Cale smiled.
The money came slowly, but by the time he closed the case he’d collected enough for a warm meal and a hot bath. Tonight he would retire clean and satisfied, content in the fact that he would be spending money he had earned fairly and honestly.
After his audience had dispersed, Cale continued walking the sandy ground, going from stall to stall with only one purpose in mind. He recognised the man as soon as he saw him: he was leaning nonchalantly against a wooden support, smoking a pipe and showing no interest in his tatty little stall. He appeared to be selling brass pots, copper kettles, and other salvaged goods, but Cale knew better.
“I have Vee,” he said without preamble. The man took the pipe from between his lips and glanced at Cale from beneath the rim of a tall top hat. His eyes were bloodshot, the tear ducts shot to pieces. As well as being a dealer, he obviously indulged heavily in his own product.
“Come this way,” he whispered, a slow smile creeping across his face like a stain. When he stalked awkwardly towards a rundown lean-to structure with a canvas tent attached, Cale saw that the man had three legs – one of them small and stunted and virtually unusable. Another botched home-clip.
Inside the tent the man grabbed a stool and sat down at a low wooden table, tucking back his extra limb. He put away his pipe and took a roll of plaid material from a shelf near the floor. When he unfurled the package, Cale saw that it contained what he recognised as a testing kit. Fair enough, the man knew his stuff.
“Where is it from?” he asked, setting up his apparatus on the stained tabletop.
“The London Islands,” said Cale, taking the other seat without being invited to do so.
The man looked up from his work, narrowing his reddened eyes. “The gillmen?”
“Yes. I have a contact.”
“Then you’re a lucky man,” said the dealer. “Everyone I know who ever tried to do business with a gillman is dead. Sunk to the bottom of the sea.”
The gillmen cultivated the lichen known as Vee in deep caves and clefts beneath the surface of uncharted waters; they ate nothing else, existing solely on this sweet fruit of the sea. They were a tribe who’d been radically modified, and spent most of their time submerged. The artificial gills they’d had installed meant that they could breathe for long periods beneath the water, and they were feared throughout the civilised landmasses as ferocious warriors, fearless pirates, and top-flight scavengers. Few uplanders were allowed to deal directly with the notoriously private tribe, but Cale had saved the life of a gillman long ago and was respected by their ranks.
Once synthesised, Vee produced the drug known as Vapid. Cale had been selling raw material on behalf of the gillmen for years now, and knew that wherever he ventured he’d have a market. A drug like Vapid created its own demand: the high it offered could be duplicated by nothing else, and the only known side effect from overuse was burst blood vessels in the eyes.
It helped people get through the days; the nights took care of themselves.
Thirty minutes later Cale was ten thousand Euros richer. He went looking for the wasp-waisted girl from earlier that morning. He had been without the pleasures of a woman for months, and her easy banter had appealed to him in ways that he’d thought forgotten.
She was easy to find – they always were. He simply headed for the end of town that generated the most noise, and followed his instincts from there.
Skin bars and cantinas lined the shimmering streets. Streetside serving ‘noids chattered for attention. Faulty neon signs and hand-painted posters advertised dubious after-dark delights. He was offered the chance to see a woman perform with a genetically mutated horse, or two genitally enhanced men manipulating a female dwarf. These were low times, bad times, and the level of entertainment reflected the loss of morality in the world. After the last Great War, humanity had turned in on itself, and when the Rains came the malaise had turned into a kind of self-consumption, or cannibalism of the psyche. People were eating themselves alive from the inside out. But now the Rains had stopped, and all that remained in the puddles was a tired, drenched corpse.
Technology had advanced in great leaps since the global weather changes; mankind had adapted to the rising waters and invented means of living with the inclement conditions rather than trying to control them: turbines to generate power, basic mechanoids to work out in the wet, grand vessels for transportation.
Society was forced to adapt, to modify. To evolve. But vital elements of what it meant to be human were inevitably left behind in the rush.
“Changed your mind, pilgrim?” She had come up behind him, and again her hand went to his chest as he spun around. Her fingers were overlong, the nails painted bright crimson. Nine of them. Red as fresh blood.
She led him upstairs, to a single room above a bar it amused Cale to see was called The Moby Dick. When she closed the door the lights flickered. He lay on the bed and watched her undress. That slender waist made her look like a pink sapling: her legs had been scraped, leaving only essential muscle and bone beneath a thin layer of epidermis, and the lower half of her body formed a narrow trunk. Above that, her upper torso - the bottom three ribs removed - represented the densely clustered branches.
The image stayed with him as she took off his clothes, and she had to work hard to retain his interest. He paid her extra to sleep next to him: the comfort of a stranger was sometimes all a man needed to get him by.
That and a fix of Vapid.
As she snored on top of the dirty sheets, he slipped away and into the bathroom. It was cramped in there, and the sink was stained with what looked like dried blood, but he needed little room and even less hygiene for what he was about to do. He took a tube of Vapid from his saxophone case and broke the seal. Tipping back his head, he upended the neck of the tube over his right eye.
First there came the pain, which was quickly replaced by the blissful warmth, and then the numbness. Within thirty seconds the drug had entered his system via the lacrimal apparatus and emotional equilibrium had been restored. Soon he felt able to return to the girl’s side.
He stood over the bed and watched her sleep. Her skin was so pale that it looked blue, and the veins stuck out on her arms and hideously hacked legs. He could not recall the last time he’d seen a woman that he found attractive. If it wasn’t extreme body modifications, it was deep scarifications, or clumsy cuts and burns.
Nobody wanted to look like themselves anymore.
His hands began to ache, and, slightly puzzled, he opened his fists and held them out before him. Blood ran freely from a small hole that appeared in each palm; and as he watched, the blood turned weak and watery, finally running clear.
Cale raised his right hand to his mouth, licked the moisture. It tasted salty, like tears.
He lay down next to the girl, and after what seemed like hours he finally fell asleep.
“You don’t even have a tattoo?”
He rolled over onto his side, flipping off the sheet. His exposed skin was smooth, unmarked, and her hungry gaze travelled the length of his body. Despite the bar fights he’d been in, and the numerous occasions when he had been attacked and beaten by bandits, Cale had no scars on his body. He always healed without leaving so much as a blemish. It had never bothered him; it was just who he was.
“I’ve never met…what I mean is, nobody I ever knew was unmodified. It just isn’t done.” She bit her bottom lip with her top front teeth.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He leaned across her mutilated form and took her lighted cigarette from the ashtray on the cabinet by the side of the bed. It was a home-rolled job; the tobacco tasted like dried wooden pulp. “I’ve met plenty of people without mods.”
But he hadn’t. Try as he might, he could not picture the last person he’d spoken to who had been free of markings or adaptations. Mostly it was an extra finger, or perhaps a bifurcated tongue. The people of Squid City had taken the concept to extreme levels, but every tribe had its signature. Everyone needed to belong.
But Cale had never felt the urge to belong to anyone, not even to himself. And wasn’t that the real reason for his endless travels? To find himself? To discover where he fit in?
“You have to meet Given,” said the girl, pulling him from his reverie. Her nine fingers played a silent concerto across his tight belly, and her eyes and mouth promised more music to come. This time free of charge.
“Who’s Given? A local shaman?”
“Sort of,” she said, moving away from him to lie on her back. Her painfully flat stomach was almost level with the mattress, only her spine getting in the way. “He’s a seer. A visionary. He knows things. And for years he’s been telling anyone who’d listen that a man without modifications would come, a true and pure human who will lead us all to a new place. A dry place.”
Fuck, thought Cale. Another zealot. The damn world is full of them.
Religion had been forgotten in the tumult of the Rains. He knew from books he had read that at first people had blamed divine intervention: they said that God was sending a new flood and mankind must build a new ark. But once the oceans rose, and it became obvious that the events were the result of Mother Nature turning ferociously on her polluters, all that biblical talk was soon forgotten.
And now, almost forty years after the Rains had stopped, the concept of God had been drowned alongside those of good and evil. Things just were. They happened. And people adjusted, modified. They got on with things.
“Well?” she said, impatient and desperate for his answer. There was desire in her eyes, and also something that he recognised as awe. It was a thing he’d only ever seen once before, and it troubled him. But it also made him want to go further, to dig deeper.
“I’ll meet this Given,” he said, surprising himself. “Later tonight.”
“Okay,” she said, barely able to contain her excitement. “Downstairs, at midnight. Come here, to The Moby Dick.”
He returned to the longboat and slept, only waking when the shifting hull of the vessel bumped loudly against the dockside. Greasy sweat coated his face, matted his hair, and there was that dull pain in his hands again. He held them out before him, squinting in the darkness, and saw that his palms were moist.
When he looked outside it was dark, and lights had come on across Squid City. He could see a soup of naked flame and sickly neon: lurid splashes across the night. He glanced down at his palms: the flow of water had slowed, but still pumped at a steady rate.
I may be unmodified by the hand of man, he thought, but something else is changing me, adapting me. Is this evolution or something else?
On the deck of his boat there sat a jar of olives with a note attached to the lid. Cale had not seen an olive in years.
He opened the jar, popped one into his mouth. The taste almost felled him it was so intense.
He unfolded the note to read what it said:
An offering. To purity.
That was all. Four words; and each of them sent a thrill of fear along his spine. The girl was obviously insane, but wasn’t everybody these days? He thought of the gillmen, of their silent night-time creepy-crawls, and the bloody havoc they’d wreak upon those land-bound souls who spoke out against them.
Yes, everyone was mad.
It was time to go.
As he walked the streets he felt all eyes upon him. Lacerated eyelids flickered behind window shades, triple and quadruple footsteps resounded in hidden rooms. The residents of Squid City were spying on him, tracking his progress: the girl had already told them what she had found.
Cale looked again at his hands. The clear stigmata had finally stopped, and the holes in his palms had closed up, leaving not a mark. He was confused, frightened. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
People joined him as he walked, ducking out from shadowy doorways and dropping from low flat roofs. Acolytes following what they obviously perceived to be a messenger or a prophet. But Cale was no emissary, no chosen one. He had nothing to give but his own lack of meaning. He was an empty shell, a husk.
But still they followed, keeping back a respectable distance and saying nothing, not even to each other.
By the time Cale reached The Moby Dick they numbered in their hundreds. When he entered the building they remained outside, sitting down on the damp cobbles and lowering their heads in what looked for the entire world like an act of group prayer.
The girl was sat next to an old man with an extra head grafted to the side of his neck. This secondary cranium was dead, and hung like a tumour, its face slack, skin as creased as untreated leather.
“Welcome,” he said, standing but showing no welcoming hand. “He dropped his gaze to the tabletop, and Cale saw that the table held another gift.
It was only then that he noticed the rest of the jars, lined up on other tables, the bar, and across the wet wooden floor.
“They have offered the only thing they think fit. They have given of themselves.” The man walked around the table and picked up one of the jars, holding it out to Cale as if he was offering him liquid refreshment.
The jar contained a pickled hand. Another held a slow-spinning foot.
These were the parts of the denizens of Squid City that had been surgically removed. The imperfections, the unwanted pounds of flesh.
Cale felt sick; he turned to leave.
Acolytes blocked the door – and the street. They had no intention of letting him go.
“You are the unmodified,” said Given, closing his eyes and placing a hand on his heart. “The last living human to remain unadorned.
“You are legend.”
Cale held out his hands: they were bleeding water. Water ran down his face, from a wound in his forehead, and blinded him. He felt water flooding from a hole that opened up in his side.
Then other hands were upon him, dragging him down and along the floor. He felt himself being hoisted upward, but could see nothing through the barrier of modified limbs.
What was he? What had he become? Water poured down his wrists, along his arms, and he felt uplifted in a way that was more than physical.
When they carried him outside and nailed him to the makeshift wooden cross he felt no pain: only an acute sense of forgiveness. They knew not what they did, and he realised that they were acting only as they thought they should, as they’d been taught. This was not real. It was faked. Just like everything they’d ever done was false, empty, lacking in human warmth and motivation.
These people had given up their humanity long ago, and now they were acting out a fantasy, an illusion: creating a new myth. The savage modifications they’d applied to their own bodies had been the only way they could think of to search for spirituality inside themselves, and when something else – something external – came along to threaten that, they acted true to type.
They lifted Cale into the night and took him down to the dock. He saw his boat gently rising and falling on small, choppy waves. The girl with nine fingers was sitting on the deck eating olives. She was smiling.
When they tipped him upside down and dropped him into the water, Cale did not feel sinned against. Instead he felt cleansed, purified. He was modified at last.
JUICE
by
STAN NICHOLLS
There had been a leakage of Joy.
‘Siren?’ Duthie asked hopefully, his finger hovering over the button.
Busy negotiating the van through rush hour traffic, Anders ground the gears and said nothing.
‘Can we?’ Duthie persisted. ‘It is an emergency, isn’t it?’
Anders glanced at his young trainee. ‘Not a category one.’ He cracked a smile. ‘But go ahead.’
Duthie grinned back and jabbed the button. The siren began whooping. Red and amber lights flashed.
Anders put his foot on the accelerator. ‘You’ve not been on one of these call-outs before, have you, Bob?’
‘No. I’m really looking forward to it.’
‘Don’t get too excited. We’ll be dealing with one of
the more benign distillates, so it’s fairly routine. But we still have to take precautions.’
‘Against Joy?’
‘Sure. In its way it can affect us just as much as the stronger essences. We’ll need clear heads to get the job done.’
‘So we have to wear the gear?’
‘’fraid so.’
‘Not keen on that.’
‘Like I said, this isn’t a category one, so we’ll probably get away with just the masks.’
‘What about it being absorbed through our skin?’
‘It’d have to be a hell of a leak to do that. And according to the reports it’s not that bad.’
‘But bad enough to get us out.’
‘It’s what they pay us for.’ He rounded a corner at speed. The screech of tyres had pedestrians’ heads turning.
‘So what happens when we get there?’
‘The main thing is to try to ignore any members of the public who’ve copped an overdose. The police and the paramedics deal with that. We concentrate on our job. Got it?’
Duthie nodded.
‘I mean it about punters who might have been affected,’ Anders stressed. ‘If you’ve not seen a fracture before you might find it a bit … much.’
‘I know what essences do.’
‘You know what they do in properly controlled doses. A fracture’s something else. So stick with me and do exactly what I tell you. Understood?’
‘Understood, chief.’
Their destination was marked by an assembly of police cars and ambulances. A cordon had been set up around a squat, red brick building, and officers were trying to disperse a small crowd on the opposite side of the road.
Anders killed the siren and pulled up a short distance from the scene. While Duthie fished out the respirators and a toolbox, Anders flipped open the glove compartment and reached for an atmospheric hazard detector. A sniffer, as the operatives commonly referred to them. Then they put on their masks and left the van.
As they approached the cordon they saw that the police and ambulance crews were wearing masks too.
Vivisepulture Page 12
