EYEBRIGHT Read online

  «But» Kemrin started to say.

  «You can do it; I have faith in you, kid.» Bodrun clicked off.

  When Kemrin tried to call back, he couldn’t get through. But a moment later his vid chimed, and he stabbed at the ACCEPT switch, hoping for a reprieve.

  Asmo Bluedog’s vast face filled the screen. He chuckled throatily.

  «Kemrin Animoht, are you there? How long can you hide?» The holographic eye winked madly; the real eye glittered hotly. «You cost me a good boy today, didn’t you? Are you proud?»

  Kemrin drew back, horrified. Bluedog’s image slowly faded.

  «Oh no. Oh no,» he said. Howlytown lost the last glimmer o f its dark luster, and he wished fervently to be back in the dull safe confines of the Pale.

  A week later he found Bluedog’s dark-haired woman in the foyer, sitting against the far wall. Blood had pooled around her, but she was alive. Her eyes focused on him as he entered.

  His first impulse was to ignore her; he suspected a boobybomb. But she called out wordlessly, and he remembered her small act of kindness to him.

  He approached as closely as he dared. «I'll call a medunit,» he said.

  She rolled her head from side to side. «No, please» she said in a tiny dry whisper. «They’ll sell me to a chop shop; I have no cash.»

  He considered. Maybe the bomb was inside her. The source o f the blood wasn’t visible; perhaps Bluedog had cut a hiding place. «Where are you; hurt?» he asked.

  «It’s not bad, really, nothing serious. My back… I ’ve just lost a little blood. I'll be okay in a while.» Her eyes rolled up; she had passed out.

  Eventually, he came to a decision. He went up to his habitat and fetched the seeker-destroyer. He switched it to capture mode and set it on her. It scanned her carefully, found nothing. While it was peeling her off the wall, she woke and screamed as the wounds on her back reopened. But she fainted again immediately.

  He followed as the SD brought her up to his habitat, and wondered all the while at his sudden foolishness.

  Her back was hard to look at, jellied blood, raw purple meat, a few scraps of fabric embedded in the mess. Kemrin marvelled th a t she still breathed. He assumed he was seeing an example of Bluedog’s fabled skill with a flickwhip. What had she done to irritate the monster?

  He had a small personal medic in the habitat. He rolled the unit across the floor to the corner where the SD had left the woman. When he pressed the unit’s switch, the chassis opened and a cluster of probes came weaving out, to touch delicately at her flesh.

  Presently, she was obscured beneath a tangle of slender silver cable, and the unit’s telltales glowed red.

  Kemrin examined the impulse that had caused him to rescue her. Why had he done it? Because she had been kind? No, it had been an insignificant kindness — though memorable, under the circumstances. Because she was pretty? No. Howlytown teemed with handsome women; most of them for sale at reasonable rates.

  Perhaps he hoped to learn something from her, some scrap of information that might help him survive Bluedog’s enmity. Y es, that was probably it.When he had arrived at this rationale, he allowed himself to hope she would survive.

  Six hours later, the telltales on the medic had faded to amber, and she woke.

  Her eyes were huge, a deep soft violet. Lovely, he thought, startled. Her face was white, still drawn, still taut with fear.

  She watched him wordlessly. «Hello,» he said.

  She bit her lip and looked away. It suddenly occurred to him that she was afraid, afraid of him. «No, no,» he said. «I won’t hurt you. Bluedog did this?»

  She nodded.

  «Why?»

  She tried to speak, but her voice was a dry whisper. He brought her water, and she drank it greedily.

  Her voice was stronger. «Bluedog is a clever man,» she said. «Bluedog wished to show you something ugly. He wished to add the weight of another decision to your load. He foresaw that you would feel guilt if you left me, and anxiety i f you rescued me. He told me to tell you these things if I survived to speak to you.»

  Kemrin drew back, appalled. Monstrous Bluedog! «He did this to you just to devil me?»

  A tiny smile trembled on her mouth. «Of course. He’s Bluedog. But he was finished with me, anyway»

  «Why? Why does he hate me so?»

  She looked faintly surprised. «You don’t know? Bluedog hates everyone who doesn’t have to live in Howlytown and comes down here anyway. And now you’ve killed one of his favorites»

  «And what are you to Bluedog?»

  She didn’t answer immediately. «Tell me,» he said sharply. She cringed away from him, as if expecting to be beaten. He suppressed a pang of unexpected shame. Come now, Kemrin, he told himself firmly. She belonged to Bluedog, after all.

  «'Please,» he said. «I need to know everything. I want to stay alive.»

  An odd look crossed her face, Pity? He couldn't tell. «I was his mind whore,» she said. She lifted her chin, looked him in the eye, daring him to' say something scornful.

  He stood and moved to the far corner of the room. Here was a marvel, a prodigy, a woman whose erotic imagination was capable o f stimulating the hideous Bluedog. «And why did he turn you out.»

  Some of the medic’s telltales were edging toward red again. «He’d used me up. That’s what he said.»

  Thereafter he left her alone, and soon she slept.

  Her name was Leila Tran. Her strength came back quickly. Whenever Kemrin left, he locked her in an inner room and warned her that the seeker-destroyer would kill her if she came out. She accepted the stricture with no evidence of resentment.

  She was no whiner. She responded to the sanctuary Kemrin had given her with dignified gratitude. She said very little, and he didn’t attempt to draw her out. She seemed content to exist day by day, and after a time she began to smile, and even to laugh.

  «How is it you can be so calm under these circumstances?» he asked her. «What’s wrong with these circumstances? I have enough to eat, a safe place to be, and I’m away from Bluedog.»

  He didn’t trust her, of course, but he began to respect her.Each morning, armed and armored, he trooped off to Singh Louie’s atelier, determined to force Prince Velligon into paroxysms o f heroism. But he seemed unable to gather the threads together, unable to do anything with the dream figures he’d lived with for so long.

  The numbers reflected this. Each night he would tap into the Pale’s dream channels, and each night he found a relentless drop in usership.One day when the next episode was ready, the courier didn’t come, and Kemrin understood he had been abandoned. While he was unsuccessfully trying to raise Bodrun, Bluedog patched into Kemrin’s vidphone.

  Today Bluedog’s beauty stripes were lime green and plum, curved diagonally across the white expanse of his face. Bluedog didn’t say a word, but his good eye sparkled. He raised his huge meaty hand to his eye patch and flapped it vigorously, exposing with each movement the black pit beneath. Kemrin jerked the vid cable from the wall.

  He went home and released Leila. When she saw his face, her usual smile faded. «What’s happened?»

  He flung himself into a chair. «I’m dead. They’ve cancelled Velligon.»

  «I’m sorry. Is it that important?»

  He looked up at her, amazed. «Haven’t I ever explained? Velligon was my last chance to get out of Howlytown. The apartment rent’s due in three days. After that, I can live in my studio for a week or so, until Singh Louie puts me out. Then I ’m a goner.»

  She looked as if she might cry. It occurred to him that she was probably dead, too. «Or maybe not,» he said. «Maybe I ’ll think o f something»

  «The problem is money?»

  She sat down, seemed to withdraw into herself. He watched her. She was really quite beautiful, in a subdued, understated way. He felt a surge of regret, for all the sweet possibilities that would be lost when Bluedog killed him. Not that he desired her in particular; he could not forget that she had been Bluedog’s
mind-whore.

  «How do you think he’ll do it?» he asked, after a while.

  «Do what?» She seemed startled, as i f he had distracted her from some deep train of thought.

  «Bluedog. How do you suppose he’ll kill me?»

  «Kill you? He won’t kill you. That would be too easy. First, he’ll take your other eye and your dream gear. He’ll give you a little time to feel bad about it, then he’ll take your mecheye. Maybe he’ll take your legs, but he’ll leave you at least one good arm. One day he’ll walk down Motomachi Street, and you’ll be there, holding out your begging bowl, and his pleasure will be complete.»

  She said it all with such matter-of-fact conviction. He shuddered, and she touched his arm gently. «It hasn’t happened yet, Kemrin. Listen; here’s an idea. Why don’t we move into your studio? The refund on the apartment will keep you going a bit longer, you’ll dream some salable dreams, and I ’ll help you put them on the Howlytown black-market channels. What do you think?»

  Her hand was warm, and he thought, How strange that I should notice that at a time like this. «What about Bluedog?»

  «What about him? You can’t destroy him; he protects himself too well. You can’t get away from Howlytown, just now, and I assure you that you and Bluedog will never kiss and make up. All you can do is survive, day by day. But what have you got that’s better, at the moment?»

  He shrugged, but he felt a touch of inexplicable hope.

  They moved to the studio, in the hour before dawn. They made the move unmolested. The seeker-destroyer preceded them through the silent streets, its sensors rotating rapidly, and Kemrin brought up the rear, clutching the splinter gun, head jerking back and forth, heart pounding.

  In the studio, Leila exclaimed over the gear. «Beautiful metal,» she said, caressing the main console. «Much better than anything I ever had to work with.»

  «Oh?» Kemrin recalled that mind-whoring used much the same equipment as dreaming, the output channel dumping directly to the client’s mind instead of into a wafer recorder. «Well,» he said. «I'll get started.»

  But it wasn’t working. No matter what he started out to do, his dreams eventually seemed to focus on Leila; strange, formless, contradictory, suffused with a confused eroticism.

  The next night he woke and saw her linked into th e monitor, eyes closed, absorbing his latest attempt. When she was done, she looked at him curiously, smiled. «Mind-whoring is a peculiar talent, a rare knack.»

  «I don’t have it?»

  «What can I say?» She shrugged gracefully.

  «Would you like to try?»

  Her smile was brilliant now. «Really?»

  «Why not? I’m getting nowhere.»

  Leila lay in the dream harness. Her body was relaxed, her eyes half-closed, sightless, twitching, as she followed her internal script. Kemrin watched her, sampled the signal going into the wafer recorder. The signal was clean and strong, and he began to wonder if she might actually be capable of producing a salable dream.

  «I won't do porn» she had said earlier, while he was s trapping her into the harness. «I’ve done enough of that to last me forever»

  «What, then?»

  «Trust me, Kemrin. A lot of people will buy this dream.»

  Then she had laughed and pulled down the induction helmet.

  After a while, he settled the monitor harness on his head, and jacked into her dream:

  Bluedog, leaning over a slender naked man, who appears to have been fastened to a wall of ancient concrete by his arms. Rivulets o f blood drip down the wall

  Peonies is there, cradling some sort of weapon, which still smokes. Kemrin suddenly sees that it is a masonry nail gun, and he knows what holds the man to the wall.

  At the man’s feet is the wreckage of a fine slithersynth, its keyboard shattered into gleaming bits. Kemrin understands that the man is a musician.

  Bluedog speaks: «Must pay, must pay. You know this is the only way.» He pulls an antique razor from his pocket, opens it, and begins to saw at the man’s fingers. Apparently the razor is dull.

  The man’s screams rise up the scale until the world is a scream, and a haze of pain obscures the dream.

  Here the dream segued from an enhanced and arranged memory into a wholly imaginary segment. The dream was still powerful, saturated, with a remarkable singing intensity. The texture was dense and deep. Kemrin was amazed and horrified and riveted. Mercifully, the viewpoint was detached from the action of the dream, as if observed by an unseen watcher.

  The dream cleared.

  Bluedog’s victim has become a decayed but still-animated corpse, staring balefully at Bluedog. The man’s fingers lie in the dirt at the base of the wall, bloated and pale.

  At first Bluedog is oblivious to the staring corpse; he is busy wiping the blood from his razor. But the more he wipes, the more the blood drips, until a torrent of red is sluicing from the blade, splattering over Bluedog’s white shoes. Bluedog flings it away with a curse, turns, and sees the corpse watching him. The corpse smiles broadly at Bluedog, and some flesh sloughs from its face, exposing wet pink bone.

  Bluedog backs off but a steel wall springs up behind him with a sound like an ax falling, and his escape is blocked. He presses against the wall, his vast face quivering with terror.

  Peonies reappears in the dream, still clutching the nail gun. A hideous creature forces its way out of the corpse’s decaying mouth, a creature with a hundred cruel hooked legs and pincers and spines. It springs from the corpse to the top of Peonies shaven head, sinks through his tattoed scalp like a crab swimming down into sand.

  Peonies’ eyes blaze, and he turns to the cowering Bluedog and fires, stitching Bluedog to the wall. Instead of nails, the gun fires little blue snakes so that in an instant Bluedog is fastened to the steel with a thousand wriggling tearing fanged things.

  Bluedog begins to scream, but the sounds that emerge from his straining mouth are oddly musical, great beautiful chords of horror and pain. The dead fingers rise and dance in response, then move to the mangled slithersynth and begin to draw a terrible counterpoint from the instrument. The corpse taps its toes.

  Behind Bluedog, on the wall, a large pink stylized heart appears.

  Kemrin felt the dream approaching a crescendo, and his heart hammered.

  The music keens, blazing with hate and triumph. Bluedog bellows as sweetly as a great pipe organ, and a crack appears in the wall high over Bluedog’s head. Bluedog looks up, and his screams reach new pinnacles of harmonious terror. The crack wanders down the wall, coming inexorably for Bluedog. Bluedog’s good eye bulges, and the wall separates behind him.

  The music falls silent. The only sound is the slow tearing of Bluedog’s flesh, the pop of snapping ligaments, the wet crack of bones, as the wall splits Bluedog into two pieces.

  A bitter black dust pours from Bluedog’s riven shell A moment later, the dust stirs and a tiny Bluedog emerges, no larger than a mouse. The manikin squeaks in ludicrous rage, runs away.

  Kemrin woke, saw Leila’s concerned face. She held a damp cloth to his face.

  «Are you all right?» she asked, patting carefully at him. «I pulled the monitor off.»

  He sat up, rubbed at his face with shaking hands. «Strong stuff,» he said.

  She brightened. «You liked it?»

  «No.» He shuddered. «But it was good. I t was great, but we can’t sell that.»

  «Why not? Besides, I ’ve already sold it. It’s playing on the blackchannel right now»

  He leaped up, horrified. «You’ve sent it out? Oh no, oh no. Bluedog will be frothing»

  She smiled fiercely. «Yes! Yes! But he was already bent on destroying you, and I was dead before you found me. Check your account.»

  His mouth fell open. But then he plugged in his cashplaque. As he watched, the numbers piled up. Already he was near the Pale’s solvency threshold. «Everyone must be dreaming of Bluedog,» he said, dazed.

  «Oh yes. Bluedog has no friends in Howlytown, only slaves
and enemies.» Her eyes were bright with pleasure. «Can’t you feel it? Howlytown is laughing!»

  He was a little frightened of her, he discovered. «I never asked you how you came to belong to Bluedog.»

  She turned away. «He wanted my skills. No one else wanted me more — anyway, no one who could take me away from Bluedog. He was careful never to let me near a weapon. Could any unarmed human ever injure Bluedog? What else is there to say?»

  «How long?»

  «A year.» The light died from her eyes, and he pulled her close, tried to comforther. She clungtightly, but she never cried.

  By midnight, Kemrin was as good as out of Howlytown, his account well over the Pale threshold. According to Leila, he could get past Bluedog if he waited until Bluedog linked to his favorite dream channel, just before dawn.

  «Come with me,» he urged her.

  She tried to smile. «You know I can’t. I’m an unregistered person, like most of us down here. I can’t even have a cash account. They’d never let me in.»

  What would happen to her after he left? «I’ll leave th e little tin soldier with you. You can stay here as long as you want to; I’ll keep paying the rent. You can become the best dreamer in Howlytown, earn enough to have Bluedog assassinated. Or maybe Bluedog will burst from his own meanness.»

  She laughed. «Maybe. Oh, that’s very kind, Kemrin.»

  But he knew it wouldn’t happen that way. Bluedog would be raging. Singh Louie would eventually give in. Kemrin remembered the fear in Singh Louie’s voice when the subject of Bluedog had a risen. «Isn’t there anyone in Howlytown who isn’t afraid of Bluedog?»

  Her smile trembled, as if his thoughts were visible. «A few madmen perhaps; they don’t count, do they? One other, I suppose, a gunlegger named Jarvis Donabel. He’s crazy too, but so heavily cyborged that he fears no one. He’ll sell you anything, any sort of weapon, any kind of bodymod, if you have the cash. Bluedog hates him for his power, but there’s nothing Bluedog can do.»