Celebrant (43 page)

The rest of the torso is like supple marble.
The brawny, slablike arms and legs are striped, yellow and dark blue.
The feet and hands are a transparent, grey-white like the edge of an incisor.
It carries its enormous hands folded in front of its midsection.
A long, smooth, erect penis, which is attached to an equally streamlined representation of two more or less spherical testicles, sways to and fro with each step like an admonishing finger.
He (the gender being thus made obvious) walks with his legs well apart, because there’s a white barrel thrust into his ass.
The bottom of this cylinder barely clears the ground.

This is Goose Goes Back, (Dr. Paper-Clarke says, sputtering slightly with the stink)

The being is smoothly coming toward them, around the fountain.

Goose Goes Back, I’d like to introduce deUh
—

deKlend (deKlend says absently)

deKlend (Dr. Paper-Clarke says)

deUhdeKlenddeKlend (Goose Goes Back says)
I’m delighted to make your acquaintance deKlend.

Having turned aside to pass around the fountain, Goose Goes Back now turns to face them.
He must be over seven feet tall, deKlend thinks, lifting his eyes.
A steel rod protrudes from the right breast at about the height of deKlend’s head, ending in a fine loop well out and before the body, and in this lorgnette there is the projection of an immaterial face, as tremulous as a soap bubble.
The face is animated, and its nondescript features are composed at present in an expression of dreamy, almost mindless, vacancy.

Do you like my exhibits?
(Goose Goes Back asks)

The lips of the projected face do not move when he speaks, momentarily reconfusing deKlend.

I
—
I notice there are no worms, (deKlend says)

Maggots absolutely ruin the meat, (says Goose Goes Back)

The voice is a synthetic baritone, soft and booming at once, that simply appears in the air.

But where on earth do you get the human ones?

I buy them (Goose Goes Back says)

—
Nor is the projected face looking at any of them.
The eyes are looking down and to the right.

Dr. Cheepie leans in.

Sarkoforms always have all the money they need
—
how do you think we afford all this?

He gives you money?

Yes!

Dr. Paper-Clarke leans in too.

Yes
—
doesn’t give it a thought.

Well, and where does that come from?

Who knows? (Dr. Cheepie says with a flourishing shrug)

But a gift horse you know, (Dr. Paper-Clarke says with a leer.
Seeing it is unrewarding.)

We’ll be back at the house (Dr. Cheepie says)

They seem to be going.

—
Come back whenever you like (Dr. Paper-Clarke calls, one hand up and the other vaguely before the mouth and nose)

They certainly speak as if they owned the house.
And can I (deKlend wonders) find my way back on my own?

He smooths his shawls, allowing his hand to slide down his lapels toward his abdomen.
The familiar sensation along his palm is soothing.
Looking once again at Goose Goes Back, deKlend irrelevantly realizes that the projected face in the lorgnette is a perfect superfluity.
It simply looks about itself, the dewy red rosebud mouth altering its shape slightly from time to time.
It’s like a baby’s.

He wonders if Dr. Cheepie and Dr. Paper-Clarke have cast him in the role of Andromeda.

Do you kill the animals?
(he asks nervously)

I never kill (Goose Goes Back says)
I merely find them, or they are brought to me.
Manipulating their decomposition I find endlessly fascinating.

Yes
(he chokes) Please forgive me
—
it’s the smell
—
perhaps you don’t notice?

The smell is essential (Goose Goes Back says)
It’s half the effect.

deKlend remarks that, standing within reach of those long arms, he can detect no bad odor, or any other, coming from Goose Goes Back himself.

Goose Goes Back takes up a chair from among a heap of bones
—
a plain, wooden chair, from a cafe
—
and sets it down.

Please sit down, deKlend (he says)

Goose Goes Back seems to radiate benevolence and serenity.
He moves to and fro with long, gliding, uniform steps, methodically shifting his weight entirely from one foot to the other, without haste.

A dead beaver dangles in his left hand, its limp arms and legs swinging lightly like saddle ornaments.

We may converse, if you wish (he says)
You won’t distract me.

Ah (deKlend says)

Suddenly inhaling a bit of extra-bad smell, like an airborne bit of skin off the top of a congealing cup of cocoa, but ripe with a sour piscine revoltingness, deKlend gags and begins coughing with verve.

Goose Goes Back is arranging the beaver on a stone pedestal, his fondling hands glide through the air as he takes up tools and an atomizer spray with a bulb, touching everything with the same tenderness and uncanny care.

Having recovered from his coughing, deKlend sits down on the chair and relaxes a little.
From here, his interlocutor is an expanse of kneaded white back over which the black crown of the mummy’s head can be seen, a deep blue dimple where the spine is, and the pensive buttocks almost horizontally distended around the barrel.

Goose Goes Back
—

Yes?

—
is a curious name.

Yes.

What sort of
...
eh, name is it?

It is my bardo name.
I saw a goose come out of the water.
Of a pond.
And return to it immediately.
Perhaps ‘Goose Goes Back’ were the first words that occurred to me.
They might have been.

Do you remember anything about your past life?

No.

Nothing at all?

I have forgotten it all.

Was your name Goose Goes Back then, do you think?

(silence)

I’ve forgotten.

Do you remember
...
taking this form?

Yes!
Yes!

What was it like?

It was light breaking in on vast oceanic darkness, and scattering itself into senses, like the light of daybreak endlessly reproduced in the glinting peaks of an infinite number of small waves.

And before?
(avidly)

(silence)

Before?

How did you die?

I remember feeling my blood sluicing over my skin.
Sickening cold pooled in my body.
Then a relaxation that left no part of me untouched, and which permitted me no place within myself to hide.
It was exquisite.

Then nothing?

At the time I felt nothing, but when I remember it I remember both standing still and travelling with unconceivable acceleration.

Where were you travelling?

It was the increasing negation of distances.

But don’t you know how you came to be ensconced in that?
(deKlend gestures at his back)

I have no idea.
I understand my mechanism only very imperfectly.

He realizes that Goose Goes Back evidently saw him pointing to his body without having to turn toward deKlend.

It follows from that (deKlend thinks) he is always turned toward me.
It is true;
your mouth is blind, your ears are mute, your eyes don’t smell, and your tongue is deaf.

Say
—
do you know I think I’ve seen another one like you
...
It was a body I saw dancing without a head, and then, it stood under a huge black ball, which became its head.
I was certain
—
I can’t say why
—
that there was a dead body in that ball.

Yes!
That’s Lyrical.

You know, er
—
him?

We used to have such wonderful conversations together.

He came here?

Yes, some time ago now, I think.
He stopped talking, as far as I know, quite a while ago.
It’s been so long, I suppose I believed he’d gone on.

And have you seen others?

I
...

Goose Goes Back stops, for a long time.
Then he resumes his activities without seeming to have noticed.
His manner suggests to deKlend it would not amount to much if he persisted with his last question.

And what is it like
—
in there?

Goose Goes Back comes about, a process that involves taking three steps.
Raising his right hand and forming a circle with his forefinger and thumb like certain kinds of statues, and seeming to raise and lift back the head that isn’t there on his shoulders, with what has to be an expression of bliss, he says

“
—
horrible
—
”

He strides over to deKlend, the erection sweeping from side to side like a metronome wand.
deKlend prefers not to remain seated as Goose Goes Back approaches.

I wonder where Phryne is? (he wonders)

Come with me (Goose Goes Back says)

deKlend follows him through a low arch into a dark, foul room.
When his eyes adjust, he can see bodies limned in the glow of their own luminous decay.
Goose Goes Back is travelling around the room doing something to stir it up, so the lights gradually become more distinct, throwing multicolored zones up onto the stone walls.
The mica in the stone glitters, as do tiny reflectors, and in a few moments the chamber is like a ghostly diamond, sparkling with dim, leprous gleams from the corpses.

Goose Goes Back stands in the middle of the vault, hands clasped together.

What do you think? (he asks expectantly)

Swathed in the heavy silence of that room, deKlend turns around nonplussed.

I’m
—
(he gags on the intake of breath)

/It’s /astounding!
(he chokes)