by Dean Koontz
"Tainted blood?"
"They dont like Mues," Gnossos explained. "They would never speak to one unless they were dying and needed help. Then, it would be Gods will that they spoke."
"Why are Mues-tainted?" Sam asked.
"A Mue is not a creation of God, but the work of man," the Christian snapped. "A Mue is a violation of Gods holy powers of creation." His eyes gleamed fanatically.
"Prejudice," Gnossos said. "Its part of the dogma of every religion-sometimes heavily disguised but always there. Do you know the history of your church, old man?"
The Christian shuffled his feet. He was beginning to feel that it might be best to stay out of an argument with these particular pagans, but his fanatic devotion could not be totally denied. "Of course I do. In the beginning there was-"
"It doesnt start that far back." Gnossos laughed. He licked his lips, anxious to launch into the old man. "It doesnt start with the darkness and the light and the first seven days. It comes along much later. Millennia later. Theres no church until man decides he needs a means of social climbing, something to make him superior to his neighbors. So he forms a church, a religion. By forming it, he can say that he knows what and why God is. He can say he knows the purpose of all things and can, therefore, be a cut above other men."
"God chose Saint Peter to start the church, to be above other men."
Gnossos smiled patronizingly, almost a saint himself-except for the sharp blade that was his tongue. "I doubt that. Youll pardon me if I sound distrustful, but I doubt that very much. History is simply littered with men who said God had chosen them to be a leader. Most of them fell flat on their faces. Most of them got trampled down and smashed in the flow of Time and History, which are two things bigger than any man."
"False prophets!" the sign-carrier growled.
"So what makes you think Saint Peter wasnt a false prophet?"
"What he started is still with us."
"Duration does not prove worth. Wars lasted a damn sight longer than your religion has, but they were finished and done away with because they were not good things. Besides, your faith is just barely with us. It seems Saint Peters work is facing the end that war faced."
Sam made a face, launched into the conversation again. "But why hate Hurkos for not being directly God-created? If God gave men the power to invent and use the Artificial Womb, then He was involved in the creation of the Mues, though-"
"Men usurped the power," the Christian said.
"But if God is all-powerful, men could not usurp anything of His. Why, He would crush men who tried-"
Gnossos put a hand on Sams shoulder. "It is not for this reason that Christians hate Mues. As I said, they have to feel superior. There are so few people they can look down on anymore; the Mue offers a perfect scapegoat. Because he is often abnormal physically-whether it be a detrimental physical difference or a beautiful, functional difference-they have something to feel superior about. I am not like you, they say. I am normal. I am whole."
A crowd had begun to form around the debate. People strained over one anothers shoulders, trying to hear and get a look at the verbal combatants. This seemed to please Gnossos, but it irritated the Christian.
"And my dear fellow," Gnossos continued in a friendly tone raised a bit for the benefit of those at the back of the crowd, "do you know who started many of the worst wars in the past three thousand years?"
"Satans forces"
"No. God, it should be so simple as you say. No, it was Christians, the very people who preached against war. In-"
The bearded man showed his teeth in what could have been a snarl if he had added sound. "I will not pursue this argument any longer. You are in Satans employ." He moved quickly, pushing at the crowd that had gathered. They hesitated, then parted to let him through. He had, very shortly, been lost in the breast of the night to be suckled by its darkness.
"You dont imagine you did any good," Hurkos said as the crowd around them dispersed and they began walking again. "You dont imagine you got through that bony structure he calls a head, do you?"
"No. But I cant resist trying. He is unreachable by this time. Besides, even if he doubted his faith, he would not allow himself to give that doubt prominence in this thoughts. He has forsaken concrete eternity via the immortality drugs, and now he has nothing to cling to but the hopes of his religion, the promises of his God."
"Gives me the shivers," Sam said.
"This is all getting much too morbid," Gnossos said. "Lets find a hotel and settle down. My feet are killing me, and there is no telling how much running we might have to do to catch Sam if he gets another order."
Breadloaf finished the last morsels of his sandwich, licked his gums to remove the sticky salad dressing, took a long swallow of hot, black coffee, and leaned back in his chair as if it were a womb he was asking to swallow him. The room was dark, for the thing behind the Shield was not a thing for well-lighted rooms. Its details were brought out too fully in light. Blackness allowed merciful obscurity.
Cinnabar horsemen riding green stallions exploded across the screen, were gone in a wash of lavender...
He liked to pick out patterns in the explosions of color, choose and name them as a young boy might do with clouds seen from a green grass-covered hill in summer.
A dragons mouth holding the broken body of an amber... amber... amber knight...
Alexander Breadloaf III wondered whether his father had sat like this, watching the patterns and trying to make something of them. It was a seeking after order, certainly, that was the purpose of watching them. Had his father sat, his great leonine head bowed in contemplation, his heavy brows run together from the forehead-wrinkling concentration? Had he laced his thick fingers behind his waterfall of white hair and watched-actually studied-the Prisoner of the Shield, as the family had come to speak of it?
He doubted it. His father had been a man of hard work and strenuous action. He had built his fathers small fortune into a very large fortune, an almost incalculable sum of money. When his engineers accidently stumbled across the Shield while looking for a non-matter force for construction purposes, when they discovered, to their horror, what lay beyond. The old man took the practical angle. He knew there was a fortune to be made here, more than his already formidable masses of wealth. He had only to enslave the powers already trapped behind the Shield and turn them to work for him. The Shield was maintained. But the powers could never be enslaved. To agree to slavery, the slave must have fear of his master. There was no fear in the Prisoner. Absolutely none.
Brilliant flashes of white rippled like fish through a sudden sea of smoky burgundy...
His heart thudded at the bright light, even though he knew the Shield was impenetrable. Take one molecule and expand it. Expand it some more. Make it bigger and bigger and bigger-but dont disturb its natural particle balance. You have a Shield. It will hold back anything, stand against even nuclear power of the highest magnitude. But you also have a doorway into a higher dimension. A barred doorway. No, really more like an unbreakable window. But that window turns the higher dimension into a prison, squeezes it into a confined space (a law of opposites which equalizes the pressure created by the expanding first molecule). The higher dimension is then bound within the tiny limits. It and its inhabitants are trapped, unable to move or to get out.
Brilliant white on yellow like cats-eye marbles...
No, his father had never sat here like this. He was too practical for melancholia. Along about the second hundred years of the Prisoners confinement, the old fellow had realized-probably with a great deal of bitterness-he could never enslave it and demand things of it. And as the years passed he came to maintain the Shield only because to let it go off would mean the end of his family and possibly all human life. The Prisoner would be seeking revenge-an omnipotent, terrible revenge of finality. By the days of Alexander the Third, this fear of the Prisoner had been compounded by a feeling of moral obligation. Th
e sanity and progress of the empire depended on keeping the Prisoner imprisoned. Always, in the rear of his mind, was the fear that the thing would escape. Sometimes that fear surged to the fore. Times like this. He wanted to run into the streets and scream about the charge behind the Shield. But the Breadloafs had done this thing, had trapped this beast. It would be up to them to watch it for all eternity. And perhaps beyond.
Finally, when watching was not quite enough, Alexander walked to the Shield, stood with a hand upon the coursing energy. "How did you," he said at length to the thing beyond, "become like this?"
It could only thought-speak to him when he was touching the Shield. Even then, the words were tiny and distant: Letmeout, letmeout...
"How did you become like this?"
Letmeout, letmeout, letmeout...
That was its constant cry. Sometimes there were bloodcurdling threats. But he knew-and it knew-that the threats could not be carried out. Not as long as the Shield was there. It would never answer his question: "How did you become like this?" Not today. It had answered previously, but only when it thought it had something to gain.
"How did you become like this?"
And it had said: I have always been like this...
On hydro-beds, reclining, they opened their ears. The hotel room was pleasant and spacious. Gnossos lay before the door so that Sam would have to crawl over him to get out. The lights were soft but adequate, the wine sweet upon their tongues. It was certainly a time for verses.
"Look through the window
to the streets below;
Its the age of sorrow,
babies in the snow.
Look through any window
across a sea of dust;
Time lies shattered
in a mobius rust..."
Then it was time to sleep. The wine had been drunk, the verses spoken, and the darkness crept over them. For a time, at least...
A dream. A dream of an empty tomb and rotting bodies. Except for one single body which stood and walked for the doorway. But there were demons that sprang from nowhere, grasping the body and flinging it down among the corpses, and commanded it to stay dead. Always and everywhere there were slavering, keening demons...
Then Hurkos lost the thread of the alien thoughts and the trio woke as one. They were all perspiring. The dim glow of the lamps seemed suddenly too dim for the circumstances.
"Not mine again?" Sam asked.
"Relayed from whatever implanted your hypnotic commands. Very far away."
But the odor of spoiled flesh had carried over into reality.
"Well," Gnossos said, grumbling and standing, "I cant sleep now."
They agreed.
"So lets go sightseeing again. Maybe the next command will be coming along soon now anyway."
"Where to?" Hurkos asked. "Is it far? My feet still hurt."
"Not far," Gnossos assured them. But they knew a short step to this giant was two steps to them and a little stroll might turn into an arch-breaking trek. "There are a number of these places we could go. This ones just around the corner. Its called the Inferno."
* * *
VIII
The Inferno was a bar. But more than a bar, a total experience. Everything in the place was geared to some sensory stimulation. Ebony and silver clouds drifted through the rooms and half-rooms, sifted in and out of alcoves and cubbyholes, some just for effect, some carrying scantily dressed performers. Floor panels popped open unexpectedly like the tops of jack-in-the-boxes, spewing out clowns in imagi-color costumes that were purple, yellow, red, green, or white, according to ones mood. The shimmering fabrics manifested themselves in many ways, shifting color to match your feelings, even as they cheered you up. The floor revolved at a different speed than the walls and in a different direction than the ceiling. Strobe lights flashed. Smello-symphonies flushed through the room, twisting the patrons senses to moments of synasthesia where music became an olfactory sensation of indescribable delectability. The erotic cygian perfumes seeped through the air in blue mists, enflaming nostrils and tying the mass of total experience into a congealed whole that throbbed with each wave of the odoriferous substance.
They took a table in the corner, one almost hidden by shadows. The robotender in the center of the table delivered their drinks once Gnossos had compiled an order, punched it out on the silver keys, and deposited the proper amount of coins. They sat sipping the cool liquids and watching the two dozen or so characters in the bar.
"Whats so special about this place?" Sam asked, almost choking on a heavy breath of the perfume. "It isnt unlike the Grande Hotel Lounge or a dozen other places weve been, for that matter."
"Look at the people," Gnossos said enigmatically.
Sam did. He could see no way in which they differed from empire norm in dress or habit. He said so.
"Look more closely," the poet urged. "Look at their faces."
Sam swung his gaze from the ruddy face to the more distant visages. And it was in their faces. The longer he watched, the clearer it became to the eye. But what, exactly, was it? He searched his mind, looking for a comparison, a simile that would make the vision into words. He was just about to give up when the proper words struck him. The look in these faces was much like the look in the faces of the scooterbeasts when they were penned in zoos. In a natural state, the scooterbeast moved as quickly as lightning across a storm sky. They were spinning, careening blurs to the eye. Penned, they pressed their faces to the glass walls and looked mournfully toward freedom, wishing to move again, to travel, to be lightning, to do what was denied them. "I see it," he said to Gnossos.
"Theyre Unnaturals."
"The ones-"
"Who would like to kill," Gnossos completed. "They are defects born with many of the old faults: with the desire to kill, an overwhelming greed, and bent toward self-gratification. There is nothing the government can do but take them and make them Sensitives. If they hurt anyone, they also feel the pain. Only ten times worse. Any pain they inflict is returned tenfold to their own nervous system. If they aid someone, they feel the other persons pleasure. If they kill someone, they feel the death throes and terminal spasms ten times more intensely than the victim. None of them could tolerate that. They do not, therefore, kill or hurt."
"And they look so normal," Sam said.
"Outside. Outside, Sam. But on the inside-"
"He knows about the Unnaturals," Hurkos said, "but he did not know about the Mues. Thats rather curious."
"Well consider it over another drink," Gnossos said. He placed the order, deposited the coins, waited for the liquor. None came. He pounded the robotender once, then bellowed for the human tapkeeper who was polishing glasses behind the bar. He was growing red-faced as he had been when his ship had collided with Sams. A false anger put on merely for the pleasure of appearing furious. The tapkeeper opened the gate in the bar and crossed the room with strides as sure and quick, almost, as Gnossos. In his eyes glittered the tenseness, the trapped expression of the scooterbeast with his nose to glass.
"This thing is broken!" Gnossos roared. "I want my money back!"
"Here," the human bartender said, flipping three coins to the poet. "Now all of you had better leave-please."
"Why?" Sam asked. This was the second time he had encountered genuine rudeness-once with the Christian, now with the Unnatural. It puzzled him.
"This is not a Natural bar."
"Youre a natural if I ever saw one," Hurkos mumbled.
The bartender ignored the wit.
"We are allowed service anywhere," Gnossos boomed. "Naturals and Unnaturals are not segregated!"
Shuffling his feet, a bit cowed, or taking a new line of tact, perhaps, the tapkeeper said, "Its just for your own safety that I ask." There was a mixure of fear and general uneasiness in his eyes now.
"Was that a threat?" Gnossos said, astonished. "Am I with the uncivilized?"
"Not a threat. Its for your own safety, as I said. Its b
ecause of him-that one."
They followed the tapkeepers thumb as it jerked toward the man standing at the far corner of the bar. The stranger was clutching a glass of yellow liquid, taking large gulps of it without effort, swishing it about in his mouth as if it were mouthwash, chugging it down without a tear. He was huge, nearly as big as Gnossos, red-haired and red-eyed. His hammy hands clenched into fists, unclenched to grab his drink. Though physically a bit smaller than the poet, he had muscle where Gnossos had run somewhat to fat. The corded masses of tissue that were his arms seemed able to snap anything or anyone to pieces.
"Whos he?" Gnossos asked.
"Black Jack Buronto."
"Youve got to be kidding," Hurkos said, slumping even further into his chair. "You must be."
"Henry Burontos his name, but he wins all the time at the gaming tables, so they call him Black Jack. And he carries one too-a blackjack, that is."
A great many Unnaturals carried crude weapons, wishing they could use them, but never daring to because of the pain echoes that would engulf their sensitized brains. Clearly, Gnossos was fascinated by Buronto. Here was someone a bit different. A poet is, of course, a man of insight if he is a poet of any worth. But he is not a jaded guru if he is fascinated by things unique. Indeed, it is just such a fascination that he needs to hone his mind on. Buronto was unique. Here was someone smiled on by Fortune at the gambing tables. Here was someone, perhaps, stronger than himself. And here was someone, for some reason, to be feared.
"Hes dangerous," the tapkeeper said.
"Dangerous because he carries a blackjack and wins at cards?"
"No. Dangerous because he would use the blackjack. He could kill all three of you-split-split-splat-just like that." The tapkeeper wrung his hands like dishcloths. He cast a glance at all three of them, searching for some sign of weakness, then looked back to Buronto.
Almost as if he had seen a signal, Buronto started across the room, directly toward them.
