The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (46 page)

"What?" I said. "What?"

Thornton raised a circular saw with a greasy wooden handle. He attached it to a socket in my headpiece. "Trephination. An ancient method to open the so-called Third Eye. Fairly crude; Ammon taught me how and a Polynesian tribe showed him—he wasn't a surgeon either. He performed his own in a Bangkok opium den with a serrated knife and a corkscrew while a stoned whore held a mirror. Fortunately, medical expertise is not a requisite in this procedure."

The dent in Fulcher's brow drew my gaze. I sighed again, saddened by wisdom acquired too late in the day.

Thornton patted me kindly. His touch lingered as a caress. "Don't fret, it's not a lobotomy. You wished to behold
Imago
, this is the way. What an extraordinary specimen you are, Marvin, my boy. Your transformation will be a most satisfying conquest as I have not savored in years. I am sure to delay your reintegration for the span of many delightful hours. I will have compensation for your temerity."

"Mr. Thornton," I gasped; trembled with the effort of rolling my eye to meet his. "Mrs. Chin said the glacier is coming. I dream it every night; flies buzzing in my brain. It's killing me. That's why I came."

Thornton nodded. "Of course. I've seen it a thousand times. Everyone who has crawled into my lair wanted to satisfy one desire or another. What will satisfy you, O juicy morsel? To hear, to know?" He yawned. "Would you be happy to learn there is but one God and that all things come from Him? Existence is infinitely simple, Marvin—cells within cells, dreams within dreams, from the molten Fingertip of God Almighty, to the antenna of a roach, on this frequency and each of a billion after. Thus it goes until the circuit completes its ambit of the core, a protean-reality where dwells an intellect of surpassing might, yet impotent, bound as it is in the well of its own gravity. Cognition does not flourish in that limitless quagmire, the cosmic repository of information. The lightning of Heaven is reduced to torpid impulses that spiral outward, seeking gratification by osmosis. And by proxy. We are bags of nerves and electrolytes, fragile and weak and we decompose so quickly. Which is the purpose, the very cunning design. Our experiences are readily digested to serve the biological imperative of a blind, vast sponge. Does it please you? Do you require more?"

A spike glinted within the ring of saw-teeth. Thornton casually pressed this spike into my skull, seated it with a few taps of a rubber mallet. He put his lips next to my ear. His breath reeked copper. "The prophets proclaim the end is near. I'll whisper to you something they don't know—the world ended this morning as you were sleeping, half-frozen on the mountainside. It ended aeons before your father squirted his genetic material into your mother. It will end tomorrow as it ends every day, same time, same station." He started cranking.

Listening to the rhythmic burr of metal on bone I was thankful the mescaline had soldered my nerve endings. Thornton divided and divided again until he crowded the room. Pith helmets, top hats, arctic coats, khakis, corporate suits, each double dressed for a singular occasion, each one animated by separate experience, but all of them smiling with tremendous pleasure as they turned the handle, turned the handle, turned the handle. Their faces sloughed, dough swelling and splitting. Beneath was something raw, and moist, and dark.

I glimpsed the face of the future and failed to comprehend its shape. Blood poured into my eyes. The panpipe went mad.

8.

The world ends every day
.

Picture me walking in a rock garden under the dipping branches of cherry blossom trees. I love stones and there are heavy examples scattered across the garden; olive-bearded, embedded in the tough sod. God's voice echoes as through a gigantic gramophone horn, but softly from the lead plate of sky, and not God, it's Thornton guiding the progression, driving an auger into my skull while the music plays. Push it aside, keep moving toward a mound in the distance . . . .

No Thornton, auger, no music; only God, the garden, and I. Where is God? Everywhere, but especially in the earth, the dark, warm earth that opens as a cave mouth in the side of a hill. God calls from the hill, in voices of grinding rock and gurgling water.

I walk toward the cave. Sleet falls, captured betwixt burning and freezing precisely as I am caught. Nor is the sleet truly sleet. A swirl of images falling, million-million shards fractured from a vast hoary mirror. There am I, and I and I a million-million times, broken, melting . . . .

I walk through God's rock garden, trampling incarnations of myself . . . .

Watery images flickered on the wall. A home movie with the volume lowered. Choppy because the cameraman kept adjusting to peer over the shoulder of a tall figure who attended a third person in the awful chair—my chair. The victim was not I; it was a mirror casting a false reflection. And it wasn't a movie in the strictest sense; I detected no camera, nor aperture to project the film. More hallucinations then. More something.

Teddy's face, trapped in the conical helm; his feet scuffed and rattled the shackles. Thornton blocked the view, elbow pumping with the practiced ease of a farmer's wife churning butter. Muffled laughter, walnuts being cracked.
The image went dark, but the dim sounds persisted.

Claustrophobia gagged me. I was still strapped in the chair, the helm fixed to my head. There was a hole in my head. My right eye was crusted and blind. I was shuddering with chills. How much time had passed? Where had Fulcher and Thornton gone? Had they shown me
Imago
as promised? My memories balked.

As my faculties reengaged, my fear swelled. They had shredded my clothes, confiscated my belongings, tortured me. They would kill me. That was scarcely my fear. I dreaded what else would happen first.

The wall brightened with new images.
Sperm wriggled, hungry and fast. A wasp made love to a tarantula, thrusting, thrusting with its stinger. Mastiffs flung themselves upon a threshing stag, dangled from its antlers like ornaments. Fire ants swarmed over a gourd half-buried in desert earth
—

Fulcher drifted through the door, Clint at his heel. I remained limp when Fulcher scrutinized me briefly; he flashed a penlight in my good eye, checked my pulse. He murmured to his partner, and began unbuckling my straps. Clint hung back, perhaps to guard against a revival of my aggressive philosophy. Even so, he appeared bored, distracted.

I did not stir until Fulcher freed my arms. It occurred to me that the mescaline cocktail must've worn off because I wasn't feeling docile anymore. Nothing was premeditated; my mind was well below a rational state. I pawed his face—weakly, a drunken gesture, which he brushed aside. I became more insistent, got a fistful of his beard on the next half-hearted swipe, my left hand slithered behind his neck. Fulcher pried at my wrist, twisted his head. Frantic, he braced his boot against the chair and tried to push off. His back bowed and contorted.

A ghostly spider mounted a beetle; they clinched.

Growing stronger, more purposeful, I yanked him into my lap, and his beard ripped, but that was fine. I squeezed his throat and vertebrate popped the way it happens when you lift a heavy salmon by the tail. Stuff separates.

Clint tried to pull Fulcher, exactly as a man will pull a comrade from quicksand. Failing, he snatched up a screwdriver and stabbed me in the ribs. No harm, my ribs were covered with a nice slab of gristle and suet. Punch a side a beef hanging from a hook and see what you get.

A truck careened across a strange field riddled with holes. The vehicle juked and jived and nose-dived into the biggest hole of them all—

I dropped Fulcher and staggered from the chair. Clint stabbed me in the shoulder. I laughed; it felt good. I palmed his face, clamped down with full strength. He bit me, began a thick, red stream down my arm. He choked and gargled. Bubbles foamed between my finger webs. I waltzed him on tiptoes and banged his head against a support beam.
Bonk, bonk, bonk
, just like the cartoons. Just like Jackson Pollack. I stopped when his facial bones sort of collapsed and sank into the general confusion of his skull.

I fumbled with the screws of my helm, gave it up as a hopeless cause. I left the cell and wandered along the hall, trailing one hand against the rough surfaces. People met me, passed me without recognition, without interest. These people were versions of myself. I saw
a younger me dressed in a tropical shirt and a girl on my arm; me in a funeral suit and a sawed-off shotgun in my hand; another me pale and bruised, a doughnut brace on my neck, hunched on crutches; still another me, gray-haired, dead drunk, wild glare fixed upon the middle distance
. And others, too many others coming faster until it hurt my eyes. They flowed around me, collided, disappeared into the deep, lightless throat of the hall until all possibilities were lost.

Weight shifted within the bowels of Thornton's Pleasure Dome. A ponderous door was flung wide and a chorus of damned cries echoed up the corridors. The muscles between my shoulder blades tightened. I picked up the pace.

The main area was deserted but for a woman sweeping ashes from the barrel stove and a sturdy man in too-loose long johns eating dinner at a table. The woman was an automaton; she regarded me without emotion, resumed her mechanical duties. The man put aside his spoon, considering whether to challenge me. He remained undecided as I stumbled outside, bloody and birth-naked. The icy breeze plucked at my scalp, caused my wound to throb with the threat of a migraine. I was in a place far removed from such concerns.

A better man would've set a match to the drums of diesel, blown the place to smithereens Hollywood style. No action star, I headed for the vehicles.

Twilight cocooned the valley. The sky was smooth as opal. A crimson band pulsed at the horizon—the sun elongated to its breaking point. Clouds scudded from invisible distances, flew by at unnatural velocity.

"Don't go," Thornton said. A whisper, a shout.

I glanced back.

He filled the doorway of the Quonset hut, which was tiny, was receding. His many selves had merged, yet flickered beneath his skin, ready to burst forth. His voice had relinquished its command, now waned fragile, as it traveled across the gulf to find me. "You're opening doors without any idea of where they lead. It's a waste. Sweet God, what a waste!"

I kept walking, limping.

"Marvin!" A hot lash of hatred and appetite throbbed from his dwindling voice. "Say hello to Teddy!" He shrank to a speck, was lost.

A fleet of canvas-top trucks shimmered upon an island in a sea of velvet. They warped and ran with the fluidity of quicksilver, a kaleidoscope revolving around the original. I picked the closest truck and dragged myself inside. Keys dangled from the ignition. The helm was too tall for the cab; I was forced to drive with my head on my shoulder. Fresh blood seeped from the wound and obscured my vision.

The truck bucked and crow-hopped as I clanged gears, stomped the accelerator and sent it hurtling across the rugged valley. One road multiplied, became three roads, now six. Now, I was off the road, or the road had melted. Bizarre changes were altering the scenery, toying with my feeble perception. The mountains doubled and redoubled and underwent the transformations of millennia—a range exploding forward, rounding and shortening, another backward, rearing into a toothy crown—in the span of heartbeats. It was a rough ride.

I found the knob for the headlights in time to illuminate the sinkhole a few dozen yards ahead. A rapidly widening maw. I slammed the brakes. The cab exploded with dust and smoking rubber. There was a tin-can-under-a-boot crunch and the truck yawed, paused at the rim and toppled in, nose-first. I performed a lazy belly flop through the windshield.

I didn't lose consciousness, unfortunately. I bounced and bones cracked along old fault lines. Eventually I stopped with a terrific jolt; a feather mattress dropped on a cavern floor. At least the truck didn't come down on top of me—it had lodged in a bottleneck. Its engine shrieked momentarily, sputtered and died. I stared up at the rapidly dulling headlights, as bits of sensation returned to my extremities. Ages passed. When I finally managed to gain my knees, the world was in darkness. What was broken? Ribs, definitely. A sprained knee that swelled as I breathed. Possibly a bone in my back had snapped; insufficient to immobilize me, yet neither could I straighten fully. Cuts on my face and hands. The pain was minor, and that worried me. Why not worse? I had landed in deep, spongy moss, was nearly buried from the impact. It sucked at me as I clambered to solid footing.

The darkness wasn't complete. Aqueous light leaked from slimy surfaces, the low ceiling of sweating rock. As my vision adjusted I saw moss claimed everything. Stinking moss filled crevices and fissures, was habitat of beetles and other things. Sloppy from the eternal drip of water, it squelched between my toes, sucked my ankles. This was a relatively small cave, with a single chimney jammed by the crashed truck. This wasn't a mine shaft; my animal self was positive about that. Nor did it require much heavy thinking to conclude that climbing out of there was impossible. I couldn't raise my left arm above waist level. A single note from the panpipe came faintly. From below. A voice may have murmured my name—I was gasping too loudly and it did not repeat.

A fissure split the rear of the cave, a cramped tunnel descended. Mastering my instincts, I followed it down. The cool air warmed, was soon moist as a panting mouth. Pungent odors clogged my nostrils, watered my eyes. Gradually, the passage widened, opening into a larger area, a cavern of great dimensions. The light strengthened, or my eyes got better, because pieces of the cavern joined as Mrs. Chin's photos had joined. And I beheld
Imago
.

Here was the threshold of the Beginning and End.

The roof was invisible but for the tips of gargantuan stalactites, all else shrouded. Moss, more moss, a garden, a forest of moss. But was it moss? I doubted that. Moss didn't quiver where it met flesh, didn't contract as a muscle contracts.