"Take off my mask," he said quietly, taking her hands in his and moving them up to his face.
Trembling, she did so, and when she pulled the sheath of rubber up over his head she found herself faced with an identical skull, this one of bone. The red candles behind his eyes flared into life.
"You're it," she breathed.
Skull nodded slowly.
"You're the beat."
Around them, it became even blacker.
"I think you knew it all along," he said softly. He made a leisurely, graceful turn around the arena. "Someone wrote, a long time ago," he said, "that the dance is the most perfect form of human expression—that it is the essence of humanity itself. It's been called poetry embodied, beauty in its most fluid and unchaotic state. Man believed this, and, eventually, man's machines believed it. I believed it." He stopped abruptly, and looked, it seemed, straight into Minnow's soul. His voice was soft, but held something suppressed, a rage or frustration. "If machine was to become man, what better way to prove we were not mere mimics than to exhibit his most human essence? If I could attain the dance I would attain humanity.
"But when I did this, something painful occurred to me: that man himself did not possess, really, the knowledge of his own most perfect poetry. And so the beat began, and has been going on ever since."
"You've been punishing us for not using what we're born with and which took you so much pain to get," Minnow whispered, horrified.
"No!" said Skull, his voice rising to an echoing shout and sending a chill through Minnow. "Not punishing: teaching. Trying to teach..." His voice dropped to a breath. "And I've failed."
"So you're destroying everything, from one end of the globe to the other, because you've failed."
His eyes flamed red fire, and she thought he would shout with rage again, but instead he pirouetted away from her, jumping lightly and landing with the finesse of a cat on his toes.
"It's time," he said, his death's head riveted on her, "for my last dance."
Minnow looked steadily at him, though her voice was faint.
"The end."
Skull stared at her, unmoving.
"And you my partner."
Every dot of light bled out of their surroundings then, leaving them in a darkness as utter and black as an inkpool. A spotlight, then another, materialized, making a circle around her feet and around those of Skull, and suddenly he was leaping up, up, graceful as a bird, and she was following him. She could not tell if they were on the ground or in the air. Her limbs, as always during the beat, were not her own.
They were swallows in flight. There may have been music somewhere; or the music may have come from within Minnow's own bones, singing directly into her brain from the core of her being. It didn't matter. The beat was there, and it made its own music. She was caught in a timeless web, and after a while she realized that her limbs were her own now, and that what she was doing was as much her own making as his. What they danced was something beyond poetry or ballet: it had more to do with water, air, and fire than with these things that were given names in some ancient time. It was an essential thing, born as much of the molecules and atoms that composed her, with their stately, roll-of-the-dice movement, as it did with the mere jerking of legs, arms, hands—though all these things were part of it too. It was something that clawed and cried and laughed, made love and violence. All movement, all dance, without this understanding, was ludicrous, obscene: but with it clutched to her breast Minnow became something more than she was before. It freed her from something that had always been with her, since the first forced tug on her body which this thing named Skull had generated. Then she had been made to do it; now she wanted to. And suddenly she saw that she was dancing alone, her arms and legs not fluid machine but human, and she soared and soared.
She awoke with the crampedness that always set in after the beat. This time, though, there was an underlying strength in her worn out body. She stood and stretched, looking down at herself and knowing for the first time that her body belonged to her and no one else.
At first she thought the arena was empty. The white tarp stretched tight to the circumference, and she could make out nothing on its surface—but then she saw, huddled at the edge, a crumpled figure.
It was Skull. He seemed, now, the mere bag of bones that his skull promised: Minnow had the unsettling feeling that if she were to pick his body up it would rattle and then fall to pieces and flake away. Instead she stared into his eyes, now absent of the crimson candle-glow of artificial life.
She looked into those eyes for a long time. And then, with a quick step she lifted her leg, gracefully, turned, and began to walk with resolution toward the tunnel leading to the world above. She would walk, at least for now—though she had the feeling that when the light of the sun or moon caressed her she might be unable to keep her body still. That warmly beating center core might burst to flaming life and take her limbs freely into motion with it.
She might have to dance.
In the Corn
Do you remember losing your eyes?"
"Yes."
"Tell me."
"I... was three years old, playing with my brother and governess in a wide yellow field in back of our house. It was Autumn, and the grass was stiff; I remember it was cold that day. My brother and I were tumbling on the grass, throwing each other over our shoulders, laughing. The governess, Nancy, got caught up in our game and began to tumble us over her shoulder also. This is... very painful to remember..."
"Go on. You must tell me."
"She was roughhousing with us, and began to pick one and then the other up, swinging us high in the air. I remember her twirling me around. We were all getting dizzy and were laughing uncontrollably. We had wandered somewhat from the center of the field toward an edge bordered by a row of picked corn; the stalks were stiff and dry and stood up straight. I can almost see the sun on their dry yellow. Nancy was laughing as if she were our own age; actually, she was only a few years older than my brother. I was running around and around her, chasing my brother, and Nancy suddenly picked me up, a bit too fast, tumbling me up and over her shoulder. I remember the stalks of corn coming at my eyes like deformed spears, I can see them now like I could then, as if in slow motion, coming up towards my eyes, and then into them..."
"Go on..."
"Doctor, I can't..."
"You must."
"I... remember screaming, hearing myself scream, and I remember flailing my arms and hands, trying to pull the stalks from my eyes, sitting on the ground and screaming uncontrollably, shrieking, my entire body shaking, and then feeling hands on me, Nancy's hands. I can remember her hands on my face, and the sticky mass of tears and blood, and then I could feel her tugging at the stalks, pulling them free one at a time, gently, and there was... a sound... as she did it, a sucking sound..."
"Yes?"
"I can't."
"I told you, you must. Continue."
"No!"
"Continue."
"I...—no!"
"You must go on."
"The... last thing I remember seeing was the governess' face after she had pulled the stalks free. I could see her face through blood, though I could not see very clearly. There was a look of..."
"Yes?"
"A look of horror on her face, and then my eyes began to unfocus, as if the world was being pulled away, taking the light with it, and I was alone and screaming..."
"Can you go on?"
''I...”
"Yes?"