‘I am prepared to punish them.’
‘I know. Perhaps that is enough.’
‘You know what I think?’ Wraxilan said. ‘This experience has sharpened you, made you strong. You’re a changed har, my friend. Use it to your advantage. Work well for me, and you’ll keep a good position.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Jarad said.
‘I heard you visited Velisarius today,’ Wraxilan said, in a tone that was just a shade too casual. ‘I hope he fixed you.’
Jarad shrugged. ‘Just about. I’ll be healed in a day or so.’
‘Good. I look forward to that.’
Jarad inclined his head. The meaning was clear.
Wraxilan stood up. ‘Well, get Viss to find you a room around here somewhere. I’ll see you later.’
‘Happy now?’ Jarad asked, once he and Lianvis were alone.
‘What?’ Lianvis appeared to have been lost in thought.
‘I did what you wanted. I’m back with a vengeance.’
‘Are you?’
Jarad stood up. ‘So find me a room.’
Lianvis hesitated. ‘Wraxilan’s is not the only way, Jarad. It’s good to be part of his troupe, but the heart doesn’t have to go where the body goes.’
‘I’ll talk to your healer friend if it’s what you want,’ Jarad said. ‘But now, I’m just tired.’
‘Then let’s go.’
They found a disused room, or rather an abandoned room, because there were some bits of furniture in it: a bed, a chest of drawers, lots of clothes and rubbish lying around. Someone had left this room one day intending to return, but had never done so. Jarad took off his uniform. He’d never wear it again. He’d wear the clothes a dead har had left behind.
Lianvis appeared anxious about something. Jarad didn’t know what. ‘I’m not going out into the club again tonight,’ he said. ‘Want to stay here with me?’ He sat down on the bed, which was low to the floor, just two thin mattresses on top of one another, covered by a grimy quilt.
‘Okay.’ Lianvis sat down beside him. ‘You seem really distant, Jarad.’
The balance of power had shifted. It had begun from the moment they’d set foot in the club.
‘I’m here,’ Jarad said.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Fine.’ He put a hand on Lianvis’ shoulder. ‘You made me an offer, remember?’
‘Perhaps you should wait.’
‘What I’m planning won’t hurt me.’
Lianvis smiled uncertainly. ‘I see.’
‘I want to fuck you,’ Jarad said flatly. ‘So deep it hurts.’
Lianvis moved away from him slightly. ‘Don’t call it that. It’s not that.’
Jarad laughed coldly. ‘Well, I don’t know what you’ll be doing, but I’ll be fucking.’
Lianvis stood up, leaving Jarad to bite only at empty air where once Lianvis’s neck had been. ‘That’s not it. You say you despise the others? Now you sound like them.’
Jarad leaned back on his elbows. His face was inscrutable.
‘What we can do together transcends…’ Lianvis’s voice trailed off. He must see he didn’t really have an audience.
‘I know what it is,’ Jarad said. ‘I thought we had a deal.’
‘We did.’ Lianvis sat down again, raked his hands through his hair.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Jarad asked. ‘I bet you’ve laid all of Wraxilan’s phyle and half of every other one in Carmine. What’s so different now?’ He grinned slowly. ‘No… don’t tell me it’s that!’ He laughed aloud. ‘Do you think you’re kelos over me, Viss? Is that it?’
‘If you’re not careful,’ Lianvis said, ‘your bitterness will be your undoing, Jarad. A bad thing happened to you. But you are Wraeththu. Get over it.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘No.’ Lianvis paused. ‘I’m not kelos over you, but I am learning new things. One of them is that sex isn’t just for mindless gratification. For us, it can be different.’
‘How so?’
‘It can be like a drug, a natural high. It can give us power, real power. I’ve seen it. If you go into it with an open mind, you can go anywhere.’ He laid a hand on one of Jarad’s arms. ‘Let me show you.’
Jarad’s eyes were still cold, but he said, ‘OK. Whatever you want.’
‘Share breath with me.’
They lay down together, and in their sharing it was clear that Lianvis was trying to project what was precious and divine about their potential union. When Jarad reached to undo Lianvis’s trousers, Lianvis stayed his hand. Jarad pulled away from him. ‘Viss?’
‘Wait,’ Lianvis said. ‘Share breath for longer.’
Drawing out the memories was like pulling shards of glass from Jarad’s flesh, but Lianvis made him do it. He relived those harrowing hours when the Uigenna had abused and violated him. They had done terrible things, far worse than Lianvis would have imagined. It was more than simple resentment or envy that drove them, much more. It was self-hatred too, and terror of what they had become.
When they broke the kiss, Jarad was shuddering, his face pressed into Lianvis’s hair.
‘You had to face it,’ Lianvis said. ‘Understand that.’
Jarad raised his head. He felt very tired, weary of life itself. ‘Your foreplay sucks,’ he said.
A week later Jarad saw two of the hara who had changed his life to darkness. Given the close-knit nature of their community, he was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. The moment he saw them, he acknowledged this and realised he’d been waiting. They were with a third har he didn’t know. They weren’t slouching around looking menacing or slinking in a pack down some twilit alley; they were horsing about in the sunlight, unloading foodstuffs from a truck, throwing sacks to each other. Laughing.
A needle went through Jarad’s heart. The carefree laughter pained him more than if they’d turned and recognised him, growled insults, spat in his face.
Lianvis was trying to educate him, Jarad knew. But Jarad was impatient with the carefully-worded sentiments about how hara could be great and good. All Jarad saw were monsters, made even more monstrous because they were beautiful. Talk of the world being gifted to a superior race was nonsense to him. Who were they kidding? Most of the time, the hara around him behaved like characters in a bad B-movie of a post holocaust world. Posturing, strutting, dressing up, learning how to sneer in the best possible way, and how to carry a weapon so that it looked cool. When Lianvis said things like, ‘think of our ultimate potential,’ Jarad wanted to say, ‘Yeah, yeah, by the way, your hair looks good.’ He felt that the sarcasm of that would be lost on this new earnest Lianvis. Perhaps it was like religion – clutching at straws when the hurricane was going to blow them all away anyway.
And Lianvis was worried about Jarad – Jarad could feel it. He knew that Lianvis could sense him slipping away into a hinterland, present in body but not in mind and spirit. Jarad didn’t care. He simply didn’t know how to. And as he stared from the shadow of the porch of an abandoned store, fixing his eyes on the hara who had ruined him, he felt Lianvis touch his mind. He was like a stalker, ever vigilant, and now he melted through the sunlight, the sun behind him, hair lifted in the breeze of his own movement, tall and stately. He was dressed in close-fitting rags of burnt orange and gold. His arms were scored with tattoos. He was radiant. Like an advertisement for a better life a long time ago.
Don’t Lianvis said through mind-touch. Come away.
He is just flesh, Jarad thought, or a lovely moving image. None of it is real. He projected to Lianvis: What are you afraid I’ll do?
Nothing. It’s what you’re thinking that scares me.
Then get out of my mind. It’s not your garden.
I’m going to see Velisarius. Come with me.
Jarad sighed. I wish you’d stop trying, Viss. It’s starting to annoy me.
You don’t want me to give up on you. Not really.
Lianvis was before him now, his back to the sun so
it was hard to see his face. Jarad noticed the hara at the truck had stopped what they were doing to look at Lianvis. They didn’t even notice Jarad standing there. He was forgotten, although surely they must’ve heard the news he’d returned. Lianvis simply eclipsed him, he supposed.
Lianvis linked his arm through one of Jarad’s and firmly dragged him away, back in the direction from which he’d come. ‘Wraxilan wants your anger,’ he said. ‘Why do you give in so easily and let him have it?’
‘There’s nothing else to do,’ Jarad said.
‘You could try to stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ Lianvis said. ‘You want to hurt me by being like this. It doesn’t hurt me, though.’
Jarad was impatient with these conversations. They didn’t interest him. He wondered whether in fact he actually liked Lianvis, further than the fleeting pleasures his body could afford. And even that seemed tawdry now, another big pose. Our sex is better than humanity’s – big deal. Doesn’t make us any smarter. He decided the next time he wanted to fuck Lianvis, he’d try to step back from the sensations and see whether the whole thing was really quite boring.
‘I’m not trying to hurt you,’ Jarad said. ‘I just wish you’d wake up to the fact the world is a crock of shit.’
Velisarius was surrounded by a troupe of adoring acolytes. He really fancied himself as some kind of harish messiah, Jarad thought. Yet another posturing idiot. He was no different from Wraxilan; he just read from a different script. The hara were preparing to meditate, hanging onto Velisarius’ soft words as if they were scented apples thrown from the Tree of Life.
Jarad hoped that he wouldn’t be asked directly to take part in what they were doing. The whole idea of it embarrassed him. Perhaps Velisarius and Lianvis picked up on this. Perhaps they conversed with each via mind touch to discuss how best to handle Jarad, make him malleable. Jarad stood at the back of the room, smoking a cigarette. The smoke made beautiful slow-moving patterns in a fan of sunlight falling through a narrow window. He forced himself not to look at them, refusing to see messages there.
When the group started to chant softly, Jarad went outside. He could still hear them, but once removed from the sight it didn’t annoy him so much. He looked up at the sky. How empty it was. Not a chopper in sight. Things had changed in a short time. City Heart was a metallic glitter he could see across the river. From here, it was possible to believe life went on there just the same, as it always had. From here, in the sunlit afternoon, when most hara were asleep, it was possible to believe in some kind of future. The light was so mellow; it had always been this way. Certain sounds were archetypal and eternal. A dog barked in the distance, but there was no sound of children playing.
Wraxilan had given Jarad time to settle. The phylarch was not wrong in his assumptions. Already, Jarad was thinking that in two days’ time when the moon turned towards darkness, he would present himself at Wraxilan’s side and say ‘I am here. What do you want of me now?’ If it was raiding into the human-controlled zones, or subduing another harish phyle that Wraxilan considered might be problematical in the future, Jarad would do it. He made no distinction between human and har; neither species commanded his respect. In this, he knew, he would be very useful to Wraxilan, in the place of hara who might baulk at going against their own kind. Jarad looked down at his hands, which he held out in front of him palms down. The skin looked tired.
He did not hear Velisarius come up behind him and started when the har placed a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t like being taken by surprise and even though he knew from the first instant who it was, he was tempted to snarl, wheel round and throw a punch, just to make a point.
Velisarius laughed. ‘You would have found no target,’ he said.
Jarad shrugged, dropped the end of his cigarette to the floor, ground out its fire with his foot. He saw four cigarette butts lying in the dirt and realised he’d stood there longer than he’d thought. ‘Prayer meeting over?’ he asked.
Velisarius stood beside him, gazing at the distant City Heart. ‘You want to know what’s going to happen to Wraxilan?’ he said.
‘I think we all know,’ Jarad replied.
‘He will meet his match,’ Velisarius said. ‘He will be broken in two, but not before he breaks our Archon in two. Wraxilan has his path, washed in blood, of course. He will be reviled and feared, and Manticker will be cast down and left for dead. He may well in fact die... in one way or another. But in the end, when history looks back, Wraxilan and Manticker will both be enshrined as hara of prominence.’
‘Supposing Wraeththu survive that long,’ Jarad said drily. ‘Foraging vermin will soon die if there is nothing left to forage upon.’
Velisarius turned and gazed at Jarad with an unreadable expression.
‘You must admit,’ Jarad said, ‘their chances are slim.’
‘You still regard yourself as apart,’ Velisarius said.
‘Because I am.’
‘Yet you’re still here, after a week. You could have left easily. I don’t see anyone following you, stopping you. Wraxilan must know you better than you know yourself.’
‘I’m not interested in your talk,’ Jarad said, ‘or your prophecies. I’ll do what Wraxilan wants for a while. When it all goes bad, maybe I’ll travel.’ He grinned without humour. ‘See new lands, meet new people and kill them.’
‘You’re not a natural killer, Jarad. Why try to pretend that you are?’
Jarad grimaced. ‘Is there a point to this conversation? If you have something to say, spit it out, I’ll ignore it, then we can both get on with our day.’
Velisarius paused before answering. He pursed his lips, sighed through his nose. Jarad guessed the har was thinking it was probably a waste of breath to say whatever was coming next. He wouldn’t be wrong.
‘Don’t think I disagree with you entirely,’ Velisarius said. ‘Most of what you believe is right, and what disgusts you, disgusts me also. Uigenna can’t continue in this way; they are sleepwalking. Wraxilan is right too, in certain respects. But he understands only how to rule through fear and that is weak. It is an armour with chinks.’
‘So you choose the path of the prophet instead. It is bloodless, but no less controlling. You will preach a different brand of fear.’
Velisarius laughed softly. ‘You are wrong about me, Jarad. I’m not the sanctimonious, pious creature you believe me to be. I just can’t walk in hot blood all the time. It makes me weary. Hot blood clouds the senses. You must know this.’
Jarad shrugged.
‘There are other ways,’ Velisarius continued, ‘and only a fool would think they are without pain, trial, cruelty and terror. That is our legacy; we cannot avoid it. Our kind is fated to evolve from horror and we might all have to do terrible things to plant seeds of growth.’
‘Do you know this off by heart? Do you have it written down?’ Jarad snarled. ‘It will make a great holy book some day.’
‘I know it off by heart,’ Velisarius replied drily. ‘But only because it is a universal truth.’ He paused again. ‘OK, enough talk. I’ll get to the point. Wraxilan wants your talents because he thinks they will help him. I want you for the same thing, but I think I can offer you more in return. Interested?’
Jarad laughed in a forced way. The question demanded that response. ‘You mean you’re planning to overthrow Wraxilan?’
‘No, I am planning on taking the hara in whom he probably isn’t interested anyway to create a new tribe. This will be a tribe who relearns the lessons we have lost in the debris of humanity’s fall. We will learn new lessons also. It is time for us to reach towards our potential. It is not here, grubbing in filth and squabbling like rabid dogs amongst ourselves. As part of the way to accomplish this, I realise we will need hara like you, hara with that cold fire, but also with intelligence. I don’t want mutton heads.’
‘You mean like a body guard, or a militia?’ Again Jarad laughed. ‘You won’t get away with it. Wraxilan might not be interested in the prayer-boys you have, but he
won’t look kindly on anyone hiving off. You know that. He’ll pursue you, wipe you out. And, by the way, there is nothing you can offer me he can’t.’
‘Well, there is, but you won’t see it just yet.’
‘You’re a fool to trust me. I’ll go back and report all this. Wraxilan will be pleased with me. I’ll earn points with him. Are you insane?’
‘You won’t tell him,’ Velisarius said quietly. ‘I’m not a fool. Give me a cigarette.’
Jarad did so. He had to admit that, in spite of himself, he was intrigued. But he didn’t want to believe that what Velisarius suggested was possible, because it would spoil his cynical view of Wraeththu.
‘We would have to go far from here,’ Velisarius said, accepting the light Jarad offered him. ‘We will have to go at the moment the young wolf goes for the throat of the old wolf. In that moment, we will be ready and our departure will not be noticed. The phyles will rise up and the power struggle for Uigenna will begin.’
‘Manticker,’ Jarad murmured. He felt a clutch about his heart; he had to admit Velisarius was right. ‘Will it be soon?’
‘You feel it,’ Velisarius said.
‘Are you ready?’
‘Mostly.’ Velisarius fixed Jarad with a stare. ‘I don’t say the things I do to try and impress you. It’s simply information you might find useful. Be prepared and alert. While the plans are in motion, the outcome is not yet decided. There are always hidden variables.’
‘I’m touched that you care.’
Velisarius laughed without humour. ‘It’s not care, Jarad. Like I said, you’d be useful to me too.’
Wraxilan did not live, as Jarad had expected, in some harsh industrial space where the light was like metal. He lived in a ruin, yes, a shopping mall that had been turned to legend by wisteria. It had once grown in the central plaza; now it grew everywhere, nourished perhaps by corpses beneath the green. In places there were carpets of a trailing vine with small leaves.
Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu Page 37
