Текст книги "The Sacrifice Game"

Автор книги: Брайан Д'Амато

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Текущая страница: 41 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

(102)

“Hi, Jed.”

“Hi, Marena.”

“So how are you doing?” she asked. She put down an empty Phlegmy cup, found the food delivery, dug out a slice of salmon, folded it onto a big round water biscuit, and pushed the package five finger-widths in front of me.

“I’m good,” I said. An imaginary mosquito buzzed behind my neck. That thing I’d forgotten. Damn.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why, don’t I seem good?”

“Well, I don’t want to say you don’t seem good, but you don’t seem exactly happy, you know.”

“Maybe I just have a sad face.” I lifted out a slice and lowered it onto my plate. I took a bite. It wasn’t dry enough and the smoking was different, but it still had that great old taste. I said thanks to Great Grandfather Salmon.

“Oh, yeah… but, you know, you brought back the stuff, we’ll work out the LEON software on the Sacrifice Game, we’ll deal with it, we should all be feeling a lot better than we did two months ago.”

“Yes.” I uncapped the Tabasco sauce and shook five shake-worths onto the salmon.

“I mean, I know it’s hard to believe, but there was a time when people weren’t so blase about time travel.”

“Right.”

“You’re like Neil Armstrong or, well, you know, I hesitate to mention Christopher Columbus, obviously.”

“Thanks,” I said. “No one’s going to know about it, though, right?”

“Come on, don’t make me a schmuck. What’s it look like out there?”

“It doesn’t work too well without the drugs.”

“I know,” she said, “but still… seriously, what’s up with it? Any stock tips?”

“Uh, yeah. Buy gold and ammunition and keep them both under the mattress and stay down there with them.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know. Yes, basically.”

“Do you realize you’ve used up, like, half a bottle of Tabasco sauce?”

“Uh, no,” I said, “I guess I hadn’t noticed that.” I put down the bottle. “Thank you.” I picked up the cup of water and automatically poured a shot out on the floor for No Way. “Oops. Sorry,” I said. I found a napkin and bent down to wipe up the spill. The cup was still in my hand.

“It’s okay,” Marena said. I looked up at her. She wasn’t looking. I knocked the Tabasco sauce onto the tile floor.

“Oops again.” When I stood up I stepped on the bottle. It shattered.

“Damn,” I said. “Sorry. I am such a total mess.”

“It’s nothing,” Marena said. She started to get up.

“No, sit, I’ve got it,” I said. I squatted and picked up the pieces, getting sauce in my hands. Damn. Random perturbation. Okay. Mime washing. I took the pieces and cap thingy to the bathroom, pulling my IV with me. In the bathroom I rinsed my hands and, noisily, dropped most of the bottle in the wastebasket. I kept a nice long shard that, conveniently, had part of the neck on it, making a good handle. I tucked it under the soft inner-arm edge of my cast, sat back down, and picked up the clear sporkf.

“You know, you’ve been stabbing that salmon over and over.”

“Oh. Sorry.” The mosquito was buzzing louder.

“Yeah,” she said, “the way you’re holding that fork, I don’t know, it’s scary.” Pause. “Okay, so, you want to show me what you’re doing with the Game? Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I said. You lyin’, cheatin’ honky-tonk angel, I thought. I am totally onto you. I finished smoothing down the foil and rolled it into a little cylinder. This stuff is incredible, I thought. Color, thinness, pliability, a miraculous confluence of properties achieved by some unfathomable alchemy… in the old days we would have traded ten thralls for something like this. I slipped it into my shirt pocket.

“This tastes kind of weird,” she said, “is there salt in it?”

I looked around. She’d picked up what was left of my ice cream soda and tried it.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “That’s the way we used to have it.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“It’s a chocolate soda,” I said.

She looked up at me. It was one of those moments. She knew.

“Is that blood?” she asked.

“Um-”

“ Is it? Gross! Jesus!”

“Well, no, it’s beef stock, it’s just, like, au jus from Lobel Brothers-”

“Jed, it’s blood, it’s blood and I think I’m going to throw up.” She put the glass down on the table and looked away. Her face was all scrunched up.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I think we have to get you some help.”

“Oh, please,” I said. I looked down at the clotting soda. It didn’t seem quite so appetizing anymore. But I picked it up and took a slug anyway.

“Jed, I’m your good friend,” Marena said, “and I really feel like you might be freaking out just a little bit. Do you have any feelings in that regard?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” I said.

“Would you be willing to talk to the shrink? I mean without anybody else around. Confidentiality city.” She poured herself some water. The moment she wasn’t looking I slid the bottle fragment under the pillow. You could really dig out a pretty big plug of flesh with this thing. I cached the glass ready-to-hand in the near corner pocket of the pool table. Marena pulled out a baby Lurisia, wrenched it open, and drank half the bottle.

“Well?” she asked. “Seriously.”

“Uh, sure,” I said, “I mean, I’ll see what I can do, I’m not sure I want to go into therapy or anything-”

“No, no.”

“But, you know, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life confused either.”

She came over and put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes.

“Jed, seriously. I’m on your side. What’s going on?”

“I don’t think it’s anything,” I said. I moved my eyes away from actually looking into hers and focused on a tiny little mole on her forehead.

“Your eyes look like they’re not focusing or something.”

“Yeah, I think, uh, that’s right-”

“Maybe you should take a Val or four and chill.”

“I will.”

“Okay.” She sat down.

“Okay,” I said. I flicked on my screen. “Okay, just a beat, I have to purify the directions.”

“Uh, right.”

“Tin chi’m tex tahlah tex to cal ual tu cal xol,” I said.

“Cantul ti ku cex cantul lubul bin yicnal.”

“My breath is black, my breath is yellow, my breath

Is white, my breath is red. Accept her head.”

“Som pul yicnal can yah ual kak ke

Tix tu ch’aah u kah u chi u sudz.”

“Accept her husk, her skin. We cast her down,

Into the heart of the cave lake, turquoise heart.”

“So look inside,” I said to Marena. “Check it out.” I moved the marker and entered the move. Marena leaned over the screen.

“See the deal?” I asked. I got my glass knife out from under the pillow but kept it out of her sight line.

“I can’t focus on this anymore,” she said. She pushed back.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She got up and moved away.

“No, you have a problem,” I said. “I can tell.” I pulled out my IV needle and, without thinking about it, licked away the drop of blood. She recoiled a little. I moved away from her, but between her and the door, keeping my right hand down at my side with the glass in the lee of her vision. “Seriously,” I said. “Please don’t make me upset. I know I look like a nerd, but when I do get upset, people say I’m hard to deal with. This is not a threat.”

“I don’t know,” she said. She leaned forward and reached for the speaker button on the phone.

“No, no, that’s not necessary,” I said. I got between her and the phone.

“Look, Jed, seriously,” she said, “I think something serious is happening and we need to talk about it”

“I’m there, I’m all over it,” I said, “yes, I want to help, don’t WORRY!”

“I just want to send one text,” she said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“No, really, don’t,” I said. “Really, I’m adamant about this.”

She moved back.

“Okay, okay,” she said. She smiled. “Atom Ant. Let’s go sit down.” She went toward the chair. I repositioned between her and the doorway.

Pause.

“Okay, fine,” she said, suddenly shifting gears. “You don’t give a wet shit about the world, or other people, or, or the Maya, or even yourself, or anything,” she said. “You just wanted to see a bunch of ugly pretentious old buildings before the paint came off. You know what you are? You’re a fucking tourist. You ought to be wearing five different cameras and, and Madras shorts.”

“The article in Time. That was a plant, right? For an audience of one.”

“Come on,” she said. “Don’t make me have to get everybody in here.”

“So is that sort of a threat?” I asked. It was getting harder and harder to talk the way Jed would.

“No,” she said.

“How about this?” I asked. I got the piece of broken bottle into striking position, where she could see it. “Is this a threat?”

“Jed, listen.”

“Answer question, is this a threat?”

“Yes, I think it’s a threat,” she said. She started moving away, in the other direction, getting the bed between us. “What do you think?”

“That’s a stupid like question,” I said. I moved to the right. If I went after her she might get around me and get out the door. She paused. I could see her gauging how long it would take to get to the door, thinking it was better to keep the bed between us, that if I jumped over it she’d be able to fake me out and get away. I moved back a bit, to a spot where I could get to her before she got out the door. It was all about pretty subtle trajectories.

Come on, give her a break, Jed thought.

Too late, I thought.

Come on, Jed thought. Anyway, I’m making you up. You got that?

No you’re not, I thought, I’m really really back. THANKS for bringing me BACK! I’m BACK, Jeddy, it’s ME! I’m HERE for YOU! It’s ME, CHACAAAAAAAAAL!!!

You can’t do anything I don’t want you to do, Jed thought.

Of course I can, I’m so much stronger than you are. Wimp. Anyway Marena outfucked you. And now she’s your enemy. She’s going to have you put away for a very long time. You got that?

I guess, Jed thought. He was obviously just feeling too weak to say anything against me. When people like Jed feel all enraged and stupid and betrayed and everything, they don’t have enough stamina to put up with it. The whole world seems so bleak and scary to them that they just gray out.

“Okay, Jed,” Marena said, “come on, you know you’re-”

“Fuck Jed,” I said. “Jed’s gone. It’s me, Chacal, SURPRISESURPRISE SURPRISE!!! ”

Marena didn’t move, but I could see her hair stirring and goose bumps spreading over her face and her nipples standing up under the linen. Her eyes were huge but I could see her already coming out of the initial Oh-my-God-I’m-dead-I’m-dead shock and thinking, What am I going to do to get out Whoa. She was on the chair-and-table side of the room, as I had maneuvered her, so the door and the call button were on my side, with the bed between us. If I went around it to grab her, she could jump over it and reach the door. I feinted as if I was about to take hold of the IV pole to hit her, and I could see from a flick of her glance that she was going to jump onto the bed. Alpinist Marena-no problem. She leaped, just one foot on the edge of the bed, pushing her over. But because I knew it was coming, I swept her feet out from under her and she fell head-down onto the floor. She didn’t move. Alert that she might be faking, I leaned down and grabbed her throat, but she didn’t respond. I put my forearm, the one with the bandaged hand, across her throat and leaned on it, while I picked up the Tabasco bottle and pointed the sharp end next to her trachea. I waited for my arm to kill her. But it didn’t. Could I use her later? Or did I love her? Or did I even care about that? After two-score beats, I pulled over the IV pole and shoved the needle in her arm vein. I wasn’t very good at it, and it took a few tries, but she didn’t react. With the needle in, I opened the flow valve. The drip had been intended to keep me docile, but I was twice as heavy as Marena, so my dose ought to put her out. But to be on the safe side, I pushed the flow valve to max, and watched as the drip rate increased.

Hmm. Well, that all looks stable.

Now all I had to do was get out of here. Well, not all. There were a few things, a few quick, easy, fun things, easy experiments with everyday household objects…

(103)

So, Jed asked from down in the bottom right side of my head, when did you know you wanted to come back to our little old twelfth b’aktun?

I knew before the sacrifice, I answered. Before you squealed out English on the mul.

I wasn’t hard to fool, was I?

No.

Are you my other?

No.

What did you see on 4 Ahau?

I’m not going to tell you.

I need to know.

Everybody always wants to know what’s going to happen, I thought back.

I just want to know, he kept saying, like a dying cricket in my head. I want to know whether this is it for everything or what.

I’m not going to tell you, I thought.

I could feel him squirm, but there was nothing he could do.

Manac zub, I thought. Come on. I need to get a grip on this time. Think. Think. And who is the steward of our captors?

Probably just Grgur.

The only reason you got back at all was that 2 Jeweled Skull let you.

When, you mean, when he told me -

When you said “Play ball s ” instead of “Play ball,” that’s when 2JS knew I was inside you, that I was going to take over. That’s a phrase that only I use.

No way.

Yes. He saw what was going to happen and that’s why he told you where the nacom was. You know how tough he was, he wouldn’t have done it for any other reason.

What about my whole life? Jed asked. Did you set up the date of my birth, and the fact that I was going to come back? Did you guys set up everything?

You’d have to ask One Ocelot’s daughter about that, I thought.

Jed just floated for a few scores of beats. I thought he’d drowned, but he came back.

I still want us to leave Marena alone, he thought. I don’t care what she did.

She’ll make a prestigious captive, I thought.

I won’t let you do it, Jed thought. Let the girl go. We have a let-the-girl-go clause.

I felt muscles tightening up and down my body, Jed trying to fire my motor nerves, but he just shivered like he was pushing hard against a wall. You’re pathetic, I thought. Give it up.

He tried to make me exhale and hold it, maybe choke and die, but I just drew in a slow stream of air until it filled my torso basin.

You’re helpless, I thought. Betrayal’s a strange thing. I’ve been there. I know.

I won’t, I’ll get back up again -

Now fall you still, I thought, now little cousin, seize:

Unique point of the lancet, penis tip,

Now starts the bleeding, now you be aspersed.

Shame wind swept over Jed. The nerves released. I felt my penis inflate.

He eats, he licks the white blood, snake-clot blood,

On the wooden haft, the stone haft, here it strengthens.

Automatically, Jed went into the begging formula:

“Accepted, singular ahau, I froth

The beaten mouth broth: here I take the shoots,

Four are his forces, four doors to his arbor,

O 4 Ahau alone, unique ahau.”

And, with that, Jed was officially my captive. All nine of his-well, around here and now, they call them “souls”-were my thralls. Forever.

(104)

I touched the eel-edge of the mirror with my left hand and gingerly pulled it toward me.

It swung out, my uay-self turning aside.

Not one-way glass.

Thin smooth white plastic shelves bolted in.

I expected all sorts of magic things inside but there was just a cylinder vase that said Phisohex ™, an amber chunk labeled Neutrogena ™, a paper box of Band-Aids™, and a stack of disposable paper towels. There was nothing else.

There was something, though. Something in Jed’s memories about the white steel cabinet frame.

I moved the Phisohex and on the left side, five finger-widths above the bottom corner, there was a tiny slit with a square of ancient brown stickum glue underneath, the trace of a label that had once, in the preinjector, predisposable era, read USED BLADES.

Got it, I thought.

I gouged into the metal with my thumbnail. Too hard.

Tool needed.

I walked to the big white vase in the floor, said a purification over it, sat on it expecting an underworld batfish to come up and chomp me, and managed to squirt a little urine into it.

I looked around. The paper stuff they used came out of a dispenser that was bolted to the wall. There was a tank on the back of the vase with a cover. The cover was plastic and it seemed solidly attached.

I rose up, got my feet on the rim of the toilet basin-there was no seat cover-turned around, put my hands down over the plastic tank lid, hit the flush lever, and just as the sound crested I yanked up-and, thank Iztamna for small favors, the rectangular lid popped off relatively undamaged.

The old brown-crusted rod between the flush-lever and the wire that went down to the rubber drain-cap looked pretty sturdy.

I unhooked the wire that held it to the drain cap, shutting off the flush. On the lever end the rod was attached with a little nut that I tried to unscrew, but it was corroded on, so I bent it back and forth a few times and finally it broke and I wrenched it off.

I put the cover back on. My hands were covered with black rubber-scum and I scrubbed them in the sink, wiped them with paper towels, went back and cleaned the side of the tank cover, and went back to the sink.

I turned the water on, reopened the medicine cabinet, jammed the rod into the slit, and pried back the sheet metal, sawing down into the depths of the cabinet, pulling the sharp flap back with my fingers.

Metal is such weird stuff, I would never have expected it. In Ix I’d owned tiny and extremely expensive earplugs made out of gold, the Venus-feces of the South, and copper, the sun-feces of the North. But here it was cheaper than pebbles and came in all colors, even that pure mirror zero-color, and nobody seemed to notice it. I went back to what I was doing, sawing and digging, the ragged hole getting bigger.

Finally, at the base of the hollow wall, nestled against the cinder block, was a stack of rusted rectangles.

I dug it out carefully, wrapped it in Band-Aids™, and Band-Aided it under my scrotum. It was the safest spot I could think of. Jed’s testicles instinctively retracted, shrinking from the idea of sharpness. Just in case, I stuck forty or so wrapped Band-Aids next to it in three thick little wads.

Marena was sound asleep. But the nurse might check in early.

I separated sixteen of the old double-edged razor blades from the brick, scraped as much of the rust off them as possible, and folded them into V’s down the center, so that they had two edges sticking out at about forty-five degrees from each other. After some picking I peeled back the outer layer of my hand cast. It wasn’t plaster, it was some kind of light breathable cheesenylon stuff.

I cut slits through the edge of the cast and threaded the V’s into them points outward, kind of like fishhooks in a cork, so that I finally had two rows of double blades traveling around the edge of my paddle hand.

It was a bit like the way they make weapons out of two safety-razor blades and a toothbrush in prison. Two edges do a lot more damage on the first stroke than one because they take out a kerf that’s hard to sew up.

Finally I filled in on either side of the blades with little folded paper tabs from the back of the Band-Aids, wrapped the outer layer of stiff beige cheesecloth loosely back around the whole thing, and stuck that down with looped Band-Aids on its inside hems so that it would look as normal as possible. When I hit someone with the assembly the edges of the blades would go right through the outer layer of cloth as though it wasn’t there.

It was bigger and lumpier than before, but I figured if I kept it down at my side and turned away from their lines of sight it probably wouldn’t get noticed.

Just as a last touch, I made a little balloon out of Saran Wrap, filled it with Tabasco, and secreted it between my teeth and upper lip.

Right.

I pulled the IV out of Marina’s arm, rolled her gently under the bed, retaped the needle onto my own arm like it was still in my skin, and hit the lighted call button on the padded bed rail. Wait. Marena’s bag was still on the window ledge radiator thingy. I slid it under the bed just before Nurse Wretched came in.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. In fact I’m feeling great, I thought. I feel more like myself with every p’ip’il. “Sorry to bug you, but I really needed to talk to Grgur, I’ve got to tell him something.” She put down the tray and left. Grgur came in.

“I really need a cig,” I said.

“Forget it,” he said.

“I also have some information.”

“Save it.”

“I just worked out a couple of dates Marena wanted,” I said.

“It’ll wait.”

“Please, Gulag, you know I am a nicotine addict.”

“No,” he said, “you have to detox.”

I thought for a few beats about how Jed would put it. All right. Let’s try this.

“Come on, please please please,” I said. “We carcinogen lovers have to stick together. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said. He beeped at the backgammon game on his phone.

“I’ll split a box of Monte Cristo Piramides with you when I get home.”

“Ungh.”

“What’s going on with you,” I asked, “are you wearing like, ten NicoDerms or what?”

“I have the power of the will,” he said.

“I’ll wire you ten thousand dollars,” I said. “Otherwise I’m just going to toss and turn and thrash until Grandfather Heat-until dawn. And then I will start screaming. And then when people ask I’ll tell them you did let me smoke, and it messed up my meds.”

“We can not smoke in here anyway,” he said. “It sets off the sirens. We would have to take us out into the stairs.”

Hah. Progress. “Or I could go down into the morgue and crawl into a drawer with a dead guy,” I said.

He went out. I could hear him mumbling something into his phone. He came back in.

“Grg, old pal next to me,… wow, I knew you had some pity in you.” Tears almost burbled up in Jed’s/Sic’s/my cowardly eyes. “Thanks. Really.”

“Yeah.”

We waited.

There was a rap on the door and the other one from the house came in wearing a shirt woven out of the blue hair of some odd creature that Jed’s memory said was called a Nylon. He also wore a pectoral on his chest with his name and mask. I mean, portrait. Somehow I didn’t think he was so alert as Grgur.

“This is Hernan,” Grgur said.

“Yeah, we’ve met, hi,” I said. Did that sound natural? Other One didn’t say anything. I hoisted myself up more unsteadily than I had to. Hurry up, I thought. Marena might cough or twitch or start singing. We went out and they steered me in front of them down the hall, letting me pull my own IV pole. They certainly didn’t seem to notice that the cast on my right hand was a little larger than it had been. I didn’t see any of the guards either.

We turned right at the far end of the hall. I couldn’t see any of those dart shooter weapons-I mean, guns-printing on Hernan’s clothing, but one never knows. I got an impression of a deserted waiting-area of bolted-down mats. That is, seating units. Chairs.

We turned down another humming green corridor to a FIRE/EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY door. There was a door across from it labeled NAHSO, which something deep in Jed’s hard drive told me was the hospital’s code for Pharmacy. Grgur ran a badge through the lock, pushed the door open without touching the aluminum bar, and went out ahead of us into the white concrete stairs.

Other One-Hernan-herded me in behind him and shut the door. He said something about how the Magic were going to make it to the Finals against the Jazz, but Grgur just grunted and pulled a pack of Kolumbos out of his shirt pocket.

He shook three out, put one in his mouth, handed one to me and one to Hernan, and took out a book of Delano Hotel matches.

He lit one one-handed and touched it to his own first.

At least Marena’d really trained this guy to be polite, I thought. A lot of people think it’s polite to light the other person’s first, but with matches you’re supposed to absorb that awful sulfur taste yourself before you move the clean match on to someone else.

I put my cig in my mouth and sort of moved into position. He held the match out to me and just as the end was about to light I blew the match out through the cigarette.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. This is the move, I thought.

I took the book of matches with my left hand, shaking my head, and he let me take it.

YES! I pulled a match around to the back of the pack with my left thumb, lighting it one-handed, and sucked in the smoke, double-inhaling it up through my nose. You can’t really explain the pleasure of smoking to a nonaddict. It’s like trying to describe sex to a five-year-old.

Okay. I moved the little balloon of Tabasco out from under my upper lip with my tongue and got ready to bite down on it.

Right. I held the still-lit match out to Hernan, sucking that big old blowgun breath down into my lungs so that I’d be ready.

Hernan leaned forward and I moved the burning match to his cigarette and then moved the matchbook under his chin, my thumb extruding two old razor blades from under the cardboard in a V-shape.

I sliced into Hernan’s throat from the left side, the first blade quickly burying itself up to the crook of the V, and continued the same motion in a smooth arc up toward his right ear. Thin flat strings of blood jetted out of the slit, black in the minty nonlight.

I let go just before reaching the ear and pulled back. Hernan reacted late to the relatively painless cut, bringing his hand up to his throat, and he lurched forward and grabbed my right wrist with his other hand but I twisted against his thumb and pulled back and fell against the corner of the wall. Only, it wasn’t the wall, it was Grgur grabbing me from behind.

I accentuated my fall, going off balance, and as Grgur came down after me, grabbing at my cast arm, I bit down on the balloon of Tabasco and swung my head around, getting the bolus of liquid position.

His face came into range.