The Man Who Melted

by Jack Dann

  Mantle glimpsed a man in Joan's dream. He had a wide, fleshy face, high forehead, brown and gray hair which was thinning in the front but thick in the back and worn shoulder-length in the boutade fashion. The man looked to be about fifty; his pale, blotched skin was natural and wrinkled. Just a man growing old: a man who couldn't afford to, or didn't want to rejuvenate.

  But there was something disquietly familiar about him.

  The man's image disappeared and reappeared in Joan's mind as if he were one of Mantle's painted subliminals. Mantle was awake now, barely, and he concentrated on this one thread of dream, blocking out everything else—all the good things he had wanted to say and think and feel about Joan: his feelings of love that he had wanted to reinforce in her dreaming mind.

  Joan groaned, thrashed about for a few seconds, then became quiet again. In her dream, the man sat at a metal table in a shabby, dusty room, a kitchen. A soiled blue-and-white drape separated the kitchen from the bedroom/living room. The susurration of the ocean could be heard—close, by the sound of it—and there were paintings on the peeling walls, even in the kitchen. Perhaps they were holos….

  But one of the paintings was Mantle's. It was a portrait of Josiane that he had painted years ago.

  Mantle listened, privy to Joan's thoughts, and he could hear the workings of the man's mind in Joan's dream. The man was idly thinking about Josiane. Then he stopped writing and thought about Mantle for an instant. He felt a black rush of guilt….

  Suddenly, Mantle realized who the man was. And Mantle was electrified. His heart beat so fast that it seemed to be in his throat.

  The man in the dream was Pfeiffer! Pfeiffer was alive!

  Even though Pfeiffer had had a face change, Joan knew him. She had a circuit fantome with him, too. She knew where he lived, where he walked, what he did. She knew the numbers on the streets, the webbings of his thoughts—all obscured, as if by distance.

  Mantle tore out of the circuit like a disoriented patient waking up to find himself catheterized, pulling away in shock and pain. He sat bolt upright in bed. His breath was short; his sweat drew icy lines down his back. Beside him, Joan was curled up and making crying noises in her sleep, as if she were aware of what had just happened; but now that Mantle had pulled out, she settled down and seemed to be drifting deeper into unconscious, dreamless sleep.

  She lied to me, tricked me, Mantle thought. She knew all along that Pfeiffer was alive. She was using me on his behalf, the bitch. Mantle could now only see Joan's face as it had looked when she rose out of the pool in Dramont to kill him. Everything was a lie but that. She wanted me dead, Mantle told himself. But why? And why would Pfeiffer want me dead? Surely she was doing it for Pfeiffer….

  Everything, the whole world, had changed in an instant, switched from white to black, from day to the most bitter night.

  Mantle flicked on the lights to bright, and Joan awakened with a start. “Whatisit…honey? Dim the lights….”

  “You knew all along, didn't you?” Mantle said. He was seething with coherent, directed hatred.

  “What are you talking about?” Joan asked, propping herself against one of the pillows, wiping the sleep from her eyes; but Mantle slapped her hard in the face, then slapped her again. “My God, Ray, stop it, please. What's wrong, what's—”

  Mantle felt as if he were distanced from himself, lost somewhere in the eye of a dark, emotional storm, caught in some purgatory between the bright and dark spaces, lost and helpless. “You knew about Pfeiffer all along. You knew he was alive. Why did he want you to kill me in Boulouris? Tell me that.” And if Pfeiffer's still alive, what does he know about Josiane? Mantle asked himself. This must be about Josiane; it has to be.

  “Ray, snap out of it!” Joan said, pleading. “What's come over you?” She reflexively moved away from him toward the other side of the bed for protection. “I don't know anything about Carl except that he's dead. You said you saw him die yourself…. Darling, please try to come to grips with yourself. You must have been dreaming. It was only a dream.”

  “I saw him in your mind!” Mantle said, stepping around the bed toward Joan. “That was no dream. Now tell me what's going on. Why didn't you tell me that Pfeiffer was alive. You knew!”

  “Ray, please, I don't know what you're talking about,” Joan said, stepping backward, away from Mantle. “Stop this, I'm frightened….”

  “Then tell me the truth!” Mantle grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her as if she were some sort of defective machine. She tried to break away from him, but he was out of control. He held her arm with one hand and slapped her face with the other. He slapped her over and over again until she collapsed on the bed; and then, as if it had a capricious life of its own, the circuit between Joan and Mantle was suddenly restored and Mantle saw into her, saw that she hadn't known about Pfeiffer until just now. It had all been buried in her mind, hidden. She had had some slight circuit with Pfeiffer but couldn't bring herself to recognize him, even in her dreams.

  “Oh God, I'm sorry,” Mantle said to Joan, who moaned and wiped her bleeding nose and mouth on the sleeve of her nightgown. She was crying and having trouble catching her breath. Mantle felt soiled, filled with guilt. He had wronged her again. What he had done could not be undone. He wanted to reach out to her, hold her, even though fear and revulsion were radiating from her like blistering heat.

  Then everything seemed to cloud over and harden into silver and darkness. Mantle cocked his head to the side as he listened to a small voice whispering in his mind…. He was hearing Pfeiffer's thoughts, feeling Pfeiffer's emotions as Pfeiffer stood on the edge of a pool of pearly, viscous fluid and watched Josiane floating below. In that instant, Mantle realized that he, too, had a circuit fantome with Pfeiffer.

  He remembered when he had smashed into Josiane in the dark spaces. Had he connected with Pfeiffer then, too…?

  Mantle was seeing Josiane through Pfeiffer's eyes, and Josiane was calling to him through Pfeiffer.

  She was alive!

  But what had Pfeiffer done to her?

  Swept away by the violence of his emotions, Mantle grabbed his clothes and ran out of the room. Joan screamed for him to stop, and followed him, stumbling.

  “Ray, I saw it, too,” she shouted. “Please don't leave without me, don't shut me out again…. I'll go with you….” But Mantle heard only the blood pumping in his head as he ran through the foyer, past the nineteen-thirties American prints and the ornate distorting mirrors on the walls, past the robot that stood eyeless as a statue, and out the sensor-lined door that opened onto the transpod platform outside his apartment. Mantle was overwhelmed with hatred for Pfeiffer and the need to find Josiane.

  Joan followed him, but the circuit fantome between them had degenerated into a rushing noise in her head: Mantle had already blocked himself off to her so he could “hear” Pfeiffer.

  Mantle climbed into a waiting transpod and punched in random coordinates, just to get him away from Joan, who ran to the car and pounded on the transparent dome that enclosed him. “I'll be back.”

  But even as Mantle said that, he knew it was a lie. He was leaving Joan behind. In a way, he was promised…to Josiane….

  Loathing himself, he opaqued the glass; and with a jolt, the car sped away from Joan into the machinery of the city.

  But Mantle could still see Joan's agonized face, as if through the opaqued walls of the car. He could sense her in his mind, an agony. He blocked out her thoughts completely, as if he were a mason hastily patching over a broken wall.

  His circuit with Pfeiffer, although it was faint, was still open. But now he knew where Pfeiffer lived: the undercity slums of Seagate, which had once been a walled village situated on the southernmost tip of Brooklyn.

  The telepathic image of Pfeiffer watching Josiane floating in a pool still burned in Mantle's mind. What has he done with her? Mantle asked himself. Why did he lie to me? How could he know that Josiane was alive and not tell me…?

  In a rage as cold and
implacable as reason, Mantle punched in the proper coordinates.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The pod sped down Broadway, over what had once been the Williamsburg Bridge, and then south to Coney Island. It slowed down until it clicked into a small, filthy transpod station. Mantle got out and walked through the empty, foul-smelling corridors that would take him to a rollway. He was afraid, for these corridors would normally be mobbed with people. And he smelled the stink of the grido, as his Neapolitan guide Melzi had called them. He sensed the slippery minds of unseen Screamers around him.

  He heard voices calling him, whispering in his mind, talking too quickly to be understood, and it was as if he were walking through the black and silver corridors of the dark spaces.

  If Mantle hadn't known where he was, he might almost think he was beneath the surface of the moon, lost in the tunnels of a liberated colony. But he was in the undercity. What had once been sunlit and filled with those who had dreamed of retiring near the beach had become a klieg-lit cemetery for the living. Corridors widened into streets and avenues. A family of boutades hurried past Mantle.

  Everything was baited. The world was about to be crushed.

  Mantle took a rollway down Surf Avenue, which paralleled the sea, to the crumbling stone wall that divided Seagate from Coney Island. Seagate looked now, more than ever, like an ancient medieval village, a fortress that had been breached by time and by generations of those on the dole. Mantle stepped onto a rollway platform, which was deserted, and walked into Seagate.

  Empty streets, as empty as Naples.

  But he recognized where he was. He had followed Pfeiffer's spoor through that faint connection that Joan had not realized even existed. He sensed Pfeiffer as a direction, and right now he could sense that Pfeiffer was not in his apartment. Like Mantle, he was walking the undercity streets….

  Mantle kept going. Many of the kliegs were out, and the black ocean to his left was nothing but forbidding. Whitecaps crashed upon the filthy, littered beach, which was covered with shacks constructed out of garbage and oddments. Mantle felt he was being watched, as if by primitive natives, and his hand curled tightly around the heat weapon in his pocket.

  He heard a faraway keening, and slowly the streets began to fill. Everyone was quiet, waiting…and Mantle remembered something Faon had once told him: when the Great Scream finally came, the dark spaces would descend upon everyone like a veil, like a dream. There would be no fear, simply the patience of death….

  He hurried to Pfeiffer's building. It had once been white, but years of grime and pollution had settled upon it until it was camouflaged, indistinguishable from the steel and concrete world that surrounded it. Its first- and second-floor windows were bricked over, and broken stone perrons abutted the street. The building was sensor-protected: it would be impossible for Mantle to get past its sliding metal doors unless Pfeiffer was with him.

  Mantle would wait for Pfeiffer to return. He stood in the shadows beside the perrons and kept himself out of sight, but the image of Pfeiffer watching Josiane in a pool of shimmering, viscous liquid kept playing in his mind like a film loop. Pfeiffer is a thief! he thought, shivering as if caught in an ice storm of his own pain and hatred. Pfeiffer had stolen Josiane…and he had taken Mantle's past away from him as a thief a purse.

  Mantle hated Pfeiffer with all the dead weight of the years they had known each other. And he waited and watched and listened.

  The air seemed filled with electricity. Mantle could feel the crowd on the street as if it were a thought, and he remembered something he had read in Boulouris about the crystal and the seed that turn the many into the One. Suddenly, Mantle jerked backward as if a cold blade had been thrust into his flesh. He gasped, and distinctly he heard Josiane call his name. “Josiane,” he whispered, but he was left in a wake of silence. As if he had been locked into himself. He couldn't even hear the crowd's pounding waves of thought.

  Then he saw Pfeiffer making his way through the street. Even though Pfeiffer was wearing a different face, Mantle knew him. Pfeiffer was shabbily dressed—as soiled-looking and nondescript as the streets and buildings and people around him. He carried a tray of food canisters tightly under one arm. Mantle waited until Pfeiffer had climbed the few stone steps to the doorway and came up behind him. “Carl.”

  Pfeiffer quickly reached for the sensor beside the door, but Mantle grabbed his arm, pulling it down sharply. “I know it's you,” Mantle said tightly.

  “I was trying to deactivate the sensor,” Pfeiffer said nervously. For an instant Mantle could see his fright, and then Pfeiffer took himself under control. “We certainly can't stand out here,” he said calmly. “Can't you see what's brewing? It's all starting again.”

  Mantle followed him closely past the sensors and up a staircase to the second floor, which was divided into two apartments. Pfeiffers apartment was the same one Mantle had seen in Joan's dream: used furniture, untidy crash-space, nothing more.

  The first thing Pfeiffer did was tap into the computer console. A hollie appeared before him. It was a map of Europe; each area of disruption was a white number inside a black square. There was a chain of squares from Gibraltar to Palermo, all along the southern coastline. “Europe's falling to the Screamers,” Pfeiffer said. “It's worse than I expected. It's going to happen here. Christ, I can feel it in the air…and those crowds….” Only then did he take the canisters into the kitchen. When he came back into the living room, he took off his jacket and laid it carefully on the back of the green stuffed chair. “Could you believe I need food,” he said, trying to make small talk. “I forgot to buy it—too many years of calling the Net for delivery, I suppose. But there's none of that down here.” He tried to smile, but grimaced instead, “Can I fix you a drink?”

  “You lied to me,” Mantle said, and suddenly his thoughts were afire with static, other voices, and just on the edges of his perception he thought he could hear Josiane calling to him, over and over again; a constant, flooding whispering of his name. But the whispering, the jangle, the static of thought carried Mantle away, raised his anger and pain to a mind-crushing pitch. He was seething with it; but outwardly he was calm, as cold and dead as a machine.

  “Of course I lied,” Pfeiffer said. “I lied to you and Joan and everyone else I knew and loved. To protect them. What else could I do? I don't want to die, even if I have to live like this. But how did you find me?”

  Mantle was standing beside a window that overlooked the street and the ocean beyond. He tried to clear his mind, calm himself. He looked out the window at the people milling around the building as if to get closer to Mantle, who heard them as a buzzing in his head. They were in his mind, every fleshy one of them a silvery thought. And Mantle was the crystal, the seed, the mirror….

  As if in response to Mantle's inward fury, a hutch had caught fire on the beach, and it was spreading through the garbage and debris to the other shacks around it.

  Mantle pulled himself away from the window. “I found you through Joan,” he said to Pfeiffer.

  “What do you mean?” Once again Pfeiffer looked frightened.

  “You gave yourself away when you connected with her.”

  “I—”

  “You were so sure of yourself, as usual.”

  “There was no way she could have known,” Pfeiffer insisted. “I used hypnodrugs and—”

  “She learned later,” Mantle said. “You had a circuit fantome with Joan and you still do, just as you have one with me.”

  Pfeiffer seemed to jerk backward ever so slightly. The look on his face was disgust…and fear. Mostly fear. In all of Mantle's experience with Pfeiffer, he had never seen him this way: cornered like a small animal. Even on the Titanic when Mantle had chased him, Pfeiffer was composed. Of course he was composed, Mantle told himself, he had planned it all out….

  “Tell me the truth about Josiane,” Mantle demanded. “Tell me right now!” The buzzing inside his head became louder. Josiane's voice became clearer, magnified as if by a t
housand voices…and then with a jolt Mantle remembered his encounter with the Screamers in Naples. His skin broke into a cold sweat, but it was too late to stop what he had put into motion.

  “If we're connected, you should know everything….” Pfeiffer mumbled.

  “The connection's weak,” Mantle said, almost shouting to hear himself over the din of dark, silvery voices screaming in his mind: Josiane screaming his name, calling him to her, taking him over. “Don't fuck around with me, not now!”

  “I told you the truth on the ship,” Pfeiffer said, backing away from Mantle. He moved toward his writing desk.

  Mantle could feel Josiane's presence. “You're a liar!” Mantle said, shaking.

  “I told you the truth,” Pfeiffer said cautiously, but there was a slight whine in his voice. “I made a point of trying to help you so you could have a life with Joan, whom you've deserted…and at a time like this.”

  “You sonofabitch. Tell me what you've done with Josiane!” Mantle advanced toward Pfeiffer with every intention of beating the information out of him if he had to.

  Then Pfeiffer suddenly turned toward the desk, yanked open a drawer, and reached inside for a weapon. Mantle rushed forward screaming and slammed the drawer on Pfeiffer's hand. They grappled with each other for a few seconds, but Pfeiffer broke free of Mantle and in a trice was out the door and into the hallway. He touched a sensor plate on the wall, and as the door unlatched, he flung himself into the apartment that was opposite his own.

  But Mantle was right behind him, and Pfeiffer had no time to lock the door closed.

  They fell to the floor together.

  Mantle struggled with Pfeiffer, who was surprisingly strong. But Mantle overpowered him.

  And just then Mantle heard a long, dark scream inside his head. He was hearing the thoughts of the Screamers who were tearing up the streets below.

  The Great Scream had begun.