Leonard disappeared behind a huge black lens. “Sociocultural pathologist, actually.”
Trip stared blankly. “Photography’s dead,” Leonard went on. There was a series of soft clicks, a faint humming from one of the more dangerous-looking tripods. “Everything’s dead. The world needs an undertaker. Atlantis sinks, Pompeii burns—I’m there. I’m doing some stuff for Blue Antelope now. You know them, right? All you little Xian apocalypse nuts. Portfolio called Vanishing Act. Last month I got this thing in Ruwenzori. Dwarf otter-shrew, gorgeous. I’ve got some proofs here, check ’em out—”
He grabbed yet another bag, pulled out a folder, and handed it to Trip. Clear plastic sleeves held Cibachrome prints of a small lithe brown animal emerging from a stream. Its most distinguishing feature was a bristling mass of whiskers around a bulbous nose.
Leonard peered over his shoulder and sighed. “Micropotamogale ruwenzori. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Trip glanced up to see if he was joking. “It looks like a rat,” he said.
“It’s not. See its nose?” Leonard’s finger stabbed at a print. “It works like a hydrofoil, sniffs out little crabs and things in the water. This is the last one, probably—that’s why I was there. Blue Antelope’s filed a lawsuit—there’s a big fight going on, whether it should be put in a lab so they can save its genoprint or just leave it there. In case another one shows up.”
He laughed and turned to the next photo, showing a fan-shaped array of bones with shreds of flesh between them, like a desiccated leaf. “That’s a horseshoe bat. Or was. Rhinolophus ruwenzori. Another interesting nose. I was a little late for that one. Fortunately I have a patron who prefers them that way. Dead, I mean. Really the last of their kind.”
Trip grimaced. “But they’re so ugly.” He looked up and saw Leonard staring at him, his green-flecked eyes narrowed.
“No, darling,” Leonard said in a very soft voice. Carefully he put aside the portfolio, then took Trip’s chin in his hand and pulled him forward, until he was only inches from Leonard’s face. Trip swallowed. He glanced out of the corner of his eyes to see if the technicians were watching, but they stared raptly at their monitors. Leonard’s fingers traced the outline of the cross branded upon his forehead, then his jaw, lingering on the soft hollow of his cheeks.
“You’ve got it all wrong, Trip,” he murmured. “They’re not ugly. They’re the most beautiful things in the world. But you and I—”
His fingers tightened. The nails dug into Trip’s flesh until the boy cried out, trying to twist away. “—you and I, Trip? We’re dirt.”
Trip could feel his jawbone shift beneath Leonard’s grip, his teeth grinding together like misplaced gears. “Just dirt,” Leonard repeated, his tone dreamy. Trip flailed helplessly, until Leonard wrenched his hand away.
“Caput mortuum,” he whispered. For an instant his gaze rested upon the portfolio. Then he turned and strode back to the waiting cameras. Trip caught his breath, gasping.
One of the technicians glanced over his shoulder with a questioning look. Trip got to his feet and started for the door, head throbbing with pain and rage.
“What? Did I hurt you?” Leonard called after him.
Trip stopped. “Yes.” he spit, rubbing his chin.
Leonard smiled. “Good,” he said, raising a camera to his face. “Now get the fuck over here, and let’s do our job.”
Trip hesitated. “Come on, Trip, don’t be an asshole,” called Leonard. “Meter’s running. Don’t blow it, okay?”
He did the shoot. The afternoon passed in a haze of heat and burning dust from the halogen lamps. The constant click and whir of recording equipment was like the buzz of locusts. He felt dizzy, not a little sick. His jaw ached, his head. But the pain seemed to spur him in front of the camera. After a few stiff minutes he moved antically through the small studio, neatly avoiding bundled cables and Leonard’s bags. A technician replaced the music with something atonal and clamorous, that faded into somber gongs and chanting, the high-pitched singing of frogs set to the hollow boom of djembe drums.
Trip recognized the frog part. It had been a surprise dance hit a year ago, a melancholy amphibian chant du cygne recorded in a remote part of Quebec, where there were still a few spring peepers left. Their wistful music gave way once again to gongs. Trip began to move more artfully, recalling the graceful hands of the Javanese dancer on television.
“I will give you the morning star,” he sang, his voice rising in counterpoint to the gamelan. “I will bring you the end of the end. The end of the end…”
He pulled his shirt off, ran his hands across his sweat-streaked chest, toyed with the cross on its gold chain. He shut his eyes and thought of the blond girl on a bed strewn with lilacs, her fine hair tangled in his mouth. He danced and sang, songs from his album, new songs he had only thought of and never written down, songs he hadn’t sung since he was on a ramshackle school bus crossing the Kennebec. Finally, after hours had passed and the room was littered with cameras like spent ammunition, Leonard Thrope announced, “Okay. That’s enough.”
Trip sank onto his haunches. He was breathing hard, but he felt exhilarated, better than he had felt in days; since before he met the blond girl. “Okay,” he said, panting, and grinned.
For some minutes he sat there. Leonard rewound film into canisters and plugged tapes and discs into a monitor, scanning them before shoving them into a leather carryall. A technician tossed Trip some bottled water.
“That was cool,” the technician said. It was the first time he had spoken all afternoon. “You want to see what I’ve done so far?”
Trip rose, but the technician motioned him back. “No, stay there—”
One hand glided across the keyboard. The other slowly turned a small projecting lens. Out of nowhere a figure appeared, crouching on the floor. Trip gasped. The figure stood and began to sing. The technician smiled.
“I possess the keys of hell and death, I will give you the morning star…”
It was Trip himself, of course. But not the Xian Trip, with his haunted eyes and the cross hanging from a gold chain about his neck. Instead the analogue was that of an Indonesian Baris dancer, barefoot and wearing a sort of brocade loincloth stiff with gold and crimson beads. Its hair was lost beneath a dizzyingly ornate headdress that rose pagodalike from its skull. The face was Trip’s, but no longer human: it had become a mask the color of new leaves, through which Trip’s blue eyes glowed. The figure moved as Trip had, but impossibly fast. As it spun and pirouetted, gold flecked the air, and little flames licked at its heels.
Trip stared, aghast. “How—how—”
“Wait, I’ll give you some music.” The technician reached for the keyboard and the monotonous tones of a gamelan rang out, the same four notes repeated in time with the figure’s singing. “It’s an icon—we just scan your image, right? And then—”
“No!” Trip glanced around for Leonard, but the photographer sat cross-legged on the floor, scribbling on film canisters. “I know how it works! I mean, how’d you know,” he said agitatedly, gesturing at his demonic shadow. “To make it look like that.”
The technician shrugged. “Stock footage. Just pulled it out of some file. I dunno, the music I guess, it reminded me of something. But this isn’t final—”