Flesh In The Furnace – Koontz, Dean

 

 

TO BE A GOD

 

Pertos was a god, of sorts. Aided only by an idiot who nurtured a dark secret, Pertos created living puppets from the Furnace. Puppets complete with intellect and emotions, lusts and fears.

 

But it was not easy to be a god. The puppets had to go back into the Furnace when their task was done. If one created, one also had to destroy.

 

In fact, sometimes it was dangerous to be a god. What if one’s creations did not wish to be destroyed . . . ?

 

THE FLESH IN THE FURNACE

 

 

RLI: VLM 7 (VLR 6-9)

      IL 9-up

 

 

THE FLESH IN THE FURNACE

A Bantam Book / published tune 1972

 

 

 

 

All rights reserved.

Copyright Q 1972 by Dean Koontz.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or to part, by

mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For Information address: Bantam Books, Inc.

Published simultaneously to the United States and Canada

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Here is a passion play in five acts of Chinese theater, a cold story for warm people Harry and Diane Record.

 

 

 

 

September

 

      The idiot and the puppeteer rode in the cab of the truck, staring ahead at the darkness and the steadily unrolling gray of the ancient road they followed. The idiot’s name was Sebastian, an unfortunate one for him. In one sense, such a name implied a weightiness of personality and a richness of detail. The idiot, however, was devoid of idiosyncrasy. On the other hand, a Sebastian might be expected to exhibit a cheerfulness, a certain Alan. But the idiot was most often somber with the press of insoluble irrelevancies, his black eyes staring from beneath the shelf of bone that was his forehead, his too-full lips somewhat loose and his pale hands limp upon his massive thighs.

      The puppeteer, though, was equal to his appellation. His mother had called him Pertos, after the star legend of Pertos of Arima who had charmed a world with smiles and warm eyes. His father had contributed the surname of Godelhausser before abandoning mother and child, but few used that, the first name being so accurate. Even now, Pertos smiled as he watched the concrete rush under the blades of the air cushion system, illuminated for a brief moment by the yellow lances of the headlamps. It was not that Pertos Godelhausser was a man of humorous disposition. Indeed, he found little to be gay about these days, as old age approached and fortune fled. It was just that, in repose, his face took on the pattern of a smile.

      “Tell be ’bout it,” Sebastian said, scrunched so far down in the seat that only his head remained above the dash.

      “About what?” Godelhausser asked. The idiot had been overly pensive the last few hours, which meant he was wrestling with some problem or other.

      “The city,” Sebastian said.

      It was not the thing that bothered the brute. Pertos could see that. But he did not mind talking to Sebastian, even when it was a one-sided conversation. “I’ve told you a hundred times, I think.

      “Again?”

      The puppeteer sighed and leaned back against the cool black plastic of the seat, stretching his neck and shoulders. Once more, he considered the blessing it would be if the idiot could drive. Having given Sebastian the wheel once before, he hastily rejected any notion of repeating that disastrous experiment. “Very well,” he said. In truth, he was anxious to hear himself talk, anything to break the dreary hum of the rotars whirling beneath them, to shatter the monotonous pessimism of his private thoughts.

      “Slowly,” Sebastian warned.

      “Surely. So . . . The city is called Springsun, but wasn’t always. Ages ago, before the Emigration from Earth, it was called Boston. It was dirtier then. Shabbier.”

      “I like Springsun more,” Sebastian said, shaking his head in agreement with himself.

      “I would think so,” Pertos said. “I find it too sweet, myself.”

      “What?”

      “Never mind. You’re not interested in my opinions. Only in the story.”

      “Tell me.”

      “Four hundred years ago, just before Emigration, when Earth was the only world and the stars were cold and distant, Boston was a piece of Hell. You know about Hell. Ugly clouds of smoke, noxious fumes, filthy drinking water. Homes were insulated against the tremendous noise of an overpopulated world. Nature collapsed and so did society. Everywhere, small groups with their own interests did subtle–and later not so subtle-battle with one another”

      “Who was the hero?” Sebastian asked.

      “No hero. Champions exist only in fairy tales, and the story of Springsun is true.” Pertos did not pretend that the idiot understood all these fine points, though he continued. “Instead of one saviour there was an agglomerate hero, many men working together. They opened the way to the stars, and. tens of millions followed them. The wonders of the universe were irresistible, as was the untainted air of untouched worlds. In time, only a few remained. But those few were stubborn, and they scrubbed the atmosphere and purified the water until everything was as it is today, all within a century and a half.”

      “Where are the people?” Sebastian asked.

      “Never returned. The air was clean, the water pure, and the cities had been rebuilt into splendor and mystery. But no one wanted Earth. To shrug off the old image, the cities were renamed and advertising campaigns were launched. But only a few thousand have ever trickled homeward.”

      “You did,” Sebastian said.

      Pertos sighed. “Yes, and I was foolish. Rumor said every man on Earth was rich, and that alien forms of entertainment were welcomed. So I brought my puppets to make my thousands. And I have made thousands. But I didn’t know about the departure fee which makes it impossible for all but the richest immigrants ever to return to the stars. They’re determined to keep every man here, even if he’d rather go to the stars to die.”

      “I’ll die here,” Sebastian said.

      For the first time, he looked at Pertos. The green glow from the control console washed across his pallid face, made his eyes seem strangely alive.

      “Yes,” Pertos agreed. “But you were born here, and that makes a difference.”

      “Where were you born?” Sebastian asked, his voice a slow, measured base as he struggled with each word.

      “In the city of Blackfawn on the planet Uri-two which circles a sun called Ozalius.” He looked at the idiot and frowned at the incomprehension he saw there. “I was born near a far star. And I’ve been trapped on this godforsaken ball of mud for five years now, trying to scrape up a bit of money to pay departure fees and be gone. And I haven’t anything to show for it.”

      “You have me,” Sebastian said.

      Pertos smiled. It was a genuine smile this time, not an accident of his features. “True enough.”

      They rode on in silence, watching the darkness blur past them. In time, the idiot dug his left hand into the pocket of his slacks and took out a plastic card. On one side was his picture, his name and a few bits and pieces about his life. He read these with fascination, for he always found something new to ponder over. On the reverse face of the card, there was a simply worded message for him which told him he came from Soldiersville, Kentucky, his hometown, should he ever wish to return there. It also explained how he could contact government representatives for sickness insurance or for pension movies. He read all this twice, which took a long while, then replaced the card in his pocket.

      “Were you really born . . . in the stars?” he asked Pertos.

      “Yes,” Godelhausser answered. He no longer felt like

carrying on a conversation. Even his permanent smile had a bitter look to it.

      “Imagine,” Sebastian said.

      “Imagine what?”

      “The stars. Who would ever think . . .from stars?”

      They rode.

      “Who would ever?” Sebastion asked later. “Stars?”

      There were a great many trees in Springsun, especially along the avenues before and behind the cultural center. In the darkness of that early autumn morning the trees rustled overhead like conspiratorial old women and shed a few

leaves on the heads of the puppeteer and the idiot.

      The lowering sky rumbled with distant thunder, and the clouds seemed to skim along the peaks of the tallest structures. The air was chilly,and it forced Pertos to stand sheltered by the ogee door of the cargo hold of his truck, t his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his overcoat, shivering, daring from one foot to the other to generate a little heat.

      Sebastian labored to unload the contents of the van and transport everything inside to the theater’s guest quarters. He had carried all their personal belongings inside and was now finislitag with the Furnace, which he handled with

great care even though he knew the pieces were unbreakable.

      As he waited for the idiot to return to take the last piece, Pertos heard footsteps. the stone of the plaza floor that connected all the buildings in the cultural complex. He stepped aroud the end of the truck and watched them:

three men their midthirties, all lean and handsome, if somewhat harshly dressed is a severity that was not normal

far Earth whom all manner of alien designs were imported and worn.

      They stopped half a dozen feet before him. “Pertos Godelhausser?” the tallest of the trio asked.

      He nodded.

      “The puppeteer,” the tallest said.

      Since it was not a question, he said nothing.

“My name is Trimkin. I’m President of Springsun’s chapter of the Heritage League. I imagine you’ve heard of us.”

      “Once or twice,” Pertos said.

      Trimkin smiled, a graceful and self-possessed man. In the short time since he had begun to speak, his companions seemed to lose color, shrink and fade by comparison. “Then you know why I’m here.”

      “No. Your people are always speech-making. I never listened. Rhetoric has bored me for as long as I can remember.”

      Trimkin grew taut, like a wire suddenly stretched, though his face remained impassive and his manner polite. “I’ll be brief. Our organization is small but growing. Our purpose is to banish all art forms of alien origin and to nurture those arts which are indiginant to Earth. Since the Emigration, our cultural heritage has grown poorer. For the last two hundred years, Earth’s painting has been a derivative of the work of off-world painters. Her music is pattered after that imported from Pino, Bleden and Treelight. All our culture is imitation, and we grow shallower year by year. The sensitive young people finally manage to Emigrate. And until Earth has her own rich culture, they won’t return, and the younger ones will continue to leave when they come of age and make money.”

      “Excuse me,” Pertos said. “But I’ve already begun to let my mind wander”

      Color rose on Trimkin’s cheeks. “I’ll try to be more specific. Don’t perform here. Pack your things and leave”

      Irritated, Pertos shook his head. “I have to eat, and I want to leave Earth. Both require money.”

      “We could pay….”

      “How much?”

      “A thousand postals”

      “I’d make ten times that much in a week here, and still it would be a pittance!”

      “Ten thousand, then,” Trimkin said.

      Pertos smiled grimly. “You would have bought me at a dishonest price if I had been witless enough to accept, eh?”

      Trimkin shrugged. Suddenly, his aristocratic bearing made Pertos feel angry, used. “If you want me off Earth so bad, why not just get the departure fees lifted for me?”

      “We haven’t got many people in high office. And even our ranks are split on that issue. But some day we’ll be able to do as you ask.”

      “Well,” Pertos said, “until you can, I’d thank you to stop bothering me with speeches.”

      “Perhaps more than speeches are required,” Trimkin said.

      “I’d advise against foolishness,” Pertos warned. He withdrew a sleek pistol from his overcoat pocket. It was plainly not of Earth design, and no man there wanted to test it to see what results it might have.

      Trimkin and his companions looked at Sebastian who had just returned from the theater.

      “If you want to take on Sebastian, go ahead,” Pertos said. “He isn’t well educated, but he has other abilities that compensate for that. He moves slowly, but strikes hard. As for my equipment, the Furnace-which you have surely been considering-it’s protected by an Olmesclan amoeba which is coded to Sebastian and me. Anyone else will find theft or vandalism quite painful”

      For half a minute they continued to confront each other.

      Blue lightning coursed across the low clouds, and the first fat raindrops began to fall.

      “We’ll be to a performance or two,” Trlmkin said. He nodded to both Pertos and Sebastian, then walked away, across the plaza. His companions followed like mute, synthetic creatures, though they were not.

      “Trouble?” Sebastian asked.

      “No more than usual. Come on. Let’s get inside before the worst of this storm hits us.”

      They ran up the steps of the side entrance to the Grande Theater in Blue, through the hexagonal crimson doors and under the roof of their haven for the following week.

 

      Sebastian could not sleep. It was not that he was afraid of the Heritage League-he had all but forgotten about them. It was just that he felt somehow unfinished for the day, as if he were hungry, though he was not.

      He left his mom and wandered away from Pertos’ chamber. He passed empty actors’ quarters, made his . way through storage vaults of old costumes that had been sewn and hung in anticipation of the lavish shows that would be performed when Earth’s children returned from the stars. Many of them were rotted. In time, he crossed the boards and reached the footlights of the main stage. There, he looked out across the darkened hall at the empty seats.

      He wished there were people here.

      Perhaps that would make him feel better.

      He went on the floor and sat in the front row and tried to pretend he was watching a performance in the midst of a large audience. He smiled at those to either side of him. No one smiled in return.

      In the rear of the auditorium he found the stairs which led to the lightman’s perch. He took them two at a time.

      Up there, he sat behind the largest spotlight.

      After a long search, he located the machine’s switch. It was on the top, directly in front of his face, a small gray toggle. He laughed at himself for having so much trouble finding something so obvious. He turned the spot on.

      Yellow light sizzled down to the black stage. A curiously perfect circle appeared there, as if a hole had been carved in the boards to allow a hidden sun to show through.

      He watched for a while, then changed the yellow gel for a blue one and settled back on his chair.

      He felt an excitement he could not explain.

      His hands shook on the cold grips of the spotlight casing.

      It wasn’t often that he could explain why he felt happy sad or tense or relaxed. He never tried to analyze, merely accepted.

      In a way, the feeling he had now was like that he had had when he had fallen off a theater scaffold in Brightwater and had broken his leg. Falling, he had been certain he was dying. It had not been fear so much, more of a long, sighing release of anxiety.

      The theater was quiet now.

      The center of the stage glimmered bluely as Sebastian waited for someone to come out there and begin doing something. But who?

      Then he remembered that blue was the color that ended the story of Bitty Belina, when she stands in sequined gown on a small pedestal with her prince kneeling before her and the body of her demon-possessed stepmother lying with the prince’s sword buried in its throat. The puppets f That was what excited him. Tomorrow, the puppets would be forged in the furnace, and maybe Bitty Belina would be among them.

      He slid off the stool and crossed the projection room in the dark. He stumbled once, fell. But he did not waste time feeling sorry for himself. He got up and untangled the cord from his feet, went downstairs. He crossed the theater and climbed onto the stage and stood in the circle of blue light and waited.

      His flesh was blue. And if he pretended hard enough, he could believe he was small, a puppet. He was the prince in the story of Bitty Belina, and he had saved her. And now when he looked at the boards he could see Bitty Belina herself, poised on her dainty feet, her smooth legs strained taut, her yellow hair to her shoulders, her eyes shining, her face turned toward him, beautiful, beautiful

      Then she was gone.

      He was alone.

      He got down on his hands and knees, but he could not find a single trace of her. And then he remembered that tonight was tonight and that Bitty Belina would not be forged until late tomorrow afternoon, when Pertos stoked the furnace. If then.

      He walked back through the empty seats up the stairs to the projection room, and he turned out the spotlight with the blue gel capped to the end of it.

      Ten minutes later he was in bed asleep. He knew that he would need all his energy to do well tomorrow. He often got sleepy, but he could not let himself miss a moment of time with the puppets.

      He dreamed of Bitty Belina. She was dancing on a flower. In the dream, he had grown as small as she and held her hand and laughed with her and fled from one bright petal to another, kicking droplets of dew into the air . . .

     

      On the planet Shaftau, a world eight times the size of Earth with only twice her gravity, there lived a race of creatures that men called spider-lizards and told many tales about. The spider-lizards called themselves Vonopo and spoke little about themselves.

      The Vonopo were each as large as two men, with twelve spindly appendages not quite like arms and not quite legs. Each appendage was tipped with a fleshy tool, each tool with a different purpose and design, like fingers and yet utterly unlike fingers. Their skin was really scales and the color of polished amber. They swallowed their food directly into their stomachs through a mouth on their bellies, and they shivered in disgust at the thought that men fouled their vocal apparatus with food pulp.

      Despite this fierce appearance, the Vonopo were a gentle people who shied from publicity and valued privacy above all else. Each lived separately in a subterranean warren, with all the comforts of a super-technical society. If one Vonopoen met another more than twice in any single week, he felt it necessary to purge himself with rituals no human had ever witnessed. No other race was permitted to live on Shafta,u, for the Vonopoens had discovered that other species tended to curiosity and could not be trusted to obey common rules of courtesy. Humans who wished to conduct business on Shaftau were issued thirty-two-hour passes, one equivalent day on that slowly turning world. Violation of the pass meant a permanent revocation of a human’s right to visit Shaftau. And no man wished to lose that privilege, for the Vonopoens made many marvelous and highly marketable items, among them the Furnaces that produced the puppets.

      The Furnace came in nine pieces for easy transport, and very little skill was required to establish the proper connections between the separate components. Also, very little skill was required to pry open the casings of the machine and see what might whir and blink inside. But the moment any piece of the hull was removed, the insides melted to slag that smoked and glowed and presented better protection for the manufacturers than any number of patents might.

      Now, in the darkened room where Pertos had chosen to erect the Furnace, the process of creation was about to

begin. The Olmescian amoeba, all but invisible when spread over the machine, had now rolled to the back and clung there in one gelatinous lump. The only light in the room came from the capsule-womb faceplate and was a dull green.

      Sebastian sat in the corner on a stool, out of the way. He tried to remain as quiet as he could, for he knew that Pertos would tell him to leave otherwise. Yet he found himself repeating lines from the script of Bitty Belina’s story, mumbling them in complete accuracy, though he had never been able to memorize anything in his life before, other than the way his name looked on paper.

      Pertos selected a wafer from the file of puppet identities on the side of the machine, frowned, then let his smile return. He looked toward Sebastian as he replaced that wafer and chose another. He slipped the disc into the memory translator above the Furnace, and the process of creation was begun.

      Sebastian was halfway off his stool before he remembered that silence and stillness were essential. Carefully, he sat back, leaning against the wall, and watched the capsulewomb intently.

      Pertos worked the only two knobs on the machine, and slowly the green color changed to rich crimson, working across the spectrum of colors. The crimson became white, and in that glare the pudding of synthetic flesh jelly that was puddled in the forming tray began to take on a solidity. It began to mold, without the help of a form, and soon was a faceless, womanly body, with pert little breasts and creased vagina.

      Sebastian became excited, though not sexually, for that was beyond him. He strained to see more of what transpired in the capsule-womb.

      The hair came next, on the head and below the belly: golden.

      It crinkled. It grew before his eyes. Like a thousand yellow snakes. And then it stopped and the face came and it was her face with the incredibly blue eyes.

      Sebastian watched until she was fully formed, until her nose popped open with nostrils and her mouth filled with teeth. Pertos removed her from the capsule-womb, a strange god with a businesslike sense about creation, and placed her

in a nutrient bath which stimulated the nerve clusters in the outer layers of her unnatural flesh. Soon, she was tossing this way and turning that, murmuring softly, fingers twitching as she grasped at dreams of death as if refusing to accept the life so suddenly flooding into her.

      More of the synthetic flesh, in its liquid form, spilled into the capsule-womb, and the cycle was begun again as Pertos chose the next wafer from the identity file and fed the disc to the machine. But Sebastian did not care about the creation of the prince of the demon-possessed stepmother, of the good angel or the three suitors who came before the prince in the story. Bitty Belina, was alive, and that was all that really mattered.

      He wanted to get up.

      He dared not; Pertos would send him out.

      He wanted to touch her hair.

      He was afraid to.

      He watched.

      And as the light flickered from green to crimson to white and the making of life from the Vonopoen synthetic flesh continued, as other small bodies, each no smaller than eighteen inches and no taller than twenty-four, were laid in the nutrient bath trays, strange images shot through the idiot’s mind, sometimes dark and hideous, sometimes naive and gay, but always without coherence.

      Bitty Belina reminded Sebastian of someone . .. someone long ago and long gone, someone whose phantom visage, resurrected in memory, was teasingly familiar and yet utterly strange. He remembered golden hair most of all. Bitty Belina, had it, and so did the girl in the past, curls and curls of it. Somehow he was certain he had been close to the unremembered yellow-haired girl, very close, painfully close-and abruptly, painfully separated by the sound of a sharp twig cracking underfoot, though it was not a twig but something else. What had it been? What had taken the blonde girl from him? And who had she been? Bitty Belina?

      The prince lay in the nutrient bath alongside Bitty Belina and her three unsuccessful suitors.

      The good angel was being created now.

      Golden wings were forming in the womb.

      Golden hair. The sharp sound, snapping. And blood. Yes, yes, lots of blood, running down his right hand, soaking his shirt sleeve. And the golden girl was looking down at his hand and at herself, and she was still laughing and he was laughing and then she was screaming and he was laughing and then she was gagging and he was getting scared and then she was . . . she was dead.

But who?

      Sitting here now, he felt guilty, though he could notr understand why. He felt as if he had sneaked some money from Pertos’ lockbox to buy candy. He had done that once. And felt awful and sorry when he was caught. But this guilty-it was worse. Much worse. It hurt.

      The winged angel lay in a nutrient bath himself, his lovely appendages draped across the edges of the pan. Behind closed eyelids, his eyeballs moved spasmodically. It was hard to let go of non-being and accept the role of life in all its facets.

      In the capsule-womb, the stepmother formed.

      Sebastian felt a kinship for her, knowing both were guilty. But her guilt, he realized, was much easier to take than his, for she knew what she had done. And he did not.

      He tried to remember the bleeding girl and the blood on his hand and the laughing and the screaming. But it hurt, and his eyes fogged, and his jaw went loose. He couldn’t remember. He stopped trying, and he felt so much better that he resolved never to think of that memory again.

      He had made the same resolution hundreds of times before, though he never remembered it.

      At last, all the characters for the story of Bitty Belina were lined up in nutrient baths. Bitty Belina herself had sat up and was looking about at the dark room and the shapes of the puppet master and the idiot. Her eyes were very wide, and she kept brushing herself as if there were dust all over her, though that could not be.

      Pertos closed down the Furnace, deposited all the identity wafers in the file again and touched the Olmesclan amoeba in the proper rhythm, causing it to spread out over the Furnace like a film of water, until it was not visible. He turned around, looked at the puppets. His face was drawn, and his large eyes looked sick, like a man bearing too much of a burden.

      “Should I watch them?” Sebastian asked.

      “Yes,” Pertos said. “I’ll be in my room for an hour. Then we must be prepared for the show.”

      Sebastian moved his stool closer to the puppets.

      Pertos gazed one last time around the room, then departed that place, the Holistian Pearl already in his hands. He walked the dark corridor to his room, went inside, closed the door and sank upon the couch there, utterly exhausted spiritually as well as physically. It was not that he minded playing God in the creation of the puppets. He thought of himself as nothing more than an operator of the Vonopoen devices. It was when the play was done and the small living creatures must be returned to lifeless, waiting liquid that made him miserable. To be a life-giving god leads only to pleasure. To deal death to those fragile creatures while they watched, aware of what was to be done to them, sapped a man’s soul. The depression always set in upon creation, because creation could only lead to death again, later. He rolled the Pearl over and over in his fingers, seeking solace.

 

      The gray surface of the living jewel slowly responded to his caress, absorbing the body heat he offered, sucking up the energy of friction caused by the stone rolling across the microscopically ridged flesh. Its pale color seeped from it as whiteness flowed in. In moments, it was storing the energy to carry on its life functions, and a moment later he had given it more than it could hold. It used the incoming excess of energy to play its own role in this symbiosis. Through the nerves in the tips of his fingers, it flushed a distortion throughout his body, sent him into synathesia where all senses were confused, where sight came as smell and sound as pictures. The Pearl fired alien images in his brain, plunged him through the heart of a star and into even stranger places where it had been in its eternity of existence.

      The Pearl had had a thousand masters in its life to date, and now it drew on all their experiences, all the scenes and events it had shared while in their possession. It touched filaments of power along the surface of Pertos’ brain, stepped up the vividness of the dreams and took him across the universe in the bodies of half a dozen races, in half a hundred strange spaceships, through half a thousand points of wonder.

      And he accepted.

 

      For a while, he forgot that he was a god of sorts and tha doom would follow genesis. There was a large audience for the first night’s two performances. Every seat in the auditorium was filled, three thousand paying customers in all. Those seated too far to either side or toward the last half of the hall had raised the folding telescopic windowplates on the backs of the seats before them and were watching the magnified stage and the drawn, emerald curtain with childlike anticipation.

      The robotic orchestra played something of RimskiKorsakov’s, cymbals crashing and drums growing ominous, then flutes and piccolos bursting forth with sign that fairness and good still existed in the black scene the music painted.

      Sebastian peeked through the curtains again and again, watching the patrons, carrying an excitement that came only with a performance. If the combination of dress styles from a hundred worlds looked strange out there, Sebastian didn’t notice. It was not the clothes, but the people that excited him. So many people, so close, all there for the puppets he helped bring them.

      He closed the gap in the curtain and turned to look over the puppets who stood together, talking, perhaps working over their lines. He had always wondered what the puppets talked about when they were together, alone, but he could ‘, never fathom what it might be. Pertos said they sometimes I, dreamed of escape, though they could never go farther from the Furnace than a thousand yards without suffering an excruciating, unendurable pain that eventually forced them back where they belonged.

      Bitty Belina was looking very earnest, her little brow wrinkled, her eyes set and sparkling, her lips moving steadily, almost as if in ritual cadence, repeating some charm or magic spell.

      Suddenly she turned and faced Sebastian, and in his mind, there was blood pumping out of her stomach and she was not Bitty Belina any more, but a girl named jenny. And he gurgled and looked away from her, blinking, crying, but no longer remembering what had stirred him so deeply. The flash of memory was gone. Jenny? Just a name.

      “Where is Master Godelhausser?” she asked Sebastian.

      Her voice, though small, was not tinny. It did not screech or whine as she spoke. It was a womanly voice in the sense that some little girls, when breathless, sound very adult and somehow sensuous.

      Sebastian waved his arms, pointing nowhere, and finally managed to say, “With the lights. As always.”

      His throat ached, as if each one of the sharp-edged words had torn chunks of flesh loose on their way from his body to Bitty Belina. He coughed, dry and racking, making his eyes water.

      She had her tiny hands on her hips now. Her white, mid-thigh skirt rustled as if made of paper, and it thrust out stiffly over the pert curve of her small buttocks. “Damn him! He promised us we’d have a new ending in the script, like we want, and then he disappears before he comes throughl”

      “New ending?” Sebastian asked. He could not understand what she meant, for the story of Bitty Belina was a permanent cycle with him, and the notion that it could be changed was alien and unfathomable. One might as well say the sun will rise in the north and settle in the east or that cows will now fly and birds will give milk henceforth.

      “We don’t want Wissa killed in the end,” Belina explained, indicating the wickedly beautiful, dark-haired and sloe-eyed villainess.

      “But she . , wants you dead I” Sebastian blurted, amazed at the blonde puppet’s concern for an evil woman lie this.

      “Only in the script,” Belina said.

      “It hurts so,” Wissa explained. “It hurts with the sword in my neck, because I don’t die very fast. And every time I’m created, it’s all just waiting until I die:”

      “We are people,” Belina said. Her pretty face was not as pretty as it usually was, he noticed. “We’re made on a pattern designed according to human gene structure. We’re complete, with brains and emotions-‘

      “Oh, hell, he’s retarded,” the prince said. “What are you all standing around talking to an idiot for?”

      Sebastian wanted to squash the prince. He could have, too. One swift kick against the wall, a heel brought down hard

      Belina stamped her feet, spat on the floorboards, leaving

a little spot of glistening saliva there, a dew drop. “We’ll put it to Godelhausser tonight. Wissa, it will be the last time. That old bastard isn’t going to keep sacrificing you for showmanshipl”

      “He’ll refuse to change it,” Wissa Said. “Some patrons like the blood in the end. He’s said so before.”

      “Then we won’t perform!” Belina snapped.

      “Yeah?” the prince asked. “And how do you plan to refuse him when he is four times taller than you, when you can’t run more than a thousand yards, and when he can refuse you food or water and let you dehydrate until you’re too weak to resist?”

      “Or,” one of the three suitors offered, “if we push him too hard on it, perhaps he’ll just stow us back in the Furnace, return us to plasm, and never use our story again. And that’s as good as a permanent death. At least Wissa is always reborn.”

      Listening, Sebastian was horror-stricken at such a possibility, and he felt his bladder weakening as he anticipated never seeing Bitty Belina again, never hearing that whispered voice in another show.

      “We could kill the old bastard 1” Belina growled, her face furiously red now, her hands fisted on her hips.

      The prince slid his hands around her, from the back, cupping her pert little breasts, chewing on her neck. “Calm, Belina. Don’t louse up all we have and give us nothing in return.”

      “I suppose,” she said, pouting her lips.

      One of his hands slid between the buttons of her blouse, and the rounded mound of one breast was partially visible.

      Sebastian wanted to squash him, though he felt terribly guilty about harboring such desires. And, too, while he hated the prince and the way the prince touched Belina (and hated, even more, the way she reacted, cooing, giggling, enjoying it), chiefly because he could not understand what they were doing, he was not of a mind to take any action because of the bigger fear: that Pertos would deposit them in the Furnace and never bring them out again.

      They would be dead. Forever. Liquid flesh without feature.

      Dead and forever and no more blond hair and bright eyes.

      Because all this upset him so much, he had had an “accident” and he felt miserable. He wanted to change clothes, but he knew he shouldn’t leave the stage until the curtain went up and he knew that there were no last-minute hitches.

      By now the puppets had seen what had happened, were pointing and laughing at the dark wet streaks down his pantleg. He saw that even Bitty Belina was laughing, and he was even more upset at this until he decided that, after all, it was funny, his standing there like that, all wet and embarrassed. So he laughed too.

      He didn’t want to laugh, really. It was just that not laughing would have made things so much worse. Not laughing would have made him different and made him outside their fun. And he wanted to be inside more than anything else in the world. He always had, but he had never often succeeded in acting right.

      Now he was. They all laughed together.

      Fortunately, the curtain went up as Pertos operated the controls from the lightman’s perch, and the play began. He could stop laughing when he didn’t want to, and there was no longer any need for him to remain in the wings. Pertos said he should stay there as a communications link before a curtain rose, but Pertos had never called him in five years. He went to his room and changed trousers, which made him feel better. He came back to watch the puppets kissing and fighting, drinking and singing and dancing. Then there was the final shriek of the evil stepmother as the prince drove his sword through Wissa’s neck.

      The audience gasped.

      Belina stepped from her pedestal and took the prince away, to make love to him, and the curtain fell with a whispering hiss that signaled the time for applause.

      It was a good performance and Sebastian felt good.

      He had forgotten that the puppets had wanted the ending of the play changed, but he remembered when Belina cursed him as he picked up Wissa’s remains and carried the shattered little body to the Furnace where Pertos would redeposit it and re-create her for the next show.

      “You could kill him,” she said.

      “Who?”

      “Godelhausser,” Belina said.

      She looked up at him from a great distance.

      “No.” He put Wissa down on the receival tray.

      “Yes. You’re big and strong. You could kill him for us. For me” The last was added in a different tone of voice. He felt her hand on his trousers, and he pulled quickly away, terrified but not knowing of what.

      Then Godelhausser came and the puppets turned on him, and Sebastian relaxed, a spectator again.

      Belina shrieked and spat and cursed. She kicked at Godelhausser’s shins, but to no avail. The winged angel fluttered at face level, arguing the humanity of letting Wissa live, but he was brushed aside. Wissa was created, found nothing had changed and shrugged at the prospect of another death. Tonight, at least, Godelhausser would recreate her and she would know some joy with the others until tomorrow’s matinee when she would feel the blade again.

      Sebastian watched, grinning.

      He was glad that Pertos was not angry with them, for otherwise he might never create them again. Pertos seemed to take it in stride, seemed even to enjoy it. He could not be upset or angry. He smiled. Pertos smiled. That made Sebastian feel good.

 

      Alvon Rudi was splendidly dressed in amber and blue, with a trailing cape, epaulets of silver, with many buttons and four buckles across each black boot. If he was too heavy, it could be forgiven because he had a certain self-possession, a certain sophistication that made the extra pounds seem beneficial, like extra muscles or an abundance of wit. He was like most Earthmen, save that he was richer. He was a merchant of some sort, dealing solely with intercontinental trade on the motherworid, though this limited yard had done him well.

      He had come to wait backstage after the second performance, even though Sebastian had made it plain, after some time, that Pertos would be a while. When Pertos arrived and said Wissa must be re-created before he could talk to anyone, Rudi was understanding. He watched the other puppets with a curious intensity, always smiling but never looking very happy. Then Wissa was alive again and the puppets went to their own room with cheese and meat, bread and cake, two bottles of wine each half as tall as the prince. They went laughing, making rude jokes, and finally left the three grown men in silence that had a disturbing quality to it.

      “So like children,” Alvon Rudi said. “So alive and bright, yet adults really, eh?”

      “Physical adults. But a strange combination of adult and child in their minds. Since I bought the identity wafers, I have used them in perhaps two hundred performances. They have been alive for a total of no more than a hundred and twenty days. In chronological sense, then, they are infants, newly born. But the Vonopoens give them personalities, make them adults in a way, though the knowledge is imprinted on their wafers and it is not something they learn through experience. So though they grasp most things on the level of adults, they have a childlike exuberance and naivety.”

      Sebastian attempted to follow all of this, but he could not. He had seldom heard Godelhausser talk at such length to strangers. Usually he was short and somewhat mean. Now he rattled away as if he wanted to talk only to keep Alvon Rudi from speaking, as if he might be afraid of what the merchant had come to say.

      “Would you like some wine?” Pertos asked.

      “A small glass.”

      “Me too?” Sebastian asked.

      “Another small glass,” Pertos said, pouring the idiot’s first. “And be careful not to spill it, or you’ll get nothing else.”

      “I will,” Sebastian said, tasting the wine.

      As Alvon Rudi accepted a glass of the black drink, he said, looking at Sebastian, “He would seem to be a strange

assistant.”

      “The government classifies him as an idiot,” Pertos said. “But he has moments of insight, flashes rather brilliant. He may be what they say, but he is sometimes more.”

      “Often?”

      “Rarely.”

      “Then why?” Rudi asked.

      “He is also cheap,” Pertos said. “And as I am saving for the damn departure fees, I scrimp.”

      Rudi drank his wine, watching Godelhausser over the brim of the glass.

      Pertos looked back. He seemed uneasy, as if he had an important engagement he must soon make, though all the night contained for him now was a late meal, a session with the Holistian Pearl and sleep.

      “I have a proposition for you,” Alvon Rudi said, putting his glass down on a polished, yellow enamel end table.

Pertos nodded.

      “Do you rent the puppets out? For other shows beyond your schedule?” He spoke, Sebastian thought, as if there were a secret that only he and the puppet master knew. Sebastian tried to imagine what the secret was, but he couldn’t think very dearly. It took very little wine to affect him, and already he had drunk half the glass.

      “We perform for private parties,” Godelhausser said. “The price would depend upon the distance of travel, for the Furnace must be transported wherever the puppets go. It would also, of course, depend on the number of the little simulacrums you would want, what the play you would like would demand.”

      “One,” Alvon Rudi said.

      “I have no play for a single puppet”

      “I would write it,” Rudi said.

      “I imagine you have chosen the puppet,” Godelhausser said, very sad now, very quiet, his voice almost inaudible.

      “Bitty Belina,” the merchant said.

      Sebastian grew more interested now. His wine was gone, and he wanted more, so he went over and poured himself some. He felt good that he had not slopped any. Pertos got angry when he spilled.

      “I imagine your curtain time will be odd.”

      “All night, of course,” Rudi Said.

      “And you would pay a high ticket.”

      “Ten thousand postals.”

      “Twenty thousand,” Godelhausser Said.

      “Very well. It should be a unique experience, well worth the extra money, even though I will not actually know her, eh?”

      “I’m sorry,” Godelhausser said. It was obvious that he required an effort to say no to the merchant.

      “You won’t rent?”

      “I won’t “

      “Twenty-five thousand, then.”

      “I’m very sorry. For both of us.”

      Rudi rose, twisted his shoulders so his cape was flung back, the wrinkles flowing out of it like ripples disappearing across the surface of a pond after a stone has been tossed. “You’ll never make departure fees otherwise, you know.”

      “Perhaps,”

      Rudi shrugged. He was not angry. Impatient, perhaps, restless with the certainty that he would get what he wanted sooner or later, disturbed that time and effort must be wasted to achieve what he wished. “I’ll try again tomorrow evening. Perhaps circumstances will have changed.”

      “No,” Godelhausser said. His voice was now so slight, so wavery that it seemed not to be a voice at all, but the stirring of a breeze across a series of open pipes.

      “I’ll return just the same,” Alvon Rudi said. He nodded curtly and left them.

Sebastian finished his drink. “What he want?” he asked Godelhausser.

      The old man had fumbled his Holistian Pearl from his pocket and was beginning to rub it between his fingers. He had not even eaten yet.

      “What he want?” Sebastian insisted.

      “My soul,” Pertos said. “But I wouldn’t give it to him” Then the Pearl sent dreams to him as it reached energy storage capacity, and he seemed to enter a trance.

Sebastian left the room because it scared him when the puppet master was holding the Pearl, his hands rolling it automatically while his eyes were closed and his thoughts were lightyears away. He went down the hall and stopped before the closed door of the puppets’ room. He could hear their laughter, husky little voices, the clink of their small glasses that Pertos supplied them. Wissa squealed in delight, and he wondered what game they were playing. When he tried the door, it was locked.

      He went to his own room, staggering a little.

He laid his identification cards in his single suitcase, a nightly ritual, and fell into bed with his clothes on. There was a faint smell of urine, and he remembered his soiled pants. But he was too tired to get up and drop them into the sonic cleaner in the wall. The smell and his exhaustion, coupled with his inability to join the puppets or Pertos made him feel more lonely and desperate than he had ever felt before in his life.

Even so, he slept.

 

      Jenny was laughing, dodging from tree to tree. She wore a slouch hat and carried a gun made of plastic that shot sponge pellets at him. She was the spy, she said, though he did not know what a spy was. It was his job, she said, to capture her.

      They were running, laughing, hiding from each other, jumping out to scare each other, running more.

      And then . . .

      And then he caught her, caught the spy, before she could shoot him, like he was supposed to do ….

      Only . . . only she had bled . . . and died . . . shooting him with those sponge-rubber pellets . . . alternately begging for help . . . get help . . . run for help . . . tell them . . . about help. .

      But he couldn’t do it. He was scared of what they would do to him. Other spies might come and try to kill him for getting their spy.

      And then she was quiet, dead. And he got rid of her and went home and when they asked him where she was, where the spy was, he told them a story, because there had to be a story, but it was a broken story and he knew they wouldn’t believe him, would send spies . . . and he would be killed and would bleed like Jenny and would . . . would . . . die….

      He woke up to some loud noise. He sat up after a while, after the dream was all gone, and he listened to see if he could hear it again. He could not. He went to sleep again.

      In the morning, when be opened his door, he found Pertos Godelhausser lying on the corridor floor, all bloody and unconscious. Down the hall there was a trail of blood to show how the old man had crawled all this way for help. Sebastian felt a momentary wash of overwhelming incompetency that he had not provided help. He was desperately sorting through his shattered mind for a plan, for something to do with the body, when Pertos raised his head and asked for help. He wasn’t dead yet!

Sebastian bent to the old man. “What?”

      “My room. The autodoc. I couldn’t get into it myself.”

      Sebastian did not understand what the autodoc was until Pertos explained it was the same machine that had fixed his broken leg. And since the idiot remembered that so clearly, he could now operate, if only by routine.

`With Pertos directing him, he managed to get the retreival tray out of the autodoc, and he lifted Pertos onto it with ease. After an embarrassing and interminable clumsiness, he worked the security belt through its clamps across the puppet master’s chest. He shoved the tray into the wall slot from which he had withdrawn it. The machine swallowed Pertos smoothly and began making diagnostic sounds as if it were digesting him.

      Exhausted, the idiot sank into a chair and watched the wall, unable to understand why Pertos should be bloody and what the old man might have done to cause such a disaster.

      After a while, he ate.

      He thought about Bitty Belina.

      For a time, he almost forgot that the puppet master was in the autodoc. When be rose to go look for Pertos, he remembered and felt sheepish and sat down to wait a while longer.

      Time seemed to pass slowly.

      In the adjoining room, puppets were giggling . . . .

 

      Pertos had a huge appetite when he was released by the computerized physician some four hours later. He was healed; the scars were gone. He had lost six pounds as the sutodoc had forced his body to contribute to the accelerated healing processes by burning some of its stored fat. He ordered several steaming meals from the central grocery delivery bank, and the plastic containers of hot food slipped from the pneumatic tubes into the delivery receptacle. He spread these out on the table, opened them and devoured the contents with an enthusiasm he felt for few things these days.

      Sebastian watched him, curious but asking no questions.

      “Better,” Pertos said when he had finished half the food, before him and was toying with his glass of wine now more than with fork and spoon.

      “What?” Sebastian asked, taking the old man’s breach of silence as a cue for his own inquisitiveness.

      “Heritage Leaguers. They came on me by surprise.”

      “Why?”

      Pertos pushed away from the table, his face suddenly clouding. He looked at the door joining his room to the room the puppets occupied. The sound of merriment came through the thin portal. Wissa was laughing, and two of the three suitors were shouting in some game or other. Belina’s own whispery giggle came through now and then. Pertos approached the door, examined it, then spun the lock dial and threw the door wide.

      The puppets stopped squealing, looked up at him. None of them were smiling. There was a litter of tiny glasses and bits of food on the floor. Wissa was naked, stunningly dark and beautiful.

      Sebastian averted his eyes, though he was not sure why.

      “You let them in,” Pertos said to the puppets.

      They watched him.

      “You let them in your room and through the adjoining door”

      It was Bitty Belina who spoke. “Who?” she asked. But there was something about her tone that said she already knew who.

      “The Heritage Leaguers. Trimkin and those four men he brought with him.” Pertos wasn’t Pertos, because he wasn’t smiling.

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bitty Belina said.

      “When I crawled into the hall to get help it was because no one in your room seemed to hear me. And when I had to go for Sebastian, I found my own door still locked, from the inside. So they came and went somehow else.”

      None of the puppets spoke.

      Wissa was slipping into clothes.

      The prince fingered his sword.

      And when Sebastian looked again, Bitty Belina was watching him. Her face held an expression of utter contempt and loathing. It was not pretty at all, and it seemed to accuse him.

      “I didn’t do any . . . anything,” Sebastian said.

      “Exactly,” Bitty Belina said.

      “What will you do to us?” Wissa asked, fully clothed now, addressing herself to the puppet master.

      Pertos looked at Bitty Belina. “There will be two shows tonight and a matinee this afternoon. But you will work an extra show. And if you don’t work it, I’ll never call any of you out of the Furnace again.”

      “What extra show?” Bitty Belina asked, her fisted hands on her hips, looking fierce-and just a bit frightened.

      “You’ll see,” Pertos said. The smile returned, but it was a grim one. “It’s sort of a command performance, you might say. For an audience of one. I’ll see you later:”

      He closed the door.

      Sebastian thought how much older Pertos looked, how much he seemed to have aged in only the last few moments.

 

      When Pertos Godelhausser climbed the stairs to the lightman’s perch for the second performance of the evening, Trimkin was waiting for him. The League President was dressed in the softest of brown, imitation buckskin, with long fringe on the arms and around the hem of the jacket. He smiled and spread his hands as the puppeteer displayed the handgun he had not had time to use the previous night.

      “I come unarmed,” Trimkin said.

      “And I should take advantage of that.”

      “You’d never leave the theater alive, then”

      “Perhaps.”

      “Most certainly.”

      Then they stood there, facing each other, being men and playing the games of courage and self-possession which are supposed to be those rituals which separate men from boys, though they seemed more in the Neanderthal spirit than in the tradition of civilization.

      “So why are you here?” Pertos asked at last.

      “You even had an afternoon performance today.” He pulled out one of the handbills that had been circulated about the city. “And you have another scheduled every afternoon this week:”

      “Standard:”

      “Maybe you didn’t understand, Mister Godelhausser.”

      “I understood.”

      “Then it’s stubbornness.”

      “No. It’s just that I have a strong sense of self-preservation,” Pertos said. “That’s the sum of it.” He smiled, too warmly to mean it

      Trimkin looked nonplussed. “Self-preservation?”

      “Tonight, I’ll sell my soul to a merchant, just as he predicted I would. The only thing I’ll have left, then, is pride and the future. Without money, I’ll never see the stars, I’ll die on Earth; there must be, then, many performances in Springsun. For if I die on Earth, there is no future to look forward to. And without any future, there can be no pride; a fly trapped in amber isn’t proud. You understand?”

      Trimkin did not speak.

      “It’s very difficult playing God,” Pertos Said. “Maybe when you and your Heritage Leaguers have established a little divinity for yourselves, you’ll find that having the power of life and death over others is not really worth the agony.”

      “No one forced you to be a puppeteer”

      “No one forces the soldier to kill. He could throw down his gun and accept the stockade. But there’s something inside him somewhere that makes him like killing.”

      “And you think I like power?”

      “Are fond of it”

      “And the sin?”

      “One can either love power, or people. But the two do not mix.”

      “And I suppose you love that idiot of yours. And those puppets which aren’t even real.”

      “No. I made the mistake of loving power, in a small way. I’ve been trying to reeducate myself, but perhaps I’m too old.”

      “Too old to suffer,” Trimkin said, steering things back to more familiar ground. “We’ll give you a final chance. If your announcements are circulated tomorrow, if you still insist on performing then, your beating will seem slight. We’d burn down the theater with you inside, if necessary.”

      Pertos did not reply.

      Trimkin shrugged, then walked by the old man, thumped down the steps and was gone around the corner, brown against white. The swish of his buckskin fringe whispered along the cold walls for long seconds, then faded like a dream surrendering to consciousness.

      In the lightman’s perch, Pertos locked the door behind himself and laid his pistol within easy reach.

 

      He sat behind the spotlight and swung the control console to his side, looked at all the buttons and toggles that controlled the stage, the curtain and the scenery which would rise out of the boards or descend from the ceiling on wires whenever he gave the electronic command.

      He fingered the topmost row of toggles.         –

      Let there be light! he thought.

      He flipped the switches with quick fingers. The footlights popped on all across the stage, the dullest of the white set, barely casting any illumination.

      Pertos laughed, though he was not at all happy.

      Let there be life ! he thought.

      The curtains opened, and the puppets frolicked forward. The last show of the night had begun, playing to a capacity house. In the front row, in one of the most expensive seats, the devil sat biding his time, disguised as a merchant named Alvon Rudi . . . .

 

      Pertos Godelhausser sat in a comfortable form-fitting chair that hugged the contours of his body, holding the Holistian Pearl in his right hand, staring at nothing, his mouth somewhat slack and his face far too pale. The jewel was a brilliant white that almost seemed to radiate heat, and as he rolled it back and forth in his fingers it seemed to cling to his flesh with a will, like a magnet seeking out his bones through the insulating cushion of his flesh.

Sebastian sat on the floor, lacquering a newly painted prop to keep the colors rich and vibrant as Pertos wanted them. He could never have been trusted to apply the many colors themselves, but he could work the self-feeding lacquer brush without much problem. It was something he usually looked forward to, for it made him feel more a part of the show. He was always plagued with fear deep inside that he would one day be useless and that Pertos would reject him for someone else. But tonight being useful was not bringing him the sense of contentment and worth that it usually did.

He thought of Bitty Belina.

      Pertos had said that she was putting on a special show for the merchant Alvon Rudi. It was a new show, a new story, privately enacted. And he and Pertos were to wait here, perhaps sleep here, in Pertos’ case, if the play should take an hour or all night. They were at the far end of the corridor from Pertos’ room where Rudi enjoyed the new play.

      He wished he could watch.

      Not being permitted to watch made him feel excluded. It was as if they all knew what the play was about, except him. And that made him miserable. He felt childish and unneeded.

      Pertos slept. The Pearl glowed. And no one was watching the idiot at the moment.

      Sebastian knew from experience that the puppet master would be tranced for a long while yet. It had only been moments since the strange sleep had taken him, and he never severed himself from a Pearl-vision in less than an hour. Sometimes he stayed under for most of a day, not eating or drinking, frightening Sebastian who thought he might be dead, though he never was.

      Sebastian put the lacquer brush down, and after the bristles had registered inactivity for twenty seconds, the tool ceased to secrete its transparent, odoriferous shellac. On the paper laid down to protect the floor, a wet circle seeped outwards from the bristles.

      It had come to him that tonight was the last night that Bitty Belina would be alive, at least for a while, until they moved on to another town and her story could be enacted before fresh audiences. Two days of any single story at a time was the limit. Then the puppets in that show would be returned to the Furnace to call forth another batch. They died.

      He felt an indescribable panic seize him as he realized the full impact of what he had just been thinking. He wanted to leap up and run and kick things and shout, work off this feeling of bursting apart. But he knew that all of that would not keep the blond-haired puppet alive another minute. Did the rain stop if you asked it to?

      Bitty Belina would die.

      Yet tonight she performed a new play, in private, and one longer than any in the puppet master’s catalogue. That hardly seemed fair when he was a part of the show. He should get to see the new story.

      She was in a new story. For the first time he understood the import of that concept. What had happened to Bitty

Belina’s prince? Was he in the new life she was living? And her three suitors? And the good angel? And what of Wissa, the evil stepmother? Would Belina die in this new life rather than be saved for her prince, by her prince, as she always had been before?

      A new life? How was that possible? He, Sebastian, was the assistant. It could never happen that he would wake up one morning as the puppet master with Pertos having taken his placel A person was what he was, and nothing changed about that. You lived your life, over and over, and you accepted and enjoyed it. Bitty Belina played out her story, was almost killed by the evil stepmother, was saved. Over and over again. And he, Sebastian, moved from town to town with Pertos and unloaded the truck and watched creation and waited behind the curtain before each performance and drank some wine and ate and packed the truck and rode on with Pertos and unloaded the truck and watched creation . . . .

      You couldn’t change your life!

      The prince wouldn’t be there and the stepmother would succeed and she would die. Yet how could she die when she had lived her life so often and always triumphed. How could she want to change her life and maybe die?

      And would she be so dead . . . so dead that the Furnace would not be able to bring her back again?

      He was whimpering.

      He knew something was awfully wrong. The world seemed to have become unstable, the floor like jelly, the walls shimmering and threatening to change shape and be something different.

      If she did not perform the script, her original life, the machine wouldn’t revive her when she died. She had never been meant to die outside of the Furnace. It was written that way. Just as he had not been meant to be puppet master. Or a tree, for that matter. We are what we are. We aren’t what we aren’t. And anyone who changes it, they die. They must die, or nothing would be solid and real any longer. Belina with a sword through her neck, bubbling blood through her lips while the prince runs away with Wissa . . .

      Belina with a knife in her belly, bleeding all over his hands and screaming and begging for help and making him afraid.

      Blood, blood, blood on his hands, as before, once, then . . .

      He looked at his hands.

      No blood.

      He stood up and looked at Pertos.

      Pertos dreamed.

      Sebastian staggered from the room, his legs unexplainar bly weak, his shoulders aching, his arms tired, as if he had dragged some burden across a long and rugged terrain. He was not certain what must be done, but he was determined to do it to save Bitty Belina.

      Blood on his hands.

      Would they think he killed jenny, stabbed her, or would they believe his story?

      He stopped there in the middle of the long corridor behind the stage in the Grande Theater of Springsun, wondering who Jenny was. He could not remember anyone by that name, although he did think of golden hair when he heard it. It scared him when he did not understand himself. It was as if someone else had entered his head and was thinking for him, but their own memories were intruding and he kept confusing them with things and places and people he knew.

      He heard puppet laughter.

      He started down the hall again.

      His head seemed to balloon, swell enormously, until it was larger than all the rest of him. He held his hands to his ears, as if to keep himself from exploding.

      Perhaps it was a hundred years, perhaps a minute, before he reached the door of Pertos’ room where Bitty Belina was performing her new life, her dangerous new life. He stood outside, breathing hard and wanting to charge inside and save her. But he didn’t dare because of two quick memories that darted through his clouded mind: First, Pertos had told him that Bitty Belina would be awkward in her new role and wouldn’t want Sebastian to see her until she had gotten it all down as well as she could; second, he remembered the sharp, ugly way Belina had spoken to him the previous day, how she had laughed with the others when he had had his “accident.” But, too, he had laughed. And he couldn’t be angry with himself, could he?

      To counteract the memories that stalled him, he told himself that Pertos would thank him for keeping Bitty Belina from harm. Pertos would say, “Why didn’t I see the danger? Sebastian, you’re a herol” And even though Pertos had said there were no more heroes, Sebastian would be a hero. Too, it was easy to convince himself that Bitty Belina’s sharpness had not been disgust at all, but a sort of sympathy.

      He touched the door handle and found that it had not been locked.

      Puppets laughed.

      Belina laughed.

      Cautiously he slid the portal open until he could see most of the room. And it was then that the balloon of his head exploded in all directions.

      Bitty Belina was naked, standing between the mammoth thighs of Alvon Rudi, caressing him there, laughing as he laughed, the object of her attention every bit a third as large in length and diameter as she was.

Sebastian had only once ever seen a man with desire, and that once had traumatized him for life, had scored into his brain like a lightning bolt scarring the trunk of a gnarled elm. His mother and father had left their bedroom door open, and he had wandered in on some imagined quest or other, discovering them in sex. He had thought that his father had been hurting her, had been stabbing her. He had leaped on the bed, screaming, and flailing at his father with both small hands, biting, kicking. And even hours later, when they had finally calmed him and his mother had assured him, again and again, that his father had not been hurting her, he believed what he chose to believe. From then on, he had been ashamed that he possessed the same flesh knife as his father. And the years since then, devoid of a single erection since his sense of the sexual was all but nonexistent, had been a blessing. He knew that he could never ever harm anybody, because there was no steel in his knife.

      And now, seeing Alvon Rudi, seeing Belina there touching the knife that could kill her, he was plagued with visions of Belina dead, bloody, ruined. And over the visions, as if several pictures had been printed on one plate, he saw jenny with the knife in her gut, spouting blood. And for the first time he understood, deep in himself where something of the human mind survived, that the knife in jenny’s gut was his response to his father’s penis in his mother. And he gagged and screamed and stumbled into the room toward Alvon Rudi, attacking himself as well as the enemy.

      There were white faces.

      Puppets screamed.

      He felt Belina beating at his hands, then at his shins, as he knocked her to the floor.

      He remembered Rudi’s face, purple and inhuman.

      He remembered bloodshot eyes watching him, terrified.

      He felt the prince’s sword driven into the calf of his leg.

      He kicked, smashing the prince into the wall. The simulacrum’s neck snapped, and it writhed a moment before death was complete, blood running from its ears and nose, its face ashen and painfully contorted, for it had never known the violent death it had so often dealt to Wissa.

      Alvon Rudi clawed at his face.

      He felt his cheeks running with blood.

      He laced his fingers tighter around the merchant’s throat.

      The naked man convulsed, pitching to and fro on the bed, his lips almost blue now.

      “No! No! You stupid bastardl” Bitty Belina was screaming. She had climbed onto his back now and was clawing her small hands at his clothes trying to reach his neck where she could swing an arm around and go for his eyes.

      Alvon Rudi managed to drive a knee into Sebastian’s crotch, making the brute gag and double over, forcing him to break his deathlike grip.

      “Help!” Belina yelled.

      The golden-winged angel flew at Sebastian, tried for his eyes. But Sebastian batted the simulacrum away with a large hand, sent it crashing against the front of the sutodoc where it broke its left wing and tumbled to the floor, crying and cursing.

      Wissa stood in the doorway between rooms, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.

      Belina bit his neck, drew blood with her fine teeth.

      Alvon Rudi was trying to get off the bed, but his throat was heavily bruised, and he was dizzy from the lack of blood to his brain. Slowly, he was gaining equilibrium, but too slowly. Much too slowly.

Sebastian reached for him, grabbed him again.

      Rudi’s hands locked on the idiot’s fingers, trying -to pry them off his neck. He dug nails into Sebastian’s flesh.

      Belina gained the idiot’s neck, reached round him, clawed at his left eye with her tiny fingers.

      Sebastian howled, shook her like a horse trying to throw a bronco buster. She fell, striking the floor hard, and lay there whimpering, her hip crushed.

      Despite the fact that one eye was blurry with blood and tears, Sebastian continued to choke the merchant, shaking the man with each furious pulsing squeeze of the fingers.

      He shook and squeezed for a long while after Alvon Rudi was dead, then turned and left that place, walking in pure blackness, unknowing and uncertain, merely terrified and filled with a need to escape the blood from the puppets . . . .

 

      Pertos Godelhausser had been awakened from his Pearlvisions by Wissa. She had been hysterical, and she had had to repeat her hurried story several times before he had even an inkling of what had transpired while he had been tranced. When he did discover that Alvon Rudi was dead, he was not angry or frightened. Merely sad. It seemed like a logical tragedy to unroll in his life, the final act with no denouement for the lead character, the hero.

      He picked up the dead prince and the wounded puppets, fed them to the furnace to be broken down into synthetic flesh liquid. He collected the healthy puppets next and did the same with them. There were no protests this time. They even seemed anxious to go.

      Back in his room he found a large blanket in a closet and wrapped Alvon Rudi’s corpse and clothes in that, tied the bundle around with four lengths of cord, as if it were nothing more than a rug. He had found two thousand postals in the man’s wallet, and he added that to the twenty-five thousand he had gotten for renting Bitty Belina for the night. It never occurred to him to call the authorities, for that would have caused had business in future cities, at least. It could very well lead to the suspension of his entertainer’s license, leaving him more stranded than ever, preyed on him in darkness and woke him ten times between first sleep and dawn. But they were gone this time, not even evident in the distance of his unconsciousness, not even lurking in the shadows. When he woke, it was more refreshed and excited than he had been in years, with a sense of the future that he had never before felt so strongly.

      He got up and sonic showered and dressed in clean clothes.

      He ate quite well, though he punched for random foods through the delivery system and ate a somewhat hodgepodge breakfast. Even if he had been able to identify the words on the menu he would have preferred this mixed-up meal of sweets and meats and cereals and liquors.

      By the time he left his room he was feeling very well indeed. He hurried down the corridor to find out what Pertos might want of him this morning. It was a day when he felt sure he could accomplish a great deal. He wanted to prove himself.

      The door to Pertos’ room was open.

      He went inside.

      Pertos was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, one side of his head slewed crooked. His light yellow shirt was sodden with blood, and there was a fragment of bone lying next to his right ear.

      And then it all came back to Sebastian, and be left that room and vomited in the hallway at the disgust he felt at what he had done.

 

      He had been all over the theater, looking into all of the rooms, touching everything he saw, though he did not know what it was that he was after. In time, it became dear to him that he felt better in those rooms where the old puppet master had been. He spent a long time in the lightman’s perch, tracing his blunt fingers over the grips of the spotlight, around and around the buttons and the knob-headed toggles of the console that controlled the stage effects. He stood a full hour on the stairs leading from the perch that Pertos had trod before and after each performance. It was almost as if he could feel the places the old man’s shoes had worn in the concrete. Once, he fancied he felt the vibrations of other feet on those stairs, though there was no one else about, and that thought suddenly terrified him so much that he ran from that dark, back area to the stage where he sat by the footlights he had turned on, trying to imagine there was an audience this morning. But when he forced a shimmering vision of people, they were all Pertos Godelhausser, and he had to run again, crying and frightened.

      He spent a while with the newly painted props that he had been lacquering the night before, hunting Pertos’ emanations on them, the sign that the puppeteer had been here, had worked here, had lived.

      Then he went back to be certain Pertos was dead, for it had occurred to him that Pertos had never died before, that his life story didn’t permit death. Had Pertos been living another story, then, too?

      Pertos was dead. Blood. Bone. Staring eyes.

      He carried the corpse to the Furnace and attempted to feed it inside, with the notion that he could then have Pertos re-created. All. he would have to do was read the nobs, learn to use the knobs. And find out which of the identity wafers would reproduce Pertos. But the Furnace refused to accept the human meat.

      Sebastian spilled all the identity wafers out and looked for something he might recognize as Pertos’ name. He had no luck. Then he thought he could look for his own identity wafer, and maybe there would be something about it that would help him find Pertos. Only he and Pertos were big, while Bitty Belina and the others were small. That might mean that he and Pertos had different identity discs. He looked through the wafers four times before he was willing to admit that there was no disc for him. And probably none for Pertos either.

      And then he felt sadder than ever.

      Just before noon, while Sebastian was outside examining the truck, feeling for the past and finding mostly cold vinyl and icy metal, Trimkin came with two men. They were a different pair, though Sebastian could not be expected to notice that Trimkin seemed always to be accompanied by different men each time, all of them bland.

      “Is your master about?” Trimkin asked the idiot.

Sebastian almost said yes, the master is inside, before he realized that no one should ever see Petros now. If anyone saw what he had done to Pertos, they would lock him away, like they would have done over jenny, and then he would be dead himself, chained up in darkness.

      “Lose your tongue?” Trimkin asked, smiling. He seemed a pleasant man. Pertos, however, could have told Sebastian that Trimkin had seemed pleasant even while he had supervised the beating his men had dealt the puppet master.

      “No,” Sebastian said.

      It was not a cold day really, but he was freezing. He wanted to go back into the theater, but he didn’t dare lead them there.

      “No what? No, your master isn’t about? Or, no, you still have your tongue?”

Sebastian looked around the cab of the truck where he was sitting, back through the open door at Trimkin.

      “I guess he’s inside,” Trimkin said.

      “No!” The idiot gasped as the men turned to walk toward the theater.

      “No?”

      “No.”

      “Where then, boy? You wouldn’t lie to us, would you?”

      Sebastian shook his head.

      “That’s good. Now, if he truly isn’t in the theater, where is he?”

      Sebastian could not think of anything to say, and for the thousandth time in his life, he damned his slow-wittedness.

      “We don’t want to harm him,” Trimkin said. “We just came to tell him that he might want to come out here, in back, and watch his truck burn.”

      For the first time, Sebastian saw the hand torch and the cans of liquid in the hands of the men with Trimkin.

      “Inside I guess,” Trimkin said, turning.

      “Leaving!” Sebastian gasped. “Going away!”

      Trimkin turned again, slowly, smiling broadly. “You wouldn’t kid me about that, would you, son?” He laughed, as if anticipating the joke, though there was a great deal in that laughter that was not humorous.

      “Leaving,” Sebastian said.

      Trimkin considered that. “There weren’t any handbills about the new play tonight,” he said, speaking to himself as much as to the brute in the truck. “So old Godelhausser has gotten some sense, eh?”

      “Some,” Sebastian agreed.

      Trimkin exploded with genuine laughter then, and the men with him joined in. His face grew red, and his thin body seemed to tremble all over, as if he had a disease of some sort.

Sebastian smiled nervously.

      Trimkin placed a hand on Sebastian’s knee. “You tell your master that we congratulate his good sense”

Sebastian nodded.

      Talking animatedly about their triumph, the Heritage Leaguers turned and left the back wing of the plaza. where the truck was parked, entered the white immaculate silent city that was their dead world. Sebastian watched them go, listened until there was no echo of excitement and laughter. Then he slid out of the truck, slammed the door shut and ran inside. He saw now that he must dispose of the corpse or face discovery when Trimkin returned the next day, angry that he had been lied to.

      First, he took out the sections of the Furnace, which he knew how to dismantle, having done that so often in these last five years. He packed them in their niches in the cargo hold of the truck, and the shape-changing contour pads slithered around them in warm, live embrace. Next, he removed all the props and then all their personal belongings from the rooms. He went over each chamber again and again, to make certain everything had been taken. He noticed the rug last, and he was not certain that it belonged to Pertos. Then he found it was not a rug, but a blanket rolled about something. He broke the twine and unwrapped the bloated, blackened body of Alvon Rudi, and it was only then that he remembered the night in full and realized that he would have to dispose of two corpses if he were to keep out of the grasp of the authorities and out of the small rooms where they would put him for the rest of his life, the small rooms his uncle had always drunkenly referred to in long, terrifying tales when he had been sadistically trying to get a rise out of young Sebastian.

      There seemed to be nowhere in the theater to hide the corpses until he went, reluctantly, into the basement. He took the wide steps carefully, his heart beating abnormally fast. The ceiling lights had burned out in most of the grids above, leaving three quarters of the way in shadow, some of it brown, some purple, some pure pitch in hue. Though the

theater had been used in its two hundred and fifty years, it had not been frequented more than three or four weeks a year, and the cellar had not been maintained in the splendor lavished upon the upper regions.

      Once, he came to a place where the way was blocked almost entirely by a wispy spider web, and he quaked at going on. There were two spiders in the strings, shuffling quickly back and forth, as if sizing him up as possible prey, each as large as his thumb. Here and there, lumps of white silk bristled with the thrusting limbs and wings of dead insects encased by the spiders against the sparseness of winter.

      He tried reaching out and touching the web, but drew back instantly as he felt the somewhat sticky, humming fibers.    It was almost as if he had felt Pertos in that web, as he had felt him other places. But he no longer wished to seek out the puppet master’s emanations.

      That was over.

      He went back up the stairs to the theater, found a length of wood in the prop room and came back, shredding the web ahead of himself.

      He stomped one of the spiders. It made a wet mess on the concrete.

      He looked for the other.

      It skittered along the edge of the steps, dropped over the side and was gone.

      He felt a desperate need , to know where that spider was, but when he reached the end of the steps and ran along the side of them to look for it, it had escaped.

      Now he wanted to return more than ever. And perhaps he would have if he had not heard the gushing roar farther back in the semi-dark rooms of the basement. It sounded like a river.

      Jenny . ..

      He followed the noise of the water until he found the large, round drainage pit in the floor. It was sunken a foot below the floor level, and there was a heavy metal hatch that fit into that depression. He wrestled the hatch open and looked down. The dim light was just enough to give him a view of swiftly moving water four feet below, black water that now and then held a whirling cluster of paper, leaves or wood. There was the smell of human wastes, and he understood that this must serve as the sewer for the city, emptying its burdens in some underground repository or in the sea.

      jenny ..

      He could dump both corpses into the sewer, and they would never be found. Or, if they were, he would be gone for a long time and no one would know where to look for him to put him in the little rooms where they tortured people like him.

He turned to go back upstairs, to bring the corpses down, when he saw the thing in the middle of the floor a dozen feet away, and all his strength went out of him like water draining out through the open faucet in a barrel.

      The spider.

      It poised on six legs, two legs waving in the air, as if pointing at him.

      The strange light caused it to form a shadow almost a foot in length.

      He screamed.

      The spider moved toward him.

      He could not move. It felt as if every bone in his body had fused itself to the next bone, as if every muscle had ceased to exhibit effect upon his skeleton.

      The spider danced closer.

      He thought he could hear its hairy legs brushing along the concrete, and he ground his teeth and cried and whimpered and begged it to go away.

      And when it was inches from him, it veered and skittered into the darkness, leaving him exhausted and drenched with perspiration.

      “Pertos . . . Jenny . . . please,” he said.

      And when the spider did not come back for twenty minutes, he felt his strength returning and knew he could go on with it.

      He tilted the blanket containing the clothes and corpse of the merchant, Alvon Rudi, into the hole. It pulled free of his hands and fell into the black water, unwrapping somewhat so that just as it sank down the rigor-mortised bare arm of the man slipped through, the fingers curled as if grasping toward the edge of the drain to save itself. Then it bobbed to the surface, was caught in the current and swept into the tunnel, out of sight.

      Sebastian lifted Pertos’ body, hesitated, then shoved it after the first corpse.

      And as he watched it go, time seemed to slow, to run like syrup, so that he had time to watch two events at the same time, one of the past, the other of the present:

      Jenny hanging on the edge of the rocky cliff, head-down toward the large, smooth boulders and the surging white of the river;

      Pertos sliding gently, gently toward the boiling blackness of the sewer, toward the litter and the defecation;

      Jenny gone, sliding like an arrow at first, then turning, tumbling, over and over as if she were doing acrobatics;

      Pertos twisting slightly;

      Jenny striking the water, catching her head against a boulder, bursting and rushing away;

      Pertos splashing into the sewer, spraying water over the idiot, sinking and rising and whirling away forever;

      Silence;

      Silence . . .

      He closed the hatch on the drain because he was afraid of the two corpses trying to crawl out again. That was why he had brought them both down before throwing either one in. He would not have wanted to come back with the second body to discover that the first had worked its way from its watery grave and was perched upon the lip of the hole, drying itself.

      He left the basement.

      Twice as he went up the stairs he was certain he could hear the brushing noise of the spider’s legs upon the concrete. But every time he turned abruptly, trying to catch sight of it, there was nothing to see.

      But that didn’t mean, he knew, that there was nothing there.

Before he left, he made a last inspection of the rooms and found the Holistian Pearl, which he placed in his pocket. For a moment he considered taking it down to the basement and tossing it into the waters after Pertos’ corpse, but he was certain if he went down there he would never come upstairs again and he gave up that idea.

      He waited until night to leave Springsun, for he didn’t want anyone to notice that it was only the assistant in the cab of the truck and that the puppet master himself was not in evidence. He did not know what anyone might make of that, but he was certain they would be suspicious. Too, he knew how badly he had handled the great air-cushion truck in the past.       Pertos had called him a “demon” behind the wheel, and he had almost wrecked twice in the space of a single block. Perhaps he would wreck tonight, and then it would all be finished and he would be dead or they would catch him. But he couldn’t allow that fear to keep him from leaving. If he stayed, there was a far greater terror: that of the rooms where they supposedly tortured young boys who were stupid-and that was one fear that he could not bear at all.

      He started the vehicle easy enough, and as the engine whuffed and the huge blades began beating, the other steps of the driver’s procedure came back to him, bits and pieces of memories from all the hours he had watched Pertos at this task.

He held the craft down until the blades beat steadily, then released the clutch. The truck rose two feet above the pavement, shuddering with power, waiting for the signal to progress.

      His mouth was very dry.

      He sent the truck forward too fast. In the last rushing seconds before impact with the pink wall of the opera house, he managed to bring the wheel tight around. The side of the truck brushed the opera house with its slipstream but didn’t sustain any damage of direct contact. But before he could feel excitement over this initial triumph, there was a towering elm looming directly ahead of him, and he was forced to tear the wheel around the opposite direction, hard, his fingers slicked with sweat. The truck brushed the side of the tree. Metal protested noisily, but nothing tore loose. Autumn leaves sprinkled down across the windscreen, stuck to the glass so that he had to squint between them. He went on.

He soon learned to hit the acceleration pedal with the utmost care, though he now and then forgot and came within inches of killing himself by ramming buildings and, occasionally, other vehicles.

      For a long while, he wandered the streets, searching for some way out of the city. He passed the signs for the superhighway many times but could not read them.

      On a backstreet where a park sided the road, he lost control and destroyed six saplings before stopping and cautiously working back toward the pavement.

      The city seemed mostly deserted. It was this lack of witnesses which kept him from being apprehended and detained by the police. His vehicle moved quietly, and after any small collision, he was soon gone, whispering down an alleyway in search of exit.

      In the morning, it would appear to some that a gremlin had been about wreaking havoc on those who had somehow engaged its anger.

      In time, he found a ramp and took it. The truck left the city for the wide, featureless plains of the little-used superhighways which he and Pertos had traveled so much in these last five years. The sight of that uniform gray without the sharp clutter of buildings on either side was almost a religious experience. He turned right, tramped the accelerator. The truck swept down the road, whined under the widely spaced arclights. Ten miles later, the city limits passed and there was no illumination but what the headlamps provided.

      He didn’t get sleepy, for a change. He could not remem= ber another night when he had not been sleepy earlier in the evening. There was that ballooning excitement in him now, and it crowded out his exhaustion.

      The wind picked up eventually, and lightning snapped along the undersides of the clouds.

      “Tell me about . . . ’bout them,” he said.

      He waited.

      Only the thunder answered.

      “About stars,” he explained.

      He could only see two or three stars through the blanket of the storm clouds. They were lovely.

      “Stars?” he repeated.

      When he received no answer, he turned to look at Pertos. It all came back again, and he almost lost control of the truck.

      He didn’t speak again. Or look to his right as he drove.

      Sometime toward morning, when the first light broke along the horizon and sent glassy, bright fingers higher into the sky, piercing the balloons of the clouds, he realized that he had no idea where he was going. This depressed him, perhaps more than it should have, for early morning on an empty highway can be a miserably lonely time.

      It was raining now. His wipers thumped rhythmically back and forth, sloshing the water into the drain-channels below the glass.

      He listened to the drumming pellets of water beating furiously on the roof of the cab.

      He didn’t know where he was going, might as well face that. Worse yet, he did not know of any place he could go. He tried to think of the names of other cities, but his mind refused to spit up that information. He thought of pulling over at one of the regularly spaced rest stops to allow himself to think things through, but panic took him every time he considered such a thing. Somehow, he was certain that, once he had stopped, he would never start again. And so he drove, the rotars beating steadily beneath him, their noise consolation of a sort.

      He had changed his story, he realized. He was not living the same life that he had always lived before. He had gone against the script. And it became painfully evident as the scenery flashed by in a monotonous gray-green monocolor, that he was not a puppet master, not capable of taking Pertos’ place.

      What then?

      He was very much afraid. And he was somehow certain that the spider had found its way out of the cellar and onto the truck-and that he was carrying the spider with him and that it was spinning its web somewhere nearby and that it was waiting, waiting . . . .

 

 

October and November

 

      It was a beautiful land, restored to what it had been centuries ago, clean and untainted. The pines were tall and sturdy, and the floor of the earth beneath them was carpeted with brown needles. Because of the dense shadow they threw, there was not much that grew beneath them. All day, the sky seemed like a roof over the earth, low and blue, almost within reach; at night, there were more stars than Sebastian had ever seen in his life. They dazzled him, and they held him for hours, his neck growing stiff as he watched them, until he nodded and fell easily into untroubled sleep.

      Sometimes Noname would wake him shortly after and urge him to bed, much as Pertos might have done. Other times Noname would be there in the morning, sitting at the idiot’s feet, watching him, silent, admonitory in his expressions, waiting for the day to begin. Sebastian would focus on the too-large head of the creature, on the eyes skewed out of their proper position, and for a long while he would have no idea where the thing had come from. Slowly, though, he would remember. He called the creature Noname because he had not known what to call it, since he could not read the identity wafers, and since it was not really what it was supposed to be anyway.

      Sometimes they would have breakfast, sometimes not. Noname seemed as cavalier about the necessities of life as Sebastian, though his attitude was not engendered by a low intelligence. Apathy came, instead, from being uncertain of life, from being a mistake, from being without a concrete identity and a past and future.

      The truck was parked in a copse of trees two hundred yards from the highway. The rolling land and the thrusting masses of pines protected it from observation by anyone but old Ben Samuels who lived in a cabin two thousand feet farther back in the woods. Perhaps such an isolated position was not necessary, for there had been no police cars on the road for the entire journey northwest from Springsun. There had been no search aircraft, and the radio in the truck had never mentioned the disappearance of Alvon Rudi, so far as the idiot could remember.. Still, he felt better sheltered from sight by trees and by the land, and he remained. He did not particularly intend to remain here forever, but neither did he make plans to leave within the foreseeable future. It was as if this pocket of Canadian wilderness was a bubble in which time did not progress even though those wrapped in it lived and aged.

      During the course of the day, they might wander into the trees, away from the cabin and from the truck, examining moss and ferns, looking for fossils in rocks, which Sebastian could find but could not explain. They might take up post on a log or a flat rock, there to wait the coming of the animals and birds. Sebastian was able to remain perfectly still for quite a long while, as if he had become a rooted piece of flora struggling for life in the woods. Noname, on the other hand, was always fidgeting, scaring off the animals when they ventured too close. His hands shook a great deal, and he coughed nervously, as if he were embarrassed of something.

      Sebastian was displeased, but he enjoyed Noname’s company too much to make him stay behind when it came time for a walk in the forest.

      Several times a week they walked to Ben Samuels, cabin to sit with him. The place was constructed of hand-cut, dressed logs, the ends notched to fit snugly, then slimed with resin and bound together with strips of bark and plastic cord (one of Samuels’ few concessions to civilization). The house had a rugged facade, though the inside boasted a few pleasures one nught not expect in a handhewn dwelling, and more than a bit of refinement and quality which seemed at odds with the rural tone of everything else. For instance, Samuels had spent many long evenings sanding and polishing the interior walls of his home until the rounded humps of the logs gleamed with a rich, stained, waxed color and the grain of the wood was presented in an almost three-dimensional effect that made Sebastian feel he could delve fingers into the core of the logs.

      Ben Samuels was a match for the house. He was quite an old man, in his late seventies, though occasional trips to civilization and the rejuvenation treatments taken there had kept him healthy and relatively unwanted. His arms were still well-muscled, his legs quick, his chest unsunken. His face was sharply angled, filled with wrinkles, though he said he had had those since he was a young man in the woods and that he would not let the doctors remove them on his annual visits to the city. His hands were large, gnarled, scarred with the many wounds of a lifetime as a woodsman. In sum, he appeared to be hacked from the same pine as his home.

      And like his cabin, he was more inside than he appeared to be from out. He was a quiet man who read a lot. His avoidance of people was not engendered by a dislike of men, but by a sadness at watching what men did to each other in the course of their lives. Though he wondered about Sebastian having a truck of his own, he never asked questions about that, for he was sure that a story of human suffering lay behind it, and he did not want to hear what they had done to the idiot to make him run away. Those were the stories he had left the cities to forget.

      Most often, Ben Samuels would be on his porch when they came, and they would sit down on the wide expanse of steps beside him, watching him whittle. Or he might have his pad and pencils again, sketching. He was good at rendering realistically. Sebastian never ceased to be amazed at the accuracy of the scene transformed to paper. It seemed to the idiot that there must be some mechanism within Samuels’ hand which resorted to a memory tape of the scene to be drawn when the old man told it to, making the lines in a ,carefully pre-planned pattern. Sebastian generally accepted the existence of computers and memory tapes. He had never been able to understand men, however.

      “Slept late again,” Samuels would say.

      Sebastian would nod. It was the old man’s only admonition, for he was certain a man wasted if he didn’t go to bed and rise early and labor while awake.

      “The forest didn’t get so big by sleeping.”

      “Or the stars,” Sebastian would say.

      Samuels would turn and look at him oddly, as if he were staring at a different person than he had thought a moment ago. “True enough.”

      “How is it with you?” Samuels would ask Noname.

      “Cold this morning,” the small creature replied.

      “Cold? This? Just you wait for winter! It comes early up here, and it stays late. And then we’ll see if those heating coils in the truck will keep you warm! Never trust to manufacture when you can build more reliably yourself.”

      The reason Samuels wanted Sebastian to sleep early and rise early was so that the daylight hours could be put to the purpose of constructing a permanent home to see them through the winter. But the winter was an eternity away as far as Sebastian was concerned. Tomorrow was the future, or perhaps only this afternoon. After an inspection of the truck and the way the rear had been converted into a semblance of a home, the old man decided the heating coils would probably keep the idiot and the puppet warmer than the cabin kept him. He had ceased to be so adamant about the necessity for a cabin, but he still mentioned it whenever he could.

      Now, when Sebastian did not respond, he launched into a story about the deepest snow he had seen in all the years he had lived here, and both the idiot and the puppet grinned and settled down to listen. Ben Samuels told fine stories, even if all parts of them weren’t told on a level you could understand.

      Toward evening, if they did not stay to eat with Samuels, Sebastian and Noname would return to the truck, where the idiot would switch on the single light against the growing darkness. Every time, as the yellow glow appeared, he would remember that without the old woodsman they would have no light or heat. Very likely, they would have been apprehended by now, or died of exposure. Samuels had found them a mile down the highway from here, the battery dead. Sebastian knew nothing of that, and had sat stubbornly in the driver’s seat some four hours before the old man found them, waiting for the truck to want to start again. Samuels had charged them from his own Rover and led them back to the trees and his cabin. Now he charged the battery every four or five days, whenever it got low again.

      Every time he turned on the light, the idiot repeated to himself the importance of charging the battery. If he ever left this place, he would have to learn that an electric vehicle must be filled with electricity at regular intervals, even when its batteries are, as Samuels said, the best man had ever devised.

      There, at night, with the single overhead light, he would go to work with the Furnace. Weeks earlier, parked in another forest a couple of hundred miles away from here, he had puzzled out the way the wafer was put into the machine, and he had started creating. But because the use of the two knobs confused him, the results had been distressing. The puppets had been deformed, monsters with melted faces and without eyes, with legs that seemed to have no bones, with arms that did not end in hands, but lumps of protoplasm instead. The only halfway decent result was Noname, but even he was disfigured. And despite the fact he had been formed with an identity wafer, he did not know who he was or remember any of his past periods of consciousness as should have been imprinted on the wafer. Sebastian had worked diligently after Noname, but the puppet had not signaled that the idiot was on the correct course. He had been an accident, and the puppets made after him seemed more grotesque and horrid than those which had come before. The idiot closed down the Furnace, angry and confused. He kept Noname out of the flesh bank to provide company, and together they drove north, without purpose.

      Then the dead battery.

      Then Ben Samuels.

      And now, for three weeks, the woods and the long nights, the listening to stories and watching the old man draw. But      Sebastian was restless.

      He hungered for company, for the special companionship he had known with Pertos in the old days. Noname, of

course, was company of sorts, though not the kind he sought. Noname was too much like himself to really compliment his personality: floundering, lost, seeking signposts of one sort or another. Samuels did not provide what he required, for the old man was careful not to meddle, careful not to make his suggestions into commands. He could not know that, in fact, part of what the idiot required eras commanding. The world seemed increasingly unreliable and fluid, and he longed for someone like Pertos to tell him what to do with his time.

      For some reason, Bitty Belina was on his mind constantly. She represented a touch with the old script, the life he had stopped leading. If he could only resurrect her, all would be well. He was sure of that. He had forgotten the way in which she had spoken to him, the way -she had laughed with the others, the way she had pleaded with him to kill Pertos.

      She was a pretty puppet.

      He remembered that he liked her laugh.

      And her smile.

      And her yellow hair.

      If Bitty Belina could be returned to him, whole and safe, then all would be well. And perhaps, if she was here with him, he would stop having nightmares about a blond girl named jenny with a knife in her belly . . . If there was a panacea for all bad memories, it was Belina.

      Near the end of October, he put the pieces of the Furnace together once again, in the rear of the truck. He had forgotten how to tap the vehicle’s battery, but he required only a little while to relearn the technique. He rolled back the Olmescian amoeba until it clung to the rear of the machine, quivering gently, out of his way. Cautiously, he set about the clumsy work of learning godhood.

      Noname watched.

      This time, the deformed puppet took more of an interest in creation than he had before. In the intervening weeks, he had had an opportunity to come to know Sebastian, and he no longer feared his master as he had at first. He stood on the casing of the Furnace, near the faceplate that gave view of the capsule-womb, waiting for a miracle.

Sebastian shuffled the identity wafers, pausing to study the printing on the smooth side of each, as if some single word would pop up and stand above the incomprehensible pattern of the others: Belina. But when he had gone through all of them, he still had no idea which was hers. Two hundred and fifty puppets waited, and the chances were he would resurrect the evil stepmother, Wissa, before he called Belina to life. And he didn’t want to do that, although he knew he could feed her into the Furnace again and be rid of her if she did show up before the heroine.

      “What are you looking for?” Noname asked after all the discs had been passed over.

      Sebastian watched the twisted face staring up at him, and he was charged with a mixture of pity and anger.

      “Is there one particular puppet?” Noname asked.

      “Bitty Belina,” the idiot said at last.

      The puppet picked up one of the discs. It was only as large as the idiot’s hand, but in the small creature’s fingers, it seemed like a tire from Samuels’ Rover. Noname skimmed the printed material on the back and found the name of the puppet represented by the plastic wafer and the carefully etched memory circuits on the roughened side. He tossed it down and reached for another.

      “You can … find?” Sebastian asked, feeling the old excitement rise in him after all this time.

      “Sure,” Noname said. “Give me a couple of minutes.”

      It took ten minutes. He handed a wafer to Sebastian which looked exactly like all the others. “Her?”

      “Her”

      His fingers trembled, and he could not think what to do. Holding the identity wafer, he was holding Bitty Belina. He could almost feel the warmth of her flesh, the tremble of her pulse, the brushing coolness of her long, yellow hair. And yet this was plastic, flat and round and stupid.

      Maybe it wasn’t too late at all. Maybe the old life could be recalled and everything would be as before. If Bitty Belina was inside this wafer of plastic, then she couldn’t have changed. She could still go back to living her old story, her old life, where her stepmother was killed by the prince and where she lived happily every after.

      Then he remembered the flesh in the Furnace and knew better. The identity wafer might not be subject to change, but the flesh could be twisted and corrupted.

      He felt terrible.

      “Are you going to make her?” Noname asked.

      Sebastian looked up, not comprehending, his eyes duller than usual, his lips slack.

      “Are you going to revive her?”

      After a time, he managed to say, “Yes.”

      Holding her plastic personality, he thought of the blue light that was focused on her when she stood in center stage. He thought of her hair gleaming with vitality, the audience held spellbound by her beauty. He did not think, even once, of the way she had stood naked between Alvon Rudi’s thighs or the way she had clawed at his eyes and had bitten his neck when he came to her aid.

      He slid the wafer into the Furnace and listened to the first sounds of creation stirring deep in the metal bowels. There was a prolonged grumbling noise, then the clatter of computers talking to themselves, the whine of memory tapes activated, called up from storage. The capsule-womb filled with synthetic flesh, formless now but soon to be occupied.       There was a distant hissing noise, a click, then silence again. It was much like a pinball machine lighting up after accepting its dime, then waiting for the first silver bearing to be turned loose.

      “Is that all?” Noname asked. He walked to the edge of the thick viewplate, his toes on the glass, looked down at the unformed jelly. “Is that all it’s going to do about Bitty Belina? That blob of stuff?”

      The light was green.

      Sebastian touched the knobs carefully and began to experiment with them. They slid easily in either direction, as far as he wished to turn them. It was curiously comfortable sensation to hold those soft, rounded instruments cupped in the palms of his hands, as if they were more than extensions of a machine, as if they offered him an intimacy with some personality which had no identity wafer but was every bit as real as the puppets.

      The light became amber.

      “There’s something happening now,” Noname said, pointing.

      The synthetic flesh curled and sought a form. But there was something about the agonizing struggle beyond the glass which bespoke sickness. It was more like a cancerous tumor burgeoning larger and larger than a healthy puppet coming to life. It squirmed and flushed with the colors of rot.

      “Soon,” Noname said.

      But the amber was all wrong, and the idiot switched the knobs back and forth, both clockwise, both counterclockwise, now each opposed to the other in the direction of its turn. There should be crimson next, he knew, and finally the brilliantly pure white of a successful creation. As he sought those hues, his hands became more and more frantic with the knobs, and panic slowly replaced caution.

      “An arm!” Noname reported, as if all were going perfectly well and Bitty Belina would be with them in short order.

      But the arm was much too long, all out of proportion, with four knuckles in every finger, the fingers themselves deformed and twisted in a useless tangle.

      The amber blended with yellow into fierce brightness.

      The yellow became orange.

      This new development made Sebastian feel better, for the orange was closer to red than anything he had thus far produced. But the deformed hand remained there all the same, and the other arm looked even worse. It was too short where the first had been too long. The fingers were intact, but the elbow joint was swollen with useless cartilage and unfunctioning bones. It curved in against the jelling body, as if the puppet were clutching its stomach in pain.

      “A face,” Noname Said.

      It was a girl’s face.

      It was her face.

      “Hair,” Noname said.

      Yellow hair crinkled below her smooth stomach, on the top of her bald head, curling down to her bare shoulders, tickling her pert breasts. He noticed one breast was set too far to the side.

      “No,” he said, very quietly, very softly. A disgust rose in him, possessed him, and he wanted to break things.

      “Almost finished,” Noname said. He did not hike the looks of what he saw, and he stepped back from the glass.

      “Bitty-” Sebastian said.

      As if that were a cue, she opened her eyes. She never should have been able to do that while in the womb, but she did. There was no eyeball in her left socket. The other blue gem watched him without expression.

      “No,” he said, speaking more loudly now.

      She tried to get up from the forming tray, levering with her good elbow and her tiny feet. Still behind the glass, she seemed more like a part of a film than something real. She was still watching him in that way that told him nothing.

      “Stay,” he said.

      She chattered. It seemed senseless.

      She managed to stand, and her face was pressed tight against the viewplate, directly beneath him. She tried to

speak, but the words were not clear, even if they did contain some meaning.

      He turned and ran from the truck, into the darkness, gagging and sputtering, unable to get a clean breath. In the woods, lying on wet, dead grass, he began to weep.

      He watched Ben Samuels whittle and sketch. He spent long hours sitting quietly in the woods, waiting for the squirrels who were engaged in a last flurry of activity before winter set in. He watched the sky be blue and sometimes sat in the rain, feeling it. Nearly a week passed before he could bring himself to return to the Furnace and begin his experiments again. Even then, there was a horror waiting just below the surface of his mind, ready to possess him at the slightest opportunity.

      He decided against using Bitty Belina’s identity wafer until he had the process conquered. When he could bring her back in her full beauty, then it would be safe to use her disc.

      “Which do you want to use?” Noname asked, sitting by the stacks of identity wafers.

      Sebastian thought for a long while. He could remember only a few of the puppets’ names. One other that stuck in his mind quite as strongly as Bitty Belina was a grotesque little monster named Wolf, the villain of a horror story that was quite popular everywhere it was performed. He would not mind experimenting with Wolf, for if Wolf turned out deformed it was only just punishment for him.

      “Wolf,” he told Noname.

      “Wolf what?”

      “Just Wolf.”

      Noname found it shortly. He handed it to Sebastian who took it with some reluctance. If he had felt the sensuousness, the warmth and delicacy of Bitty Belina when he had held her wafer, what would he feel while handling this one? Death and blood and ruthlessness? He took it at last but was surprised to discover he felt nothing at all. Just cool plastic, smooth on one side and rough on the other.

      Wolf was born with holes in his leathery wings, with no teeth where fangs should have been; he was consigned to liquification and the idiot made another try, knowing full well that evil must have undamaged wings and teeth with which to bite.

      Wolf was born without a face, and he was liquified and the idiot made another try, realizing that evil must have eyes in order to find its victims and persuade them.

      Wolf was born with more teeth than he should have had, the fangs as long as his fingers. His claws were sharp and like the blades of knives, and his face spoke of rot and decay, so hideous was its composition. And the idiot fed him back into the Furnace after much consideration, aware that evil must never be so utterly vile that there seems no way against it.

 

      Wolf was born.

      And he died.

      He had no sins.

 

      In time, Sebastian found how the controls were meant to be operated: the right knob to control the intensity of the color beyond the glass, the left to move that color through the spectrum. This was, at least, the outward manifestation of them, though they surely performed more complicated tasks within the bowels of the Furnace. The idiot cared only for appearances, however, and he was happy. Four times, without fail, he formed Wolf complete, just as he was meant to be to play his role. Sebastian had conquered the details of creation, and the catalogue of puppet identities was open to him.

Sebastian’s good humor reached a peak with his fourth full success at creating the villainous Wolf, and it was a giddiness that arose from this good humor that led to his worst mistake since Springsun. He placed the unconscious Wolf in one of the shallow nutrient trays to help bring him around. The black wings glistened wetly, fluttered now and then as Wolf’s body came slowly to full life. Sebastian wanted to see if the small beast could walk and talk and was otherwise in possession of its own faculties as it had been after the previous three creations. Impatient for the puppet to come awake, he went to pour wine for himself and for Noname, a small celebration, the first he had allowed himself since Springsun. He left Wolf unwatched.

      Whenever a puppet is created in a Vonopoen Furnace, the identity disc is retained within the machine until such a time as the same puppet is returned to its component synthetic flesh liquid. When the puppet is fed into storage, all of its new experiences are first transferred to the wafer. In this manner, a puppet is able to have a continuing life, though that life may be broken into one- and two-day lengths over a period of a great many years. This was thought to be a wise consideration by the Vonopoen artisans, for a puppet who is permitted to have some existence of its own will be more easily controlled than one who feels that he is being used to perform and cast aside like a prop afterwards. Too, to earn the reward of a private night or two, after their performances, the puppets will work harder on stage, perform to their best abilities.

      The puppets are actually tiny humans, the Vonopoens warn all those who come to learn about puppeteering. And those who refuse to see them as such are inviting financial failure-and perhaps personal harm.

      Wolf s identity wafer had recorded the long string of bad creations that he had undergone. Scored into his mind were the recollections of the painful distortions he had been born into while Sebastian was learning the use of the machine, the details so vivid as to make his nerves scream again and his muscles twitch and convulse in horror. Too, he remembered the three good creations before this one, and the quick return to the Furnace every time. The first memory frightened him, even though he was supposed to portray evil incarnate. The second memory angered him, for he had always taken his short hours of off-stage private life as a right and not just as a privilege.

      Now, as consciousness was complete and his body began to react a bit to the commands he gave it, he wanted to escape.       Whether it was the mischeviousness of all puppets, or whether the experiences of the butchered creations had done something to his mind, one could not say at this point. Later, it could be seen that the latter explanation was the more likely.

 

      Wolf sat up in the nutrient bath. The viscous fluid ran down his dark sides, dripping into the tray. It fell from his wings like gravy from the bulk of a holiday fowl come suddenly and unappetizingly to life just before the ritual of carving.

      Noname and Sebastian were to the right, half turned from the equipment, filling two glasses of unequal size. They did not seem to notice that Wolf was fully active. Or perhaps they did not care. In any event, he determined to make the most of the fortunate circumstances.

      Noname giggled.

      Wolf stood, raised his wings to full spread, tested them quietly. They were still damp, though he had no feathers to be clogged. The water and the nutrient salts suspended in it merely beaded on his dark skin like so many jewels.

      Sebastian turned in that moment and raised his glass of black wine as if he were about to toast his work. Even though he saw the poised figure, toes curled over the edge of the metal shelf, body hunched forward, wings spread and at their arc, he did not stop smiling. Indeed, his smile seemed even to broaden, as if he were pleased at this exhibition of his handiwork.

      Wolf leaped.

      He flapped his wings furiously and sailed toward the door at the end of the truck cargo are,. It stood slightly ajar, rattling a bit as the cool wind caught it.

Sebastian turned, following the creature’s flight, still grinning and still ignorant of what the small, vampiric creature desired: freedom, escape, sanity.

      Noname saw it first and shouted a warning. “He’s leaving!” Over and over again. “He’s leaving! He’s leaving!” As if the repetition and not the words themselves would set the idiot into action.

      Wolf struck the door and battered it open without a great deal of effort since it was lightly hinged and welloiled.      He struggled through, into the darkness of the late autumn night. In seconds, his wings had carried him so far that the two in the truck could no longer hear the soft echo of beating membrane.

      A fog had settled in from the south, across the only stretch of fiat land, and now it hung between the trees like the mist that swept through Sebastian’s mind whenever he tried to concentrate too long or too hard on any single problem. Visibility was cut severely. Trees loomed up suddenly in front of them, like prehistoric behemoths. Out of nowhere, vines tangled in their feet, like grasping fingers, like snakes that wound about their victims and crushed them to death before devouring them. Here and there forest animals cried to one another, and the bursts of inhuman conversation made them start every minute or so, as if they did not know whether harmless animals or vicious demons made the sounds.

      It had occurred to Sebastian that puppets could not go any farther from the Furnace than a few thousand feet without experiencing a harsh, bone-rending pain that drove them home. That meant that Wolf was not all lost, that they might discover him at any minute. He could not remember just how far a puppet could go, but he was certain they should have to search only a small area.

And still they found nothing.

      For a moment, Sebastian bad considered letting the small beast go free, but he had soon realized that if anyone discovered it besides Ben Samuels-it would be a clue to their whereabouts. Even if they left and the thing were

found later, the police would know where to search for them. Wolf must be found, quickly, and returned to the

Furnace, or all could come tumbling swiftly down.

      “Anything?” Sebastian asked Noname.

      “Not here,” Noname said. The fog grew thicker the closer one got to the ground, and Sebastian could see nothing more than the top of the puppet’s head bobbling along beside him.

      He was frightened -and he wanted to go back to the truck and lock the door and go to sleep and forget about Wolf. He didn’t want to be in the foggy, dark trees, stumbling around and not able to see where he was going. The fog reminded him of a spider’s web. And for the first time in a good many days, he remembered that the spider from the basement of the Grande Theater in Blue had gotten on the truck. It was here with them now, and it might have come out into the fog, behind them, stalking them.

      He shuddered. But he went on; fear does not always justify turning back.

      “Why don’t we look around up there closer to Ben’s cabin?” Noname asked. “There’s light up there, anyway. The only light around. It’ll make for easier looking. And maybe he was attracted by the light.”

      “Maybe.”

      Wolf did not seem like the sort of creature who would seek release from dark places.

      “And, besides, it’s cold out. It’s probably even colder for him than for us, because he hasn’t had time to dress, remember. He might think there will be heat up near the lights.”

      “Let’s go,” Sebastian decided.

      He loped up the long path to the cabin, with Noname barely able to tag at his heels.

      They saw Wolf almost at once when they reached the bay of diffused yellow light around the rude cabin. He was swooping from one end of the porch to the other, close under the flat roof, like a moth gone mad, darting at the two windows and the light that spilled through them, but afraid to touch, silent except for the sound of his wings.

      “Hey!” Noname shouted.

      Sebastian took up the cry.

      Wolf turned and zoomed over their heads so low that he seemed ready to attack Sebastian. A few yards behind them, as they were turning to look for him, he came around and flew back, low again, toward the porch, as if he too were frightened of the night and the mist. He struck the window this time, dead center, shattered it and tumbled through, screeching in pain and anger.

      Glass rang on a hardwood floor.

      Something fell in the living room, made a loud clattering noise, though it did not seem to break.

      Sebastian and the puppet hesitated only a moment, then ran for the porch steps. They found the front door bolted, and they stood there rattling it for a few moments before either of them remembered the broken window glass. Ben Samuels was cursing, and the violent, booming echo of this abuse drew them to the window. The idiot smashed the remaining shards of glass that prickled in the frame. By the time he had started through, the old man was not cursing any longer. He was screaming . . . .

      It was not like a woman’s scream, not high and wavering but deep and perfunctory, delivered almost reluctantly. It was more a scream of fury than one of dread, though there was pain and fear in it as well.

      Sebastian cracked his skull against the bottom of the top part of the window, almost fell backwards onto the porch.

      He clutched at the sill until his dizziness was gone, then swung sideways into the room, falling onto his knees. He felt a fragment of glass grind into his left leg, but it did not hurt enough for him to take the time to examine the wound. He pushed to his feet and rubbed his bruised forehead which had already begun to swell. He looked about for the old man and the puppet, afraid of what he might find.

      Noname jumped from the windowsill and landed on a rather large piece of glass which cracked under him, though he escaped injury.

      Samuels was on the floor across the room. He was wedged between a huge easy chair and an ottoman. A book lay rumpled on the floor half a dozen feet away where it had fallen when the vampire had attacked. Despite his strength, the old man could not dislodge the small beast clawing at his chest and throat. He beat upon Wolf’s back, but the flapping, rubbery wings cushioned the creature’s spine and protected it from damage or deflated the blows altogether.

There was blood on Samuels’ hands. But it was his own.

      Wolf snarled, as if he were merely playing another performance of the horror story he had been made for. All other parts of his personality had been driven down into him, and the blood lust had risen.

      “Stop it I” Sebastian howled.

      Noname ran toward the struggle. Even to Sebastian, who respected the fierceness of things as small as spiders, the puppet looked pitifully ineffective. Wolf was strong, designed to overcome creatures his own size, designed to kill them for the pleasure of the audience. Noname had been designed for life, nothing more.

      Samuels had stopped screaming. His fists flailed weakly now, even missing Wolf’s wings as often as he made contact with them. His entire body kicked and spasmed, almost like one of a pair of lovers.

      Noname leaped onto Wolf’s back, between the long, dark wings where the creature was vulnerable. He endured the savagely flapping membranes that pummeled him on all sides, slipped. an arm around the vampire’s throat, drew backwards with all his might, pulling the beast’s fangs from the old man’s neck and also cutting off blood to Wolf’s brain.

 

      Ignoring the contestants as Noname and Wolf rolled across the floor in their frantic contest, Sebastian knelt beside Samuels. The old man’s eyes were open, though they seemed glazed. There was blood all over his face, and his throat was a ragged mess.

      “Sorry . ..” Sebastian said. He was crying, and he felt his head ballooning with a sense of inadequacy.

      “Sorry.”

      “I Can’t-“

      Samuels tried to get up. He slumped back, his head bouncing once on the floor, and he was dead. He had died not understanding what was happening to him. Perhaps he had imagined that the rejuvenation treatments that he took once a year in the city would preserve him forever against accidental death as well as against the natural decay of his flesh. Or, more likely, he had long ago forgotten about death. Here, alone in these woods, he was not a witness to the mortality of friends and relatives. He saw only the trees, and they appeared to persevere, to stay the centuries, growing larger and larger, sometimes suffering drought and other times a late spring, but always holding to their place in the world. He saw, too, the flowers that bloomed every summer, fresh after a long winter’s sleep.

      There was no predator of any import in these forests, and what small animals did die had the grace to use their burrows as a final resting place, out of sight and out of mind. After a lifetime of hermetic existence, perhaps Ben Samuels had come to think of himself as being as immortal as the trees, as the land, the earth.

      Sebastian turned just as Wolf finished with Noname. The vampire had nearly shredded the puppet that had attacked it. Noname was dead.

      The idiot’s chest tightened. Suddenly, he hated the Furnace and Bitty Belina and everything that he had done these last five years.

      Wolf flew.

      Sebastian dodged the dark body, but by the time he whirled to confront it from the other direction, it was upon him, claws hooked into his shirt, its head level with his jugular vein.

      He felt its claws rending the flesh beneath his shirt. Warm blood ran down his belly.

He grasped Wolf’s head in both hands. A low, ugly snarl rumbled in his throat, worse than any noise the vampire had made.

      Wolf bit his fingers.         _

      He didn’t notice.

      He literally tore the puppet’s head from its shoulders. Wolf’s doll-sized mouth worked even after he had been decapitated, as if he could reach out from death and respond to this indignity perpetrated upon him.

      Sebastian wrung the torn neck until the blood stopped running. He threw the remains down. And as quickly as the rage had come, it passed, loneliness settling in its place. The loneliness brought exhaustion, and he sank to the floor, his chin against his chest.

      He sat there for a long while. Then, slowly, he rose and began the now familiar ritual of disposal of the corpses . .

      He tried to re-create Noname. But now that he knew how to work the controls of the Furnace, he could not call forth any twisted creatures. If Noname was brought to life, he did not recognize him.

      He slept.

 

      Two days after the murders, Sebastian found the Holistian Pearl in the pocket of the coat he had worn that night he left Springsun. It was a darker gray than he had ever seen it. He had heard that when a Pearl became black it was still not dead, though living only subliminally. He rolled it back and forth between his fingers, watching it grow lighter and lighter, just as it had in Pertos’ hands so many times before.

      When he thought of Pertos, he thought of Ben Samuels and Noname, and he put the Pearl down in disgust.

      After supper he took the Pearl in his hands again. There are those who contend that a Holistian Pearl is not just a bauble that can produce hallucinations or call up the memories of past owners, but a personality that seeks out those who need comforting. They say that, in a room with many bright objects, the distressed man will always pick up the Pearl, even if he does not know what it is and what it can do for him. And so it was that the idiot sat down with the jewel again, even though he did not wish to touch something that had belonged to Pertos and that now had associations with death.

      The Pearl grew white as he touched it, caressed it.

      He relaxed as the tendrils of manipulatory power threaded outwards from the jewel and reached his brain.

      He was rising through the air, and the Earth was dwindling behind him. He watched this with fascination. He laughed with delight when the moon drew near in seconds, passed by and dwindled like the motherworld had.

      The Pearl took him farther.

      There were stars.

      And soon there were ships, thousands of them, and he knew it was a colony of space gypsies that had never touched earth. And then the panic started. He realized he was not on solid ground either, and that old fear of aimlessness, of unstable surroundings, struck him with the force of a mallet, driving him in on himself.

He woke, shouting senseless things, and he threw the Pearl across the room. It snapped against the wall of the cargo hold, hit the floor, and rolled back to him. He did not pick it up again.

      A week after the murders, on the first of many very cold days to come, he walked up the slope to the empty cabin. There were a few snow flurries in the sir and they dropped softly on his eyelashes, melted on his face and streamed down.     He liked snow, and he was feeling better than he had in some time. The cabin door was unlocked, as it had been since the night of Samuels’ death. He had not been back since, but now he wanted to get the keys to drive the Rover down to the truck and charge his own vehicle’s battery, as the old man had taught him.

      The keys were on a pegboard in the kitchen, and he found them easily. If he had left then, all might have remained as it was. But he had never been inside the old man’s bedroom, and he was curious. He pushed the door open and peered in at hand-carved furniture, a cozy place full of bookshelves. He stepped into the chamber, smiling at the sense of security the place seemed to emanate . . . .

      And nearly walked right into the spider’s web.

      It was inches in front of his face, hanging from open beams on the low ceiling, an enormous piece of work. One huge black bitch spider watched him, or appeared to. Around her, half a dozen smaller spiders scurried along the outermost reaches of the silken highways.

      He could not move.

      She came closer, descending on a silvered thread.

      He was perspiring.

      She had green markings across her back.

      “No,” he said.

      But she didn’t stop.

      “Sorry,” he said.

      She tensed, as if she would leap from the web and scrabble across his face to hide in the uncut masses of his hair.

      She was so close he could see the spitting fibers flowing from her mouth, forming new lines.

      “Pertos!” he shouted. “Pertos!”

      There was no response.

      “Help me I “

      There was quiet.

      “Pertos!” This last call was strung out, each syllable many seconds long, agonized. He turned and ran, ran as fast as he could for the trailer of the puppet master’s truck. Inside, he hid himself, alone with the single light.

At two in the morning the light burned out, leaving him in complete darkness. It was a night of terror, for he kept hearing the sound of a thousand spiders stalking him across the cold metal floor.

      In the morning, he got enough courage to get the Rover and charge the battery. He had decided to leave. Perhaps the spider would not be able to follow him. But before he could go, he would have to create himself some company to make the miles seem shorter. He picked up the identity wafer which Noname had said belonged to Bitty Belina, and he fed it carefully into the machine.

      The Furnace lighted.

      He took the two control knobs in his hands.

      Creation was begun.

 

      In the Vonopoen Book of Wisdom, there are two verses that are attributed to the saints, the first to Saint Zenopau, the second to the Rogue Saint, Eclesian. The first tells us: “The identity of God changes, as his children unseat him.

     

      Each generation, we come under the hand of a fledgling deity who has gained his power through fratricide. This explains why God is clumsy and why his wisdom has never equaled that of his creations: He never had a full lifetime in which to learn.” The second verse, in the words of Eclesian, explains: “We can rejoice in our humanity, for there will come a day when God’s creatures will have grown more powerful than he. Then we will rise up and dethrone him and his children, and the magic of life-death suspension will be ours. This is not a threat to the divine powers, merely a statement of ecological progression.”

 

December

 

 

      She sat on the folded blankets, which elevated her enough so that she could see over the dashboard. She watched the land rush toward and past them with a keen interest, and she seemed awed by the immensity of the world. It was a great deal larger than the stage, even larger than an entire theater, indescribably huge.

      She was fascinated by snow. Often, she turned her gaze directly into the steel-gray sky, as if she expected to discover that it was like a saltshaker, the Sakes of snow a seasoning for the earth.

      “What is it?” she asked.

      “What?”

      “Snow.”

      “It’s snow,” he said.

      “What makes it?”