The Man Who Melted

by Jack Dann

  A bomb exploded, shaking the building. The door to the apartment started to slide closed, then stopped midway.

  Something exploded in Mantle's mind. Although he had sensed it coming, he was instantly plunged into the dark spaces. He was part of the Great Scream. He was screaming for Josiane, and with every shout, he banged Pfeiffer's head against the floor. Pfeiffer still struggled, but to no avail; Mantle was on top of him.

  “Stop, for God's sake, stop,” Pfeiffer begged. “Please…I'll tell you, I—”

  But Mantle was deaf and blind to Pfeiffer. Raging, overwhelmed by hatred, fueled by the Screamers below, he struck Pfeiffer furiously. He was completely out of control. It was as if he had become a Screamer…as if he were just another gray face screaming for salvation. He was paying back a debt for all the pain Pfeiffer had inflicted upon him, for every indiscretion of the past.

  And the world was cheering him on.

  One of Mantle's blows broke Pfeiffer's windpipe, and Pfeiffer thrashed about wildly, clutching his throat pathetically. Then it was over as suddenly as it had begun. As if jerking away from a terrible nightmare, Mantle found himself looking down at Pfeiffer, whose broken face was already turning black.

  It wasn't Pfeiffer's face, but it was Pfeiffer….

  Mantle felt numbing exhaustion and a wrenching isolation. The buzzing in his head had stopped. He had nothing but his own thoughts. He held Pfeiffer in his arms, whispered in Pfeiffer's ear: “I didn't mean to kill you. Oh my God, what have I done?” He sobbed and combed his hands through Pfeiffer's bloodied hair. “I'm sorry, but it wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault….”

  Dazed, Mantle looked around the room. This place was so familiar. Pfeiffer had duplicated the apartment that they had once shared with Josiane in Syracuse…built it out of the past. Everything was here in this, the living room: the old green couch, the torn, stuffed red chair with the embroidered pillows they had all won at a country carnival. Josiane's ancient tapestry from New Zealand was even hanging on the wall.

  Mantle was suddenly filled with longing and bitter nostalgia. He could almost see Josiane sitting on the floor under the tapestry. That had always been her favorite spot in the old apartment.

  And suddenly he felt something open up inside him, uncoiling…something dark and silvery as thought.

  The circuit fantome with Pfeiffer was strong and clear and sharp. Death became the very stuff of sight. Even in death they were locked together….

  It was a deep descent, a flowing. Mantle was sliding down a spiraling silver tunnel into undulating spaces, the dead places, and Pfeiffer was no more a presence than a shadow in the dark.

  Silences, as Pfeiffer became weaker…as the icy darkness leached away his soul…and only then the taste of memories. Pfeiffer's memories. Pfeiffer's thoughts. And Mantle understood.

  Pfeiffer loved Josiane too, had always loved her; and she, in her way, had loved him. But Pfeiffer burned for her, was consumed with the idea of possessing her completely. When he found her in a New York hospital after she had gone over the deep side and become a Screamer, she was in a deep coma. He used his influence and a great deal of money to have her hospital records altered and had her taken to a place where she was immersed in a pool which would keep her alive. But she would remain in a coma, a receptacle for Pfeiffer to plug-into. Pfeiffer couldn't bear to let her die, nor could he let her live without him, so he kept her in half-life. His own guilt-ridden life was centered around hooking-into her; he was as much a junkie as an addict.

  Then the sound and taste and feel of Pfeiffer's thoughts and memories became vague, as impressionistic as a painting. Only one thought remained clear…and that was a whisper.

  Mantle heard Pfeiffer calling to Josiane, begging her to help him, even as Pfeiffer was dissolving into the dark spaces.

  And Mantle realized that Josiane was here. In this apartment.

  He could hear her calling. But she wasn't calling Pfeiffer. She was calling him.

  Mantle followed Josiane's voice, as he had once followed Joan's. He stumbled through Pfeiffer's secret apartment from one dark room to the next—until he found a locked door. He burned away the lock with his heat weapon.

  The door led into a large, dimly lit den that was soundproofed, by the look of it, and comfortably furnished. The only sound was the soughing of the filtration system.

  In the center of the carpeted room was a small, oval pool, illuminated and very bright, and there floated Josiane in viscous fluid. It was just as he had dreamed…as he had seen through Pfeiffer's eyes. He felt her speaking to him, but could not yet make out the words, even as he looked down into the pool at her, even as she stared blindly up at him. She was so white, more dead than alive, and beautiful, as if made out of eternal stone.

  His heart was pounding, and he was unable to stop himself from trembling.

  He found a psyconductor beside the pool and, kneeling, placed the cowl over his head—he wasn't going to take any chances on a circuit fantome. There was a chair beside him where Pfeiffer used to sit when he hooked-into Josiane.

  Mantle was like a junkie giving himself an injection.

  He felt the black and silver, for she was a Crier and could never return to the world of things and solidity. He felt her presence as a cold shock, and she overwhelmed him. It was as if he had been plunged into ice water.

  “Josiane,” he called, shivering as he was caught by her embrace as if he were twelve again, as if they were making love…soft ice cream….

  She was darkness and chill, and Mantle gasped, remembering.

  He loved her. He had always loved her. They completed each other. There never could have been anyone else. He remembered, all the times revealed, all the special feelings and sensations and sights and sounds recaptured forever; the childhood and adult hungers and sharing, the anger, and the pain; and, finally, he was almost whole. And she led him down, deeper into himself, through the memories which spun like the blades of propellers. He heard her voice as if he were touching her cold skin, entering her over and over, deliciously, and she whispered, “It wasn't your fault, my darling, don't blame yourself….” And finally he remembered how he had lost Josiane.

  He screamed in terror.

  He remembered the first Great Scream in New York: the crowds filling avenues and streets. Josiane had been out shopping; Mantle had been working in the apartment. Even in his soundproofed, insulated apartment, Mantle heard the scream. Frantic with worry for Josiane, he rushed out of his apartment and down into the streets. He, too, had been drawn by the Criers. Their scream was like the ariara; it was the rhythm of fire and transcendence and death, and it carried him with gale force to Josiane, who was trying to get home, who was struggling with the Screamers, with two husky boutades who were tearing at her. Mantle pushed his way through the crowd toward her. She saw him and called to him, pleading. But suddenly he felt silvery music, heard the dark, telepathic voices of the crowd, saw its thoughts, felt its longings and anger and jubilation. Its thoughts were becoming his thoughts. He was being swallowed by the crowd, and Josiane was danger and transformation and death. She was calling him deeper into the beast. If he tried to save her, he would lose himself. He turned and ran. He heard her screaming behind him, calling him desperately. She was being swallowed by the crowd, becoming a Screamer; and he didn't even turn around, lest he be dragged down, submerged in the undertow of minds.

  Everything that had happened to Josiane was his fault. He had left her, left her for the Criers, for Pfeiffer, for this….

  Mantle couldn't bear the guilt and self-loathing, and Josiane whispered, ‘It wasn't your fault…. It will pass….’

  ‘But what about Carl?’ Mantle thought. ‘I've killed him…. I've killed him.’

  ‘You've only helped him to the other side…. He's safe now…. The Criers are taking care of him. We'll all be together soon, and this time of our flesh will seem like only a bad dream….’ She drew Mantle's mind deeper into the dark spaces, into cold comfort. She leached away hi
s will, and Mantle felt her strength, reinforced by a thousand other dark minds, pulling him into the dark. ‘It wasn't your fault,’ they whispered, and the whisper echoed.

  ‘We'll save you,’ Josiane said, and she suddenly rose out of the opalescent fluid, grasped Mantle with her cold, powerful hands, and pulled him into the pool. She pulled him under, tried to drown him. Mantle broke away from her, but she pulled him down again, clinging to him like a parasite on hide. She held him under the surface, throttling him, and he felt her thoughts, her love, as a hail of ice-sharp silvery darts.

  ‘Kill me,’ she whispered. ‘My brother, my love, take me into the dark spaces. We'll take each other….’

  Everything darkened around Mantle. He was fighting for his life. But her thoughts were too strong. She commanded him, and he was helpless. Even as he snapped her neck, she called him into the dark spaces…held him under in the pool…was drowning him with sheer power of will.

  And she had him. He was lost to life, following his sister through the silver corridors of death.

  In death her hands were around his throat….

  Then Mantle felt something open up in his mind, and a piercing scream suddenly shattered the dark spaces. In that instant, he broke away from Josiane's thoughts…broke away from the telepathic nets of the Screamers. He came awake and lurched backward, breaking the surface, gulping air. He felt light and warmth and living movement. He felt his lungs working and his blood coursing. Every heartbeat was a miracle.

  And still he heard the scream.

  It was Joan. She had found him.

  He looked up at her from the pool. He blinked, still not certain of anything. He was dazed, his mind still filled with the silvery stuff of the dark spaces…with Josiane. For an instant he thought he was indeed dead. In the dark spaces. That this was a trick. But there was Joan standing near the edge of the pool and looking down at him.

  Beside him, Josiane floated facedown in the warm liquid.

  Trembling, he pulled the skull fittings from his head.

  Joan stopped screaming at him. But the horror and revulsion and terror she felt were unmistakable, palpable. Mantle felt her emotions as if she were burning with them.

  “I…I wanted to stop you,” Joan said. Her voice quavered and she could not seem to catch her breath. She was crying as a child cries. “I tried to get through to you with the circuit, but you closed me out! But you couldn't close me out entirely. I could feel where you were; and, my God, I felt it when you killed Carl. It was as if we both killed him. And I could feel Josiane making you kill her and trying to kill you. My God, I'm too late, how could you…how could I…my God, my God…. Then her eyes rolled up and she started mumbling to herself “It's not my fault…it is…it's too late….”

  She turned and ran out of the room, almost falling as she did so. She ran toward the shouts and screams coming from the streets, toward the breaking of glass, the tearing and rending.

  “Joan!” Mantle cried, coming fully to his senses, just as he had in the dolmen at Dramont Beach when the raiders attacked during the hook-in ceremony. He saw Josiane submerged beside him in the pool, and jumped back reflexively, trying to get away from the ghost-white corpse. He remembered what happened, what he had done, and felt the full front of his self-loathing. Oh God, he told himself, I've killed her. It's Josiane floating dead beside me. My sister…my love. Yet for all his grief and remorse, he couldn't quite believe that the corpse floating beside him was his sister. It was as if she had died long ago.

  Memories passed before his mind's eye, as if the past were alive once again. But now that he could remember, now that he finally had found his memories, he realized that he had changed. Although he felt grief and bone-crushing guilt over the loss of his sister, he was not in love with her. That passion was a shared childhood dream and would have been over long ago…but the Screamers took Josiane and locked Mantle out of his past.

  And now, even now, he realized that he loved Joan.

  But Joan was out on the streets…with the Screamers.

  Resolving not to let the past repeat itself, Mantle pulled himself out of the pool. “I'm sorry, Josiane. Forgive me,” he whispered; and ran out of the room, down the stairs, and through the main sensor-guarded door that had been blown open by needle bombs. The street stank of sweat, blood, and burning. Frantic, he pushed his way past old men and children, past underside women wearing rags instead of the disposable clothes issued to them daily. Crowds filled Atlantic Avenue, the side streets, and the beaches. Rioters exploded needle bombs and gasoline bottles as people were crushed underfoot, beaten, and burned. Mantle saw a police platform lase about forty people before it was overturned and blown up in the road.

  But he couldn't see Joan.

  He had to find her. She would have no chance on the streets. Not in these crowds. His only hope was to open the circuit fantome, to find her telepathically….

  Then the Great Scream shattered everything in his mind.

  There was no escape, no haven from the explosions of telepathic fire and anger that became the dark cadences of transformation. Only the silvery music could carry him smoothly from flesh to death…to safety. All he had to do was give in for an instant…. A moment would give him eternity….

  Mantle tried to protect himself from the Screamers who were randomly kicking and grabbing and punching anyone within reach. He tried to block out voices inside and outside his head, but the telepathic intensity of the crowd was overwhelming.

  A voice called in his mind, pleading, breaking through. “Ray….” It was Joan, unmistakably. The circuit fantome was alive…as was Joan. She had not been caught by the Screamers. She had kept her mind closed to them and was hiding in the rubble of an old stone fortification on the beach. Mantle could hear the thunder of the ocean, for Joan was concentrating on the sound of waves breaking on a natural jetty of high, jagged rocks…transforming it into white noise…using it to close out the Screamers around her.

  But Mantle could see where she was. He could see the ocean and jutting rocks, dark and cold as death. When she gazed upward, he could see the vertiginous webbing of the city above her. It ended several miles out to sea and gave off a dim, milky light, as if a thousand constellations of stars had been pressed together.

  “Stay where you are,” he called. “Keep yourself closed. I'll get to you.” And Mantle pushed and kicked and elbowed his way across Atlantic Avenue toward the beach. He was in as much of a frenzy as any Screamer. He would not let the Screamers take Joan. He had let them take Josiane. He would not let it happen again. He would redeem himself. They could take him, but not her.

  “Close yourself up!” Joan said, but it was too late.

  Mantle's thoughts had bled into the crowd.

  The Screamers suddenly knew where Joan was.

  He had given her away.

  “No!” he screamed, trying to push his way past the agitated Screamers.

  Suddenly, everything was deadly quiet. Everyone but Mantle stopped walking and shouting and babbling; they seemed asleep on their feet, each one dreaming the same dream, every head cocked slightly to one side or another, listening…listening. Mantle pressed between them, making the most of the moment. It was as if he were pushing his way through a throng of stinking, sweating statues. He could feel the telepathic current of the crowd. Something was about to break….

  Thousands of Screamers turned at the same time…all caught in the same collective dream.

  They turned toward the beach. Toward Joan. The fragmented groups of disoriented Screamers that were already wandering about on the beach suddenly gained purpose. They came together, then rushed Joan.

  She tried to run, but it was too late. Several boutades and a middle-aged woman grabbed her and jerked her upright. Then one of the young boutades pushed her against a cement block and tore at her dress, tore at her while the crowd looked on.

  She fought, but the others held her down…pinned her.

  She was helpless….

  Mantle c
ould see it all through Joan's mind and through the screaming mind of the crowd. The crowd was like an engine that had started again; and although nothing was engaged, it was roaring flat-out.

  He screamed, as did the others; but he was screaming for Joan. He saw them take her and use her and soil her and make her public. It was a nightmare repeating itself.

  He saw the white crust on the lip of the boutade who was raping her. He saw his narrow but guileless blue eyes. He felt Joan's pain and shock and horror…felt her last febrile thoughts before the Screamers devoured her exposed, vulnerable mind.

  Still, he fought to reach her, to help her; but the crowd was now like a wall. He couldn't get close. But he had to save her. Nothing else mattered. He had killed Pfeiffer and Josiane. And now Joan….

  “Leave her alone,” he screamed. “You can have me!”

  But his screams were lost, and he was exposed.

  Then, as they had with Joan, the Screamers turned on Mantle. Like a tidal wave, they washed over him.

  They gave Joan back to him.

  They became Joan. Each and every face was transformed. Every old woman and boutade and undercity urchin was Joan. Then, like chameleons, they changed again. Everyone took on Josiane's features. Every face turned into one face. Into Pfeiffer's. It was as if Pfeiffer were drowning him with his true face.

  Mantle felt Pfeiffer's profound pain and sorrow magnified by every Screamer in the crowd. He couldn't stand the barrage of dark remorse, the cold melancholy of death.

  He screamed. He poured out his spirit. He lost himself to the dead ghosts of those he had killed and wronged.

  He died, even though his blood coursed and his heart pounded.

  He was wrenched into the dark spaces.

  As he made his passage, he electrified the crowd into unity.

  A thousand voices joined him, and their screams spread like waves, until they became a sheet of noise, solid and dark and metallic, an outpouring of the dark spaces. The sound was coherent, a verbal lasing.

  And Mantle was the insect around which the cocoon of sound had been woven. He had become the crystal when he killed Pfeiffer. When he killed Josiane. Now he was the seed. Now he was the field, a field of black and silver upon which the many would turn into the One.