Pierre felt a strong shock, as if electrified. And then, it seems fair to say, he cowered. Not from the grandeur of the room, but from the thought of who might own it. Their overwhelming individuality smoldered here and there throughout the space, like incense that bewitched him with its scent even as its smoke choked and suffocated him. How clearly he could imagine the master of this room! Beautiful they surely were, cruel and fierce. So superbly terrifying a personage that their thoughts would be unimaginable to the likes of Pierre. Before them, he was a handful of dust. Pierre’s breast burned hot with emotion as he thought on the matter. He felt deeply moved by some unnamable emotion.
“Hey there.”
The voice came from beyond the deep drapes.
The fabric parted soundlessly, revealing the voice’s owner. Pierre realized that he was moving in that direction. And looking up.
A beautiful man lay on the bed, entirely naked, looking down at him.
“Hello, Pierre.”
The voice had a luster like the finest tanned leather.
“Uh …”
Pierre finally understood why he had cringed before the man, even before seeing him. His bed was twice the size of a normal one. The height of the ceiling, the mirror, and the chair were all to the same scale.
The man was well over three meters tall.
His formidable physique was beautiful to an exceptional degree. He lounged on the feather pillows piled up on the bed with the elegance of a swan extending its neck. Every inch of his body was as proportionate and controlled as ancient statuary. His lithe arms and legs were clad in muscles of ideal form that rippled with quiet power. His chest and stomach seemed to have been carved from a boulder, then lightly covered in a layer of fat and pure white skin. The white (blindingly so) bedsheet just barely covered his chest. His heroic features were noble and sharply chiseled, the stuff of a dictator’s dreams, but clouded with reserve, restraining the gleam of the luxurious gold hair that framed his face.
His thin lips dissolved into a smile.
Speechless, overwhelmed, Pierre surrendered completely and unconditionally. He was entranced.
First by the man’s beauty and majesty, like a memorial stone’s.
But then, even more, by that giant smile.
In that smile, the true character of this cruelest man of all was laid bare. It was a smile like the ulcerous flowering of the psychological wound he bore from something that ate at him deep inside. It was obvious that something nasty had wormed its way into that body of his, white as a plaster wall. His pearly teeth were like adornments fashioned from the bones of war casualties. Every inch of his body brimmed with sickness and poison and death, and that, Pierre reasoned to himself, was exactly why this gentleman was so beautiful.
The giant was not overly hairy, but was covered in downy fuzz that glimmered occasionally like gold dust shaken from a sheet. Pierre shifted his gaze to where those downy courses gathered and grew dense, seeing their termination in a pitch-black spiral of pubic hair beneath which his thick member casually lay. He gave off a smell combining leather and cigars and tea and sweat. To Pierre it was the sweetest perfume.
“Hello, Pierre,” the giant said. “Welcome to my room. I was hoping you’d come, and I’m so happy you did.”
Unlike the words he spoke, the giant’s voice was cold. Pierre did not detect a hint of feeling for him. But this coldness only stoked the flames in his breast higher. He still could not name the emotion he felt. Was it love? Did he long for the giant to embrace him, caress him? Or to lay down the law as a virile patriarch? Both were close, but neither was quite correct. Pierre felt as if he might go crazy from impatience. There was someone here who would give him what he had always longed for. All he had to do was give voice to that wish—but the wish itself would not come out.
“What’s wrong, Pierre?” the giant asked gently.
That gentleness made Pierre want to abandon all he had and simply beg the giant for forgiveness, and he was about to say so, but even this was so far from what he truly wished that he could do nothing but close his mouth and groan in his throat. He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead against the floor, tears dampening the carpet.
“Never mind,” the giant said. “I understand. Pierre, this is what you’re thinking: ‘I want to be eaten by you.’”
Another electric shock ran through Pierre. The tangle of disparate emotions within him had been resolved in an instant. One sentence had been all that was needed. Why didn’t I realize it myself? I wanted this man to eat me. I want to be eaten. I want him to do me the honor of eating me. Right now. Right here.
“Pierre, you want me to eat you. Not cooked, but raw. You want me to tear your arms and legs off and crack your tightly interconnected skeleton apart. Then you want me to stuff what’s inside into my mouth and slurp it out of you. You’ve been wanting to die for a long time, right? You are noble at heart, and so you long to choose soul-rending agony over an aimless sleepwalker’s death. Your narcissism is too strong to accept a death brought by those idiot Spiders, who know the value of nothing. You would rather fall into the hands of someone big and strong, majestic and beautiful—have every inch of your body dissected, savored unhurriedly, and praised as you breathe your last. And that is why I will separate every bone in your body from every other, as carefully as a watchmaker. I will pull out your eyes and kiss the sockets as sweetly as I would a vagina. I will adorn myself with every drop of your blood. After all, that is what you want from me.”
“That’s right,” Pierre said, in a voice husky with arousal. His eyes were moist. His erection was hard. Everything the giant had said was right. This gentleman knows every part of my soul. No—this gentleman thinks my thoughts for me. He gives name to my feelings.
“Right now, you are enraptured. This is because you are imagining what you might taste like. I expect you will have the purest of flavors. The pain inflicted on you by guests from the real world can only have purified you. Come, that I may do what you wish. I will show no mercy. I have magical powers, and so you will be incapable of losing consciousness. Until the very moment of your passing, you will taste unimaginable pain to the fullest extent.”
Sighing like a believer approaching the altar, Pierre ducked beneath the canopy curtains and climbed onto a corner of the bed.
“Please tell me your name,” he said.
“Langoni.” The giant gripped Pierre’s head in one hand. “I am Langoni.”
And then Langoni began to eat Pierre. As soon as the dining began, the giant’s wretched human sacrifice forgot all he had felt, as if it had been nothing but a lie, and recalled that he had not wanted to be eaten at all, but preventing that from taking place was beyond his power now. Langoni lingered over his meal, savoring it for longer than was necessary. He kept his promise faithfully. Pierre’s consciousness and sensation remained intact, and he suffered an agony he had never imagined any Realm could provide, until the very last piece of him was gone.
Langoni rose to his feet, his naked body smeared with blood. As he did, the entire room began to shrink around him. The bed, the wallpaper, the sofa cover, the textiles the room was hung with—all these things lost their form and melted together into an extravagant harlequin suit of countless fabrics woven together, covering Langoni’s naked body. The garment clung close to his skin, hungrily absorbing the blood of the sacrifice.
The room disappeared, leaving Langoni, controller of the Spiders, alone in the forest that stood west of the hotel. He popped one of Pierre’s eyes into his mouth like candy, turned his garment into a cloak of invisibility hiding him from both AIs and Glass Eyes, and began to walk toward the Mineral Springs Hotel.
Yve was lost.
She could not find Pierre no matter how she tried. The TrapNet didn’t register the anomaly in the forest. If this had something to do with the Spiders, then the Spiders were now able to act undetected by the net a
s well. She shrank from the horror of this idea.
She waited in increasing irritation for one of the three sisters to bring the matter up, but none of them did. Had no one else realized what a dangerous omen this was?
The TrapNet was no longer a simple security system. It was a sensory order. If the hotel was one great virtual being, the TrapNet was the immune system that kept the Spiders out. But if some area appeared within that body where nerves could not reach, making it impossible to know what was happening inside? If the body’s arms and limbs stopped moving as commanded? What then?
No, there was no time to think about things like that. We have our hands full just monitoring and operating the net properly, Yve tried to think. At this very moment, the TrapNet was fighting off ten Spiders at once. That alone would certainly require fierce concentration from the “widows.”
But Yve wanted to spend just a little more time in the wonderful sensuality of the net. She wanted to enjoy the feeling of omnipotence like a rising wind that was only available to her there. Yve’s mastery of the Eyes was greater than anyone’s. The TrapNet was like a giant cruise ship with a rudder so heavy only Yve could turn it. And no one was at all concerned about Pierre yet.
She decided to watch how things progressed for just a little longer.
There was surely still time.
“It’ll begin before long,” murmured the old man in black who claimed to be called Jules. His tone was oddly relaxed. “Looks like everything’s going nicely, though. At least one of the women has clued in. Realized that there might be things out there the TrapNet can’t detect, I mean.”
“That’s …” Jules stiffened. “Impossible,” he finished. It was impossible. Every object, every phenomenon in the Realm was subject to capture by the Eyes. Nothing was supposed to be able to escape their gaze.
“I don’t mean to criticize you. You did pretty good work.”
Jules was thinking. Things the Eyes couldn’t see—what could the old man mean by that?
“Look at the big thinker with his mouth all pursed. Of course there are things the Eyes can’t see. They’re powerful, but not omnipotent. And then there are the things the Eyes can see, but you and yours can’t—which works out to the same thing. You get my drift?”
Jules was shaken by the surprisingly simple admonishment. “But the net has an identity boundary of its own,” he argued. “If the Eyes see something, the immune system should go into action.”
“That jerry-rigged identity you thought of yourself? You think that’ll be effective against someone outside the standard AI box? The net’ll be powerless soon. And then it’ll tighten around our own necks.”
Jules felt like tightening something around the old man’s neck himself.
Just then someone punched Jules’s head from behind. As he reeled from the blow, his legs were swept out from under him. He fell forward, nose grinding into the carpet.
The whole casino watched as he pushed himself up onto his knees.
Felix. That was who had punched him. Thin, fox-like face. Red corn-silk hair.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Felix demanded. He stank of drink. “Secret whispering, disagreements in a place like this? Just sit tight and keep quiet, boy. The adults are trying to keep you safe.”
Jules couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Felix was only in the casino because the other men had left him behind for being too drunk.
As Jules rose to his feet, he saw Yve standing behind his assailant. Felix glanced behind him, sensing her presence too.
“What are you doing?” Yve asked.
“Just what it looks like,” Felix said. “Teaching the boy some manners. Just gave him a little nudge.”
Yve stared unblinking at Felix. Her face was sad, but not her eyes. They were as fixed as the stones at the bottom of a stirred-up pool.
“At a time like this?”
“Times like this are exactly when people need to respect the rules. Two people whispering together can make everyone around them uneasy.”
“You’re pathetic,” Yve said, still eyes fixed on her husband, expression unchanging.
“That look again? I’ve had that up to here,” Felix said, dropping his own gaze. “I’ve had it up to here with you!”
He crossed to the doors of the casino, pushed them open, and walked out into the corridor. His figure wavered and warped through the stained glass of the doors as he staggered away.
“I’m sorry,” Yve said, approaching Jules. The stillness in her eyes had dissolved. “I’m sorry, Jules.” Tears began to run down her cheeks.
“No need,” Jules said, shaking his head. “I’m fine.” He could say nothing more.
“I’ll get back to my station,” Yve said. She hung her head as she turned away. Her rich chestnut hair was tied neatly at the nape of her neck.
Jules glanced over at the stained-glass doors again.
Felix’s swaying form disappeared as if swallowed up by the outlines of the picture. Had he turned a corner in the corridor? Jules narrowed his eyes.
“Hey.”
It was Joël, the hotel’s long-suffering, potbellied cook. His black eyes smiled at Jules through his black-framed glasses.
“Don’t let him get to you,” Joël said. Then he looked at Old Jules too. “That said, it isn’t exactly pleasant to see you two huddled together whispering to each other. Come over and be with the rest of us. Have some hot soup.”
“That would be appreciated,” said Old Jules, rising to his feet.
As they walked, Joël continued. “Got a message from Bastin,” he said. “Seems the Spider attack’s abated a bit. He’s called for a short break. I made sandwiches and soup.”
A young waiter was passing out soup cups and sandwiches wrapped in paper.
“Make sure Yve and the others get some too,” Jules said.
“Of course, of course. Especially Julie, right?” Joël laughed. “A tough nut to crack, that one.”
Jules sipped from the cup he was handed. It was a chicken cream soup, whipped to give it a cappuccino-like frothiness. The taste of cream and the chicken broth were as warm, light, and soft as a pile of blankets. It was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. He couldn’t recall even thinking something was this tasty before.
“This is good stuff.” Old Jules was chomping on his lightly toasted sandwich. “What is it, duck rillettes? Pulling out all the stops, huh?”
Jules looked down. He had just remembered what Old Jules had said earlier. If there were things the net could not detect, how would they behave? The conditional itself was unclear, so there was no point thinking on it. Jules put it out of his mind and switched to mentally rechecking the safety measures designed to keep the net system alive.
“Here,” said Old Jules, giving Jules his sandwich. “You’ve got to eat, or you won’t last through this.”
Jules bit into the bread. The flavor was so vivid that he had to put his thinking on hold for a moment. The smell of wheat and yeast. The mouthfeel of the dough, with its tiny, evenly distributed pockets of air. The smack of salt and fat and garlic.
He tried to recall what it had felt like when Felix had shoved and kicked him just before. Extremely painful, for one thing. It had seemed to him the first time he had ever felt such pain. But, thinking about it, he’d had worse injuries before, and those had hurt more. It was a strange way to put it, but it seemed that the pain today was distinctive in quality rather than quantity, like the way the same musical performance sounded more real when you listened to it on a better radio.
But why should that be so? He had no idea.
The woman in a Romani-style outfit realized that steam was billowing from the enamelware kettle on the stove. She rose from the sofa and padded barefoot across the wooden floor to remove the kettle from the heat and place it on the table.
Her room was inside a G
lass Eye.
Nobody knew her name. She did not even know who she was herself. She was neither human nor AI. “She” was nothing but a phenomenon within Femme Fatale, just like the fire that burned inside the Father of Flame. She knew that there were things outside her tiny room, but after a mind-numbingly long time spent here alone, with no visitors and no connection to anybody, she no longer gave it much thought.
She poured the water from the kettle into the teapot. Removing the teacups from the cupboard, she placed them on the table.
Them?
She gazed at the tabletop curiously. Two cups. Come to think of it, she had put enough tea leaves in the pot for two as well. For who?
After pouring the remaining hot water into the cups to warm them, the woman took some canned fruit in syrup down from the cupboard. She was restless, but the feeling was not unpleasant. It was just new to her. She had never received a guest before.
She laid out the fruit, poured two cups of tea, and sat at the table facing the door that never opened. It opened today, as perfectly timed as if it had been choreographed in advance. Standing in the doorway was a dapper man with bushy eyebrows as black as his five o’clock shadow, and friendly, ingratiating eyes. He was not tall, and his tread was light on the floor. He entered the room as naturally as if he did this all the time. The woman for her part received him as though it was perfectly natural for strangers to visit her.
“Hey there, Maria,” he said.
“Darling,” Maria replied.
Replied, and then shivered. For the first time in her life, Maria had been addressed by name.
That’s right—I’m Maria. My name is Maria.
Thus named, she felt as if her silhouette had come sharply into focus. A name let her believe that she was a person. Relief and reassurance filled her breast. It was like realizing how thirsty you had been only after drinking a glass of water. She could not stop the tears that spilled suddenly from her eyes. She saw now that she had long lived in an isolation of terrible degree. All at once, Maria became afraid. She could not be alone again. She wanted someone by her side.
The Thousand Year Beach Page 14
