Somatoys
BY RAY ALDRIDGE
Illustration by Pat Morrissey
/Science Fiction Age, March 1993/
The hermit Berner climbed up to his shrine, as he did every morning at sunrise. The sun’s hurtful glare rose swiftly above the surrounding mountains. By the time Berner reached the top of the hill, harsh light filled his valley. The shrine was a bronze statue– a naked woman, life-size. She lay back on a gray boulder, legs spread, hands laced comfortably behind her head, smiling up at the sky. Sharp little knives tipped her small breasts.
«From death into life, from life into death; the same door,» he prayed, so quickly that the familiar words ran together. He lay his forehead against the smooth belly of the shrine, still cold from the desert night. Soon the shrine would be too hot to touch, which was why he performed his devotions at dawn.
He rolled his cheek against the metal, trying to remember how it felt to touch a real woman. Nothing but a sort of abstract revulsion came to him, mixed strangely with a tenuous longing. «You’ve been here too long, too long, too long,» he told himself, as he did every morning. It was as much a part of the ritual as his prayers.
After a while, Berner pushed himself away from the shrine and went down to his posole pod plantation. He took a hoe and labored among the wiry vines until the sunlight became dangerously intense.
Then he retreated into his cave.
Tawny posole fiber mats covered the walls and floor. A cool spring trickled pleasantly at the back of the cave. Berner owned a hammock, a small library of sacred books, and a good med-unit. He looked around at this comfortable dwelling and felt a desperate surge of boredom.
He took a bowl of posole to his table. After 30 changeless years, the thin gray gruel had lost whatever appeal it might have originally possessed. But it was nourishing, and the pods grew without too much trouble. He stared down into the bowl. «What I wouldn’t give for a tomato,» he said. «Or even a stinking squash. And I hated squash.» He sighed and forced himself to eat.
In his hammock, Berner was settling toward sleep, when he heard the rumble of descending engines. The cave trembled and dust fell from the mats. He rushed to the entrance. Looking out, he saw a squat black starboat at the edge of the posole pod field, descending in a blossom of orange fire.
The starboat stood silently in the noon glare. The posole vines beneath the boat smoldered for a bit.
Nothing else happened.
Berner soon retreated into the relative coolness of his cave. In late afternoon, Berner again ventured to the cave’s mouth. The sun still hammered down, and the heat rose from the red soil in shuddering waves. Bemer watched for long minutes, gasping in the fiery air, but no one came forth.
An hour after dark, when the air was cooler and the moonless night blazed with stars, he thought he heard a sound from the boat. A scream? Had he heard anything at all? What sound could escape the armored hull?
A little later, the boat’s lock revolved and fell open.
A pneumatic gangplank unfurled from the starboat; an impressive man descended. He wore black glitterskin and a silver-thread tunic; he was tall and lithe; he moved with an air of irresistable authority. A mask of gold and silver microscales cloaked his face–a prosthesis attached directly to his facial muscles, as mobile as the skin it replaced. The features were impossibly noble, inhumanly precise. Bemer stepped cautiously from the cave.
The visitor made an easy gesture of greeting, and strode forward. «Good evening,» said the visitor, in a resonant tenor as beautiful as his mask.
«Good evening, sir...» Berner’s voice broke.
The visitor smiled, his mask glimmering in the starlight. «A lovely night. It must be one of the compensations of your life here. Where, may I ask, are your companions?»
Berner was unprepared for so direct a question and answered without guile. «There’s no one here but me. It’s an empty world.» «Oh? A shame. Aren’t you lonely?» Dark eyes twinkled within the mask; the voice sang on. «But where are my manners? My name is Warven Manolo Cleet, a citizen of Dilvermoon, on a journey of rest and renewal. And you?»
«Ah... Brother Bemer, a lay dedicant of the Stringent Mystery.» Bemer hesitated a moment. Something more was required of him; he felt it strongly, as if Cleet jerked at him with invisible hooks.
«Oh... Berner said, finally. «Will you come in?»
So, you’re alone here. Have you no other visitors?»
Cleet lolled elegantly at Berner’s table. He had taken the only chair, without hesitation.
«The Mission circuit ship stops every five years.»
Cleet leaned forward, taut. «Ah? When did the ship last visit?» «A year ago. Do you know of the Stringent Mystery?»
«Yes,» said Cleet, relaxing. «I know of your sect.» A sneer trembled on his metal lips. «You worship an idol... a naked demon, correct? She reclines, her legs are open and her nipples are knives. You regard sexuality as a mortal sin, in the most literal sense. Not so?»
«The shrine is an allegory, not an idol.» In spite of all the times Berner had doubted, he resented this sleek Dilvermooner’s contempt. «It’s true, we regard sex with women as its own punishment.»
«What of sex with men?»
«There’s little theological difference. Men use each other as women. In our view the sin is undiminished by the physiological details.»
«I see.» Cleet seemed to be struggling not to laugh.
«Why are you a hermit? Others of your sect prosper in the settled worlds.»
Cleet was prying into sensitive areas now, and Berner set his jaw and looked away.
Cleet finally did laugh, a sound somehow unpleasant, for all its silvery perfection of tone. «I understand. Beyond touch, beyond temptation; is that the plan? Did you prove particularly susceptible to the charms of women? Particularly weak in your faith?» Cleet’s eyes glittered.
«That’s none of your concern, Citizen Cleet,» Berner snapped.
Cleet leaned forward, and the hard contours of his mask flowed like molten metal, shimmering with several unidentifiable emotions. «You’re wrong.» A nerveburn appeared in Cleet’s hand. Cleet pointed it at Berner’s chest.
Berner stared down at the weapon, horrified. «I’ve nothing worth stealing...»
Cleet grinned. «You think I’m a thief?» He chuckled throatily, shook his head. «No, no. It pleases me to be served, and you’re the only servant to be found on this ugly little world, so... you must dedicate yourself to a new mystery.»
Berner drew back. «I’m sorry. I can’t take on any additional responsibilities. My devotions... my work in the fields...»
«I’m your god now, hermit,» said Cleet. He triggered the nerveburn.
Berner found himself suddenly damned. Horror assaulted all his senses. An indescribable sound clawed at his ears, sent spikes of ugliness into his brain. Cleet changed into a thing so hideous he could never afterward remember its shape. His mouth filled with the taste of maggoty rot, he choked on a supremely vile stench. Fire shrieked along his nerves, shuddering waves of agony. The world disappeared. Nothing existed but the pain, it filled his universe from edge to edge, it went on and on, until he had forgotten its source.
When it ended, he lay on the floor in a puddle of vomit and urine, and he was a different man.
«Have you changed your mind?» asked Cleet.
«Oh yes,» said Berner.
Cleet allowed Berner to clean himself and put on his other robe, then he took him to the starboat.
The boat was furnished in luxurious style, with deep carpets and soft pastel walls. In the central well of the boat, a slow-spinning stairfield floated them up into the bow. Here the walls were bare alloy, studded with holoprojector lenses. To one side was a heavy metal door, set with an armorglass port.