Part 29 (1/2)
More!A feedback began that drew Greer even closer. Kathee was beside him. Her face was pale and strained. He realized she was accepting the telepathic outpouring and then retransmitting it, filtered of extraneous thoughts so the emotion became stronger and more stimulating.
Pure pain.
Pure pleasure.
Greer's body began to respond. Around him he heard other men crying out, but he could not move. He turned to the heat, the telepathic heat that drew him like a moth to flame.
More! he got from Kathee. She directed and shaped and magnified the emotional outpouring of the crowd. He saw how pale she had become, how indistinct and ghostlike. Her hands shook as she pressed even closer to him. He liked the feel of her body against his, the way her thoughts surged and beat against his like ocean waves rising at the start of a storm.
More!
Greer wanted more. He held Kathee and felt the others in the group crowd toward her.
Before, when Erickson had been the sacrificial lamb, it had been thrilling. But not like this.
This was something new.
Kathee, he thought. You are the difference tonight!
Greer felt the hundreds in the crowd suck in their collective breath as the feedback built in intensity. From the three being whipped, to the receivers and Kathee, through Kathee and back, filtered and magnified for everyone-even those shackled to the posts-to relish. Excitement mounted and fed the crowd and Kathee and him. A link formed between Erickson and Kathee, stronger and more potent than anything Greer had ever felt before.
Dizzily, Greer felt a migraine at the back of his head begin. He ignored it. The feelings cascading into his body and soul were too intense for mere pain now.
Greer, Kathee thought. I- Words were no longer enough as the pressures within grew, pressures of guilt, l.u.s.t, and illicit sharing.
Greer screamed. He felt as if he had been launched on a rocket. His mental echoes quivered forth and resonated with the others that fed Kathee.
Feedback.
Growing intensity.
Tidal wave.
Out of control.
Out of control!
Greer experienced a freaky second where he knew they would all die from ecstasy. He had discovered what it meant to be a telepath.
Over and up and around and ever increasing, their exhilaration grew until they were consumed in a huge flame of stark rapture that destroyed them all-and then began snuffing out the lesser lights of nontelepaths.
The world did not end in fire or ice.
It ended in o.r.g.a.s.m.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman gave me a tiny plastic mouse with an ar-ticulated head the first time I met her a few years ago; she had an entire side pocket in her bag filled with the d.a.m.ned things. A fellow editor stole the mouse later on,and when I saw her again a year later the pocket in her bag, alas, was empty.
Her bag of tricks is never empty, though, and she offers a dandy little strange tale, which for some reason I haven't been able to get out of my head. It's simple, straightforward, yet completely evocative of family life.
She's been a Nebula and World Fantasy Award finalist, and has a Bram Stoker Award-more awards should follow, for both her dark fantasy and science fiction.
Between Disappearances.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman.
We're standing in the living room. This is where I always transit to, and somehow it's where Mom always is when I arrive.
”I can't stay,” I say.
”You never stay,” says my mother.
”It's not my fault,” I say.
So far this is the same conversation we always have, etched deep into our brains. This is your brain on automatic. I wonder which of us will jump off the path first this visit.
”It's not your fault you tripped in that stupid dimensional portal and got a piece of travel rock stuck in your back?” Mom says. ”Whose fault is it, then? When are you going to see a doctor and try to get it removed?”
On track so far. I decide to make a run for new territory. ”So what's up with Artie?” She'll talk about my brother, won't she? He's the good one. He sticks around. He's never even left town.
Or maybe he did? It's been a while.
I don't know how long I've been gone. Mom looks older. But maybe it's just my vision. I've been to six worlds since the last time I was home, and I stayed on the last one for a year, local time. I got used to talking to people with four eyes in their foreheads and odd numbers of arms.
I've forgotten what wrinkled foreheads normally look like.
Mom ignores my gambit. ”And what are you wearing? I can see your nipples! They're staring at me! Is that the fas.h.i.+on where you were? Put some clothes on!”
I sigh and go to the hall closet. This is one of those sure conversation stoppers that I have to actually act on, or she'll keep coming back to it. I find a full-length black raincoat and wrap up in it. It's sized to fit someone taller and bigger than me, and it smells like good cologne. I wonder who it belongs to.
”Not that! Take that off! I don't want your otherworld germs messing that up!”
I shrug and take off the coat. Whatever germs I've got-come to think of it, I did have a really bad cold right before this last jump, with a bright purple rash-are already on the coat, but what can you do? Morn grabs the black coat from me, humphs out of the room, and comes back with a ratty terry-cloth bathrobe, which she flings at me. I wrap up in it. It smells like fabric softener. I recognize it. It actually used to be mine.
”So what year is it here?”
”Two thousand thirty-one,” she says.
Wow, it's been three years since the last time I was on Earth.
”Whose coat was that?”
”Line's.” Her eyes narrow. ”He doesn't know about you.”
This is new. I glance toward the PixWall, which last time I visited displayed shots of Mom,of me, of Artie, the three of us together and apart at various ages, with various pets, in various places we remember only because we have pix of them. She deleted all the Dad shots before I left, and now I see that I'm not there anymore either.