The Marriage of the Living Dark

“Right”

“But why should anyone risk losing their mind for the sake of an entertainment?”

DeVore grinned. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

‘They would do so because, first and foremost, that experience was so wonderful, so ... desirable that they wanted to repeat it time after time - in fact, had an overwhelming urge to go back to it” “And secondly?”

“Secondly, because they hadn’t a clue what was actually going on.” “And what is actually going on?” Ben’s smile was one of pleasure at his own ingenuity. “If s an imprint” “An imprint?”

“Yes. Each time the participant goes back to the shell - to the experience - they receive not just the entertainment, but an imprint. False memories, if you like. Vague at first, but stronger as each layer of the imprint is added on.” “So the programme is cumulative, a ...” “... sticky web ... filled with insidious poisons.” “Rather a mixed metaphor, wouldn’t you say?” “Absolutely,” Ben agreed, “but with good reason. If we showed them the spider in the web, who would enter it? What they don’t know is that the poison is in the strands of the web. Simply experiencing this is enough.” “And what kind of symptoms would someone who’s hooked on this show?” Ben shrugged. “It depends what you’re looking for. But generally you can make them believe anything you want them to believe - that they murdered their own mother, that they have a pathological hatred of someone they previously loved or revered, that... well, I’m sure you see the potential of the thing. Memory is a corrosive thing, particularly if if s been tampered with,” “And the Americans won’t suspect a thing?” Ben laughed. “They might But not until if s too late. Not until half their country’s fucking mad!”

Emily sat there a long while, watching the boy. From where she was, in the shadows some thirty feet back from the fire, to the left of the boy and almost in line with him, she could see his face clearly, the features carved in blocks of gold and black. The boy’s clean-shaven head had begun to grow a fine stubble, but it was a good head and she observed how he held it up proudly, his eyes - bright, intelligent eyes - taking in everything. Even so, he had not noticed her creeping up on him. She waited while the others about the fire drifted off, then spoke to him, her voice pitched so that it carried no further than where he sat “Boy?”

There was no movement. No sudden turn of the head. For an instant she thought he hadn’t heard her, but then he answered, his voice pitched no louder than her own.”Yes?”

“Who are you, boy? Who are you really?”

He leaned forward and took a branch from the fire, lifting it and studying the glowing cinders at the end of it Then he turned, looking in her direction. “Just a boy,” he answered, moving the branch closer to his face and blowing on the tip, making it glow brighter.

“You served The Man, I hear.”

“I was in his camps.”

“One of his soldiers,” she persisted.

He hesitated, then nodded.

“So why did you leave?”

Was that a smile? With his head tilted down it was hard to tell.

“I woke up. I saw, finally, what was going on.”

“Ahhh.” Did she believe that? “And what woke you?” “You did,” he said, looking directly at her. “I saw how you helped those wounded boys. Two weeks back. I saw ...”

“You saw that?” Emily was surprised. “You mean ...”

“I could have killed you. I had you in my sights.”

“But you didn’t”

He nodded.

Emily was silent a moment, thinking about that Dead. She could have been dead two weeks ago. And then Michael would have been grieving her. And the boys. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Daniel.”

“And what do you want, Daniel?”

Again he looked at her. “I want to know the truth. I want to know whaf s really going on.”

CHAPTER-10

the well and the spire

“We’re here.”

“Here?” Li Yuan yawned, then sat up, noting through the blindfold that it was still dark Hands reached up to him and took him down from the back of the cart. Then one of them removed the blindfold and stood back. As the cart trundled away, Li Yuan looked about him, trying to make out where he was. They seemed to be inside a massive chamber, for the rocks surrounded them on every side without a break, rising to form the walls of a giant cavern, yet the roof of that cavern was the sky - a sky of velvet black, littered with jewel-like stars, most prominent of which was not a star at all, but the morning star, the planet Venus.

“fehtar,” someone said quietly from just behind him. Then, “Welcome to Nineveh, Li Yuan. May you find happiness.”

The words surprised him and he turned, looking to the man, but the figure was in shadow, his face obscured.

Li Yuan turned back, looking, taking it all in. Buildings huddled against the walls of the settlement, low buildings for the main part, except for one or two that were on the far side of the cavern, including a great, seven-storey zigurrat Like Bremen, he thought, surprised to see such a structure there in the midst of the desertOn a plinth before that building was a great statue. Of what, he could not make out at this distance. And in the centre of all, like a radio tower, was a massive spire, the tip of which was surrounded by a tiny platform. There was a gap of some kind, which bisected the cavern, for he could see bridges crossing it, and just beyond that - close to the spire - there was a depression, but from this distance he could not make that out either. As he looked, figures came across one of the bridges, a dozen or more in all, heading towards him.

“Go to them,” his guide said. “They will prepare you for the ceremony.” He wanted to ask what kind of ceremony, but the man had gone, slipping away silently into the shadows, leaving him there as the welcoming party approached. Li Yuan hesitated, then did as he was bid. Yet as he came close to them, he felt a tiny jolt of surprise. They were all women - young, beautiful women - wearing long, diaphanous gowns that both suggested and yet concealed their bodies. Surrounding him, they laughed and held his arms, brushing his back and shoulders gently, the sweet scent of them stirring something in him. “You must not be afraid,” one of them said, whispering in his ear. “We will not harm you, Li Yuan.”

The words were similar to those the woman had used earlier, when she had brought him the food, and he felt now the same surprise, the same strange flaring of hope. He had thought himself at best a hostage, at worst a dead man. To be suddenly in the company of such sweet and gentle creatures was both strange and unexpected.

His spirits rose, yet his darker self suspected some deception. He looked from side to side, seeing how they smiled at him, their eyes bright with laughter. And all the while their hands gently stroked him, comforting him, reassuring him with their touch.

As they came to the bridge, he looked up at the spire, which towered above him now. A narrow ladder climbed the steepside of it, while beneath it, not twenty metres from its foot, was a massive hole. A well. “What is this?” he asked, slowing, taking in the strange grandeur of the sight “Later,” one of them said, squeezing his hand. “You must not rush things, Li Yuan. First you must be relaxed.”

Relaxed? Li Yuan frowned, unable to take his eyes from the spire and the great well that sat beside it Somehow the juxtaposition of the two seemed significant, yet why or how he could not say.

He let them lead him on, the sweetness of their perfume filling his nostrils, the softness of their touch a strange, almost intoxicating delight, yet he felt a marked unease now, a tightness in his stomach that had not been there a moment earlier.

And all the while, above him, the evening star burned like a blind eye staring sightlessly from the centre of the darkness.

Old Man Egan closed the door, then turned, looking in at the bright-lit cell.

“Is this him?”

His men stood back, bowing low. “Yes, Master,” one of them answered. All three of them wore masks and butchers’ aprons over their nakedness, and, incongruously, boots so that they would not slip on the bloodied floor. Between them, hanging upside down from the ceiling of the cell, was their victim, a young man of barely twenty years of age. He had been burned and cut, but thus far they had not badly mutilated him. Nor, it seemed, had they started on his private parts.

Egan walked across and, crouching down, put out a hand, gripping the young man’s chin hard and twisting it, forcing him to look into his eyes. “Well, you little cunt, what have you to say for yourself?” The young man tried to spit, but hanging upside down, he could not raise the phlegm. Blood dribbled slowly from the corner of his mouth and along his nose.Egan grinned, then spat fully in the man’s face. “Is that what you mean?” There was laughter from the watching men.

Egan released his grip, let the man’s head fall, then, straightening up, put a hand over the man’s exposed balls, letting his fingers rest there. Fear contracted them.

Egan grinned, seeing that He turned, putting a hand out “Give me the pliers.” His man smiled as he handed across the heated pliers. An unpleasant, conspiratorial smile Egan winked at him, then turned, crouching again, to show the pliers to the prisoner -holding them in front of his face. “These are for your bollocks,” he said. “Nothing personal, of course, but I’m going to pull them off, one by one, for what you tried to do to me. And then I’m going to put my hand up your arse and pull out your innards, bit by bit. And what won’t pull out, I’ll cut out. But I’m going to make sure you’re alive for all this. We’ve got drugs that can do that, you know. Chemicals that will keep your body functioning, even as it’s being torn apart. So is there anything you’d like to say before I start? Any names you’d like to mention?” The man had blanched. But now, with a tiny shudder, he found his voice. “You c-can go to hell.”

“Oh, come now,” Egan said, touching the pliers to the end of his nose so that the skin there blistered, “you can do better than that. Hell? I’ve been to hell. I spent thirty years in hell. But now I’m back, Fm going to give my enemies a taste of what it was like. You understand?” ttr ii Egan stood slowly, then, delicately lifting one of the man’s balls, he applied the pliers to it, crushing it even as he began to stretch it The young man’s screams were awful. But Egan was grinning now. He eased off with the pliers then stood back, admiring his work.

The man’s screams were regular now. “A-oh, a-oh, a-oh...” “So you’re a singer are you?” Egan looked about him once again and winked. His men were looking at him now with new respect Most bosses didn’t like to get their hands dirty in this way. But he wasn’t like most bosses. Under their aprons, they all sported fierce erections. Egan looked down. He too was hard.

Fucking hard, he thought, then turned back, raising the pliers once again.

“One down, one to ...”

The explosion knocked him from his feet When he got up it was to find his chest and upper arms spattered with blood... and other things. He looked across and gaped.

“Shit!”

The prisoner’s head had gone. Blown off like a ripe melon. Blood now gouted from his neck and his arms hung limp.

One of his own men was down, clutching his stomach. Clearly he had taken the full force of the blast.

“Master?”

Egan put a hand up, stopping the other two from touching him, from helping him to his feet “If s okay,” he said, Tm not hurt” He pulled himself to his feet, brushing the bits of brain and bloodied tissue from his apron, then shook his head and pointed to the injured man. “See to him. Make sure he gets to a surgeon quickly. Then come back and clear this up.”

They did as they were told, leaving him alone in the cell with the headless body. Egan stared at it a while, then, in a fit of anger, he stepped closer and kicked it hard in the chest The body swung back and forth, blood dribbling still from the neck, pooling on the tiles below.

“Egan, thaf s the fucking name you were supposed to say! Mark-fucking-Egan!”

Then, turning away, he left it

Damn the boy! Damn him for ever existing.

They stripped Li Yuan and bathed him, then rubbed him down with aromatic oils, their touch so pleasurable that he felt hewould burst unless he had one of them. But that, so they said, was not allowed.

Finally, when they were done with him, the eldest of them -the one who called herself Ishtar - came and knelt before him, offering him a bowl. It seemed at first a perfectly ordinary ceramic bowl, dark blue in colour and round, like a cut section of a fruit, but as he handled it he felt a strange tingling go through his hands and arms and, looking inside, he felt a sense of vertigo, for it seemed as if he looked right through the bowl into the depths of the universe itself.

The inner surface of the bowl was studded with what looked like a ring of tiny metallic pegs, between which a silk-fine web of force seemed to dance, giving off the faintest glow. Beneath it, almost touching it, and yet it seemed a thousand ti away, a second, equally insubstantial layer could be glimpsed, shimmering wetly in the half light He sniffed at it, then looked up at Ishtar. “But this is ...” She laughed. “Water, yes.” Her dark eyes smiled at him. Still she offered the bowl. “You must drink, Li Yuan. It is important. Only then will you be ready.” “But...”

“No buts. The time for hesitation is past A new life beckons you, Li Yuan. But you must first cross over. This will help you.” “Help me?”

“Yes. It will help you lose your old self. And afterwards...” He stared at it a moment longer, uncertain. There was no scent to it at all, but could he be sure? What if it was a poison?

Ishtar waited, as patient as the rocks, holding out the flickering bowl. Again she smiled. “If we had wanted to kill you, Li Yuan, we would have killed you days ago. This uriH help. But only if you surrender to it” It was true. And to be honest, he had nothing to lose, only his old self, and what good was that? Tuan Ti Fo was right His old self had been responsible for the death of millions, yes, and had lost an empire in the process! He took the bowl and, holding it to his lips, drained it at a go, then handed it back At once he felt the change. It was as if, suddenly, every part of him was doubled. And yet there was no physical change, no sense that he was drugged. The liquid had had no taste, no warmth to it, and yet he felt completely different, two bodies in the space of one, each coexistent with the other, their atoms shared.

“Good,” Ishtar said, setting the bowl aside. “Now come. The ceremony can begin.” She stood, facing him, then, to his surprise, slipped off her gown, so that she stood there, naked before him.

Li Yuan stared, awe-struck. She was magnificent. Perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, Han or Hung Mao.

“Throw off your gown, Li Yuan,” she said as he stood. “For we must come to the pit naked as we were born.”

He did as she asked, letting his cloak fall from him. She reached out, taking his left hand in her right, the simple touch of her making him shudder violently.

The drug - if drug it was - was coursing through him now, making his nerves spark and tingle, as if firecrackers were going off inside his blood. He felt his consciousness expand to take in not merely the room in which he stood, but the whole of Nineveh. And as it did he saw the spire and with it, next to it, the great pit into which we was to descend.

Yes, a voice inside him said. You must go down inside yourself, Li Yuan. Only then can you make the journey up into the light. He laughed, but the laughter was only in his head. And then he was walking, Ishtar at his side, like the Queen of the Night, proud and terrifyingly beautiful. Out they went. Out from the caverns where they had prepared him and up into the great bowl of Nineveh.

Crowds had formed to watch his passing - a whole host of people, naked as himself - and as he passed so their hands brushed against him and on all sides faces smiled and voices wished him well.

And so they came to the pit And there, as they stood beside it, a great hush fell - a quiet of awe and understanding. And then, with a tenderness that surprised him, hands lowered himslowly backwards into the dark. For the briefest moment he thought that he would fall, but other hands reached up for him, holding him, welcoming him, their bodies closing about him as he was embraced and taken, whole and naked, into the living darkness. A mouth closed on his, soft hands caressed his buttocks while yet others gently stroked his legs and chest and groin. And as they did, he understood at last And shuddered, and let go, his old self slipping from him like a snake’s discarded skin.

And with that last, bright-sparking moment of understanding came oblivion - that great darkness of the senses he had wished for all his life and never known. And then the darkness swallowed him.

Harding threw on a gown, then went through to see who could have come at this hour.

His Steward, Levitch, was standing in the shadows of the hall. For a moment he did not realise that Harding was there, then, with a start, he turned and smartly bowed.

“Master...”

“Whaf s happening, Levitch?”

Levitch took two steps towards Harding, then, bowing again, held out a book-sized package.

“This came, Master. From Shepherd.”

“Shepherd? Ben Shepherd?”

“Yes, Master.”

Harding took the package, frowning. He had never met Shepherd, yet he had had some dealings with SimFic in the past and had made some money out of distributing copies of The Familiar throughout City North America. But for Shepherd to send him something direct seemed unusual to say the least “Was there no note with this?”

“Nothing, Master.”

“And you’ve screened it?”

“Naturally, Master.”