Weird Tales, Volume 51 (14 page)

All the delight and comfort and joy and sadness and numbness and drunkenness and sobriety: he thought them all in his head, balled them up tight and put them in the pit of his stomach.

He opened his eyes. Constance was standing at the back of the room, watching him.

When he seemed to hesitate, he saw her jaw tremble slightly, as though she'd said something. He imagined he heard her whisper one word: “Play,” she might have said.

“Play.”

He brought the trumpet to his lips, letting it linger there, as though savoring his first kiss; which, in the way of things that night, it may as well have been. Keeping his eyes on Constance, on all the ladies and all the gentlemen, on the giddy blonde and the District Attorney and the ex-pirate behind the bar, on everyone and everything that was the Orpheus that night, he played.

Your music keeps them, toys with their imaginings of time, I reckon, and while you play, they stay and drink and flirt as though all the time in the world was theirs for the takin'.

The first note started softly, and grew. It was long and mournful, and seemed to fill the Orpheus with its sorrow. Several hearts broke that night, but no one dared even breathe to interrupt that note.

You give our customers something special. You take 'em places they've never been, and could never be; you give 'em a piece o' the street they never woulda seen for themselves.

The bar grew quieter with each passing second, and all at once became silent. All eyes were on John as he started his last set. How many were there? Fifty? A hundred? All of them were listening intently, as though incapable of anything else: jaws were slack; eyes glazed. Everyone stopped to hear the last mournful song to ever be heard from the trumpet of John Bastion.

The customers never spend a mite less time than they intend to, and, more often than not, they spend more.

John just kept right on playing, through the night, straight up through dawn; standing right there at the heart of the Orpheus, he just kept right on going like nothing in this world could ever stop him. And everyone in the Orpheus, they just kept right on listening.

And City Administration, they went right on and built that throughway.

Now no one ever gets to go to the Orpheus; but that's OK, John Bastion thinks as he plays, because now, no one ever has to leave. if you ever find yourself happening across that particular throughway, take a moment to listen; it's a quiet place for all the cars driving by, but if you listen, and listen hard, you just might hear John Bastion playing.

They say it's lovely stuff. Me, well . . . I've never had an ear for the like, you understand.

When asked to write about himself, chiles samaniego enjoys using lowercase letters and the third person: “Easier to make things up that way,” he says. As a writer of fictions, he wonders if everything he writes might be true, and therefore not to be trusted. He is originally from the Philippines but is currently living in Singapore.

* * *

BLEAKWARRIOR MEETS THE SONS OF BRAWL

by Alistair Rennie

In Which the Metawarriors Wreak Great Havoc Upon One Another

The folly of brawl is a tower of disproportionate girth, besmirched at the base with festering lichens and nettled clumps. Venomous ivies scale its roughshod masonry. Dripping vines encircle its mildewed heights. The bloated misalignments of its elapsing stiffness represent an ominous departure from the orthodoxies of architectural form. Below its corroded lintel a single door of blanched iron offers sole access to its interior.

Lord Brawl himself can be heard proclaiming aloud from the un-turreted heights of his Folly in the arboreal wastes. The various species that flock to his abode, feeding on discarded body parts of victims, will cease their scavenging and stare up at him, blankly, as if to listen.

“My fifty Bastard Sons!” he cries, with a voice that carries through the veins of his offspring. “Bring me the living body of a chief rival. I tire of these sops of linear flesh. They are sources of amusement only: but I need the pain of one after my own kind.”

It is a regular summons which the fifty Bastard Sons of Brawl will readily obey, as they travel the world on various missions, in subdivisions of two or three, hearkening to their Father's grim requests, though they are easily distracted by the allure of havoc.

“My Bastard Brood,” says Lord Brawl, willing his words through the blood of his spawn. “Daily I toil in the midst of my wretchedness, but seldom am I gratified by common atrocity. I have administered every torture ever conceived, and devised many others that no ordinary cruelty could sustain. Yet I receive nothing more than the mild satisfaction of the visible terror on a maiden's face, which, at best, hardly arouses my fancy.

“Bring me, then, the living body of a rival whose capacity to endure is proof of an unbearable suffering. Do not mock me with the linear kind, but delight your Father with the most infected specimen of our stock. Head Wrecker or Mother of Peril, Hecticon or, better still, BleakWarrior will do. But bring me an idol of misery and I will show them woes that are mine and theirs in unison.”

Sons 21, 24 and 39 have proved particularly adept at adhering to their missions and, presently, have aligned themselves to a linear usurper by the name of Layman Sohk. Layman Sohk has many spies who have brought reports of a stranger taking residence in the City of Indulgences, whose demand for excessive pleasures exceeds even that of the indigenous people. The stranger shuns the attentions of Free Traders of Interest who wish to sensationalise his achievements which are, to him, the
ennui
of his removal from ordinary life. Privacy, however, often proves the mother of infamy; and soon word spreads of his exploits which, by the time they have reached the collective ear of the masses, are almost legendary.

He has debauched for several weeks and his appetite for more is like the tide that never wanes, pleasuring himself with harlots of all sexes and types; assaulting his senses with lurid concoctions; and fighting to the death with hired ruffians in the combat clubs. But he lives: and, as he pleasures himself, he feels no pleasure. These pastimes, instead, are a kind of erasure of the need to serve causes which he hates because he does not understand them.

In the private salon of a leisurely bordello, a prostitute, who does not hire her body but hires her mind, was bathing with him in the juice of stipple berries, which are full of toxins said to relax the muscles and skin. She said to him:

“Seeing as you will remain nameless–”

“I have no name worth knowing,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I might never be seen here again.”

“So my memory of you will be a nameless one?”

“Do memories have names?”

“Memories have people. People have names.”

“Better to forget, then.”

She scooped up some stipple berry juice in cupped hands and told him to drink. “The stipple juice is full of chemicals that have the same effect on the brain as endorphins. It will make you feel better.”

He drank.

“You
do
have a name, don't you?” She wouldn't let it go. It was, after all, what she was paid for.

“What use is a name,” he said, now scooping up the juice and drinking for himself, “when you don't know who or what you are?”

“A name will begin to make you someone.”

“But not some
thing
.”

She began to massage his emaciated shoulders.

“To most people,” she said, “I am some
thing
before being someone. Most of them never even think of me as someone at all. I'd say you were lucky.”

He laughed with little amusement and they were silent for a while. Then she said:

“Why do you wear those lenses?”

The Warped Lenses. She had to ask. He said nothing.

“Can I take them off?” She raised her hands.

“No.” He span his head away from her. “I have a problem with my eyes.”

The head-whore, who was a professional, quickly changed the subject:

“You think it's possible?”

“What?” He frowned.

“To forget.”

“There are ways and means.”

She sank beside him, leaning an arm on the edge of the bath. “You really have that kind of control over your own mind?”

He looked at her.

“No,” he said. “Why else would I be here?”

21, 24 and 39 were already intent on investigating the stranger's presence. It was, for them, a routine measure. But when they heard of the extent of the stranger's capacity for physical and mental stimulation, they began to get suspicious and, on discovering his identity, were aroused by the prospect of violent action.

It had been a while since they'd received their Father's edict and, dutifully, they had turned their attentions to the City of Indulgences, which was often a favourite hideaway for Meta-Warriors capable of controlling their random leaps. BleakWarrior had no control over his; and the Sons of Brawl had no control over theirs either. They could, however, depend on their Father's guidance, whereas BleakWarrior was bereft of any mastery of self-navigation and, to this extent, was likely to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Which is where he was now; and 21, 24 and 39 were about to make him pay for his shortcomings.

Outside the door of BleakWarrior's room (where he was shacked up with some psycho-slut parasite getting kicks out of some heart-to-heart colloquy), the Sons of Brawl were preparing themselves for an abduction, regrettably with some restraint. 21 was jittery with eagerness, his cleaver in his hand wavering with as much excitement as he was. 24, wielding a hatchet, was very calm, which only emphasised his talent for hate. 39 was rubbing the tip of his poniard like it was some kind of phallic totem destined to bring him additional vitality.

But when they burst into the room, they saw nothing of the woman; and BleakWarrior was now poised at the window, ready for a random leap. The stipple bath stood between them and steamed; and, as 21, 24 and 39 made their move (which they knew was in vain), BleakWarrior, not looking at
them
, said:

“Better to forget.”

And he threw himself through the window, which exploded in a mass of splintered muntins and shivered glass, and flung himself free from the grip of his would-be captors.

21, 24 and 39 stood still and gaped, too angry even to move. Then a bubbling noise arrested their attentions and, looking down at the bath, they saw a head, gasping for air, emerge from the steaming ooze of stipple juice.

The whore who does not hire her body but hires her mind gazed up at them. The Sons of Brawl rounded on her and, with their weapons raised, vented their fury on her delicate flesh, afterwards pausing to savour the brew of stipple juice mixed with female blood, which, they agreed, was a highly satisfying remedy for failure.

Meta-Warriors can only die through acts of violence (including death by drowning, poison and fire) and are physically immune to the linear disorders of disease and starvation. They are also immune to death in cases of violent impacts sustained through random leaps, when the fall, from a linear point of view, has to be high enough to be fatal. In which case, Meta-Warriors simply fall through, rather than onto, whatever they hit, whereby the effect is like jumping into water, except that it is the body that becomes like a liquid, sifting quickly through the hard matter of the targeted surface and reforming itself as an organic whole on the other side of the transition.

There are some who have learnt to navigate their way through what they refer to as the Intersecting Differentials of the matter through which they are capable of travelling (often called IDs, which state that the chaos contained by the material order of the universe also contains inversions of that principle). But, generally, the destination (or node) is entirely random—hence, the name: random leap.

—from The Private Testimony of Achlana Promff, Priestess of the Church of Nechmeniah

Bleakwarrior shot up through terrain that felt like a pavement. A few moments of disorientation, then . . . Nemeden, the City of Riches. He was beside the River Tho and could see the High Street squirming with dandified tourists, merchants, sooth sayers, acrobatic troupes, fortune tellers and affluent street vendors. Last time he was here, he'd stayed in a luxurious tavern that was famous for its wine selection and extravagant orgies. This time, it might be better to get out of the city altogether and seek refuge in some anonymous ancient village in the hills.

Money, however, was a major problem; and this is where the tourists came in.

BleakWarrior slid unseen into a labyrinth of decaying streets where idling visitors wondered aimlessly—just right for being dragged into some deserted alley and beaten up for every sovereign they had in their possession.

In a private salon at the Palace of Layman Sohk, 21, 24 and 39 conspired.

“What shall we tell Father?” asked 21, wringing his hands like some kind of aristocratic ponce with too many gambling debts.

“The truth,” said 24, ever the pragmatist.

39 agreed: “Our failure to catch the rat is only temporary. The sooner we tell Father, the more chance he'll have of tracing the location.”

“Let's do it now,” said 21.

“Consider it done!”

The voice came shafting through their veins like liquid ice and into their ears like a sudden hoarfrost.

“Father!” they cried, falling to their knees with fear and awe in equal measure.

“Little worthy fragments of myself, your various murdered mothers would be proud. Fear not my wrath when accomplishments are forthcoming. Though they be done by half, they are halfway to being whole; and, for this, I am pleased. Go you, then, to the highest point of your current place of habitation and cast yourself from its prodigious height. Empty your minds of all things and let a Father's guidance direct you to your goal. In the aftermath of your good work, all has been accounted for: sons 8 and 47 await your arrival with the obedience of good brothers. Go, now, and bring me the rival whose roasted bones will enthuse my grief.”