Watson, Ian - SSC (7 page)

 
          
Tezcatlipoca
took the form of an ashen-veiled giant carrying his head in his hand and
searched for the sunspot where he could be himself, the sun. The sight of him
in the dark made nervous people fall dead with fear, the way the wasps in their
slave cars shivered at our banshee wail as we passed them by on the highways,
invisible, vindictive, reckless. Yet one brave man seized hold of the giant
and held on to him—bound him in white plastic webbing, in spite of his screams
and curses. Held him hour after hour till near morning when it was time for the
sun to rise. Then the ashen giant began promising the brave man wealth and even
omnipotence to let him go. At the promise of omnipotence the brave man agreed
and tore out the giant’s heart as a pledge before he let him go. Wrapping the
heart up in his handkerchief, he took it home with him. When he opened it up
to look at the heart, however, there was nothing but ashes in it. For the sun
had already risen, and in his new omnipotence broke his promise and burned his
pledge.

 
          
Take
heed, Marina, hand on the release tag— take heed of the sun when he is free.
You hold my heart now in your handkerchief, blood drips into your bottles
through the mesh, safely. The heart is not yet ashes.

 
          
Her
hand touching the webbing, her Indian face divided by a watershed of light ...
at this brief pause in time could I have afforded a little pity, a little
affection . . . ?

           
“Is it time . . . ?”

 
          
She
whispered into the darkness from which the sun must rise—for the sun is time
itself (or so I thought then) so far as our twenty-four hour clocks knew, so
far as the circadian rhythms of our bodies are aware.

 
          
What
else is time, but the sun in the sky? But this is the Age
Without
Time—for the travellers over the blackened prairies, for the wasp refugees in
the Fuller domes!

 
          
At
the end of every fifty-two years, the fires were all quenched throughout
Mexico, and a fresh fire kindled on a living prisoner’s chest—to keep time on
the move. What fire shall be kindled in whose chest, to bring Time back into
the world today?

 
          
“Yes,
it’s time to kindle the sun.”

 
          
Marina’s
breast rose and fell convulsively as she pulled the tag.

 
          
Plastic
thongs slid off my limbs in four directions at once like frightened snakes and
I slipped to the floor, free of the pain hammock, knocking aside the sanitary
facilities which she’d forgotten to remove, with a noisy clatter that alerted
Shanahan. He craned his head against the tension of the web, as I sat
massaging life into my limbs.

 
          
“Considine,”
he called softly. A worried Marina flashed the pencil of light across his face,
and he blinked blindly at us.

 
          
“Considine,
get me out of here—please!”

 
          
“Put
him back to sleep, Marina.”
(Quietly.)
“It’s not his
time for release—Tezcatlipoca isn’t with him.” My feet prickling intolerably
with thawing-out frostbite.

 
          
She
crept towards Shanahan, dazzling him with her pencil of light; injected him
with something, while he imagined his web was being undone. By the time my
legs were fit to stand on, he was calm again.

 
          
She
gripped my arm to steady me, helped me dress.

 
          
“Your
car’s in the ambulance sheds.” “Buggy,” said I angrily.
“Sun
buggy.”
“There’s so much I have to learn.”

           
“There isn’t much,” I assured
her—and this, alas, was honest—as we slipped out of the ward toward the
darkness of freedom.

 
          
“What
is the sun really like?”

 
          
“A
ball of incandescent gas . . .”

 
          
Of
course Marina hadn’t seen the sun.
Except as a baby, long
time ago, forgotten, maybe.
Models of the sun were all. Hot yellow lamps
hanging from the eggshells of the Fuller domes, switched on in the morning,
switched off again at night. If a sunspot had ever bathed the hospital, she
wouldn’t have seen it through the solid walls.

 
          
As
we crept into the ambulance sheds, she began to cough, grating explosive little
coughs that she did her best to stifle with her hand.

 
          
A
dull orange glow from standby lighting pervaded the gloom of the sheds, where
half a dozen of the great sleek snub-nosed ambulances were parked and a number
of impounded buggies— beyond, light spilling from a window in the crew room
door and the sound of muffled voices.

 
          
We
climbed into my buggy—the key was in the lock—and I ran my hands gently over
the controls, reuniting myself with them.

           
Tezcatlipoca’s jaguar stenciled on
my seat radiated confidence strength suppleness and savagery through my body. .
. .

 
          
Marina
sat limply in the passenger seat looking around my world, stifling her
cough—but the air was cleaner in my buggy, would get even cleaner once we were
on the move.

 
          
“Who
opens the doors?”

 
          
“We
have to wait for an ambulance to leave,
then
chase it
out. How soon till we see the sun, Considine?”

 
          
“Sooner than you think.”

 
          
“How
do you know?”

 
          
“What
is the sun, Marina?
A blazing yellow ball of gas radiating
timelessly and forever at six thousand degrees Centigrade, too bright to look
upon.
A bear with bells on his ankles, striped face,
blazing eyes.
A magician with a puppet dancing in his
hand.
A smoking mirror.
A
giant in an ashen veil with his head in his hand.
A
G-type star out on the edge of the galaxy around which planets and other debris
revolve.
Your choice.”

 
          
“I’ve
seen movies of the sun—maybe it’s no big thing after all.”

 
          
“Oh
it’s big, Marina-—it’s the climax.”

 
          
Then
a siren went off in the shed, shockingly loud, and the lights came up full.

 
          
The
ambulance crew spilled from their room, zipping their gear and fixing their
masks as they ran. They took an ambulance two along the line from us.

 
          
Its
monobeam flared out ahead, splashing a hole bright as the sun’s disc on the
door. Its turbines roared.

           
And the door flowed smoothly,
swiftly, up into the roof.

 
          
As
I started the buggy’s engine a look of fear and terrible understanding came
over Marina’s face—sleepwalker wakening on the high cliff edge. She tore at the
door handle. But naturally it was locked and she couldn’t tell where to unlock
it.

 
          
“Marina!”
Using the voice that cuts through flesh to the bone.
“Quit it!” A voice I’d never used to beg or plead with in the hospital.
Authority voice of the Sun Priest.
Obsidian
voice.
Voice that cuts flesh.
Black, volcanic, harsh.

 
          
Her
hand fell back upon the seat.

 
          
The
ambulance, blinding the smog with its monobeam, sped through the doors—and us
after it, before the doors dropped again.

 
          
Great
Tezcatlipoca, Who Bringeth Wealth and War, Sunshine and Death, Sterility and
Harvest! For Whom Blood Floweth Like
Milk, That
Milk
May Flow!

 
          
The smog so thick outside.
Even the great eye of the
ambulance saw little. Undoubtedly they were relying on radar already, as I
was—and wondering, doubtless, what the tiny blip behind their great blip
represented, Remora riding on a shark ... I dropped back, not to worry them.

 
          
When
we got to the highway entry point, I took the other direction.

 
          
Whichever
way I took, I knew it led to the sun.

 
          
Two
hours down the highway, Marina sleeping on my shoulder, bored with the
monotonous environment of the sun buggy (green radar no substitute for
video), radio crackling out data from

           
Met Central revealing total disarray
among the air currents, turbid gas blowing everywhichways, absurd peaks and
dips in the nitrogen oxides, crazy chemical transformations—a scene in
disarray awaiting my touch, and what I brought it was the body of
Marina
, magnet to the iron filings of the
everywhichways polluted sky.

 
          
Two
hours down the highway, piloting with ever-greater certainty, careless of
pursuit, I picked the radiophone up, tuned to the Sun Club waveband. . . .

 
          
Nearby,
voices of some charioteers of the sun.
“Considine calling
you.
Considine’s Commandos.
Smokey
Mirror Sun Club.
I’m heading straight for the sun. Anyone caring to join
me is welcome. Vector in on my call sign . . .”

           
My voice woke
Marina
up, to the babble of voices answering over
the radiophone.
“Considine?’’

           
“How did you get
out?’’

 
          
“How
do you
know?
Man?’’

 
          
Who
had ever dared call a hunt into being among sunrunners other than his own? How
great the risk he ran, of shame, revenge, contempt! How did I know, indeed!

           
“Where are we?” yawned
Marina
. “What’s going on?”

 
          
“We’re
hunting for the sun—I’ve cried fox and I’m calling the hounds in.”

 
          
“Whose
voices are those?”

 
          
“It
hasn’t been done before, what I’m doing.
Those voices—
the
cry of the hounds.”

           
“Considine, I’m hungry. Is there
anything to eat in the car?”

           
“Hush—I’ve told you,
buggy
is the name. No eating now—it’s
time to fast. This is a religious moment.”

 
          
A
louder challenging voice that I recognized broke in on the waveband.
The Magnificent Am- berson’s.

 
          
“Considine?
This is Amberson. Congratulations on your
break-out—how did you do it?”

 
          
“Thanks,
Amberson. I got a nurse to spring me.”

 
          
“A nurse?”

 
          
“She’s
with me now—she’s part of it.”

 
          
“Hope
you know what you’re doing, Considine. You
really meaning
to call a general hunt?”

 
          
“A gathering of the tribes.
That’s it, Amberson.”

 
          
“Sure
your head isn’t screwed up by loss of blood? The weather data is chaos. Sure
you haven’t bought your way out of there by offering something in return—say, a
gathering of the tribes in a certain location?”

 
          
“Screw
you, Amberson—I’ll settle with you for that slander after I’ve greeted the sun.
Sun hounds, you coming chasing me?”