Transmaniacon (11 page)

“One of them. And I think I hit the control panel through the window.” Gloria said huskily. “Looks like they're having problems staying up.”

The wasp-car ranged erratically, dipping excessively right, then left, writhing like a mad bee.

Suddenly, the wasp-car was far above them, and Ben knew the fly-car was dropping. He looked over his shoulder. The laser-shot had ripped through the deck and nicked the power-spine. The energy supplies were leaking. The crater in the metal deck gave out a violet glow. They were sinking to earth.

“We gonna crash?” asked Gloria off-handedly.

He shook his head. “No, but it's going to be bumpy or maybe even—”

They hit the trees.

Thunder and crackles. He was thrown to the floor. Gloria was clawing at him. Both of them slid feet-first toward the tail as the fly-car wedged itself straight up between the trees.

It stopped moving. They pitched up against the concave aft bulkhead. All was still. They got their breath back and struggled upright; the eye-windows of the fly-car were pointed at the sun. The sun seemed trapped at the end of the black shaft formed by the interior of the vertical craft. They climbed laboriously up, gripping the frame-struts, and Ben cranked open the hatch. They climbed through and dropped ten feet to the fragrant pine needles covering the ground.

Brushing off, they assessed their situation. Bruised but unbroken. The fly-car was dead. They were in an uncrowded woods redolent of pitch and sage, and with very little underbrush. They heard the crackle of snapping tree limbs as the wasp-car crashed, far down the slope.

Gloria smiled.

Ben shook his head. “Didn't sound to me like it struck hard enough to kill the pilot. Good chance Fuller's alive. He's a tenacious bastard. Let's go. You got the gun?”

She nodded.

“Okay, then.”

They struck off up the hillside, northwest, hoping to intersect the pilgrims' caravan.

In a flat-bottomed hollow between two hills, the track widened suddenly, from six yards to sixty, and they came upon an ancient campground pitted with the black scars of many campfires. A thin waterfall splashed down the hillside, formed a pool, then leaked into a creek which trickled around the flat area to fling itself down the hillside.

Here, beside the stream, sat Ben and Gloria, waiting in the shade of an overhanging boulder. They had reached the spot ahead of the pilgrims, and Ben assumed the cult would stop here to rest and refill their water bags.

“Why are they on foot?” Gloria asked.

“There are no roads between cities, except a few rough trails. Some of them might be rich enough to afford to fly to San Francisco, but they wouldn't if they could. They are morbid ascetics. Something like the Penitati Monks or the worshippers of Ahura-Mazda in ancient Persia. The essence of life, to them, is suffering. The essence of virtue, contrition. According to Dis, we are placed on earth to do penance for the original sin of the conceit that led us to come into being—our mistake was in causing ourselves to be born. So we must suffer until we are paid up in the account book of pain-accrued, at which time we are rewarded. We are permitted, as a reward, to enter again the Sacred Halls of Non-being. Commonly known as death. The ultimate act of devotion for the Dis-cultist is suicide. I know them well. I used to work in the Suicide Parlors in San Francisco. Part of my cover--I had to learn their jargon and rituals. Nonbelievers call them ‘Dizzies'. I can get us in with them, I think, if you keep your mouth shut.”

“Don't worry about me, hot-shot. What's a suicide parlor? What it sounds like?”

“In a fancy way--yeah. Suicide is each Dis-cultist's ultimate goal. So they try to make it as elaborate and dramatic and glorious as possible. There are Final Gift agencies, specialists who provide hundreds of shrieking mourners, slaves who seem to kill themselves at the feet of the suicide in worship. They produce the story of the suicide's life on stage, and fireworks, displays of lightning bolts that spell out the suicide's name. They unveil monuments to him or her—all depending on how much the suicide can pay. Naturally, there are a variety of devices for ending it all. Self-immolation by fire is the most impressive. But others prefer to be torn limb from limb by a crowd adoringly chanting their name. My parlor was cheap. We did a quick wailing, maybe a stock poem dedicated to the suicide, and gave the client a nice room with a view and a loaded pistol.”

“Same old San Francisco,” Gloria commented. “Actually, I sort of understand. I could go for it, I think.”

“Personally, I suspect my death would be a great inconvenience to me,” said Ben,

The first of the pilgrims rounded the bend, crashing hand-cymbals with every footstep.

All of them wore the same red cowls, except the man second in the procession, who wore a dusty white robe with a blood-red heart sewn on the chest. As they neared, Ben could see the man in white had bare feet, bleeding from the sharp stones.

Ben nudged Gloria, whispered instruction. As the trailing procession came abreast, they both fell to their knees. Ben crawled forward and prostrated himself before the man in white, who held up a hand to signal the procession would pause. The pilgrims, glancing dispassionately at Ben and Gloria, spread out onto the wide ground, filling water bags and breaking out rations, resting in the shade. The man in white regarded Ben stonily; his features were craggy, his nose a hatchet of flesh, his cheeks sunken, his pallid lips tight over his teeth. His eyes were hollows; a thin mask of flesh stretched over his skull.

“Speak, unclean.” said he in a high, nasal tone.

“Oh, Pristine and Burdened Mourner, we are stricken with adoration of Dis and would surrender to His Holy Will. ”

“Are you initiated?”

“I am. We are.”

“Speak the third invocation.”

Ben cleared his throat and began, kissing the ground after each
so be it:
“Where is the man who has cheated Death? No man or woman bests Death. So be it! Where is the final victor? Death and Death alone. So be it! Where is the joy in living a life doomed to pain in a body doomed to be the communion-bread of maggots? No joy is there. So be it!”

“Well spoken, and now speak your name and the fifth invocation.”

“Maggot-swill Rackey pleads for punishment! There is no birth without the violence of eruption. So be it! There is no dynasty begun without the violence of usurpation. So be it! A wooden altar is not built without the violent felling of the tree. So be it! As we are born let us die, as we begin let us end, from violence, to violence, through violence to peace. So be it! You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. So be it!”

The mourner in white intoned: “Death, where is thy victory? It is
here! Here!”

He bent and, in the ritual manner of the worshippers of Dis, tossed a handful of dust in Ben's eyes. “Rise, Mourner Rackey.”

Ben stood, eyes stinging. Gloria was still kneeling.

“This one is initiated?” asked the venerable mourner.

“Ahhh— yes, O Burdened Mourner.” Ben answered hastily. “But she is unwell. Our long march has dulled her senses, the invocations are lost to her.” Ben swallowed. Not one of his better lies. If they were not accepted into the caravan they would have no cover and no defense from Fuller, who was certainly not far behind. Ben recalled the overland vehicle he'd seen attached to the wasp-car. If it was intact, Fuller would be here shortly. And if he had salvaged the laser-rifle…

The man in the white robe regarded Ben balefully.

“You are lying. This is evident. Apparently this woman has no background in Dis Adeptus. Yet…” He bent and lifted Gloria's face with a trembling white stick-finger to her chin. He looked into her eyes. He nodded. “She is a child of the mysteries. She can travel with us.” He turned away and began to issue instructions to the lesser Dis officiaries waiting patiently nearby.

Gloria stood up, clapping dust off her knees. “What did he mean, I'm a ‘child of the mysteries'?” “He means you're their kind of folks,” Ben replied lightly. “Real basic Dizzy stock, I suppose.” They accepted and donned red robes offered them by the storekeeper, pulling them over their clothes. “Too damn hot,” Ben complained. They pulled the cowls over their heads to conceal their faces and went to the file of the newly-initiated, sitting along the stream, scowling and rubbing their aching feet.

They had just sat down when Gloria gasped and tugged Ben's arm. “What
is
it?” '

She was staring over her shoulder at the pack animals coming up with the rear of the procession. They were Denver Genetic Manipulation products. “They're
hands,”
Gloria said.

They were immense hands, with fingers a yard long, a proportionate palm and a short wrist ending abruptly, as if a giant's hand had been lopped off at the wrist. Each huge hand had great lumpy calluses at the tips of the fingers, where it walked on the ground. It had no nails, but the horny knuckles resembled those of a human hand. “That looks like human skin!” Gloria sputtered.

“That's what it is,” Ben said.

The oversized hands were beasts of burden for the pilgrims, khaki bundles of provisions strapped to their backs. Several of them were unloaded as they watched. The freed hands grazed lazily amongst the sage, eating through beaks concealed in their palms; they moved like slow spiders, crawling low to the ground on their fingers, resembling huge pink tarantulas pulling themselves along.

“Where are their eyes?” Gloria asked, swallowing her revulsion.

“They don't have any. Listen, you'd better get used to seeing things like that. They're genetically-engineered flesh-machines. Lab-bred from human chromosomes for specialized tasks. You'll see a lot of them as we head west. There are many species of flesh-machines. They can't reproduce, most of them, but the Genetic Manipulations people in Denver make a lot of them. There are rumors that the dolphins are contracting with Denver to build an army of brainless killing machines. The hands, and all flesh-tractors, are fairly docile. But they have a simple brain and I think I can enrage them, direct them, if it becomes necessary. They're strong. Very strong.”

“Where are we going from here?”

“Unless some means of transportation offers itself to us, we'll travel with the pilgrims to San Francisco and try to get to Detroit from there. It might be to our advantage to go to Astor, though, before Detroit. We'll see. You know, you can still drop out. You can stay with these people till you get clear of Fuller. No reason you should travel with me. He's going to do his damnedest to kill me. Chaldin is a powerful man.”

“Oh, stop being so maudlin. I don't want to wander by myself in San Francisco. At least, I know you. Somewhat. I'm going to stick with you, at least 'til I know my way around.”

A Dizzy was handing strips of dried, bacon-like meat to the resting cultists along the stream. Ben declined, saying he'd just eaten, though his stomach growled hungrily. Gloria accepted the meat and examined it curiously. Ben whispered, “I doubt you'll want to eat that. It's human flesh. A few of the pilgrims kill themselves along the way to feed the others. That is dried pilgrim.”

Gloria shrugged and bit it. “Always wondered what human flesh tastes like. Not bad…”

Ben looked away. A child of the mysteries, he thought.

Minutes later, at the clash of cymbals, Ben nudged Gloria and they rose with the others, joining the ranks of Dizzies in circles around the man in white. They took up the low, humming chant, “Zero times Zero equals Zero times Zero equals Zero times Zero equals…” ad infinitum.

Peering between three layers of red cowl, Ben could see the two miniature guillotines set up facing one another, with the man in the white robe standing between them. The guillotines were made of wood and equipped with heavy blades, long as butcher knives. Below each blade were two semicircles cut into the receiving cradle, fitted for ankles and wrists.

“Who will offer their gross physicality to be purged? Who will be shot into the third eye of the Godhead like an arrow to its mark?”

“Maggot-swill Bulmer pleads!” called a young man, stepping from the crowd. It was a haggard man with a thatch of wispy blond hair and a pathetic red beard; his deep-set, blue-gray eyes starved for death. Ben realized that all the worshippers somehow resembled Death's Heads. It's their diet, he told himself. They eat little, they grow gaunt, the skull presses through. He half believed it.

The young man stripped off his robe, tossed it on the ground, mumbled the imprecation against material possessions, and spat on the robe.

Then he lay down between the two guillotines, on his back, ankles through one, wrists through the other, skinny buttocks on the stones. The mourner spoke: “We are the flesh of envy, you are the skeleton of triumph!”

The red-hooded crowd chanted, “Zero times Zero equals Zero times Zero equals…”

Ben glanced at Gloria. She seemed greatly entertained by the scene. She watched in fascination as the mourner, mumbling incantations, anointed Blessed Receiver Bulmer with the purifying oils. Gloria was swaying and twitching, and Ben hissed, “Did you put that rock 'n' roll tape in your ear again? If you did, take it out before someone notices—we're not even supposed to be wearing our clothes under these robes!”

“No one'll notice,” she whispered, giggling. “I've got it turned down low. It's playing ‘Love It To Death,' by Alice Cooper, and—”

“Shhh!”

The mourner was rising over the young man, his eyes on the sun, staring into it without blinking. Tears coursed his cheeks as he intoned:

“For this very day a sign from Dis appeared to us. Lo! In the sky Mourner Drett witnessed a great battle! The Lord of Flies, Beelzebub, in the form of a fly great as a thundercloud, contended with the master Dis who wore the form of a monstrous wasp, and wasp and fly did battle, till wasp stung fly and fly bit wasp and both tumbled to earth! The omen speaks! The battle of Dis, the eternal war between Glorious Death and Pestilent Life, continues on the earth! Dis exhorts us thereby to do battle in our hearts! Witness the triumph of Dis in Mourner Bulmer!”