Lilith tells him to move along.
No response at first. Then his face crumbles. Unutterable sadness. Brings left hand up in awkward clownlike gesture, touches forehead, lets hand drift down to chest, to crotch. Making the sign in reverse — what’s the significance of that? He says tragically, I … love … the … love … ly … al … phas.
I say to Lilith, What kind of drug is it?
Slows the time-sense. A minute becomes an hour to them. It stretches their free time. Of course, we move like whirlwinds around them. Usually the addicts stick together, all on the same time-scheme. Illusion of having days between each work-shift.
A dangerous drug?
She says, Cuts about an hour off the life expectancy for every two hours you’re under the influence. The gammas figure it’s a fair deal, though. Give up an hour objective, gain two or three days subjective — why not?
But it reduces the work force!
Gammas have the right to do what they please with their lives, don’t they, Alpha Leaper? You wouldn’t accept the argument that they’re merely property, would you, and that any kind of self-abuse practiced by the gamma is a crime against its owner?
No. No. Of course not, Alpha Meson.
I didn’t think you felt that way, Lilith says.
The slobie addict is moving in foolish vague circles around us, chanting something so slowly that I am unable to connect one syllable to another, and can make no sense of it. He halts. A glacial smile spreads infinitely slowly across his lips; I think it is a snarl until it is half formed. He sinks into a hulking crouch. His hand rises, fingers flexed. The hand is obviously heading toward Lilith’s left breast. Neither of us moves.
I catch the gamma’s chant now:
A … A … A … A … A … G … A … A … C … A … A … U…
What’s he trying to say?
Lilith shakes her head. It isn’t important.
She steps away while the groping hand is still ten centimeters from her bosom. A frown begins to replace the smile on the gamma’s face. He looks wounded. His chant takes on a questioning tone:
A … U … A … A … U … G … A … U … C … A … U … U…
A sound of slow, dragging footsteps comes from behind me. A second slobie addict is approaching: a girl, wearing a cloak that hangs down from her shoulders and trails raggedly for many meters behind her, but leaves her thighs and loins bare. She has dyed her hair green, and has it bound up in a kind of tiara. Her face seems wasted and pallid; her eyes are scarcely open; her skin is glossy with sweat. She floats toward our first friend and says something to him in a startling baritone boom. He replies dreamily. I can understand none of what they say. Is it because of the decelerating drug, or do they speak a gamma patois? Something ugly seems to be about to happen. I nod to Lilith, suggesting we leave, but she shakes her head. Stay. Watch them.
The addicts are doing a grotesque dance. Fingertips touching, knees rising and falling. A gavotte for marble statues. A minuet for stuffed elephants.
They croon to one another. They circle one another. The man’s feet become tangled in the girl’s trailing cloak. She moves; he stays firm; the cloak rips, leaving the girl naked in the street. Between her breasts she has a knife, dangling from a green cord. Her back is crisscrossed with scars. Has she been flogged? Her nakedness excites her. I see her nipples stiffening in slow motion. The man is next to her now. He reaches up with painful haste and takes the knife from its sheath. Just as slowly he brings it down and touches the cold metal to the girl’s loins, her belly, her forehead. The holy sign. Lilith and I are against the wall, near the entrance to the doctor’s office. The knife makes me uneasy.
Let me take if away from him, I say.
No. No. You’re just a visitor here. This isn’t your affair.
Then let’s go, Lilith.
Wait. Watch.
Our friend is singing again. Letters, as before. U … C … A … U … C … G … U … C … C…
His arm comes back, then starts forward. The point of the knife is aimed at the girl’s abdomen. From the tension in his muscles I can see that the blow will have full force; this is no dance step. The blade is only a few centimeters from her skin when I rush forward and slap it from his hand.
He begins to moan.
The girl does not yet realize that she has been saved. She utters a deep droning bellow, perhaps intended to be a shriek. She drops to the ground, clutching her breasts with one hand, thrusting the other between her thighs. She writhes in slow motion.
You shouldn’t have interfered, Lilith says angrily. Come on, now. We’d better go.
But he would have killed her!
Not your affair. Not your affair.
She tugs at my wrist. I turn. We begin to move away. I am aware peripherally that the girl is getting up; the garish lights of the sign of Poseidon Musketeer the Medic glisten on her bare thin flanks. Lilith and I take two steps; then we hear a grunt. We look back, the girl, rising, has risen with the knife in her hand, and she has driven it into the man’s belly. Methodically she draws it upward from waist to chest. He is disemboweled, and is only slowly becoming aware of it. He makes a gurgling sound.
Now we’ve got to go, Lilith says.
We speed toward the corner. As we reach it I turn. The door of Alpha Musketeer has opened. A gaunt haggard figure, alpha-tall, with a mane of wild gray hair and bulging eyes, stands in it. Is this the famous medic? He rushes toward the slobie addicts. The girl kneels before her victim, who has not yet fallen. His blood purples her shining skin. She chants: G! A! A! G! A! G! G! A! C!
In here, Lilith says, and we duck into a dark doorway.
Steps. A dry smell of withered things. Cobwebs. We plunge into unknown depths. In the distance, far below, yellow lights gleam. We go down and down and down.
What is this place? I ask.
Security tunnel. Built during the Sanity War two hundred years ago. Part of a system that runs everywhere under Stockholm. The gammas have taken it over.
Like a sewer.
I hear quick stabs of laughter, jagged blurts of incoherent conversation. There are shops down here, with slitted gates behind which little lamps sputter and flicker. Gammas move to and fro. Some of them make the one-two-three sign as they pass us. Driven by a fear I do not understand, Lilith leads us frantically onward. We change tunnels, entering a passage at right angles to the first one.
Three slobie addicts wander by.
A male gamma with face streaked by red and blue paint pauses to sing, perhaps to us:
He kneels and gags. Thin blue fluid pours from his lips, almost to our feet.
We move on. We hear an echoing cry:
Al — pha!Al — pha!Al — pha!Al — pha!
Two gammas couple in an alcove. Their bodies are sweat-shiny and lean. Despite myself I watch the plunging hips and listen to the slap of flesh against flesh. The girl pounds the flats of her hands steadily against her partner’s back. Is she protesting a rape, or displaying ecstasy? I never find out, because a slobie stumbles out of the shadows and falls on them, tumbling in a turmoil of intertwined limbs. Lilith draws me away. I am suddenly heavy with desire for her. I think of the firm breasts beneath her wrap; I think of the bare moist slit. Shall we find an alcove of our own, and couple among the gammas? I put my hand on her buttocks, which are taut as she walks. Lilith wriggles her hips. Not here, she says. Not here. We have social distances to keep too.