The Centauri Device Part 12

Elsewhere small furtive birds eyed their surroundings sadly, ruffling then*

feathers as they hopped among the fallen, decaying trees.

Finally, that revelatory city-a handful of ban bearings embedded in black sand-it closed on Truck like a trap.

"An early faflure in climatic control,** admitted Grishkin. "We were primitive if energetic when we came to Stomach, Captain." He spoke as if he'd been there in 2143, which wouldn't have surprised Truck in the least. "It will be rectified, like all things, with time."

He hurried Truck into a sflent place with clean cool white walls. An odd smell of ozone and antiseptic pervaded it. There were static dust-collectors and ventilators everywhere, humming faintly. If you looked closely at the walls, you could see countersunk rivets. People who might or might not have been Openers moved down the pa.s.sageways dressed in pale green gowns and plastic gloves, their footsteps echoing with queer calm urgency.

"Are you sick?" asked Truck suspiciously. Hospitals made him uneasy. He thought of running back to the aircraft, but the pilot had gone off somewhere to get his breakfast.

'This anxiety, Captain-it isn't necessary. AH your problems end here.**

"That's what I'm afraid of."

He bit his fingernails, swallowed accidentally, coughed. He lagged behind, but Grishkin took his arm possessively.

"What are you going to do with me?**

106.

The Centaur; Device "Come now, Captain, before we tend to the first part of our bargain, you mustsee something of our work here." His diabolic or malefic avatar lurked just beneath his eyelids, peeping out but endeavoring to remain un.o.bserved. "YouTI find the Memorial Theater very interesting. But we mustn't be late." Things were fermenting, dissolving behind his windows. Every time they came to a fire door in the corridor, he glanced up at the clock above it His grip tightened.

He was actually pulling Truck along.

Suppose the Memorial Theater to commemorate a single genius of the movement (rather than, say, some murky instance or episode of its past) and he'd have to be a fable-a Minotaur of medicine and religion, some accidental connection between the brain of a mad vivisectionist and the bands of an inappropriate rector. Something any decent man would put a boot to without thought. On Stomach, no one had, and his spirit presided.

It was a huge room.

Normally, Truck sensed, it would be full of a seedy, vinegar-colored gloom strained through the thirty-foot stained gla.s.s windows (depicting what?

Openerism is an eclectic, a catholic faith--there was a bit of everything, from Lazarus rising to Moses descending; but surely Lazarus hadn't died from a Caesarean incision?). Now it was lighted up starkly by thousands of watts of white light. Electrocorticogram operators and organists sat over their instruments while choirboys draped hi thick plum felt paced slowly between the ma.s.sive multifoil arches, then- eyes fixed on the groined roof. The operating table, inviolate on the center of the flagged floor, was a limestone altar.

The eerie modes of some plainsong chant echoed long and hollow and far away, as if from bare masonry.

Snip, pick, went the hands of the surgeons, slim and dextrous. "+&-, +&-, +&-," sang the electrical gear as, masked and gowned, Truck and Dr. Grishkin slipped into the inner circle of light and odor.

107.

"This is one of the most impressive events in our history," whispered Grishkin. The patient lay under a local a.n.a.lgesic. A tent of surgical drape covered his body. Above him, spotlights and sheaves of cable hung from chrome bars. Thin bright laser beams crossed and danced. Grishkin bowed to the surgeons, moved nimbly forward-keeping hold of Truck's wrist-and whipped back the surgical tent. "Look-" he breathed.

At first sight, it was a flayed corpse: a ma.s.s of yellowish adipose tissue, great ropy blood-vessels, red and blue; all ligament and muscle, wet and sticky-looking and held together by a sac of cling-plastic. John Truck felt his throat fill up with something. He was back among the orbital hospitals and corpse-boats of Canes. Venatici, packing them in then: boxes. He tried to pufl away, but Grishkin held on.

"For the first time, a Grand Master of the Movement is attaining total transparency-'* It was plastic. The thing under the tent would never move again. It had a gla.s.s skin. "His reverence is fully aware. Would you like to speak to him? Ask him something?** Grishkin radiated an ebullience, a vast energy. "If you find this amazing, you should see what we*re doing with the head Captain!"

s Truck backed off, waving his free arm violently, dislodging a strand of hair from under his hygienic cap. Doctor Grishkin tucked it back for him, hissing with pleasure. The chant of the choir fell into the minor, over a pattern of unresolved chords from the organ: "Hallelujah!" they cried, and Grishkin said, "A crystal skull, Captain! The Brain Revealed!"

It poked through the back of the surgical tent, maggot-colored, patched with distended areas of cochineal, veined blue-black. It was covered with tiny squares of white paper, each bearing a number. It opened an eye and looked at him.

"Something's gone wrong!** he shouted. "Oh, kill it-can't you see!**

"We've had some trouble with the aDografting, I ad- 108.

mit," said Grishkin. **But foreign-body reaction is well below the acceptable minimum. Don't carp, Captain. Ask!"

Truck swallowed. "Why-" Mfld, swimming blue eyes, like birds' eggs in that wreckage. It was trying to smile at him. "Why would you need a sentient bomb?"

he managed. He was frantic; anything so Grishkin would be satisfied and take him away from there.

A faint chuckle. "You," whispered the Grand Master of the Openers. "You-"

Grishkin began to laugh. He threw back his head and roared. "Oh, Captain!

You've been listening to poor, violent Alice Gaw. She has a mind like a howling desert. She's mad, my son-there's no bomb on Cen-tauri. I was there first, I dug my way into the final bunker bare-handed. What she saw lies in her own head, not there. Didn't you realize that?"

His laughter died away. He wiped his mouth. "But I-what I saw was something quite different. It filled that place, it-" He shuddered. Condensation formed behind his windows. Anguish clouded his eyes. "There is a Mystery at the foot of Shaft Ten: a receptacle of the Spirit-and G.o.d spoke to me from it-" He swayed like a sick man, pawed his forehead. "He asked for you, Captain, he asked me to bring him a Centau-ran." His lips peeled back off his teeth, he seemed to be fighting the muscles of his own face for an instant, some actual battle-then he relaxed. His fingers left a red mark on Truck's wrist "Now, Captain, the rest of our bargain."

"I don't think I want to go on with this."

Truck was always running for doors. This time he made it, and he was out in the corridor before something p.r.i.c.ked him in the neck. For someone not getting any dope, he thought, I'm pa.s.sing out more than I should.

He dreamed that pupation was almost over. Dr. Grishkin was forcing him to distend the sac on his

109.

forehead, to burst the brittle sh.e.l.l of the chrysalis. He hated it. His multi-jointed legs, however, scrabbled on of their own accord; his forehead strained against its confines, diminished, swelled again; the sh.e.l.l cracked, cold air flowed in. You could go anywhere like that, said General Gaw.

Anywhere, sonny. He tried to withdraw. Let me be a grub again. But they wouldn't His antennae waved feebly, already receiving messages of a new kind.

That was an end to it: fighting to remain, he left the husk nevertheless, an imago full-formed. Woke up-Terrified in case he discovered what kind of insect he was.

He waited for his head to clear. He looked down at himself. "I never asked for this, Grishkin. Some day I might kill you for this." He got carefully off the bed^ rubbing his arms. His old clothes were gone. Wisps of the dream were still evaporating in his head. He got dressed in the only thing available (aware of Grishkin, arms folded, watching him curiously), avoiding the mirrors in the room when he could.

He flexed his hands in miserable defiance. "One day." Caught an accidental glimpse of himself- shfvered.

"But Captain, you wanted to disappear. Now you're invisible. Who'll look at you and see Captain John Truck, a s.p.a.cer? Mm?"

Truck walked blindly past him and out of the room, but he followed. "I've fulfilled my part of the bargain, Captain. Both your conditions have been satisfied. You're mine, now."

His numb misery gave way to panic. He was almost sobbing. He became lost in a maze of cool white corridors, where Openers nodded politely at him and his reflection lay in ambush for him at every gla.s.s door. He began to run, his breath sc.r.a.ping at his throat. But he couldn't lose the shadow behind him.

"Admit it, my son-" Finally, he found the daylight, stumbled out with Grishkin waddling rapidly after. He fell down a 110.

The Centauri Device flight of steps and into the ghastly s.p.a.ces of the Stomach badlands.He stayed there, on his hands and knees, gulping.

"The General has installed half the Fleet over Cen-tauri VII, Captain. It will take time to breach her security. We can only wait a suitable opportunity. In the meantime, don't you see, you can take up a probationary ministry, like any other Novice of the order. You will be invisible. It's what you asked. I have provided not only security for you, but a means whereby you can remember our bargain."

"You didn't have to do it this way, Grishkin."

His cloak had fallen open. He looked up. In front of him stood the pilot of the atmosphere vehicle, a puzzled expression on his decent flier's face. "What are you staring at, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" But he could no longer avoid his reflection.

It was in the man's eyes: the plum-colored cloak; the horrible naked scrawny body* shaven and goosefleshed in the wind; the bald head- And the little plastic panel implanted hi his abdominal wall. He stared at it and began to weep.

It was disgusting.

It hurt.

"Here," said the pilot, helping him up. "Take it easy."

But that wasn't the end of it, either, although he soon found that he could keep the cloak discreetly wrapped round him and ignore what lay beneath it-so that when he got back to Golgotha some of his composure, such as it was, had returned. It was precarious. He'd take Pater's injunction to heart and he could no longer guess what might become of him.

It was dark by then. My Ella Speed was blacked out. She seemed deserted, but up in the control room he stumbled over Tiny Skeffern, snoring on the floor, a ripped-off bottle of Pater's ethanol under his hand. He kicked the body gently. "Tiny? Fix, why aren't there any lights on?" He found the switches himself, worked The Centaur! Device 111.

them petulantly. "Fix, where are you?" There was something scrawled on a bulkhead in tremulous yellow crayon: DERE BOS.

IVE GOTTA JBO ONA PRATER OUT FRUM ERTH AW IF.

WEER TAUKGNI ABOT PAY WEL I HAVENT BIN PAYD FRO.

6 MNUTHS FKX.

All Chromians are dyslexic from birth. It may be why their culture is still feudal. Truck sat down in one of the command chairs and shrugged at the inscription. "Fix, Fix." It was no more than he deserved. He felt unutterably weary.

Tiny, meanwhile, had stirred, rubbed his eyes, and sucked the empty bottle.

"Fix left," he said, helping himself up with the edge of the chart computer.

"Christ that stuff stinks." He staggered round the cabin looking for water, tripping repeatedly over the bottle, intent only on his own pain. "Took his chopper and everything."

"It's happened before. h.e.l.l be back. We're always falling out.'* It was true, but it didn't make him feel any better: it was always his fault.

Finally, Tiny got his sight back.

"Hey, Truck," he sn.i.g.g.e.red, "did you get converted?" He squinted across the control room, a big, silly grin spreading across his face as he took hi Truck's new clothes. "Jesus, what-"

Truck, inspired by a dreadful rage, had leaped to his feet and was making determined grabs for Tiny's throat.

He skipped smartly back. "Truck, I-"

Truck got hold of him. Laugh, and FI1 kick your head in, Skeffern," he said earnestly. "Come on then-" He wanted to hurt somebody. He was being driven further and further out on his own, away from even the minimal decencies of the hinterlands. He 112 shoved Tiny up against the bulkhead untfl his thin blond hair was rubbing outFix's illiterate plea for fair treatment. "Come on"-inviting with steely fingers- "say one word."

And then, from all the sick misery of his awakening in Grishkin's ghoulish city; "Oh sod it, sod it. Help me, Tiny."

Tiny gaped and snuffled.

Truck slumped back in his seat and set his eyes sorrowfully on the bosun's stupid half-erased note (Fix wasnt fit to be out on his own: he only got into fights with people bigger than himself, or p.a.w.ned his chopper). "What am I doing, Tiny? I made a deal with Grishfcin. It was the only way I could see to get hold of the b.l.o.o.d.y Device. Now I'm not sure he didn't suspect that all along. He expects me to try and double-cross him. He cut me open as a warning.

What am I doing?" "It was only a joke, Truck, I didn't-" Truck s.h.i.+vered and stared at the bulkhead. Bleak steel.

I.

NINE.

Under the Lamplight at Avernus 2367: without Truck to operate it, the Centauri Device (bomb or Totem, perhaps both) remained in its bunker, quiescent but maybe reviewing hi solitude memories of an earlier war. Or even-sensing that Truck was now gravitating toward it, spiraling hi from his o,wn choice rather than General Gaw's or ben Barka's or Grishkin's-stirring a little hi its two-century sleep.

2367: above, on the fringes of Centauri's rubbished atmosphere, hung evidence of the new war-Mind black battles.h.i.+ps, slipping constantly into new patterns of defense, casting mechanically about like beasts that will tear each other if there is no scent of quarry. 2367: the Galaxy had begun a horrible gavotte to Earth's tune. On Sad al Ban IV, adolescent shock-troops with doomed delinquent faces wore their IWG uniforms through weekend leave in the hinterland, shyly testing their new boots in the alleys off Bread Street; from the factories of Parrot issued the graveyard s.h.i.+ft, rubbing its hands to stir a sluggish, sleep-deprived const.i.tution and congratulating itself on overproduction of long reaction guns for the mutual succor treaty with 113.

114 - Tfte Centaur/ Device UASR (the notorious "Salisbury" pact); whfle everywhere else young girls with clear winsome eyes were lifting their feet to Earth's popular songs and their skirts to das.h.i.+ng young Earth-liaison officers with the colonial squadrons.

2367: a brief hush out there among the stars, as it an hit a pinnacle of awed preparation. Then-lips parted in wonder and a calm dewy smile-the long graceful pratfall into Earth's mucky business. 2367: Intestinal Revelation (lately the Ella Speed, out of RV Tauri n-Stomach-with a cargo of nothing) lay at Egerton's Port. Avernus, that infamous planet at the edge of the Ariadne arm. Out there, the war seemed remote but plausible.

Egerton's Port went down the dram before it was ever a finished proposition.

It never experienced that state of spiritual pioneering-during which the local Women's Inst.i.tute will hang a s.p.a.cer whose hair falls a centimeter below his collar (and even specify the type of collar)-through which ports on newly-colonized planets inevitably pa.s.s; but moved from raw incom-pletion to the decadence of an established hinterland while the earth-movers were still mapping it out of the ground. Thus, while its streets were cinders and its buildings sour corrugated plastic, -its heart was as rotten as Earth's; and while its considerable warehouse facilities were still in process of development, so was the sore that came to be called "Junk City."

Before the civil engineers left there was a pusher for every street corner and every possible sensation, from AdAcs to Ziapaprothixene. By the time John Truck got there, there were ten (and the reputation of the place, had been going anywhere but in circles round Beta-X-ligo XVII, would have preceded it at every stop along the way). They fought one another in vicious obscurity through the confines of Junk City, and those who survived went out like rats into the port-proper; they were the red-eyed end, they were the 115 continually-replaced rodent teeth and alligator shoes of the Galaxy-they were so eroded in the skull that they'd ask you one minute if scruples were shot or snorted and wonder the next if you could get them a kilo or two at the right price, But it was their clients that made the place an agony.

They sat or slumped in groups with their backs against the shaking walls, caught like depraved family snapshots-the spike still hanging from the arm, the tiny trickle of blood from the nose-Denetrian, Gyg-nian, Chromian, Earthman, They had given up all pretense of being s.p.a.cers or wh.o.r.es or anything they had started out to be, and become ciphers with creased open palms, evil clothes, soft bleached voices. The whites of their eyes were gray and somehow crystalline; and whatever it is that the eyes are attached to had gone that way'too. Every day just before dawn an irregular detail drawn from their own ranks would clear the streets of those who had died in the night It kept them hi dope.

It was there that Truck began to incubate the vision that was to influence his final deployment of the Cen-tauri Device. Day after day he had to ignore the beseeching hands or listen to the alligator shoes (licking, licking the filthy untreated concrete floors) or pick his way between the O/D cases of the streets. He felt sympathy for someone other than himself, which was unusual-and more, he came to realize that it was Earth money that had built the shacks of Avernus and Earth speculators who owned them.

Further, he remembered Sad al Ban, where he had looked at the losers and, in effect, congratulated himself on escaping all that. But was it any more than a matter of degree? From a terminal H habit on Avernus to a streetsinger's pitch on Sad al Bari to My Ella Speed was an upward progress, maybe-but he'd consumed with the best of them, and he was no stranger to alligator shoes, either. Somehow, he'd never seen him- 116.

self as quite so much a part of it-would he begin to regret his THC sundaes and his adventures on Morpheus?

People take what sc.r.a.ps of personal memory they want to believe in and erect a house of experiential straw. Pater had set light to his, and Avernus was fanning the flames.

He shared with Tiny Skeffern a one-room plastic shed and left it once a day to preserve his fictional Openerism. His window hurt at the edges, where the flesh was inflamed, and it still terrified him to look at it; but he hung on grimly, waiting for a word from Grishkin and thinking up ways to double-cross him when it came.

He made an unconvincing Opener, being embarra.s.sed to undo his cloak in private, let alone public; as a Novice, he was not allowed, nor would he have wanted, to take confession; and so his sole cover-activity was the distribution of sect literature (brown bundles of which, printed on that crude paper which always seems to smell of excrement, filled the hold of his s.h.i.+p) among the bars and leprotic brothels of the port. It was a threadbare deception and when, after about two weeks of it, he met an earlier acquaintance, it was put paid to entirely.

TEN.