She was no whiner. She responded to the sanctuary Kemrin had given her with dignified gratitude. She said very little, and he didn’t attempt to draw her out. She seemed content to exist day by day, and after a time she began to smile, and even to laugh.
«How is it you can be so calm under these circumstances?» he asked her. «What’s wrong with these circumstances? I have enough to eat, a safe place to be, and I’m away from Bluedog.»
He didn’t trust her, of course, but he began to respect her.Each morning, armed and armored, he trooped off to Singh Louie’s atelier, determined to force Prince Velligon into paroxysms o f heroism. But he seemed unable to gather the threads together, unable to do anything with the dream figures he’d lived with for so long.
The numbers reflected this. Each night he would tap into the Pale’s dream channels, and each night he found a relentless drop in usership.One day when the next episode was ready, the courier didn’t come, and Kemrin understood he had been abandoned. While he was unsuccessfully trying to raise Bodrun, Bluedog patched into Kemrin’s vidphone.
Today Bluedog’s beauty stripes were lime green and plum, curved diagonally across the white expanse of his face. Bluedog didn’t say a word, but his good eye sparkled. He raised his huge meaty hand to his eye patch and flapped it vigorously, exposing with each movement the black pit beneath. Kemrin jerked the vid cable from the wall.
He went home and released Leila. When she saw his face, her usual smile faded. «What’s happened?»
He flung himself into a chair. «I’m dead. They’ve cancelled Velligon.»
«I’m sorry. Is it that important?»
He looked up at her, amazed. «Haven’t I ever explained? Velligon was my last chance to get out of Howlytown. The apartment rent’s due in three days. After that, I can live in my studio for a week or so, until Singh Louie puts me out. Then I ’m a goner.»
She looked as if she might cry. It occurred to him that she was probably dead, too. «Or maybe not,» he said. «Maybe I ’ll think o f something»
«The problem is money?»
She sat down, seemed to withdraw into herself. He watched her. She was really quite beautiful, in a subdued, understated way. He felt a surge of regret, for all the sweet possibilities that would be lost when Bluedog killed him. Not that he desired her in particular; he could not forget that she had been Bluedog’s mind-whore.
«How do you think he’ll do it?» he asked, after a while.
«Do what?» She seemed startled, as i f he had distracted her from some deep train of thought.
«Bluedog. How do you suppose he’ll kill me?»
«Kill you? He won’t kill you. That would be too easy. First, he’ll take your other eye and your dream gear. He’ll give you a little time to feel bad about it, then he’ll take your mecheye. Maybe he’ll take your legs, but he’ll leave you at least one good arm. One day he’ll walk down Motomachi Street, and you’ll be there, holding out your begging bowl, and his pleasure will be complete.»
She said it all with such matter-of-fact conviction. He shuddered, and she touched his arm gently. «It hasn’t happened yet, Kemrin. Listen; here’s an idea. Why don’t we move into your studio? The refund on the apartment will keep you going a bit longer, you’ll dream some salable dreams, and I ’ll help you put them on the Howlytown black-market channels. What do you think?»
Her hand was warm, and he thought, How strange that I should notice that at a time like this. «What about Bluedog?»
«What about him? You can’t destroy him; he protects himself too well. You can’t get away from Howlytown, just now, and I assure you that you and Bluedog will never kiss and make up. All you can do is survive, day by day. But what have you got that’s better, at the moment?»
He shrugged, but he felt a touch of inexplicable hope.
They moved to the studio, in the hour before dawn. They made the move unmolested. The seeker-destroyer preceded them through the silent streets, its sensors rotating rapidly, and Kemrin brought up the rear, clutching the splinter gun, head jerking back and forth, heart pounding.
In the studio, Leila exclaimed over the gear. «Beautiful metal,» she said, caressing the main console. «Much better than anything I ever had to work with.»
«Oh?» Kemrin recalled that mind-whoring used much the same equipment as dreaming, the output channel dumping directly to the client’s mind instead of into a wafer recorder. «Well,» he said. «I'll get started.»
But it wasn’t working. No matter what he started out to do, his dreams eventually seemed to focus on Leila; strange, formless, contradictory, suffused with a confused eroticism.
The next night he woke and saw her linked into th e monitor, eyes closed, absorbing his latest attempt. When she was done, she looked at him curiously, smiled. «Mind-whoring is a peculiar talent, a rare knack.»
«I don’t have it?»
«What can I say?» She shrugged gracefully.
«Would you like to try?»
Her smile was brilliant now. «Really?»
«Why not? I’m getting nowhere.»
Leila lay in the dream harness. Her body was relaxed, her eyes half-closed, sightless, twitching, as she followed her internal script. Kemrin watched her, sampled the signal going into the wafer recorder. The signal was clean and strong, and he began to wonder if she might actually be capable of producing a salable dream.
«I won't do porn» she had said earlier, while he was s trapping her into the harness. «I’ve done enough of that to last me forever»
«What, then?»
«Trust me, Kemrin. A lot of people will buy this dream.»
Then she had laughed and pulled down the induction helmet.
After a while, he settled the monitor harness on his head, and jacked into her dream:
Bluedog, leaning over a slender naked man, who appears to have been fastened to a wall of ancient concrete by his arms. Rivulets o f blood drip down the wall
Peonies is there, cradling some sort of weapon, which still smokes. Kemrin suddenly sees that it is a masonry nail gun, and he knows what holds the man to the wall.
At the man’s feet is the wreckage of a fine slithersynth, its keyboard shattered into gleaming bits. Kemrin understands that the man is a musician.
Bluedog speaks: «Must pay, must pay. You know this is the only way.» He pulls an antique razor from his pocket, opens it, and begins to saw at the man’s fingers. Apparently the razor is dull.
The man’s screams rise up the scale until the world is a scream, and a haze of pain obscures the dream.
Here the dream segued from an enhanced and arranged memory into a wholly imaginary segment. The dream was still powerful, saturated, with a remarkable singing intensity. The texture was dense and deep. Kemrin was amazed and horrified and riveted. Mercifully, the viewpoint was detached from the action of the dream, as if observed by an unseen watcher.
The dream cleared.
Bluedog’s victim has become a decayed but still-animated corpse, staring balefully at Bluedog. The man’s fingers lie in the dirt at the base of the wall, bloated and pale.
At first Bluedog is oblivious to the staring corpse; he is busy wiping the blood from his razor. But the more he wipes, the more the blood drips, until a torrent of red is sluicing from the blade, splattering over Bluedog’s white shoes. Bluedog flings it away with a curse, turns, and sees the corpse watching him. The corpse smiles broadly at Bluedog, and some flesh sloughs from its face, exposing wet pink bone.
Bluedog backs off but a steel wall springs up behind him with a sound like an ax falling, and his escape is blocked. He presses against the wall, his vast face quivering with terror.
Peonies reappears in the dream, still clutching the nail gun. A hideous creature forces its way out of the corpse’s decaying mouth, a creature with a hundred cruel hooked legs and pincers and spines. It springs from the corpse to the top of Peonies shaven head, sinks through his tattoed scalp like a crab swimming down into sand.