by Chris Howard
He backed out and looked along the metal walkway around the forty-foot wide shaft into the lower decks. “Who's there? Aldrich? Why'd you leave the door open? The stink's bad enough.” Halfheartedly, he added, “Now you let the cold out."
It was hot and humid above decks and even the closed hatches didn't keep in the cool. McHutcheon walked in, the temporary fluorescents he had clamped to the beams buzzing like insects above his head. Dual halogens on a tripod, hot bolts of sunlight standing at the head of the table, hit Gabriel Pinnet's decaying body in hard white light as it lay in the black zipper bag, the abdomen sliced open from McHutcheon's foray into forensics. He had taken three anatomy courses in college, two with real corpses—pieces of them actually, and several passes in complete virtual. He had performed an abdominal section twice, and so that was where he started with Pinnet, stopping as soon as he discovered the eyes melting in digestive juices in the stomach.
Other things had come in with the warm air and McHutcheon, while he snapped on surgical gloves, bent close to Pinnet's gaunt face to inspect the tiny squirming white barrel-shaped thing. It looked like a grain of rice, moving clumsily along Pinnet's right nostril.
A spasm of disgust rolled up McHutcheon's throat, and he swallowed a sour fluid surge from his stomach. He had seen maggots before, but not on a dead human, and even on a human as foul as Pinnet had been, the tiny crawling thing made him shudder. He noticed more of them, a cluster around one of Pinnet's eye sockets, glistening and oozing over each other, making faint wet crackling noises. Not strong enough to eat through the skin, the larvae gathered at the openings into the body.
McHutcheon stretched his hand out, extended one finger and tugged on Pinnet's chin. The jaw was tight, but he worked it open, using two fingers, while keeping his distance. The teeth parted and a swollen maggot-covered tongue filled the space.
"Oh, God,” whispered McHutcheon, turning his head. At the same moment, a flood of incongruous thoughts piled into each other in his head. How could anyone decay this quickly? Pinnet had been stuffed in the body bag an hour after Miss Lairsey had killed him, and from there straight to cold storage. There were no flies down here, not inside the cold room. It didn't make sense.
McHutcheon got a firm grip on his stomach, kept his eyes away from Pinnet's face, and lifted the right hand. Pieces of skin sloughed off in his grip, slipping fluidly away like pieces of an oily surgical glove.
Pinnet was falling apart in front of him. It was as if, instead of lying in frozen sleep on a rack in cold storage, they had thrown Pinnet on deck, exposed to the humid air, tropical temperature and flying insects.
McHutcheon backed away, turning his gloves inside out and tossing them into a cardboard box he was using as a trash bin. There was no sense proceeding if the room wasn't being chilled. He followed a web of conduit to a weatherproof box on the far wall, closing the thick insulated storage room door on his way over. He cut his thumb shoving the slide latch up, but that was enough to open the thick metal cover. There were two rows of black rocker switches inside and a faded handwritten legend on the inside of the door. He scanned the illegible list and then went with his impulse to try all of the switches. He found six loose levers and moved each one to the right in turn. The last one in the row seemed broken, unfastened from the hinge, and it wouldn't stick when he thumbed it to the right.
McHutcheon fiddled with the breaker, shoving the lever back and forth, frowning up at the chiller. If he could not get the storage room cold again, Pinnet was going to turn to soup in the body bag. He heard the drip of fluid from the table to the floor. The corpse was already well along the autolysis cycle, in which the body's enzymes ate through the cell walls, releasing all the internal fluids, and heading—at a good pace—for bloating. At this rate, the body would be a slack self-digested liquid mess by the time they made their first port. He doubted if the coroner in S?o Lu?s would even be able to recognize Pinnet when they showed up with a bag of rot and bones.
So it was quite a shock to Daniel McHutcheon when he felt Pinnet's firm grip on his shoulder.
* * * *
Aleximor lurched, grabbing the first shelf in the bookcase and tipped all of McHutcheon's medical books onto the floor. The muscles in the host body's legs gave way and he tumbled over the corner of the bed, somersaulted, and landed on his back, splayed across the thin blue industrial carpeting.
What the hell is this? What are you doing! Corina felt a tingling along her spine; deep cramps uncoiled in her stomach. A hissing sound filled her ears, going thin and stinging, a noise like needles.
Aleximor couldn't answer in words. He rolled on his side, curling his legs up in agony, squeezing his eyes as tight as the muscles would push. He made some deep grunting noises with Corina's throat; eyes filled with tears that dribbled down her face. Her body shuddered and twitched. A dark bruise blossomed on her forearm, another one, sickle shaped, spun blurrily around the right side of her ribs.
In Corina's pain-twisted voice, he said, “He has acquired his first one."
Who? Acquired what? A deep chill swept through Corina's mind.
"Mr. Pinnet has killed and performed the binding."
Who? McHutcheon?
"That would be ... my ... presumption."
Corina felt a dozen separate dull pains shoot up through her feet, as if she was standing on a floor of small knuckle-sized cobbles. Lifting one foot transferred all her weight to the other, making it worse.
There was darkness all around her.
"What are you doing?” Corina's voice was loud in her ears, but it was her own voice under her control.
Aleximor did not answer.
"Shit.” She felt mentally cold. Her first thought shoved all the others out of her head. “I've lost touch with my body.” She tried to bend the last word into a question, but didn't have enough evidence to turn it all the way into one. She couldn't move her body's fingers or open her eyes to take in McHutcheon's cabin. This must be somewhere else. Am I in some other body?
She tried her voice again. “The place with the roaring black wind."
She had a body of some kind. She could not see it, but she felt its presence, gravity weighing her down, pressure in her lungs, the touch of a strong wind on her skin, the emptiness around her. She crouched down—her toes spreading painfully wide over the rocky ground, sharp points sticking into her bent knee—and picked up a handful of stones; some of them were jagged, stabbing her fingers, but most were rounded smooth by the constant wind.
A mordant question shot directly from her mind to her mouth: “Wouldn't it be gross if these turned out to be knuckle bones, billions of them?"
She was mildly disappointed when they turned out to be simple gray-mottled, non-ossiferous beach rocks. She could see them suddenly, dark against her hand, as if someone had switched on a dim light.
She dropped the stones and jumped to her feet, wincing at the sharp points pressing into her bare soles. A bright yellow star fell in the infinite night, across the sky, flying in the wind's direction, away from her. It lit the ground under her, just enough to allow her to make out details. Corina reached for the star, not wanting it to leave her alone in the dark—and because of the lack of reference points it appeared to be right overhead.
The black wind shifted and slapped her in the face, roaring stronger in her ears, whipping her hair. Dust blinded her, blotting out most of the star's light. She took a step back, swinging around to find a softer foothold, but she kept her hand out, grasping for the only thing that seemed alive in this place, the bright ball of light passing over her head.
She blinked in the dimness, glancing down to keep her balance. There was an edge to her new dark inner world, cutting a sharp black emptiness through the gravelly surface under her feet.
The rocky platform brightened, going gray and shadowy while the void beyond its edge remained perfect black. She looked up in time to catch the star ... sort of. It passed right through her grasping hand, through her wrist, to lodge in the center
of her chest just above the curve of her breasts, knocking her on her back.
She opened her eyes, and for a moment she thought the blindness had returned. Then she lifted her hand and saw it glowed with an inner light. She had fallen inches from the edge of nothing, one shoulder and her head hanging into it, her open eyes staring into the abyss.
Corina rolled and clawed frantically away from the edge, shoving rocks and hand-sized plates of loose slate-like stone over the edge. She waited, holding her breath, but never heard them hit the bottom.
She stood and looked down at her glowing body, a dim gold light spreading from the core—where the star had landed in her chest—out to her limbs. Her bones and muscle were pale shadows against her skin.
Corina sighed with a sharp annoyed edge.
Why is one always—always!—naked in dreams like this?
She glared up at the pure black sky. “Fuck natural! Where are my damn clothes?"
She cried the words to the endless gusting night.
She held her arms up, flexing her hands. A spark ignited her anger. The webbing Aleximor had added to her fingers had come through with her.
"Whose body is this?” She demanded to the darkness. “I want my old one back!"
Corina sat down angrily, ramming a sharp stone against her tailbone and cursing Aleximor. She folded her legs in front of her, breathed the night's air and stacked flat stones on top of each other until she had a slightly lopsided tower over two feet tall.
The second movement of Beethoven's “Opus 130” played in her head. She tapped the rhythm on her bare knee, thinking that it felt as if she had broken up with Alan Yeater a year ago. There was a faint melancholy accompaniment, not enough to rile her, just enough to bore her. It seemed a long and uncomplicated time ago, a minor ripple in the pond, a wisp of low altitude cloud in an otherwise full sky of meteorological activity.
She got to her feet, holding back the urge to kick over her little stone tower, and marched off along the rim.
She walked the perimeter of her sharp, rocky ... un-world ... counting paces, determined to calculate its size. The glow from the captured star—or whatever it was—allowed her to see ten feet around and she stepped and stubbed her toes in a circuitous march along the edge.
"The circumference is little over three hundred paces,” whispered Corina when she came upon her stone tower from the opposite direction. “What would that be? A good step is three feet. Nine-hundred feet around. Circumference divided by pi—3.14 equals the diameter ... a little over two hundred and eighty-six feet across.” She made a mildly impressed frown, thinking that un-worlds usually come in smaller sizes, and that she must have done something right in life to be upgraded to a roughly circular platform nearly three hundred feet wide. “Okay, so the radius is half the diameter. One forty three. Area's pi-R-squared. Three point one four times one forty three is ... four hundred forty nine point zero two ... times one forty three ... sixty-four thousand two-hundred nine point eight six square feet.” In the tone of a perky real estate agent, she said, “Spacious living area, open concept design, upgraded kitchens and bathrooms, stone entryway, views of eternity from every window.” Her voice went higher and perkier. “I love it! When can I move in?"
She looked down at the ten-foot section of illuminated gray rock around her, shrugging. “It could be worse,” she said and began counting the ways. “It's like prison, but without the three hots and a cot—not to mention the benefits of companionship."
A rattle of stones off to her left broke her concentration right in the middle of debating the up- and downsides of being left here alone or exiled with someone she hated.
Corina felt the mental chill again as she walked carefully over the loose stones in the direction of the noise. She reached the edge before she found anything.
She looked over the broken lip of stone and jerked back. The floor of her stomach was pushing at the back of her throat; a raging fear of falling off shook her and she backed up several steps.
Her eyes chased a sound into the blackness. Something was moving ... out there, across the void.
"Who's there?"
"Corina?” It was Aleximor. She heard his unique pronunciation, but his voice had a rough wet rotting quality. It was his original voice, his male voice.
"What do you want?"
There were sharp clicking and scraping noises like metal on stone. “You must return."
"You're lying. Why?"
"You have something of mine."
"You have something of mine!” She shouted back at him.
"We can cooperate, kill the Seaborn king and House Rexenor. I sensed that you and I are alike, and now you have proven it. I don't want to make you join me, Corina. I could do that, but that would break you, and I do not want to."
"I don't want to have anything to do with you. I don't know where I am, but until a minute ago you weren't here, so I was starting to feel comfortable again, something I haven't felt since you got inside me—you ... killing, raising the dead, soul binding—and you're slowly killing me in the process. I don't want to have any part of it—or you!"
"You are part of me, Corina.” She could hear a hint of laughter in his voice. “After what you have done, I am not certain I could extract you from your old host body. You have made your decision to help me, to become like me."
"Fuck off! I'll never do it! I am not like you!"
"You already have. You are. You made your decision when you reached up and plucked him out of the sky, dear, dear Corina. You see how simple it is for you? He was mine, but you took McHutcheon inside you and bound him to your soul."
She looked down, horrified at her glowing body, at the star burning inside her, at the pale glow she gave off, lighting the gray stone around her.
"You see. You are my Melinoe. You would make a fine ostologos. Your slave's physical form is hiding below the deck, but he is free to roam the ship—and he will. He must live off something. Even I cannot control him in death. McHutcheon is yours, Corina."
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Chapter Twenty-Three
The Canal
I call on you Melinoe, saffron-veiled, of the earth, to whom dread Persephone, venerable queen, gave birth at the mouth of the mournful river Kokytos, on the bed of Zeus Kronion. Zeus deceived with guileful arts dark Persephone, mating with her in the guise of Hades. Hence, partly dark thy limbs and partly white. From Hades shadow, from Zeus ethereal bright. Thy colored members, men by night inspire when seen in spectered forms with terrors dire; Now darkly visible, made of night. Shining in darkness they meet the fearful fight. Terrestrial queen expel wherever found the soul's mad fears to earth's remotest bound; With holy aspect on our incense shrine, and bless thy mystics, and the rites divine.
—Orphic Hymn 71: “To Melinoe"
* * * *
Corina woke inside her body, the fluorescent glow from McHutcheon's former cabin in her eyes. It took her a few minutes to figure out she was on her back. Her first impulse was to get up and run; there was a hint of hope that she had control back. Her eyes blinked. Hope died. Aleximor moved in just before her, taking the reins, and shutting her out of the control room. Then he made good use of her happily gloating voice. “You will see, in time, we will make a wonderful pair."
Her second impulse was to go with the silent treatment, but questions were piling up inside her mind and demanding answers. Besides, she hated the silent treatment. It was a total coward's way out.
Where were we a second ago? The darkness, the rocky sixty-four thousand square foot shelf in space? What was that place? What were the clicking noises coming from you? Why were we both there? They sounded like idiotic questions and something told her that there might be an advantage in keeping them to herself, in allowing Aleximor to believe she knew exactly where she had been. But she didn't have a trace of a thought to pin them to. Nothing in her head had prepared her for instantaneous appearance in a place so strange and then, in another instant, to be back to earth.
A man's voice, rough with the lack of sleep, answered Aleximor. “In time, Miss Lairsey? The captain has paired us up for the entire journey to S?o Lu?s, which is where I've convinced him to drop you off—not waiting all the way to S?o Paulo."
Aleximor sat up, getting his bearings. He remembered falling on the floor, but couldn't account for a significant gap in time during which his host body had apparently been moved to the bed.
He smiled flirtatiously at Officer Aldrich. Scary as hell, thought Corina. “That is kind of you, Mr. Aldrich. To look after me for the journey—even a shortened one. And you are right. We already make a wonderful pair."
"I know you won't try anything now,” said Aldrich with a warning finger pointed at her, trying to ignore her light tone.
Testing the waters, Aleximor raised one eyebrow, slid one of Corina's hands along her hip down her thigh. “And what makes you so certain, Mr. Aldrich?"
Suddenly you're the femme fatale. Corina couldn't believe how quickly the monster inside her had grown accustomed to her skin, known how to use every muscle on her face.
The officer jutted his chin at the ceiling, which presumably meant the control room forty feet above them. “The pilot from the canal authority is aboard. There are security boats on both sides of the locks. The ship won't be entirely under Captain Teixeira's command until we're beyond the Port of Cristobal."
"Locks?"
He might have had a secure lock on her body and its expressions, but he knew nothing about the world above the waves. Corina cursed, but couldn't help herself. We are going through the canal, the Panama Canal, a channel cut through Central America from the Pacific to the Caribbean Sea. A lock is like a big room without a ceiling—big enough to fit the whole ship inside.
