The Pure Cold Light (35 page)

“If that was Mingo’s work—”

“It was. I was there.”

“Then we’ll have to do something for them,” said Sherk. “Give away some boxes—big ones, better ones. We could bulldoze the area for them, how would that be?”

“Why not instead,” suggested Angel, “stop trying to exterminate them?”

The four heads floated in silence until Kosinus said, “I’m sorry? Exterminate?”

“You dissemble almost as well as you disassemble,” Angel said. “Mingo exceeded his authority, did he?
¡Pamplinas!
You would like it that way. Absolved of all guilt, as much the victims of your agent as those he ruthlessly killed. I would sing another song were I you. But I’m not.” Angel drew off Kosinus’s face then. He tossed it onto the table. The neck clip rang the glass top like a bell. “I am he that lives, and was dead.”

“Rueda.”

“Christ, he’s alive.”

“No thanks to any of you. You’ve now obliterated me two times. First in Madrid, with your drug. Then on the Moon, with your clever brain trap. Tried to squeeze out my soul like toothpaste. You can’t attribute that to Mingo—remember, I was there and heard your conversations. About me, about my people whom you slaughtered, about the others you buried up there in the airless silence. These people with me know all about it.”

“This human refuse?” said Rajcevich with a sneering laugh. Under her head the mechanism of an Orbitol atomizer appeared. It floated down to settle on the table. “Here. Don’t you want some? Aren’t you all hungry for it? Burning? It’s like that, isn’t it? Only supreme will can deny such a hunger. Few have that kind of will.” The container skidded and rolled across the table. “Go ahead, all of you. There’s plenty more. We own the warehouse.”

Shikker broke from the group. She made her way to the table and picked up the atomizer with her good arm.

“That’s right,” Rajcevich urged. “You can’t help it.”

“What are you doing, Jean?”

“Just offering our friends a treat before we get down to reaching a settlement. How about you, there, in the back,” she said to Lyell. “Wouldn’t you like some?”

Lyell stared back at her. On what did this woman base her assessment of Lyell as a Boxer? Could Rajcevich even see this dimension any longer? Offering her Orbitol!—she started to laugh. “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a big ugly monster with four big, fat heads. And because it had four big, fat heads, it had four fat mouths, and an appetite so big that it devoured whole cities. Philadelphia, Montreal, Atlanta—ate ’em right up. Ate the whole continent. Pretty soon the world gets gobbled up like that.”

“Let’s skip the morality tale,” Rajcevich said sourly. “You have some specific point to make?”

“You want to jump straight to the moral—okay, here’s the moral, the way Thomas Lyell would have said it. You don’t need to kill a greedy thing, it eats itself to death.”

“Would that be Thomas Lyell, the late but hardly lamented mayor of Atlanta?”

Lyell took the comment like a physical slap in the face. It cemented her position. “Case in point.” She turned and made her way down the room as she spoke, thinking bitterly, triumphantly, of all that her lens had recorded. “Here sits the very core of the company, the four COs, with your lovely view, and look at you. Rotting away in self-deception, almost gone altogether.”

“Quite the contrary,” Rajcevich argued. “Not gone at all. We long ago established a maintenance dose, which for our own reasons we’ve kept to ourselves. We slowed down the process to where we’ve held steady for near on a decade, and we can remain like this another decade if we like, long enough to realize our dreams. The real question is, do you want to realize yours? You, whoever you are, do you want money? A large apartment in the best Rittenhouse towers? Better—a villa overlooking the sea? Or even passage to Mars. Even that. We can set you up forever.”

“The way you had Mingo set up the Boxers who volunteered for your experiments, the ones who were promised the same Martian colonies but got a mass burial on the Moon instead? You’ve dangled your Mars colonies in front of so many people, I doubt they exist.” She arrived before the window, and peered down at the stepped architecture, down into the blackness that was the plaza at the bottom. “It looks to me,” she observed indifferently, “as if you’ve positioned yourselves on a setback.”

Reflected in the glass she saw Amerind Shikker wandering as though mindlessly around the table. She could tell what Shikker intended, and kept talking. “It amazes me you can accept your own addiction so casually. Don’t you see the same things as other Orbiters?”

“Hallucinations,” the woman said dismissively. “Who cares?”

“This far along and you can still pretend that. That’s impressive.” She turned.

Coming up beside Rajcevich’s chair, the LifeMask image of the ideal Rajcevich produced the atomizer bulb she had been offered. Lyell held her breath, seeing the actions before they came as clearly as a Knewsday psychic.

Shikker suddenly sprawled over the chair, pressed the nozzle of the bulb against the woman’s disembodied head, and fired.

Rajcevich bobbed to the side. She made a wailing sound somewhere between ecstasy and agony.

Shikker slid up over the back of the chair and around the other side, catching Rajcevich on the rebound. She pressed the thing against the left temple of the floating head and fired again. Rajcevich shrieked ferociously, primordially. Her breathing went erratic, became trip-hammer panting. She gave her head a violent shake, slammed it first into the back of her chair and then down again and again, hard against the glass tabletop. A smear developed where she struck.

Kosinus rose as fast as he was able, but was too far away to prevent Shikker’s third pull of the trigger. His invisible hands clutched at her—the ragged clothes plucked and jumped in his grip, but she wrestled free of his weak hold, twisted, and fired back at him. He retreated from the danger she represented.

Lyell stood her ground. As cold and hard as the lens she wore, she held her place and disked what happened without interfering. Later, Neebergall could zoom in to extract every nuance, every moment he wanted. “You chose,” she muttered, “when you said his name—one cruelty too many.”

Angel and Glimet stood by like judge and jury, and she made sure she captured them, too. Glimet’s eyes were closed as if in prayer. Gansevoort stood trembling behind them, his teeth bared in feral repulsion.

Around the table, Sherk had slunk down in his chair, as if he hoped to be overlooked. She couldn’t see the last one, Gotoh. His chair had cranked away immediately from the action.

Rajcevich shrieked in terror. Her pouchy eyelids stretched wide, tracking the approach of a horror she alone could see. “No, no, no,
stop
them!” she called, “don’t let them near me.”

Of an instant her head ceased to exist. Its disappearance made a “pop” like that of a champagne cork. A tiny spurt of blood, as from a nosebleed, spattered the table in front of where she’d sat.

“Aw, God,” Gansevoort groaned.

Meanwhile, the head of Kosinus had begun to bob and weave through the air. He opened his mouth and a yowl emerged, a yowl echoed by Gansevoort, who then slumped down with his arms wrapped around his head.

Shikker’s first blind shot must have hit Kosinus somewhere, enough to disorient him. Her second missed his temple and fired into his forehead. His skin reddened where the chemical opened his capillaries. He spun around with surprising speed for an Orbiter, ululating all the while, like a screeching three-year-old trying to make himself dizzy. His wail swelled with fear, and he halted his crazy spin. Shikker ruthlessly gave him a third shot for good measure, and a moment later, he, too, was gone. His cries seemed to continue long after, but again it was Gansevoort, mewling where he huddled.

Huston Sherk had drifted from the table. He stood against the wall. Shikker ignored him, and closed on the chair ostensibly containing Gotoh. Lyell circled carefully toward it. Shikker turned it from the wall.

Gotoh floated calmly, not a hint of fear in his eyes. He focused on the atomizer bulb. “Please,” he asked, as if desiring a cup of tea. His eyes closed. Shikker fired twice into his head. His reaction was unlike the others.

He hissed and his face scrunched up. The veins stood out on his forehead, but he was smiling—a grotesque sight, since he had no lower jaw. He faded away like a ghost. Shortly, there was nothing of him to be seen.

Sherk begged. “Don’t, I don’t want to go over. Please don’t let her do this.”

Shikker said, “You done this to a lotta people. Been trying for years to make me take it, you and your pitchmen. I don’t see why we shouldn’t give it back, if it’s so damn good. You think you’re special, but you ain’t special, bastard. You got the urge like Glimet, ya want some of this, don’t ya? Hunger that bitch was on about—yeah, you got that particular hunger. I been surrounded by people itching your way. Ain’t no supreme will when you got to have a taste. So, I guess I’m giving you my share. I want you to join the party, don’t be late for your own funeral.” She stalked him around the table. He couldn’t move his altered limbs fast enough to escape. He tried to pull himself over the glass. Shikker had him like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Lyell asked Angel, “Are you making her do this? Is he?” She indicated Glimet.

“She’s doing this on her own.”

“Then what’s he doing, communing?” she asked, indicating Glimet.

“He acts as a focus, a beacon. Drawing the others in twelve-space to himself. From him they can locate the transformed COs and be there to take them as they arrive. She’s doing them a favor, really. Easing their passage. Best to get it over with.” He stared meaningfully at her. “Believe me, it’s a journey better avoided.”

“Lying, fucking bastards,” muttered Gansevoort.

Sherk cried out, in pain, in pleasure, then in mortal terror for his life.

The tabletop cracked at one end, but nothing remained on top of it.

“What happens now?” asked Lyell.

“Now,” said Angel, “I bid you
adios
, Thomasina Lyell.”

“You’re going to ride off into the sunset just like that?”

“I have no choice.”

Shikker was turning, glancing all round herself in search of another head to attack. As she passed by Glimet, he reached out and touched her and she stopped. She gazed lovingly at him. “Never again,” she said, “Never again for you.” She flung the atomizer against the large screen. It bounced harmlessly off.

“No,” he promised, “never.” He hugged her to him. The gesture reminded Lyell more of a parent than a lover, and made her ache with an emptiness she had not felt for years. She wondered which side of Glimet initiated the hug, then decided it really didn’t matter. Certainly it didn’t to Shikker. Lyell sensed more than saw Angel Rueda start to collapse.

He doubled over, one hand stretched out as though clutching for support. Then he pitched headlong into the debris.

She knelt beside him and flipped him over, intending to apply whatever lifesaving techniques she could. He was no more than a husk, his body already collapsing, cast off. The energy—whatever it was—that had kept the spark of him alive was gone. She covered her mouth and nose against the sudden stench, and stood away. Behind her, Gansevoort flopped over, unconscious.

“Glimet,” she asked, “what happened, why did he—”

“He told you, he had to. He’d made a promise.”

“I don’t understand. Promised who?”

“Angel Rueda. His work was done, and he granted release to the human host. So it’s agreed, each of us with our hosts. Glimet’s time isn’t long off, either. I hope you’ll help Amerind—she won’t realize the true nature of the event as you do.”

Lyell bowed her head over the body of the man who had brought her into this, and bade farewell to the soul released from strange purgatories.

A presence moved into the room. Like a shadow passing, it drew her attention.

In front of the wide window, phantom threads unfolded out of a dark core. By the moment these joined and gained in complexity, like a living Julia set, crystalline but somehow supple. The evolving form was familiar to her already—call it lotus or mandala. A circle, vaguely.

Trash on the floor sprang up and danced. A frisson like that preceding an electrical storm filled the air; a glow akin to St. Elmo’s fire outlined each bit of flying debris, none of which touched them. Its flight had a pattern to it, or, rather, hundreds of patterns coexisting. The table split its length and collapsed. Its tubular supports stuck up like animal legs in rigor mortis. The trash spun ever more slowly, lower and lower, dying down like dry leaves abandoned by a wind. They skittered to a stop.

Glimet turned toward Lyell and said, “Behold, and I’ll show you a mystery.”

The dark, thousand-petaled form, flowing in a continuous cycle from center to tips, had fully eructed into the here and now of the room. Held in the air by whatever unseen forces, it blocked the view of the towers. Lyell moved past him to disk it in detail. As she did, the first of its new offspring began to push through.

Epilogue: The Big Broadcast

“It’s the President Odie Show! With Veep Schnepfe! The Capitol Hill Synthestra! And tonight’s very special guests in an exclusive interview: the Chief Officers of ScumberCorp! That’s right, folks, you’ll never see them anywhere else. So give me a big assist and say ‘To Hail with the Chief!’ It’s President
Odie
!”

The curtain parted and out shuffled the president of the United States, Malcolm Odie. His suit gleamed only slightly brighter than his teeth. He waved warmly to his constituency, waved the one-man synthestra down as a Dixieland send-up of “Hail to the Chief” filled the hall.

“Thank you all, every registered voter out there. Good God, you’d think I was in
charge
of something.” Laughter. “Yeah, yeah. Well, here we are, on what promises to be an eventful night, the kind of night that goes down in TV history as the night where everybody remembers where they were. They used to say that sort of thing about Jack Kennedy and the New York nuke and Schnepfe’s piles.” A synthetic rimshot spanged like a bullet across the stage.