The body of Leviathan, the parka of the great whale, sank to the bottom, Qawik in its stomach.
Qawik felt the breath go out of him, felt the cold wash over him, felt his body crushed by the deep. He went down and down and down, and sank into Hell. Darkness fell over him, and his soul passed on.
The horrible stench of the Undertaker's breath wafted over him, a fart from the ass of a corpse.
Qawik woke up, looked down at his body, looked up at-the rat eyes of Satan's mortician. The Undertaker smiled.
"Ah, you are back," he said.
Qawik looked down at his body. He was all cord and sinew, muscles and bones and blood vessels. He held a red-raw hand up, clenched and unclenched his fingers, winced as the muscles rubbed against each other.
"No need to do that," the Undertaker said. "We have a new skin for you - a new 'parka', as you might say. Would you like to try it on?" He waved to a large slab, thirty yards long - a slab upon which there was laid out a great black bag. Qawik felt his legs walk over to the skin, felt his body wriggle into the huge bag of flesh. He felt his muscles and bones and body grow and expand, fill up the skin, grow into the flesh. His body wriggled and oozed. When the skin was tight, he wiggled his arms, kicked his legs, felt the fins slap against his side, and felt the flukes slap the ground.
"Ah, a perfect fit," said the Undertaker. "I think you shall like your new body, little Wolverine."
And he smiled, that awful smile of rotting teeth.
"Or," the Undertaker said, "should I say 'Leviathan'?"
SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH.
C.J. Cherryh.
The boy still slept, in that twilight world where he had rested much of the time since his return, in the broad bed, in the room with the record player and the rock and roll posters and the magazines and the pictures of green earthly fields and horses. He was seventeen. A little bit of a mustache and a touch of beard was on his face, shadow of a manhood he might never reach, in Hell-a down of beard which the sycophants zealously shaved away, as they tended him in these several days and nights; but they did not disturb his rest. Locks of black hair fell on his brow, about his ears; one well-muscled young arm lay across his chest, picked out like marble in the single stripe of light which came in from the door. His father stood looking down on him, and at last, carefully, settled on the bedside.
Brutus did not stir at that shifting of the mattress, and Julius Caesar reached out ever so gently and touched the boy's face, back of his forefinger tracing a line of bone which he saw in the mirror daily. It was a theft, that touch, stolen from time and Hell-a moment he had never managed to steal from life; and his hand trembled now, which had not trembled at many things on earth-not out of fear: it took more than an assassin to daunt him-but out of the enormity of what he stole from the Devil and from his enemies, and out of the Sense of vulnerability he found in himself. The Devil had a hostage-here, in this bed. And he, Julius, veteran of plots and counterplots through centuries in Hell, possessor of vast power-risked everything in that touch.
"This isn't about Caesarion at all," Welch had said, that day in Julius' office-when Julius' second son had proven twice the fool and threatened Hell to pay if Julius did not retrieve him quickly from the allies he had chosen.
Welch, the American, was an expensive man-unbuyable in coin. And from that moment and that observation Julius had looked on this recruit with doubt.
"It is," Julius had assured him, playing out the role, "most especially about Caesarion. My son the fool. My son who runs off to the Dissidents. Who compromises my interests."
"So make up your own family quarrels," Welch had said. "Put your own people on it."
Is that what they want? Is that the name of the game-bring my resources out of hiding? Who are you working for, Americane? It was Mithridates sent me Brutus.
I know that. Sent me my bastard son- my assassin, stripped of memory, Marcus Junius Brutus, thinking he died on the Baiae road, as, of seventeen ... because it's as far as his recollection goes. Mithridates, in the Pentagram, the power who pulls Rameses strings, keeps my murderer out of time, lo, all these centuries, and delivers him to me an innocent. The Dissidents take out Hadrian, the Supreme Commander who was, whatever his failings, Roman-and in comes Rameses and the East. Arrives Brutus, helpless and seventeen, on my doorstep. Exit Caesarion the rebel, from that lecher Tiberius' den-to join Dissidents we know are a front for the Eastern faction.
And put my own people on it, this American says.
Was it Mithridates sent you last time, Welch, to work your way into my regard like this bastard son of mine? And have I made a fatal mistake?
"Augustus will kill the boy if he finds him," Julius had said, dour-faced. It was plausible enough. Augustus had indeed done it once and long ago. "Then no matter what strings you think Niccolo can pull, we may lose him forever."
"So." The American locked his hands behind him and paced a bit, looked at him with a curious turn of his head. "And you can't stop that? You got a real houseful here. Another son, what I hear. Besides Augustus. Rumor was true, was it? You. Brutus' mother."
Too many questions, Americane. Far too many questions. "Brutus was-is-a seventeen year old boy. Do you understand what that means? We just got him back. We don't know from where."
But we guess, don't we? "He doesn't remember anything. You, of all men, ought to sympathize with that-"
- knowing that Welch himself alleged gaps in his memory. If it were so. If anything regarding this American was Credible, this should be.
"Fine," Welch had said then, "I'll take Brutus with me-I need someone Caesarion can relate to, somebody he'll trust. Another one of your sons ought to do the trick."
That he had not expected; Julius had been, for once, caught facing the wrong flank. Not information. A challenge and a trap. "He ... Brutus doesn't know Caesarion; they've never met here. Anyone but Brutus, Welch. Anything but that." And that was wrong to have said. Once into it, there was no way out but forward. He foreknew that litde look of satisfaction on Welch's face, foreknew the demand, foreknew that he was compelled then, trapped, to make a play within a play, feigning Caesar feigning grief, which in fact was true, but he made his face hard and shot a calculating look which he well intended Welch to see-If you are Mithridates man; and Mithridates sent Brutus'-
Beyond the play, beneath the double-layered grief and harshness, snake swallowing tail, that drought had come up like a foul bubble out of the dark.
If you ask for Brutus, if you seek him out - Is it not that Mithridates thinks it time to throw the dice? Bring me back Caesarion. And what do you bring back in Brutus?
Trojan horse, my Greek-loving American?
But I dare not call a bluff-not of those that may pull your strings.
No, you will not lose them. You will not fail me. Not fad Mithridates, who will bring Brutus back himself - how could he fail a revenge he's planned ...
all these centuries? If Brutus should die there - Mithridates himself would bring him back.
"Yes," he had said to Welch. And thought: I will have both of them returned.
And you, too, Americane, into my hands. A man who can surprise me is too clever to leave to my enemies.
The boy shifted, a turn of his head against the pillows, a movement of his hand, and an opening of confused eyes. Julius took back his hand as Brutus started upright, eyes wide and his face a mask of terror in the stripe of light from the door.
"Ah!" he cried.
Do you know that I know? Julius wondered. It was fate he tempted, sitting here within reach. Or it was has enemies.
"Father?" Brutus said then, a shaken whisper. "Father?" Desperately, the way a frightened boy might ask; the way a guilty boy could not ask, not with that tone of vulnerability.