The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (45 page)

I followed on wooden legs. Crows argued behind us.

The Quonset hut was so old its floor was a sunken mass of caramelized wood and dirt. An arch in the rear opened to darkness. Moth-eaten banners of curiously medieval design hung from the rafters, casting fluttery shadows upon the long table where I mechanically chewed a ham sandwich and drank a sour beer that Roy Fulcher had fetched. Thornton had departed, promising a swift return. He asked Fulcher to attend my needs.

Light oozed through window glass that sagged and pooled at the bottom of rotten frames. Crates made pyramids against the walls, alongside boxes, barrels and stacks of curling newspapers. Homey.

Fulcher watched me eat. His features were vulpine and his lank beard was stained yellow-brown around the mouth. He smelled ripe. Farther off, a group of fellow colonists played at a ping-pong table. They cast sly glances our way and chuckled with suppressed brutality. Four men, two women, ages indeterminate. They were scrawny, haggard and unwashed. Several more came and went, shuffling. Zombies but for a merry spark in their eyes, satisfied smirks.

I said, "Here's the million-dollar question—where's the caveman buried?"

"Caveman? I don't think there's a caveman." Fulcher's was an earthy accent, a nasal drawl that smacked of coal mines and tarpaper shanties.

"All this trouble and no caveman?"

"Sorry."

"It's okay. Jacob will get over it," I said. "I don't suppose you'll tell me where Ammon took the
Imago Sequence?
That won't hurt anything, if there's no caveman."

Fulcher leaned in. "Take a spoon and dig a hole in your chest. That's where he made his pictures."

I pushed my plate aside. I wiped my lips with a dingy cloth towel. I stared at him, long and steadily. I said, "If you won't talk about Ammon, tell me about your colony. Love what you've done with the place. What do you guys do for fun in these parts?" I'd cultivated a talent for reading people, weighing them at a glance, separating shepherds from sheep. It was nothing special; a basic survival technique—but it came up dry now. These people confounded my expectations. Was I in a commune or a militia compound? Were these hippie cultists, leftwing anarchists, or something else? I gave one of the more brazen ping-pong players— the redhead from town—a hard look. Fulcher had called him Clint. Clint's grin vanished and he concentrated on his game. Human, at least.

"You know," Fulcher said.

"I hate word games, Roy. They make me hostile."

"Ask Anselm."

"I'm asking you."

"It brought you to us—one from multitudes. You still question what our work is here?"

"It? If you mean the
Imago Sequence
, then yeah, I'm full of questions."

"Anselm will answer your
questions
in due course."

"Well, Roy, problem is, I'm kind of stupid. People usually need to repeat stuff."

Fulcher's expression grew rigid. "You don't want to see. Surprise—it's too late. The fictions you've invented, your false assumptions, your pretenses, will soon be blown apart. I doubt it will profit you in the least. You're a thug."

"Story of my life; nobody likes me. I guess you'd be willing to show me the big picture. Shoot me down with your intellectual superiority."

"Anselm will show you the cosmic picture, Mr. Cortez."

"Isn't it customary for you religious zealots to have pamphlets lying around? Betcha there's a printing press somewhere in this Taj Mahal. Surely you've got propaganda for the recruits? And beads? I like beads."

"No pamphlets, no recruits. This is
Imago Colony.
Religion doesn't apply."

"Oh, no? What's with all the faux Roman crucifixes in the back forty?"

"The crucifixes? Those are authentic. Anselm imported them."

I tried to wrap my mind around that concept. The implications eluded me. I said, "Bullshit. What the hell for?"

"The obvious—sport. Anselm has exotic tastes. He enjoys aspects of cultural antiquity."

"Yeah, so I hear. And he has a thing about bugs, I guess; sort of similar to his mentor. Seems to be a reliable pattern with lunatics. An imago is an insect, right?"

"It's symbolic."

"Oh. I thought the bug thing was cute."

"An imago is not
any
insect. The final instar of an insect, its supreme incarnation. Care for another beer?"

"I'm good." I gestured at the ping-pong tournament. "Weedy crowd, Roy. Somebody told me there were forty, fifty of you in this camp."

"Far less, these days. Attrition."

"Uh, huh."

"You've come during harvest season, Mr. Cortez. That's what we do in the cold months. The others are engaged, those who remain. Things will quicken in the spring. People seem to be more driven to enlightenment during sandal weather. Spiritualists, nature enthusiasts, software engineers on holiday with wives and kiddies. We get all kinds."

"Thornton is off to play plantation overseer, eh? I wonder what you kids harvest in these parts—poppies? Opium is Afghanistan's chief export—ask the Taliban what it paid for its military hardware, the light bills in its palaces. The climate around here is about goddamned ideal. You'd be millionaires. I've got a couple pals, line you right out for a piece of the pie."

Fulcher rubbed his dented brow, smiled. "What wonderful irony! We do love to trip. You have me there. Poppies, that's very funny. I almost miss those days. I stick with cigarettes anymore."

"Lay your gimmick on me."

"Evolution."

"You and everybody else."

"What do people want?" Fulcher raised his grimy hand to forestall my answer. "What do people truly want—what would induce a man to sell his soul?"

"To be healthy, wealthy and wise." I said with mild sarcasm. Mild because as I uttered the punch line to the children's rhyme, coldness began to unfold in my bones. The tumblers in my head were turning again.

"Bravo, Mr. Cortez. Power, wisdom, immortality." His expression altered. "We have found something that will afford us . . .longevity, at least. With longevity comes everything else."

"The Fountain of Youth?"
In the deep mountain woods a mossy statue spurted black water. Congregations of hillbillies in coveralls bathed in its viscid pool. A bonfire, a forest of uncured pelts swaying. A piper.
I shuddered. "Dancing girls, winning lotto tickets?"

"A catalyst. A mechanism that compresses aeons of future human evolution. Although future is a relative term."

"Ammon's photographs." It seemed obvious. Everything seemed patently obvious, except that the room was undulating and I couldn't figure out who was playing the flute. A panpipe, actually; high, thin, discordant. It pierced my brain.

Fulcher ignored the music. He flushed, warming to my edification. "The
Imago Sequence
is a trigger. If you've got the right genes you might already be a winner."

I rubbed my ear; the pipe raised unpleasant specters to mind, set them gibbering.
The monstrous hominid opened its mouth wider, wider
. "How does that shit work?"

"Take a picture of God, tack it on the wall and see who bows. Recognition is the key. It doesn't make a difference what you comprehend intellectually, only what stirs on a cellular level, what awakens when it recognizes the wellspring of creation."

"Don't tell me you believe the caveman is God."

"I said there's no caveman. Look deeper, friend. Reality lies beyond the surface. It's not the Devil in the details, it's God."

"Aha! You
are
a bunch of Christian cultists."

"We do not exist to worship an incomprehensible being. A being which assuredly lacks the means to appreciate slavish devotion."

"Seems pointless to have a god at all, when you put it like that."

"Do you supplicate plutonium? Do you sing hymns to uranium? We bask in the corona of an insensate majesty. In its sway we seek to lay the foundation blocks of a new city, a new civilization. We're pioneers. Our frontier is the grand wasteland between Alpha and Omega."

"Will you transform into a being of pure energy and migrate to Alpha Centauri?"

"Quite opposite. Successful animal organisms are enduring organisms. Enduring organisms are extremely basic, extremely efficient. Tarantulas. Scorpions. Reptiles. Flies."

"Don't forget cockroaches. They're going to inherit the earth." I laughed, began coughing. The room wobbled. "So Thornton is what—the messiah helping you become the best imago you can be?"

"Anselm is the Imago. We are maggots. We are provender."

"I get it. He does the transcending and you get the slops."

"It is good to have a purpose in life. To be an integral part of the great and terrible cycle." Fulcher shook his head. "As I serve him, he served Ammon and Ammon served the one before him down through time gone to dust.
'By sating the image of the Power they fulfill their fleshly contract. By suckling the teat of godliness the worthy shall earn their reward
.' Thus it is written in a book much more venerable than the Bible. For we who survive to remake ourselves in the image of the Power, all risks are acceptable."

"Reverend Jones rides again! Pass the grape Kool-Aid!"

"Hysterical, much?"

"Naw, just lately." I took a breath. "I wonder though, what does a guy do after he reaches the top of the ol' ladder? Live in a cave and compose epic poetry? Answer riddles? Pick up a sword and lay waste to Rome?"

"Caligula was one of us, actually."

I didn't know what to say to that. I plowed ahead. "Well?"

"Basic organisms require basic pleasures."

"Basic pleasures?" The chilly sensation linked hands with vertigo and did a Scottish jig. I was as a figurine in that enormous room.

"Subsistence and copulation. That's what the good life boils down to, my friend. Eating and fucking. Whoever you want, whatever you want, whenever you want."

The mouth opening, opening—

"Power to the people." I was slurring. Why was I slurring?

"Ready to go?" Fulcher rose, still smiling through his matted beard. We walked through the tall archway. He lightly gripped my elbow to steady me. One beer and I was drunk as a sailor on the third day of shore leave. The corridor expanded in the best Escher fashion, telescoping into infinite shadow. There were ragged tapestries at intervals, disfigured statues, a well-trammeled carpet with astrological designs. The corridor branched and branched again at grand arches marred by ages of smoke. At one fork, a kerosene lamp swung on a sooty chain. Behind a massive iron door the piping shrilled, died, shrilled. Hoarse screams of the primordial sex act, exhausted sobs, laughter and applause. Mrs. Chin's photograph haunted me.

"The gallery," Fulcher said.

I recognized the musk upon him, finally. For a horrible moment I thought we would go through that door. We continued down the other hall.

Fulcher brought me to a dingy chamber lit by a single dirty bulb in an overhead cage. The room was windowless and bare except for a large chair made of wood and iron. The chair had arm straps and leg shackles; an artifact from the Spanish Inquisition. It was not difficult to picture the fallen bishops, the heretical nobles who had shrieked in its embrace.

"Please, make yourself comfortable." Fulcher helped me along with a shove.

I slumped in the strange chair, my head heavy as a wrecking ball, and watched as he produced a nasty looking bowie knife and expertly sliced off my clothes. When he encountered the revolver he emptied the cylinder, slid the weapon into his waistband without comment. He cinched my arms and legs; his fingers glowed, dragging tracers as they adjusted buckles and straps. Seemingly he had grown extra arms. I could only gawk at this phantasm; I felt quite docile. "Wow, Roy. What was in my beer? I feel terrific."

"One should hope. You ingested several hundred milligrams of synthetic mescaline—enough to launch a rhinoceros into orbit."

"Party foul, and on the first date too. I thought you didn't do dope anymore."

"I dabble in the manufacturing end of the spectrum. Frankly, all that metaphysical mumbo-jumbo about hallucinogens affecting perception in a meaningful way is wishful thinking. Poor Huxley." Fulcher stepped back, surveyed his handiwork while rolling a cigarette. The yellow flare of his lighter painted his face, made him a devil. "Oh, except for you. You're special. You've seen
Alpha
and
Beta
. As my pappy would say, you've got the taint, boy." He blurred around the edges. With each inhalation the cherry of his cigarette brightened, became Jupiter's red sore.

I noticed the walls were metallic—whorls whorled, pits and pocks formed. Condensation trickled. Smoke made arabesques and demons. The walls were a tapestry from a palace in Hell.

The panpipe started wheedling again and Thornton entered the room on cue. He pushed a rickety hospital tray with a domed cover. The cover was scalloped, silver finish flaking. A maroon handprint smeared its curve.

"This is a bad sign," I said.

Thornton was efficient. He produced an electric razor and shaved a portion of my head to stubble, dug a thumb under my carotid artery and traced veins in my skull with a felt-tip pen. He tweaked my nose in a fatherly manner, stripped off his coat and rolled his sleeves to the elbows. His skin gleamed like coral, cast faint reflections upon the walls and ceiling. Shoals of phantom fish scattered above, regrouped and swam into an abyss; a superhighway and its endless traffic looped beneath my feet; it rippled and collapsed into a trench of unimaginable depths.

I watched him remove a headpiece from the tray—a clumsy framework of clamps and screws; a dunce cap with a collar. Parts had never been cleaned. I wanted to scream when he fitted it over my head and neck, locked it in place with a screwdriver. I sighed.

Fulcher stubbed his cigarette, produced a palm-sized digital camera and aimed it at me. He gave Thornton a thumbs-up.

Thornton selected a scalpel from the instruments on the tray, weighed it in his hand. "Teddy was a friend—I would never use him as provender, but neither could I set him on the path to Olympus. There's limited room in the boat, you see. Weak, genetically flawed, but a jolly nice fellow. A gentleman. Imagine my disappointment when he showed up on my doorstep last fall. Not only had the old goat bought
Parallax Alpha,
he'd viewed
Beta
as well. He demanded to see
Imago
. As if I could simply snap my fingers and show him. Wouldn't listen to reason, wouldn't go home and fall to pieces quietly like a good boy. So I enlightened him. It was out of my hands after that. Now, we come to you." He sliced my forehead, peeled back a flap of skin. Fulcher taped it down.