Part 12 (1/2)
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?**
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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.
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”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.