The Man Who Melted (9 page)

“Just let it happen,” Roberta said, looking intently at him as if he were one of the stone idols.

“Bullshit,” Mantle said. Only an instant had passed. His mind was clear now. The rain, which had begun to fall again, felt good on his face. It was tangible and real.

Mantle and Roberta had been talking to each other in time with the rhythm,
intoning downward at the end of each phrase, ending in a groan, then up again. Even Mantle's thoughts followed the rhythm, the rhythm of glossolalia, of fiery tongues, the same rhythm that could be found all over the world, from the Umbanda trance ceremonies in São Paulo to the Holy Rollers in Binghamton.

He had been trapped, duped. Now he was scamming down again into the hollow metallic regions of his subconscious, to the places he feared, that he only visited in his paintings, that he had shut off and bricked over since his bum trip on enlightenment drugs. There was no enlightenment, just bare metal. His skin was clammy and he was beaded with sweat.

“There
is
dust in the air, isn't there?” he asked angrily. “Sonofa
bitch
!”

“We didn't ask you to come here,” Roberta said. “You've no right to anger, no matter what we do. You're using
us
. This is
our
ceremony.” She was spitting her words now, or did Mantle only imagine that? Damn their drugs and subliminals, he thought. “We did not contract to take you by the hand and explain our service, point by point,” she continued.

“Don't give me any holier-than-thou shit,” Mantle said. “Your friend Pretre is already blackmailing me.” The drugs isolated him, and he was afraid of being alone, of feeling that only he was real, that all the others were shadows. “I don't want to be drugged when I plug-in.” He imagined that the mist had turned into veils which, in turn, were hardening like polymerized plastic around the laser-projected image.

“You want to find your wife and regain your memory,” Roberta said. “What does it matter how you do it, straight or stoned? You should care only for the result.” That said quickly, a glissando.

“Why did Pretre choose you to be my guide?” Mantle asked softly, changing the subject, leading her to safer ground. He knew that he needed her, for she alone was substantial; the others were shadows, ghosts—he thought that if he could keep her nearby, he could hold onto his thoughts and sanity even through the drug dust.

“Joan Otur was to be your guide; I was to help her as I could.”

“It was my fault about Joan, she—”

“I'm sure she's fine,” Roberta said, drawing nearer to him. Pretre must have told her what happened, Mantle thought, but he accepted her closeness and comfort.

“Why should Joan have needed help?” Mantle asked. “There's no one helping you.”

Roberta smiled and said, “Actually, Joan wasn't much further along in the church than you are. Her own problems kept her back.” Then she said, “I lost my husband, just as you lost your wife. And I suffered amnesia too.”

“And that's why you joined the church?” Mantle asked. “To find him?”

“I attended a hook-in under the pretense of joining the church. Like you. But I joined the church out of belief.”

“Did you find him?”

She shivered and said, “Tonight, I will meet him.” Mantle could feel her close up; still, he pressed her. “And your amnesia—have you regained your memory?”

She ignored him and stared in the direction of the tomb. Mantle was alone now and vulnerable. The worshipers were quiet, waiting, twitching and swaying to an imagined rhythm as if they could see cloven tongues of fire and the rushing wind of holy spirits. Everything was quiet, or, rather, bathed in white noise.

Then Pretre stepped out of the tomb: an impressive figure, his face smeared with ashes or perhaps dirt. Standing naked outside the dolmen, he might have been an Olmec priest without cap and cape, or the gray bishop of Carthage, or a Judaic prophet, or an Indian Pejuta Wicassa. For an instant, he was all these things; then he was just another zealot, a foolish, potbellied upside-down man trying to return to a child's primitive world of authority.

Mantle saw him clearly, saw him as visionary and fool, one overlaid upon the other; and he was embarrassed for him and embarrassed for himself—and for Roberta and for all these worshipers who imagined that they could shake off their culture like a damp blanket. He felt sorry for them all, felt sorry for the mist and drug dust and idols and olive trees and transpods, for the very rocks of Cap Roux.

Sorry for the
rocks
?

And with a jolt, he realized that the drugs had taken him again.

He fought to hold himself together. He took Roberta's hand, hoping she would not pull away. She squeezed his hand in return, reassuring him. She seemed alert, unaffected by the hallucinogens, and the contact helped to clear Mantle's head. Or was that clearness itself a dangerous illusion?

“He's waiting for you,” Roberta said softly, as if she were speaking directly to Pretre and not Mantle. She unzipped her clothes and stepped out of them. She looked chunky in clothes, but, naked, she was taut and well-muscled; only her overly large breasts broke the illusion of smooth lines. “Come on. Quickly,” she said, turning to Mantle. “Get undressed.”

“Why?” Mantle demanded, mouth full of brambles, and words spoken not conforming to the words in his head. For a second he thought he was speaking to Joan.

“Just get undressed.”

But Mantle made no move to disrobe. Although he felt that public nudity was as natural as skin, he was suddenly shy and embarrassed.

“When you took your vision-quest, you went naked, as you must now,” Roberta said. “Humble yourself; loosen your mind.” Mantle's face burned.
Damn
Joan for telling them everything. He remembered sitting in the vision pit and dreaming of thunder beings and the mystery of the holy Cabala; he had been eighteen then. The vision-quest had been real, authentic;
this
ceremony was a sham. But no, that was bullshit, too: the vision-quest had been a last attempt to hold onto childhood before his passage into civilized adulthood. He had hallucinated then, as he was hallucinating now; and that was all there was to either ceremony. But he didn't believe
that
either, did he? Inside, in the fearsome cellars of his mind, he believed in the old vision and all the spirits he had seen.

Even now he believed.

Mantle didn't really care that this ceremony was a sham, a paste-together of other cults and religions; what bothered him was that it was heretical. By participating, by taking off his clothes and plugging in, he was forsaking his old gods and accepting new ones.

He undressed clumsily, dropped his clothes in a heap, and walked through the crowd to the tomb. The worshipers closed in behind him.

Roberta was waiting for him, and he followed her into the tomb, which was evenly lit and seemed larger than it had looked from the outside, no doubt an effect of its ziggurat-like structure. The stone walls were bare, and there were cracks in them large enough to see through. In the center of the room, beside the large and weather-worn console of the psyconductor, was the
Screamer: a middle-aged man with a long, sallow face; gums drawn over even, capped teeth; and pale blue eyes that might have been piercing at one time but now were glazed. Mantle had the absurd notion that the eyes were porcelain, that he could have painted on them or tapped them with his fingernail without producing a single blink. The Screamer, who must have once been affluent to afford such a pretty set of teeth, was naked. Mantle could not help but notice that he had lost most of his pubic hair (and most of the hair on his head, although he was not completely bald) and that he had a formidable erection.

The other participants, looking skeletal and chicken-skinned, stared down at the Screamer, who was still alive and breathing shallowly. Mantle shuddered as he watched: they were all waiting for the Screamer to die.

There was a hospital smell in this room. Mantle felt miles removed from the ceremony and the crowd outside; years removed from the drug-induced euphoria of glossolalia. He was in a waiting room, simply that, waiting for a man to die so he could hook-in and then go home with a few memories to fill up his empty life.

“Where's Pretre?” Mantle asked.

“Outside with the other Criers,” Roberta said in a whisper. “He'll be back in time.”

We're vampires, he thought; Roberta smiled as if she had read his mind. “Shouldn't we plug-in before he's dead?” Mantle asked. “Help him over, so to speak?”

“We can't help him until he's dead. And then he's going to help us.”

Mantle looked at the Screamer. Fuck him, he thought. If the man had wanted privacy, he would have died alone. Curious, this hatred he felt for the dying man. He wondered about that. Perhaps it wasn't so strange, after all. He was going to invade him, screw his mind, which was more physical and sensual than if he were engaged in a simple act of necrophilia.

He could imagine himself doing just that, debasing himself. He had reason: to find Josiane. But Joan—he could not imagine her sinking herself into the mind of a corpse. But she was going to do it for the church.

He felt a rush of hate for Joan, and desire.

With a long sigh, the Screamer died.

SIX

Paris was below them.

But for the dymaxion dome of the Right Bank, Joan would not have been able to distinguish Paris from its suburbs. A city had grown over the city: the grid of the ever-expanding slug city had its own constellations of light and hid Haussmann's ruler-straight boulevards, the ancient architectural wonders, even the black, sour-stenched Seine that was an hourglass curve dividing the old city. Like silver mold, the grid had grown over Paris, even filled the dome, as if it were a Petri dish. Extending over the Seine and across the Left Bank, it would eventually grow around the dome itself and bury it.

But tonight, from the air, the dome looked like a child's transparent toy filled with specks of light. Indeed, the city seemed to extend forever, a great black field piled high with diamonds.

It will all be wrecked soon, Joan thought as she stared through the oval window of the flyer. Pfeiffer was leaning against her, was a little too close, craning his neck for a view.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Pfeiffer asked. The flyer was banking, making its descending curve toward the old Paris heliport on the Seine.

“No, I don't think so,” Joan said, impatient with him and annoyed by his insipid remark.

“Aha,” Pfeiffer said, “so now we're seeing politically.”

“It reminds me of Christmas lights,” she said, gently pushing him away, thinking of him as a cumbersome child. “One great string of pretty lights, that's the great grid.”

“But pull the plug and all the lights go out, right?” Pfeiffer asked in a mocking voice.

“Yes, actually. Something like that.” Asshole!

“And you're waiting for that, aren't you?” Now Pfeiffer drew away from her, as if one had to keep a distance to converse. “Isn't the Great Purging one of the tenets of your religion?”

“We don't have strict dogma,” she said. “Some ideas they all seem to agree on, others not.”

“They?”

“I meant ‘we,'” Joan said, flustered. She checked her computer implant: still no word from Mantle. Well, it was much too early yet….

“What do you believe?” Pfeiffer asked.

“There are members of the church who want the purging. They see every manifestation of psychosis as a step closer to the world inside, what you would call right-brain authority.”

“I want to know what
you
think,” Pfeiffer said.

There was that condescension, she thought. It was in his tone of voice. The empty sonofabitch. “I think they're fools, but there are fools everywhere,” she said pointedly. “The cities are being torn apart because social reality is a sham. We've blocked over the internal world with a social one, the purpose of which is to keep us from ourselves.”

“Surely you don't really—”

But Joan was carried on by her thoughts and insecurity. “It was built by and for those who haven't experienced anything but this world. The only relics of the old experience are the traditional religions, which have long been empty.”

“Aha,” Pfeiffer said. “So the Dreadful has already happened.”

“What?” she asked, annoyed that he was trying to score points rather than trying to gain understanding.

“Something Heidegger said—”

But Joan had already subvocalized the question, and the computer was explaining: “…and Laing, R. D., a twentieth-century theologue, wrote that the Dreadful has happened to us all—that being the collective estrangement of modern man from the unconscious parts of his being.”

“The Dreadful is a result of the old order,” Joan said, and the collective psychosis is merely a symptom of disease—”

“As are the Screamers, and your church.”

“No,” Joan said, feeling flushed and cornered. She had already said too much. “The psychotics can't adjust to a dysfunctional society. But the Criers have cut free, adapted themselves to an inner establishment.”

“And the church is the authorized connection to the divine establishment,” Pfeiffer said, smiling. “Spoken like a true fanatic.”

He's right, Joan thought, turning to the window. But the Criers are real.
As are the dark spaces. “You seem to place all your faith in science and its methods,” she said, still looking out the window. “Consider what I've said as an untested hypothesis.”

“And how do I test it?”

“By hooking-into a Crier.” She turned toward him, and she was right: she had caught him.

“We're in this mess because of politics,” Pfeiffer said quickly. “What the hell do you think the famines in China and the flooding in Eastern America are all about? Or don't you believe in weather warfare, either?”

Joan knew just what Pfeiffer was getting at: viral warfare. But she didn't answer him. That, she thought, was probably the only way to stop him. Again, she checked to hear if there was a message from Ray; there wasn't.

“Your Screamers were most likely created in a lab somewhere, either by intent or mishap. You can explain it as vitalistic evolution or whatever else is fashionable right now, but it's probably some sort of virus that facilitates or blocks some neurohumoral action in the brain.”

Jesus, not that old saw again. Joan thought.

“…but you're caught in your own passivity,” Pfeiffer said. “
That's
the collective experience.” Joan felt herself stiffen, caught like a small animal. She had fought being passive all her life, and always seemed to lose. Could Pfeiffer have seen that? she asked herself. The sonofabitch was right-brained, she thought, but was so afraid of it that he proclaimed it nonexistent. “Your church is a manifestation of despair,” he continued. “But none of this is new. All this cosmic-consciousness bullshit was prevalent in Germany once, before the Nazis came to power. That's your new consciousness—”

“I think we should continue this later,” Joan said, nodding in the direction of a woman of about forty in the aisle before them. She was quite pretty, although overweight and dough-faced, as if she had glandular problems. She was staring, obviously eavesdropping.

The woman grinned and winked at Pfeiffer, who quickly turned away. But perhaps she had winked at Joan….

“You don't seem to be the shy type,” Joan said nastily.

“Cut it out,” Pfeiffer said, looking unreasonably nervous. “We'll be landing in a few minutes.”

“I'm not so sure. We're still circling at the same altitude. Perhaps something's happened below. Anyway,” she said cheerfully, “there is still time for you to diagnose her illness.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“I'm also sure she's a Crier,” Joan whispered.

“How do you make that surmise?”

“Just a feeling…the way she's looking at us. You see, if you'd use that right brain of yours a bit—”

“Ah, yes,” interrupted the woman. “
I
have your right brain. Stare right at my forehead and you can imagine it right rightly.” She was talking to Pfeiffer, or so it seemed. Joan leaned back in her seat, ready to enjoy what was to come.

“Dammit,” Pfeiffer mumbled, “you're provoking her.”

“But you're sitting beside her. Give her a chance.”

“Jesus God….”

“Ah, Jesus God,” said the woman. “A religious man are you, but how can you be so without the right side of your brain?”

Pfeiffer ignored her.

“Come on, talky, talky. Alas, I forgot, you don't have your right side, but hear you may with the left. But I'll bet you can't sing. Sing ‘Melancholy Baby.' Come on, sing, Mr. Pfeiffer.”

Pfeiffer groaned at having been recognized.

“Be a sport,” Joan said. “Play along, you might learn something.”

“I've spoken to enough schizos—” he whispered angrily.

“But you don't
listen
to anyone.”

“She's right about that,” the woman beside them said. “But he can't really hear without his right side, now, can he?”

“Come on,” Joan said, “play along.”

“Why?” Pfeiffer asked, staring at his hands and blushing like a little boy. He really can't handle this, Joan thought, curious.

“You might learn a few subtle gambits. Try a different point of view—remember old Kraepelin's servant girl?”

Pfeiffer paused, as he was listening to his computer implant explain the case of the early twentieth-century psychiatrist who had stuck pins into a schizophrenic girl during a clinical demonstration. A later school of psychology
rightly claimed that it was only a matter of viewpoint whether one thought the servant girl or the psychiatrist crazy.

“Aha,” said the woman. “Then you do have a double brain, quite correct.” And she looked at Joan as a conspiratress.

“Quite right,” Joan said. “He's got two left sides.”

“Aha,” repeated the woman. “One side for law, the other for order.”

“What does she mean?” Pfeiffer asked Joan.

“Your computer implant, silly. Don't be so thick, talk to her.”

“You do think I'm mean?” the woman asked, preening herself.

“I don't think anything about you.”

“You're right to think me bad.”

“But I really don't care—”

“Because he has no right,” Joan said.

“Two lefts don't make a wrong,” the woman said.

“You see, she does like you….”

As the flyer made its descent, Pfeiffer sat stiffly, looking nothing but impatient to leave the plane. The woman across the aisle went back to reading with a tiny viewer, as if the conversation had never occurred.

When they debarked and were swept into the clamoring crowd of the airport, Pfeiffer said, “Don't ever do that to me again!”

“I just wanted to prove my point,” Joan said, holding close to him in the crowd, “as you were so determined to prove yours.”

“All that proved is you're both wigged-out.”

As there were no transpods to be had, they took a beltway. The public means were uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous, but Joan had an access permit to one of the complexes at Grenelle which housed a private transpod station.

“It simply proves that you can handle only one modality of thought,” Joan said. She felt hot and trapped and claustrophobic in the press of people, as she always did. Above, like moving ceilings, were more beltways, speedier ones that were express. On either side of this slower beltway were others, all congested with people and their baggage. Since the Screamer attacks, everyone on the streets except the
boutades
were nervous and afraid. The crowds exuded fear like perspiration; and like the noise and stink and filth of undercity streets and ways, one never became used to it.

“That conversation was idiotic,” Pfeiffer said.

“But you were positively alarmed, and quite unable to handle it. Don't you think that a bit odd—you, of all people, to get so upset over such an ‘idiotic' thing?”

“I am not in the habit of talking crazy to crazy people. You were baiting me at the expense of that unfortunate.”

“That ‘unfortunate,' as you call her, wasn't any more schizophrenic than you,” Joan said. “She was having it on you.”

“Not on me, she wasn't. And I thought you were so convinced that she was a schizo?”

“I was having it on you, too. I wanted to see if it were true.”

“If what were true?”

“That you can't handle anything that smacks of the right except, of course, your politics.”

“That sounds like something you got from Raymond. Am I correct?”

“Correct.” A group of
boutades
wearing identical one-piece suits jostled Joan as they were trying to jump off the belt onto the service catwalk below. They were all young and neatly dressed, and each one openly carried a weapon. All of them had shaven heads, which was the current unisex fashion.

“The skinheads will kill themselves,” Pfeiffer said.

“Maybe break a leg, that's all. Didn't you ever jump the walks?”

Pfeiffer shook his head, and Joan said, “I thought not.”

“You're a nasty bitch.”

Joan reached for Pfeiffer's hand. It amused her that she really did like him. There was a sudden press of people on the beltway, for the six-hour shift was changing. As usual, the Rapid Transit System seemed to be working at minimum. “Come on,” Joan said, fighting her claustrophobia, which was worsening. “Let's get off the belt.”

“And walk in the undercity?” Pfeiffer asked, surprised.

“It's not that bad, and I know the area.”

“The crowd will thin soon,” Pfeiffer said, holding on to Joan's arm.

“But I have to get off
now
,” Joan said, pulling away from him. Pfeiffer followed, and they pushed their way onto the slowest-moving debouchment belt. Joan felt somewhat relieved. But Pfeiffer was buzzing. “It's crazy to
walk around down here. Christ, we'll get ourselves mugged, at the very least. Couldn't you have stood the crowd for such a short time?”

“No,” Joan said. “Leave it alone. I don't wish to discuss it right now.” The street was crowded, but there was at least enough room to breathe. To their left were the ever-present beltways, a river of rollways and slidewalks. Like boats on water, vendor platforms and restaurants and pleasure hutches drifted slowly past as if they were isolated from the crowds and rollways.

Joan felt a need for a narcodrine: she wanted to open up, sail through the white spaces of her mind, be private and at the same time have Pfeiffer quietly make love to her.

“You said you know this area,” Pfeiffer said. “How so?”

“It was here that the Criers first congregated—Surely you remember? It wasn't a large or a very destructive scream, but it was the first heard in Europe.” She laughed. “They even rebuilt the area, which is a damn sight better than bombing them out as they did in Baltimore.”

“The bombing was a mistake,” Pfeiffer conceded, “but it was thought to be the only way to stop the Screamers. Christ, they burned almost—”

“Bombing them only made it worse….”