“I’ll show you; I’ll show you! You and all the goddamn Rees. You and all of them!”
He reached her, and his hands grasped her ankles. Her skin was cool to his touch. He pulled, and she toppled to the floor, and the gown brushed away under his hands.
He shouted again. He was sick inside; his body trembled, and he was no better than the rest of them, no better than all the Rees — no better than the drunken pigs mating in alleys, no better than any of them. The tears streamed down his face when he tore the gown from her. He choked on a sob, and his hands fumbled for her breasts. She trembled beneath him, and then tried to roll away from him, but he pinned her tight.
“I’ll show you,” he blubbered. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you.”
Chapter 15
Cold turkey, the ancients had called it. They had misnamed it, Van Brant thought.
He consumed his remaining drugs in the space of three days, and then it began. He woke at 1100 on the fourth morning. He went directly to the bar, lifted the lid, and reached in for a vial, surprised when he found only empties. He remembered that he was all out, then. He stood staring down at the empties, and when Liz came into the room, he glanced up briefly. His eyes avoided hers, the way they had even since the night he’d...
He could still not bring himself to think about it honestly. He’d hated himself, and he’d hated her; and now her subtly exposed body was a constant reminder of what had been. He’d expected her to leave the next morning. She hadn’t, and considering the circumstances, he could not force himself to ask her to go.
“I tried to get some for you,” she said softly.
He looked up, but his eyes still did not meet hers. “And?”
“None; not anywhere. It’s going to be rugged, Van.”
“I know,” he said.
He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known at all what it would be like. Happy time was 1115; he’d watch the hands of the chronometer work their way around the blank white face. At 1105, he remembered there were no more vials in the bar. He shrugged the memory aside, and waited, watching the insidious creep of the chron’s hands.
At 1110, he felt the first pangs of desire. They started in his mind, started as a gentle probing that reminded him it would soon be happy time. They moved rapidly, reaching into his veins, starting an insistent hum in his blood, a hum that softly beckoned the stab of the needle. By 1115, the hum had become a thunderous buzz. He went to the bar unconsciously, completely forgetting there were no drugs in it. He blinked his eyes at the empty vials, slammed the lid shut, and began pacing the floor.
This was no holdoff; this was no voluntary tease, he kept telling himself. He couldn’t put it off until his blood was ready to erupt, and then pop it, enjoying it ten times as much. There was nothing to pop.
He began twisting his hands, and then he began scratching. He scratched his arms, and his back, and his neck, and his face. He’d never been so itchy; he scratched until his skin was red and raw, and then the pain started — a sharp pain that crossed his back and tightened his muscles. And then a dull, throbbing pain in the pit of his stomach.
Liz watched. She sat quietly on the edge of the bed while he paced the room; she didn’t say a word. She watched as his fingers became claws. She watched as he tore at his skin, as his pacing became more frantic. She watched when he doubled over with pain. She watched when he began trembling, when the muscles of his face lost complete control, when his features crumbled into a shivering, jelly-like mass. His breath trembled from his open mouth. He tore at his hair, wet his lips, and strained his neck. He sat, and then stood immediately, and then sat again. He jiggled his feet and twisted his hands, and blinked his eyes. His nose began running, and then his eyes started watering. He opened his mouth wide, trying to suck in air.
When he got sick, she led him to the bathroom. He tried to squirm free of her hands, but he was too weak to protest. He leaned over the bowl, retching drily, and she held him firmly, still silent.
The scream of his blood died, for a while. It came back in an hour, clamoring for the drug. There was no drug, and the cycle began again, ending ultimately over the bowl, where his stomach tried to eject food it did not possess.
The reports of suicides did not cheer him. Liz kept a watchful eye on him, her face taking on an expectant look whenever he wandered close to a window. She could only guess at what was going on inside him, but her face held honest fear and concern.
On the second day of the cold turkey, he left the apartment. He told Liz he couldn’t stand the four walls any longer; he told her he wanted to stretch his legs and breathe some fresh air. He told her he’d shaken the drug.
He told the same thing to himself.
He told it to one corner of his mind, but his body knew he was out to seek drugs illegally.
He tried the worst parts of the city. He offered large sums of money; he would have offered his life. There were no drugs to be had. The heat was on, and the illegal traffic had burrowed underground, far from the probing eyes of the Federal authorities. He walked the streets, sick with the panic of defeat, and sick with the physical disintegration of his body. He walked with his shoulders hunched against the wind, his eyes staring blankly at the cast-iron skies that solemnly forecast the winter. There was a still, funereal feel to the air. The people he passed were silent, Vike and Ree alike. The Vike faces were drawn and haunted, mirrored reflections of his own. And the Rees, like murderers drowned in their victims’ blood, avoided Vike eyes, walked the streets with the guilty look of an ill-behaving conqueror.
He wondered how all this had happened, and his thoughts took his mind off the drug for a while. He kept walking, unseeing almost, and he was surprised to find himself at his office building. He shrugged, took the lift up, pressed his thumb into the lock, and entered.
A light was burning, and he cursed the inefficiency of the office staff until he opened the door to his private office and found Lois Sylvan sitting at his desk.
She had never looked worse. Her face was drawn and white; the overhead lamp cast deep, black pockets under her eyes. Her lips were thin and cracked, and her face was an active field of muscular spasms. There was the haggard look of a witch about her. Her hair was stringy, matted; her fingers were long and thin, and they trembled violently. She looked up when he entered the room, and there was all the loneliness and despair of the Vike world in her vacuous eyes.
“It’s all over,” she said.
“Don’t be silly. Just because...”
“Not only the drugs,” she protested. “Everything. Everything, Van. It’s all over.”
“What do you mean?” Panic had stabbed deep within him. For a moment, it superseded the other panic, the pressing desire for the drug. “What’s happened?”
“This,” she said. “This. Look at it.” Her hands trembled violently when she reached for the white slip of paper on the desk top. She handed it to him, and then pulled her hands back to clutch at her stomach as a new pain racked her body. Van took the paper and stared at it incredulously.
“This is a lie,” he said.
Lois spoke over the pain in her abdomen, her eyes clenched shut.
“No, Van. It’s the goods. It’s straight.”
He looked at the paper again. It told him that Pall Associates now owned a majority of the stock throughout the publishing and entertainment fields, and that editorial requirements would be changed abruptly in the near future.