Psychotrope (13 page)

Seconds ago he had been surrounded by joy, a beautiful light that drew ever nearer, and gentle, comforting murmurs. Now there was darkness, silence, and fear.

Dark Father tried to move but found that he could move his arms and legs only a short distance before they bumped into walls. He lay on his back on a hard surface that was lined with padded, silky cloth. He tried to sit up, but his head bumped against a ceiling that was only a few centimeters above his nose.

Walls, also lined with padded silk, surrounded him on al sides, only a centimeter or two away from his body.

Dark Father suddenly realized where he was. The tiny boxlike room, the silk-padded walls, floor, and ceiling, the utter stillness in which his racing heart beat loudly . . . he could only be inside a coffin. Had he died? Had they buried him? Had the doctors been misled by his ghoul's body and thought he was dead when he was stil alive, then interred him by mistake?

For several helpless, panicked seconds, Dark Father flailed against the prison that enclosed him, kicking his feet against the sides of the coffin. He clawed at the silk lining until it hung in shreds against his face and slammed his palms against the coffin lid.

"There's been a mistake!" he shouted. "I'm alive! Let me out!"

But his efforts were futile. The hollow thuds of his kicks and blows would never be loud enough to attract attention if he were buried and the lid was sealed shut with the pressure of hundreds of pounds of earth. And now the air inside the coffin was getting stale, as Dark Father sucked the last of it into his gasping lungs . . .

He closed his eyes against the darkness and balled his fists. There had to be a way out. There had to be.

But at the core of his being, he knew it was hopeless. He had about as much chance of becoming human again as he did of escaping this living hell.

A faint scraping sound caused him to open his eyes. He lay utterly still and listened, head turning to the side, focusing every scrap of his attention on the sound. Was it really the sound of someone digging? Had his thuds and shouts been heard?

The digging sounds became louder and closer. Now he could hear the scrape of something sharp against the coffin lid, and the click of a latch being unfastened.

Weeping with joy, he began to laugh through his tears as a crack of light appeared around the edge of the coffin lid. As it creaked open he sat up, ready to embrace his rescuer.

Then his mouth dropped open in surprise. "Chester?" he asked.

His son stared down at him. Clods of earth fell from his elongated fingers—he had used his untrimmed claws to dig the coffin out. Although his facial features were as African-American as Dark Father's own, Chester's skin was a pale, mottled white. His eyes watered and he winced in the sunlight that streamed down from above, reflecting dully on his hairless head. The boy was only eighteen, but the taint of ghoul was so strong in him that he looked like a man in his thirties.

"Hullo, Father," Chester said. Then he grinned, revealing jagged teeth.

"What happened to me, Chester?" Dark Father asked. "How did you—"

That was odd. Now that Dark Father's eyes had adjusted to the painfully bright sunlight, he could see his own arms and legs. Instead of the slightly grayish skin he expected, he saw black bones encased in loose black cloth. The noose still hung around his neck and his eyes were shaded by the brim of the black top hat on his head.

"What is. . . ? Where. . . ?"

Was he in the Matrix still? But this felt so real. Without the connection to his body, without the subtle cues that the RAS couldn't quite filter out, simsense was indistinguishable from reality. But if this was the Matrix, what was Chester doing in it?

"That's a good question, Father," the teenage ghoul answered. "The answer's pretty simple: I'm hungry."

Chester
lunged forward, scrabbling with his dirt-encrusted hands at Dark Father's chest. The fabric of his suit tore away easily, revealing patches of grayish skin still clinging to his skeletal ribs. The boy fell upon these in a frenzy, tearing at them with jagged teeth. Searing pain lanced through Dark Father as he felt the flesh being torn from his bones. But the pain was nothing compared to the emotional anguish he felt. His own son—feeding upon him as if he were so much carrion. This was madness! Betrayal!

"Leave me alone!" Dark Father howled. He fought back, trying to push Chester away, but his arms were cramped after his confinement in the coffin. And the boy was young and strong. Now Dark Father could hear his bones cracking as Chester bit through them, slurping the marrow out of them as if they were syrup-filled straws.

Shaking with fear, Dark Father hurled himself from the coffin and scrambled out of the shallow grave in which it had been buried. Chester climbed up behind him, stuffing a chunk of Dark Father's flesh into his mouth as he climbed.

"Admit it!" Chester burbled in a gleeful tone. "You're just like me. A flesh feeder. A ghoul."

"No!" Dark Father howled. He staggered across a field of dark, soft earth. Chester ran after him, clawed hands plucking at Dark Father's tattered jacket.

Dark Father looked wildly around, seeking an escape route. But his nightmare was about to intensify. Gibbering voices surrounded him as ghouls closed in on every side, their eyes greedy with hunger and their clawed hands raised and ready. And each of them looked like a ghoulish rendition of the bounty hunter who had shot him a year ago . . .

Surrounded by a ring of slavering ghouls, Dark Father skidded to a stop. In desperation he tore open his jacket and turned toward the nearest one.

"Leave me alone!" he howled. "I'm nothing but bone. There's no flesh left on my body. I'm dead. You can't feed on me!"

The ghouls hesitated. Several lowered their hands. But Chester stepped forward, eyeing his father critically.

"If you're dead, then you belong in the ground," he said. The other ghouls laughed and began crowding forward once more.

"I—" Dark Father felt the ground shift beneath him. Looking down, he saw that his feet were buried to the ankles in soil. He seemed to be sinking into the earth. When he looked up, he saw that the ghouls were hesitating. Several were staring in confusion at the ground, as if wondering where Dark Father had hidden his feet. But Chester's attention was still firmly focused on his father.

"Come on," he told the other ghouls. "It's time to finish him."

The ghouls leaped forward, laughing in anticipation of a kill.

Dark Father did the only thing he could think of. He ducked down into a crouch and began scrabbling at the soft soil. Perhaps if he covered himself in earth, the ghouls would no longer see him. It was a desperate ploy and had about as much logic to it as a child thinking that, if his own eyes were closed, no one could see him. But if it was that or death . . .

Amazingly, it seemed to be working. As Dark Father clawed his way into the ground like a hunted animal, the ghouls suddenly looked confused and then began wandering away, one by one. Soon only Chester was left. And then as Dark Father disappeared into the ground, he too vanished.

Soft soil surrounded Dark Father. For a moment he lay still. Then he noticed a light below him. He dug a little further, and a hole opened underneath him. Pulling himself out of it, he climbed up and onto the surface as gravity suddenly reversed itself. The hole he had just emerged through was below him now.

He'd done it—freed himself from the nightmarish confrontation with his son.

But the place the hole had led to seemed little better than the one he had just left. . .

* * *

A buzzer sounded and the soft warm tunnel surrounding him disappeared. Bloodyguts found himself sprawled stomach-down over the back of a galloping horse, just ahead of its rider—an Asian ork dressed in a dirty sheep-skin vest, leather pants, and soft leather boots. One of the rider's hands clenched the back of Bloodyguts' shirt, holding him tight against the saddle. The saddle horn dug into his gut with each jostle and blood rushed to his head, which bobbed loosely between his outstretched arms. Below them, the horse's chromed hooves churned up a boiling cloud of dust. Grit filled Bloodyguts' nostrils, carrying with it the smell of horse sweat.

Bloodyguts groaned and lifted his head slightly. He saw other riders—also orks and dressed much like the first—galloping madly after the horse that carried him, their vests billowing as they caught the rush of air. Although the orks looked as though they had ridden out of a documentary on the ancient Mongols, several sported obvious cyberware.

One had wrap-around mirror shades, and another wore a Darwin's Bastards metamusic T-shirt and military-style combat boots. Each rode a horse that had large white numbers painted on it; similar numbers, in black, marked each rider's sheepskin vest.

They rode furiously in pursuit of the horse on which Bloodyguts was sprawled. The landscape behind them was table-flat, a smooth expanse of bright blue plastic imprinted with circuitry—a gigantic simsense chip. Somewhere an orchestra was playing. The air was filled with the rolling thunder of drums, the clash of bronze gongs, and the shrill of stringed instruments played in a frenzied minor key.

Every last one of the riders was wired for simsense. Each had a rig wrapped tight around his head and a flexible wire antenna streaming out behind; the wet records were being sampled remotely. Bloodyguts saw a similar wire trailing from his own skull, and could feel the pinch of the simsense rig around his temples, where it was snugged tight under his horns.

Anger boiled through him. Frag it—he was being recorded? He tried to paw the simsense rig from his head, but the jostling of the horse frustrated his efforts. The drekkin' thing seemed glued to his skull.

Bloodyguts tried to lift himself up—and nearly slid from the horse. Only the firm grip of the ork kept him on its back.

That was when he realized that something was wrong with the perspective. In the meat world, the troll decker Yograj Lutter stood nearly three meters tall and weighed in at 250 kilos. Yet here he was slung over the back of a short, shaggy horse that was little bigger than a pony. His dangling hands and feet barely reached the horse's belly. In comparison to the ork rider, Bloodyguts was no larger than a child, even though he had the powerful, muscular body of a troll. No matter how hard he struggled, he just wasn't strong enough to escape . . .

Another of the riders caught up to the horse on which Bloodyguts was sprawled. The ork kicked his horse violently, sending it slamming into the other horse's flank. Sparks flew and a metallic whining filled the air as the two horses ground together. Then the pursuing rider drew a monofilament whip and slashed at the ork holding Bloodyguts. As the hair-thin filament snaked out, glinting in the sunlight, Bloodyguts heard a loud, special-effects
whoosh
and wet tearing sound. Hot blood sprayed onto his back as the rider let go of his shirt and suddenly tumbled backward off his horse, his severed head flying in one direction and his body in another. The other rider leaned in close, grabbed Bloodyguts' shirt in his fist, and hauled him over to his own horse. Whooping his victory, the ork kneed his horse on a new course, wheeling around to escape the other riders.

Bloodyguts shook his head, trying to make sense of it all. This was crazy. One minute he'd been sliding through a tunnel of light toward his dead chummer—the next he'd woken up in a crazed, Asian-western dream. The orks were treating Bloodyguts as if he were a prize cut of beef that they were carrying home to the stew pot. . .

Then Bloodyguts got it. His wetware slotted and ran a distant memory, and he understood the game he'd been dropped into. Years ago he'd seen a flatscreen film from the twentieth century of a violent game played by the riders of the Asian steppes. It was an every-man-for-himself mounted combat in which riders tried to grab the body of a freshly killed calf from one another. The winner was the man who could carry this "ball" outside a designated playing field. The prize for victory was the calf itself, which was roasted and eaten.

Then Bloodyguts saw the dotted lines on his hands and forearms. Just like a carcass of beef, his skin had been marked with lines a butcher would use to make his first cuts . . .

Riders on another part of the field came together in a tussling knot of horses and dust. In an effort to escape another contender who had almost caught up to him, the rider carrying Bloodyguts was forced to swing toward the commotion. Bloodyguts caught a brief glimpse of the rider at the center of the throng, who also had a body draped over his horse. The dreadlocks and horns of this child-sized troll were immediately recognizable to Bloodyguts, despite the simsense rig that obscured the troll's features. Bloodyguts
knew
his friend was dead, but even so a wash of dread swept through him as he saw one of the rider's whips lash down, cutting his friend's back open in a bloody line.

"Jocko!" he yelled.

Jocko's head lifted slightly—but it may have just been the motion of the horse on which he was carried. Was he still alive? Bloodyguts couldn't tell.

Then Jocko slid from the back of the horse to land in the dust. The riders leaped from their horses, whips raised. As the monofilaments rose and fell, sparkling in the sunlight and sending drops of blood flying, Jocko's body was precisely flayed like a side of beef.

Bloodyguts felt a chip slotting home in the chipjack in his temple. He'd had the chipjack permanently sealed years ago, but somehow it seemed that the plug had fallen away. The chip slid home with a familiar
click
—and then the agony that Jocko was feeling sawed through Bloodyguts' flesh, cutting him to the bone. He
was
Jocko, lying on the smooth surface of the BTL chip that formed the landscape, feeling the monofilaments cut him to pieces. He was dying.
Again.