"Greg," Laurel said one night in bed, "I think that Don is ... well, after me. You know."
Trager rolled over and propped his head up on his elbow. "G.o.d," he said. He sounded concerned.
"I don"t know how to handle it."
"Carefully," Trager said. "He"s very vulnerable. You"re probably the first woman he"s ever been interested in. Don"t be too hard on him. He shouldn"t have to go through the stuff I went through, you know?"
The s.e.x was never as good as a meathouse. And, after a while, Laurel began to close. More and more nights now she went to sleep after they made love; the days when they talked till dawn were gone. Perhaps they had nothing left to say. Trager had noticed that she had a tendency to finish his stories for him. It was nearly impossible to come up with one he hadn"t already told her.
"He said that?" Trager got out of bed, turned on a light, and sat down frowning. Laurel pulled the covers up to her chin.
"Well, what did you say?"
She hesitated. "I can"t tell you. It"s between Don and me. He said it wasn"t fair, the way I turn around and tell you everything that goes on between us, and he"s right."
"Right! But I tell you everything. Don"t you remember what we ..."
"I know, but ..."
Trager shook his head. His voice lost some of its anger. "What"s going on, Laurel, huh? I"m scared, all of a sudden. I love you, remember? How can everything change so fast?"
Her face softened. She sat up, and held out her arms, and the covers fell back from full soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Oh, Greg," she said. "Don"t worry. I love you, I always will, but it"s just that I love him too, I guess. You know?"
Trager, mollified, came into her arms, and kissed her with fervor. Then, suddenly, he broke off. "Hey," he said, with mock sternness to hide the trembling in his voice, "who do you love more?"
"You, of course, always you."
Smiling, he returned the kiss.
"I know you know," Donelly said. "I guess we have to talk about it."
Trager nodded. They were backstage in the theatre. Three of his corpses walked up behind him, and stood arms crossed, like a guard. "All right." He looked straight at Donelly, and his face-smiling until the other"s words-was suddenly stern. "Laurel asked me to pretend I didn"t know anything. She said you felt guilty. But pretending was quite a strain, Don. I guess it"s time we got everything out in the open."
Donelly"s pale blue eyes shifted to the floor, and he stuck his hands into his pockets. "I don"t want to hurt you," he said.
"Then don"t."
"But I"m not going to pretend I"m dead, either. I"m not. I love her too."
"You"re supposed to be my friend, Don. Love someone else. You"re just going to get yourself hurt this way."
"I have more in common with her than you do."
Trager just stared.
Donelly looked up at him. Then, abashed, back down again. "I don"t know. Oh, Greg. She loves you more anyway, she said so. I never should have expected anything else. I feel like I"ve stabbed you in the back. I ..."
Trager watched him. Finally, he laughed softly. "Oh, s.h.i.t, I can"t take this. Look, Don, you haven"t stabbed me, c"mon, don"t talk like that. I guess, if you love her, this is the way it"s got to be, you know. I just hope everything comes out all right."
Later that night, in bed with Laurel; "I"m worried about him," he told her.
His face, once tanned, now ashen. "Laurel?" he said. Not believing.
"I don"t love you anymore. I"m sorry. I don"t. It seemed real at the time, but now it"s almost like a dream. I don"t even know if I ever loved you, really."
"Don," he said woodenly.
Laurel flushed. "Don"t say anything bad about Don. I"m tired of hearing you run him down. He never says anything except good about you."
"Oh, Laurel. Don"t you remember? The things we said, the way we felt? I"m the same person you said those words to."
"But I"ve grown," Laurel said, hard and tearless, tossing her red-gold hair. "I remember perfectly well, but I just don"t feel that way anymore."
"Don"t," he said. He reached for her.
She stepped back. "Keep your hands off me. I told you, Greg, it"s over. You have to leave now. Don is coming by."
It was worse than Josie. A thousand times worse.
III.
Wanderings He tried to keep on at the theatre; he enjoyed the work, he had friends there. But it was impossible. Donelly was there every day, smiling and being friendly, and sometimes Laurel came to meet him after the day"s show and they went off together, arm in arm. Trager would stand and watch, try not to notice. While the twisted thing inside him shrieked and clawed.
He quit. He would not see them again. He would keep his pride.
The sky was brigh t with the lig hts of Gidy on and full of laughter, but it was dark and quiet in the park.
Trager stood stiff against a tree, his eyes on the river, his hands folded tightly against his chest. He was a statue. He hardly seemed to breathe. Not even his eyes moved.
Kneeling near the low wall, the corpse pounded until the stone was slick with blood and its hands were mangled clots of torn meat. The sounds of the blows were dull and wet, but for the infrequent sc.r.a.ping of bone against rock.
They made him pay first, before he could even enter the booth. Then he sat there for an hour while they found her and punched through. Finally, though, finally; "Josie."
"Greg," she said, grinning her distinctive grin. "I should have known. Who else would call all the way from Vendalia? How are you?"
He told her.
Her grin vanished. "Oh, Greg," she said. "I"m sorry. But don"t let it get to you. Keep going. The next one will work out better. They always do."
Her words didn"t satisfy him. "Josie," he said, "How are things back there? You miss me?"
"Oh, sure. Things are pretty good. It"s still Skrakky, though. Stay where you are, you"re better off." She looked offscreen, then back. "I should go, before your bill gets enormous. Glad you called, love."
"Josie," Trager started. But the screen was already dark.
Sometimes, at night, he couldn"t help himself. He would move to his home screen and ring Laurel. Invariably her eyes would narrow when she saw who it was. Then she would hang up.
And Trager would sit in a dark room and recall how once the sound of his voice made her so very, very happy.
The streets of Gidyon are not the best of places for lonely midnight walks. They are brightly lit, even in the darkest hours, and jammed with men and deadmen. And there are meathouses, all up and down the boulevards and the ironspike boardwalks.
Josie"s words had lost their power. In the meathouses, Trager abandoned dreams and found cheap solace. The sensuous evenings with Laurel and the fumbling s.e.x of his boyhood were things of yesterday; Trager took his meatmates hard and quick, almost brutally, f.u.c.ked them with a wordless savage power to the inevitable perfect o.r.g.a.s.m. Sometimes, remembering the theatre, he would have them act out short erotic playlets to get him in the mood.
In the night. Agony.
He was in the corridors again, the low dim corridors of the corpsehandlers" dorm on Skrakky, but now the corridors were twisted and torturous and Trager had long since lost his way. The air was thick with a rotting gray haze, and growing thicker. Soon, he feared, he would be all but blind.
Around and around he walked, up and down, but always there was more corridor, and all of them led nowhere. The doors were grim black rectangles, k.n.o.bless, locked to him forever; he pa.s.sed them by without thinking, most of them. Once or twice, though, he paused, before doors where light leaked around the frame. He would listen, and inside there were no sounds, and then he would begin to knock wildly. But no one ever answered.
So he would move on, through the haze that got darker and thicker and seemed to burn his skin, past door after door after door, until he was weeping and his feet were tired and b.l.o.o.d.y. And then, off a ways, down a long, long corridor that loomed straight before him, he would see an open door. From it came light so hot and white it hurt the eyes, and music bright and joyful, and the sounds of people laughing. Then Trager would run, though his feet were raw bundles of pain and his lungs burned with the haze he was breathing. He would run and run until he reached the room with the open door.
Only when he got there, it was his room, and it was empty.
Once, in the middle of their brief time together, they"d gone out into the wilderness and made love under the stars. Afterwards she had snuggled hard against him, and he stroked her gently. "What are you thinking?" he asked.
"About us," Laurel said. She shivered. The wind was brisk and cold. "Sometimes I get scared, Greg. I"m so afraid something will happen to us, something that will ruin it. I don"t ever want you to leave me."
"Don"t worry," he told her. "I won"t."
Now, each night before sleep came, he tortured himself with her words. The good memories left him with ashes and tears; the bad ones with a wordless rage.
He slept with a ghost beside him, a supernaturally beautiful ghost, the husk of a dead dream. He woke to her each morning.
He hated them. He hated himself for hating.
3.
Duvalier"s Dream Her name does not matter. Her looks are not important. All that counts is that she was, that Trager tried again, that he forced himself on and made himself believe and didn"t give up. He tried.
But something was missing. Magic?
The words were the same.
How many times can you speak them, Trager wondered, speak them and believe them, like you believe them the first time you said them? Once? Twice? Three times, maybe? Or a hundred? And the people who say it a hundred times, are they really so much better at loving? Or only at fooling themselves? Aren"t they really people who long ago abandoned the dream, who use its name for something else?
He said the words, holding her, cradling her, and kissing her. He said the words, with a knowledge that was surer and heavier and more dead than any belief. He said the words and tried, but no longer could he mean them.
And she said the words back, and Trager realized that they meant nothing to him. Over and over again they said the things each wanted to hear, and both of them knew they were pretending.
They tried hard. But when he reached out, like an actor caught in his role, doomed to play out the same part over and over again, when he reached out his hand and touched her cheek-the skin was smooth and soft and lovely. And wet with tears.
IV.
Echoes "I don"t want to hurt you," said Donelly, shuffling and looking guilty, until Trager felt ashamed for having hurt a friend.
He touched her cheek, and she spun away from him.
"I never wanted to hurt you," Josie said, and Trager was sad. She had given him so much; he"d only made her guilty. Yes, he was hurt, but a stronger man would never have let her know.
"I"m sorry, I don"t," Laurel said. And Trager was lost. What had he done, where was his fault, how had he ruined it? She had been so sure. They had had so much.
He touched her cheek, and she wept.
How many times can you speak them, his voice echoed, speak them and believe them, like you believed them the first time you said them?
The wind was dark and dust heavy, the sky throbbed painfully with flickering scarlet flame. In the pit, in the darkness, stood a young woman with goggles and a filtermask and short brown hair and answers. "It breaks down, it breaks down, it breaks down, and they keep sending it out," she said. "Should realize that something is wrong. After that many failures, it"s sheer self-delusion to think the thing"s going to work right next time out."
The enemy corpse is huge and black, its torso rippling with muscle, a product of months of exercise, the biggest thing that Trager has ever faced. It advances across the sawdust in a slow, clumsy crouch, holding the gleaming broadsword in one hand. Trager watches it come from his chair atop one end of the fighting arena. The other corpsemaster is careful, cautious.
His own deadman, a wiry blond, stands and waits, a morningstar trailing down in the blood-soaked arena dust. Trager will move him fast enough and well enough when the time is right. The enemy knows it, and the crowd.