
“This is where my place I been stay long time,” said the gnome, staring across at the machine. They were now only a hundred feet above the floor of the cavern, and the computer rose up before them, filling their eyes.
Neil asked the gnome his name. “Fursday,” he said. “This Fursday, I me I get turn to joy.”
A life centralized around his love-partner. No name other than the name that told everyone he would go to Heaven on Thursday. Neil shuddered, but it was a trembling of expectation and desire. And it was there, sitting and remembering the first time, three years earlier…remembering the times since…inadequate, searching, fulfilling but not fulfilling the way this installation, this carnal machine could fulfill…he knew it…he felt it…his bones vibrated like tuning forks, his heart was pudding.
And it was there, sitting beside the gnome, that Mr. Robert Mossman found him.
He came down the ledge behind them, walking lightly, never dislodging a shard of limestone, hardly breathing, the pounder in his right hand. The pounder hit the brain with a laser beam that had the impact of a cannonball dropped from a great height. It could turn the inside of the victim’s skull to gruel without marring the outside surface. It made for neat corpses. It was final. It was utterly illegal.
The thief knew there had been noise behind them in the tunnel; there had been movement in the arroyo.
He cursed Lady Effim’s word of honor.
He said nothing as the killer came down on them. Mr. Robert Mossman stopped and aimed the weapon at Neil Leipzig’s left eye.
“Hey!” Fursday said, seeing the silent killer for the first time. “You aren’t being to come down here! I’m me I told to bring him, this one down. Stop!”
Mr. Robert Mossman tracked the pen-point muzzle of the pounder through mere seconds of arc and squeezed the butt of the weapon. Light slashed across the space between them and hit the gnome with the impact of a slammed door. The recoil shuddered the killer; the little metal man was lifted and slung along the ledge. He fell flat onto his back, his human arm hanging over the edge. Neil froze for only a moment, then made a movement toward the gnome’s weapon. He knew he would never make it. He could feel the pressure of Mr. Robert Mossman’s palm squeezing the pounder. He anticipated the slam of nova heat in his brain, and his eyes filled with light.
But it didn’t come. He could not turn around. He knew the killer was savoring the moment. And in that moment Neil Leipzig heard the rush of displaced air, the most terrible scream in the world, and the sounds of a struggle.
He turned in time to see the falcon tear away half the killer’s face and, pinions beating a blurred breast-stroke against the air, the falcon bore Mr. Robert Mossman over backward.
The killer fell screaming to the rocks below. The falcon skimmed above him, observing, making note of finality, and when it was satisfied that its prey was dead, it dove, ripped loose a piece of meat, and arced back up into the air, banking and turning on a wingtip, and flew to rest on the Catman’s shoulder.
The smoldering ember eyes of the two cheetahs stared back at the thief.
The Catman came down the sloping ledge and helped his son to his feet. “Come home now,” he said.
Neil Leipzig looked at his father, the lines of tension and sadness and weariness imprinted like circuits across the face. He moved a step closer and then he had his arms around the black man. They stood that way for seconds, and then the Catman’s arms came up and circled the thief’s back. They stood silently, holding each other.
When they separated, Neil was able to speak. “You didn’t stay home, you followed me; all the way from the Five?”
The Catman nodded.
“But how?”
“You to the meeting, then him after you. Come home.”
“Dad, it isn’t your onshift, you can get yourself in a bad way. Go now, before anyone sees you.” The single dead eye of the gnome stared up at the hidden roof of the cavern. Neil thought of metal surfaces. His palms were wet. The air sparkled with scintillance; he stopped it.
“You won’t come back with me?”
“I can’t. Please, Dad.”
“You’ve seen what this is like. You’re my son. I can’t let you do it.”
“Dad, go away. Please! I know what I’m doing.”
“Neil.”
“Please, Dad! I’m begging you. Go away.”
“And nothing up there matters more than this?”
“You’re not turned away? It doesn’t make you sick? Not even here, not even seeing this, not even here will you make a stand? My God, Dad, can’t you see you’re more destroyed than I’ll ever be, no matter what I do?”
“Make a stand? I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Go away!” Then, trying to hurt him because he did not want him hurt, he said, “Your wife is waiting for you.”
“Stop it, Neil. She was your mother once.”
“The once and never mother to the pervert thief. And you, her consort. Lovely. You want me to come back to that? I won’t let my eyes see it again. Not ever.”
“How long have you been—”
“How long have I been like this?” He waved an arm at the great machine. “Three years.”
“But there was Joice, we thought, your mother and I thought.”
“It didn’t work. It wasn’t enough.”
“Neil, please, it’s not for you. It’s—”
“It’s what, Dad, it’s what? Perverted? Nauseating? Destructive? Pointless? I could apply them all to the way you live with her.”
“Will they come up here after us?” He nodded toward the ledges of cave dwellings and the people moving about them.
“I don’t think so, I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Everything was arranged. I don’t know why that one—” and he indicated the body of Mr. Robert Mossman below, “—I don’t know why he came after me. But that doesn’t matter. Go back. Get out of here. Your promotion, your job, it’s almost time for the permutations, God knows that bitch won’t give you a moment’s peace if she doesn’t get rejuvenated. You’re offshift, Dad! You’ve never even bent a reg before…please get the hell out of here and leave me alone.”
“You don’t understand her.”
“I don’t want to understand her. I’ve lived with her for twenty-eight years.”
“You won’t come back with me?”
“No.”
“Then let me stay.”
The cheetahs closed their eyes and dropped their heads onto their paws. The falcon shrugged and ruffled itself.
“You’re out of your mind. Do you know what I’m here for…of course you know…go home!”
So they walked down past the still body of the little metal and flesh gnome, down the ledge, down to the floor of the great cavern, the thief, the policeman and the animals padding along behind. They paused at the body of Mr. Robert Mossman, and Neil Leipzig, to make certain he knew what he was walking into, took the killer’s communcation phone from his ring finger, called Lady Effim, and told her what had happened. She said, “I apologize, Neil. My companions are, how can I put it meaningfully, devoted to me. Mr. Mossman was very much on his own. I regret his death, but I regret even more that this has caused you to doubt my word. You have my assurance everything was ordered correctly for your arrival. You won’t be troubled again. And again, I ask your pardon.” He turned her off and he went with his father to the village of the computer.
“For the last time: will you leave now? I don’t want you to see this.”
“I’ll stay. I’ll be right over here. Perhaps later…”
“No. Even if I go back, I’ll only come here again. I know what I need.”
“I’ll have to keep tracking you.”
“That’s your job.”
The thief held a tiny inhalation tube filled with soft, feathery yellow dust. He had received it from the hand of the cyborg woman who ran the computer’s village. It was called The Dust, and spoken of reverently. It was much finer and looked more potent than any Dust Neil Leipzig had ever used. He knew what was going to happen, and could only guess at the intensity of the experience.
The world aboveground was free, totally and utterly free. There were no boundaries, no taboos beyond causing other’s harm. And even in such a world, this was forbidden. The last, the final, the ultimate sexual experience.
“I’ll wait.”
He didn’t answer. He removed his clothes, walked to the towering bulk of the computer and touched it.
The crackle-finish surface of its north flank was smooth and cool to his touch. He felt sensuality pulsing in the machine. They had exposed the leads for him, and he paused for a moment to consider what obligations they must owe Lady Effim for them to give him The Dust, to permit him Mekcoucher time with their love-partner. The dwellers in this subterranean hideaway. They were all like Fursday. Advanced stages of love commitment to this machine. Part metal, part human, totally the computer’s property. Helpless to deny their passion. He grabbed the leads.
The blue lead went into the surgically implanted socket on the inside of his right thigh, the red input lead went into the socket on the inside of his left thigh. The “stim” electrodes found their proper areas though his hair and scalp. He merely placed the medusa cap on his head and they wriggled to their proper clips, sank their fangs, wire snakes. One lead hooked him into the plethysmograph and the Lissajous oscilloscope and the GSR galvanometer. The Velcro band containing a million black-dot photocells was ready and he wrapped it around his penis. Then he snorted The Dust, the yellow wonder from Barcelona.
He lay up against the metal body of the machine, arms out cruciform, legs spread, cheek flat to the waiting surface. He could feel the expectancy in the computer, hungry lover.
He thought of the first time he had made love to Joice, the feel of her flesh. It was not enough.
Then he contracted the muscles in his thighs and closed the circuits.
Instantly, the metal of the machine began to flow. He felt himself sinking into the north flank of the computer. His fingers penetrated the metal as easily as if it had been modeling clay. He began to get proprioceptive feedback from muscle activity…he could feel the whorls on his fingertips as sucking whirlpools, dark swirling waters that drew his blood and bones through the flesh and out into the machine, spinning the essence of his physical being away from its skin container…his chest began to harden, to vibrate with sound like a thunder sheet of aluminum…the soles of his feet melted and his arches flattened and his lower legs oozed into puddles of mercury…he sank into the machine, was enclosed, its arms around him, welcoming him…
The Dust blew in hurricane clouds through his body and puffed out through the great smooth apertures in his head and back and buttocks. The Dust mingled with lubricant and it was altered, even as he was altered.
He perceived with purest immediacy the sense of his positioning of arms and legs and ferrite cores and LSI circuits and bowels and conductors and limbs and body and plates and fissures and counterweights and glands and wiring in the immediate environment that he was the machine had begun to be him.
Then the auditory and visual feedback began, delayed responses, an instant later than they should have been. He spoke: Oh, good and it repeated from another mouth a moment later, ood. Echolalia.
He felt his penis engorging with blood and felt the density of light increasing in the capillaries as the plethysmograph measured his arousal in a new language the machine he was the machine interpreted…the density of light decreased…increased…decreased…increased…
He spiraled upward into the machine—Lissajous pattern oscilloscope sine and cosine waves from the x and y axes actually came together, pulsated in three dimensions and he teased himself the machine he the man with vernier knob stimulation—it came out green and the machine trembled, began to secrete testosterone, estrogen, progresterone…
She, the machine, he, the machine, she, the man, he, the machine…the man, he becoming she becoming machine…
His heart was pudding.
The Lissajous pulsations became hallucinations in the sex organs of the computer…galvanic skin response on the galvanometer…aching in his spine…
Sinking slowly into a sea of oil. Great skyscraper bulk of metalflesh slowly warmly moistly sinking into a sea of blue-black oil. Pumping. Pumping. Wet closing over his head, running in waves over his naked body. Invisible mat of hair covering every plate and surface, a fine golden down, soaking up oil, engorging, coming to climax.
Her breasts were warm, the rivets sensitive to each feather caress of electric stim. Her vagina filled with soft, melting things that went up and up and roughened the oil-slick inner surfaces, sliding to touch and knead the vulva. So good. Ood.
His memory, he could see everything in his memory, stored in the banks, every moment of his life from the first dripping emergence from the vats, the running, the extruding, the rolling, the flattening, the cutting, the shaping, the forming, the welding. Every moment of his life: the instant he was first engaged, the circuits closing, the surge of power, the first inputs, the primary runs, every boring clearing procedure, every exercise, every erroneous output.
His mother, his father, great cats and the wet scent of their breath, like coolant on overheated coils, the soft taste of Joice in his mouth, her body moving beneath him, sinking into her, tiniest folding of her labia around his penis, the rising to orgasm, the overloading, the heat, the peace of darkness.
Then he altered his stroke and felt the change to precognitive anticipatory feedback, telling himself how it would feel, fulfilling his own prophecies, the smell of flesh on metal, metal on flesh, the colors of whirling information, increments of semen and fused capacitors.
He was the teleport, additional human faculties, soft sponge pineal gland, polluted adrenaline, strange eyes, this was the best for me the very best I’ve ever hungry metal lover. They began to converge…everything began to converge. He, the machine called Neil Leipzig, was the x axis; he, the machine called love-partner, was the y axis; they began to converge; identical sine waves, out of phase.
His pattern was a growing. The machine’s was a throbbing. He passed the machine at a higher level every pulse. The machine grew frantic and drank more power. He tried to catch up, chasing the nymphomaniacal peaks as the machine beckoned him, teased him, taunted him, drew him on, then flashed away. He extended on metal limbs, the machine’s soft flesh grew sunburned and dark and leather tough.
Then he peaked out, it, she, peaked out, unable to draw more power from her source. They exchanged modes, as the point of destructive interference denied quantum mechanics and was reached: a millisecond of total sound and utter silence. Orgasm: metal became flesh, human became machine.
The interference pattern was a grating whine that became more and more pure as they came into phase. The machine, in its human throat, began to vibrate in sympathy. She, who had been Neil Leipzig at the start, captured the exponential pattern that had been his, the machine, captured it as it fell away.
They circled, and the image on the Lissajous screen became a circle as she captured the machine and held her in phase again. Prolate and oblate: two dimensional images slowing, softening, dimming, the message of release and surcease .986, 1.0014, .9999986, 1.00000000014…
The first thing he heard was the sound of the two cheetahs attacking something, agony and fury. The first thing he saw was the dying point of green light on the oscilloscope screen. The first thing he felt was the rough metal of his chest against the sweat-soaked north flank of his love-partner.
He was dry. As though he had given the machine a transfusion, as if it had sucked all the juices from him. He understood why Joice and all the others, as free as they had been, had been unable to arouse him in times past, how the first Mekcoucher with its promises of this, had led him further and further into the inevitability of what he had just experienced.
Now, for the first time in his life, he knew what passion could lead through, what it led to inexorably. And he knew he could never go back. He would stay here, in this terrible place, with these others who shared his lover, and this was all he wanted.
He fell away from the machine and lay on the rock floor of the cavern. His breath had to be drawn in stages. His head reeled. His hand lay on his metal chest.
He wanted to sleep, but the sounds of conflict were louder now, insistent, crowding through the pain and satiation his body felt at one and the same time. He rolled over on his stomach, his chest clanking against the rock floor. It was the best for you, too, he thought. The best you ever had, love-partner. You will never forget me. If I die today, you’ll remember always, in every last memory cell.
At the base of the nearest ledge, the Catman’s cheetahs were struggling with one of the love-partner’s people. He was down and they were savaging him, but clearly trying to avoid killing him. The thief had seen the technique before. It was called putting, as in stay put. The rest of the colony had no part in the melee, and were, in fact, watching with some pleasure—if pleasure could be discerned on faces that were partially metal masks.
A tall, limping, old woman with copper legs came across from the crowd. She hobbled to Neil as the Catman commanded, “Heel!” and the cheetahs left their chewed and semi-conscious prey. The Catman joined the copper-legged old woman.
The falcon looked sleepy. It was an illusion.
“Will you can stay be here with love-partner?” the old woman said. There was a tone of pleading in her voice. “Tewsday,” she said, indicating the pile of worked-over flesh and metal the cheetahs had put, “he was for crazy of you with the love-partner. But I’m the saying one for your give machine love never before that fire hot. If you’ll be stay this place us can make you what my is being, first lover.”
The Catman moved a step closer. “Neil!”
There was raw horror on his face. He had seen his son’s body vanish into the machine, had seen the machine turn soft and swallow the thief, had seen the machine sweat and go mad with lust, had seen his son emerge with his parts altered. Neil Leipzig looked at his father, and at the old woman. “I’ll stay. Now go and take Tewsday for repair.”
The old woman hobbled away, and the crowd went back into their rock-wall dwellings. Neil Leipzig stood facing the Catman.
“You can’t. My God, Neil, look at you, and this is only the first time. That thing eats what it loves. Do you want to end up like—”
He waved a hand at the retreating mob of half-humans.
“This is where I belong. I haven’t belonged up there for a long time.”
“Neil, please, I’ll do anything you want; resign my commission, we can go away to another city…”
“Dad,” he said, “I have always loved you. More than I’ve ever been able to tell you. I always wanted you to fight back. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“You don’t understand your mother. She’s had bad times, too.”
“It’s all in aid of nothing. Look at you. You haven’t got a dream left in the world. We’re killing you a little at a time. It’s time I stopped contributing to it and did something final.”
“But not this, not down here, son…”
But the thief was gone. The air twittered with bright scintillas of fading light.
The first jump brought him back to the world imbedded in the earth a quarter of a mile beneath the arroyo. Had he made such a teleportational error earlier, he would have died. But mating with the machine had altered him. The love-partner had never known a teleport, and in the exchange of modes he had been made less than machine but more than mortal. He expanded his personal space and vanished again. The second jump took him to the surface, and he winked in, out in an instant—seen by no living thing, for even the guards were dead, having been pounded by Mr. Robert Mossman.
The night welcomed him, accepted his mote-outlined shadow, and took no further notice as he vanished again, reappeared, vanished, and in seconds materialized in his mother’s bedroom high in London.
He leaned over and grasped her by the wrist, and wrenched her from the doze cocoon where she lay, supple and naked, the powder-white marks of the plasticwork making longitudinal lines on her breasts that glowed faintly in the night light. Her eyes snapped open as he dragged her free.
“Come along, Mom. We have to go now.”
Then, clutching her naked body to his naked body, he vanished.
Before merging with the machine, he could not have carried someone with him. But everything was changed now. Vastly changed.
The Catman was high on the ledge leading to the elevator when the thief reappeared with his mother. The cheetahs padded alongside and the falcon was on the wing. The climb was a difficult one for a man that age, even with unnumbered rejuvenations. The Catman was too far away to do anything to stop him.
“Neil!”
“You’re free, Dad. You’re free now. Don’t waste it!”
The Catman was frozen for only a moment. And in that moment Neil Leipzig carried the semiconscious body of his mother to the love-partner. The Catman screamed, a high and desolate scream because he knew what was happening. He began running down the ledge, screaming to his falcon to intercept, screaming to his cheetahs to get there before him, screaming because he could never make it in time.
The thief plugged himself in, his mother pressed flat between his naked metalflesh body and the fleshmetal north flank of his love-partner.
He flexed his thigh muscles, closed the contacts…
…and offered himself and the suddenly howling woman as the ultimate troilism.
The machine flowed, the oscilloscope formed a design no living creature had ever seen in more than three dimensions, and then, in an instant, it was over. The machine absorbed what it could not refuse, and there was only the single point of green light on the screen, and endless silence once more beneath the earth.
The Catman reached the machine, saw the beads of sweat mixed with blood that dotted the north flank, and heard fading moans of brutality that repeated soundlessly.
The Catman sits alone in a room, remembering.
The child never knew. It was not the mother. The mother always loved, but had no way of showing it. The father had never loved, and had every way of reinforcing it, day after day.
The Catman sits and mourns. Not for the child, gone and without sorrow. For the woman.
For the bond of circumstances that held them together through days and nights of a special kind of love forged in a cauldron of hate.
He will never forgive the child for having destroyed that love out of hate.
He will sit alone now. He has nothing left to live for. He hopes the child burns in a terrible Hell, even as he burns in his own. And after a while, there is always the conversing waterfall.
Los Angeles, California; Hanover, New Hampshire; New York City; Gull Lake, Hickory Corners, Michigan/1972