Time's Dark Laughter Part 6

"Odd sort," said Beauty when they reached the wharf. "You . . . are confident in his abilities?"

"Oh, he's good, he knows what he's doing," replied Aba. "Little crankier than I remember ..."

"Well. We are here now. I need some food and a bed. You know a place?"

Aba knew a place. It was a two-story boardinghouse, set back from the oceanfront-which meant it was less noisy than the dock area; more conducive to rest. They couldn't find it at first, but kept asking directions until finally they were steered to a building more or less similar to the one in Aba's childhood memory; and so he was satisfied.

The concierge was a jolly, Oriental, cloven-hoofed woman who seemed immediately smitten with Aba. She winked, and asked if he would like a Human sent to his room to warm his blood. When he declined, she appeared hurt; but quickly regained her spirits, took his coin, pinched him on the bottom, and went to ready their rooms.

"But you must be hungry by now," Beauty suggested to the Vampire as they stood in the lobby, waiting.

"A bit," Aba admitted. "But I wouldn't drink anyone in a city like this unless I were starving-they'd almost certainly be poxy or jaundiced."

Beauty nodded at the wisdom of this view, and said no more. The concierge came back presently and showed them to their rooms-small and adjoining, off the main corridor, with mats on the floor. Beside each mat was a candle and a bottle of wine.

"First drink's on the house!" The concierge beamed, pinched Aba again, and left.

They went into Aba's room. The Vampire lay down on his mat and opened the wine. "I wouldn't mind a sip of this to relax me, though-I'm tense as a new clot." He took a swallow and offered the bottle to Beauty.

The Centaur shook his head. "I'm tired enough now to sleep standing up." He opened the connecting door and walked into his own room. "We can check about boats to rent later this afternoon. For now, dream well." He closed the door.

"Go in good blood," Aba called after him. He heard Beauty answer, "Until soon," but was already getting too sleepy to hear more.

It was Beauty who couldn't sleep. He was too exhausted; so he just lay on the floor of his room, staring at the shredded curtain that flapped listlessly in the shallow breath of the window. After an hour, he realized Mistress Sleep was being shy, and he knew from experience that at such times it was wisest not to pursue her.

He rose, slipped his longbow across his back, and opened the connecting door to see if Aba was similarly spurned. The Vampire was sound asleep in the corner, though, so Beauty exited quietly and made for the docks, in search of food.

The waterfront was churning with creatures. The sounds of their clash and intercourse rose and fell, almost musically; and for the first time in his life, Beauty was able to appreciate the love some beasts had for city life.

He strolled leisurely down the main wharf, sampling the smells of the street vendors as he pa.s.sed each stand: hiba-chi Lizard bits, skewered and smoking; boiling candied taffies, with fresh fruits to dip in them; roasting litchi nuts, almonds, boro seeds, ksili nuts; plantanos sauteeing in ta-mari and brown sugar; pickled Dove heads; honey-fried jungle Beetles. Each vendor called out his fare to Beauty, attesting to the unsurpa.s.sed flavor of the particular delicacy being sold. The Centaur bought a stickful of Lizard, two plantanos, and a cup of bamboo wine, then sat, greatly contented, on one of the piers, enjoying the tasty meal.

A faint beating of drums caught his ear. He traced it to the middle distance of the cove, where a grand ship could be seen slowly making its way toward the harbor. He asked a pa.s.sing sailor what it was, and was told it had to be the fabulous Chinese ship Tai-Phung, making its annual stop in the port. It generally stayed a week, making repairs, trading slaves, brocades, spices, and the like, then set off again, for points south.

Beauty finished eating and felt much better. A Hermaphrodite approached him, sat down, and made him a proposition that ordinarily would have offended or embarra.s.sed him. Now, though, he merely declined with a hearty laugh, and even felt slightly flattered. The combination of the general vitality of the city, a pleasantly full stomach, and the dry bamboo wine had made him quite optimistic about almost everything. He took a deep breath of sweet sea air, reared up on his hind legs for a long stretch, and set out to walk down the docks once more.

Fifty paces along, he paused to watch a sh.e.l.l game. A Sphinx nimbly moved three walnut half sh.e.l.ls back and forth atop a small stand, challenging all comers to discover which one hid the pearl. Beauty watched for ten minutes- of course, he never bet money-and never once guessed right. He laughed, shook his head, and continued meandering.

The sights were endless. A dancer with feathers enticed a crowd of onlookers to delirious cheers, then kissed each and every one who threw money. He watched a round-robin knife fight between an Accident and two Satyrs- whenever one animal was cut, he would sit down and the other would enter the fight. All three were bleeding, laughing, and drinking.

There was a slave auction at one end of the docks. Buyers inspected the merchandise while sellers extolled the virtues of their stock. Beauty didn't stay there long. It occurred to him, sadly, that even when he was full and sleepy, the city was hungry still.

The rhythmic drums on the water had been growing progressively louder, until, suddenly, they stopped. Beauty looked up to see the enormous Chinese ship anchoring in the middle of the harbor. And giant it was. Slowly, he walked back along the docks, to get a closer look.

The Tai-Phung was a sailing ship, but the strangest one Beauty had ever seen. For it had seven masts, each a hundred feet tall, s.p.a.ced along the hundred yards of deck; and chained to each mast were thirteen Vampires, one above the other, many with wings outstretched and manacled to the crosspieces.

Beauty was incredulous. The harbor master had sailed out and was shouting to the Monkey mate that the ship had to anchor farther south in the harbor, because of the reef. The mate, in turn, shouted orders to the Vampires chained to the masts. The Vampires whose wings were free began vigorously flapping; those whose wings were bound out oriented themselves at various angles on command; and slowly the huge vessel sailed to its new mooring.

Some of the Vampires simply hung, unmoving, suspended from chains that strapped their chests and legs to the mast, their heads lolling limply upon their sternums. Two crimson Dragonflies, four feet long, flitted up and back and hovered in front of each of these seemingly unconscious Vampires, offering cups of blood to the silent lips with what appeared to be small Human hands. Some of the Vampires responded, drank the sustenant liquid, roused themselves; others remained motionless.

There was a bustle of activity on the deck. The crew busied themselves running lines all around, opening hatches, securing battlements. Large, opulent Peac.o.c.ks strode along the bow, curious about the new surroundings. At the tiller stood an eight-armed Shiva; a six-foot-tall Parrot shouted orders from the quarter-deck. Three Elephant-headed men dropped a long, wide float overboard; rope ladders quickly went over the side, and soon dozens of crew-men with antlered Elk heads, Rat heads, or Elephant heads-were off-loading crates onto the floating barge. Monkeys ran up the masts, unchained the Vampires who still weren't moving, and heaved them into the water, chains and all, where they sank without a trace.

For a time, Beauty watched all this with intense fascination. The afternoon was getting on, though, and he had business of his own. He wondered, briefly, at the variety of animal experience, and what it signified; but it was beyond his understanding. So without further delay, he set out to hire a small boat.

There were none for hire. The arrival of the Tai-Phung was such an event, it turned out, such a ma.s.sive appearance of scarce and exotic treasures, that not a single boat-owner was willing to miss the unveiling. Absolutely everyone wanted to be around to buy something from the winged sailing vessel. And not only were they unwilling to leave the city to ferry Beauty to his destination, they were unwilling to rent their boats at all, afraid of losing their only means of carrying off whatever strange and wondrous goods they might happen to buy. The Centaur was frustrated at first, then angry, until finally, deciding they would just have to walk to The City With No Name, he fell asleep on the pier, as the great ship from the west sent ripples through the harbor.

He awoke at dusk to a huge commotion. Looking down toward the water he saw a medium-sized skiff just leaving the pier. In it, four of the Tai-Phung's Elk-headed sailors pinned down a struggling captive with their hands and antlers. Beauty rubbed bis eyes and stared hard at the scene: the raging prisoner was a Vampire: moreover, it looked like Aba.

Beauty stood up and ran to the end of the pier. "Aba?" he shouted.

The Vampire victim in the skiff twisted and roared: "Beauty!" But to no avail. His captors held him firm.

Beauty scanned the Tai-Phung. Other Vampires were already being shackled to the masts-at the empty s.p.a.ces where, earlier, the dead had been. Those being cuffed into place now screamed and fought and shrieked the supersonic Vampire calls of distress. Useless. Their wings were pulled into taut extension and wired to the crosspieces.

Beauty's mind cleared swiftly, and he looked back to the skiff-too late, for it was rounding the stern of the the ship, going behind it, out of sight.

The Centaur was quietly frantic, with rage and fear. For a few minutes he lost his sense of internal balance entirely, straining to focus on the whole ship at once, uncertain whether to swim out to it, start shooting flaming arrows into its side, or run for help. Then he saw Aba again, and in the s.p.a.ce of moment, became calm, his balance restored. He knew what to do.

Planking had been erected beside each mast. Up this latticework the Elk-headed sailors climbed, clutching the weakened Aba, carrying him to the top of the second mast. Evenly, Beauty pulled an arrow out of his quiver; serenely, he strung it on his Dragon-rib bow.

It was a sensationally long shot under any circ.u.mstances-over a hundred yards distance from Beauty's position on the ground to the top of the mast. Add to this distance the thickening dark, the ocean wind, the wild movement of the obscured figures. An impossible shot by most accounts. Yet Beauty was a remarkable archer.

He pulled back the tense bowstring, aimed but a moment, let the arrow fly, drew a second arrow, and strung it while the first was still in the air. The first went two feet high and wide, and sailed on free into the night; the second hit one Elken sailor in the armpit; the third hit another in the neck; the fourth clipped Aba's arm, the fifth hit the mast, the sixth hit another sailor in the thigh. The three sailors who had been hit fell a hundred feet to the deck; the fourth jumped into the harbor. Aba was left standing, shaken but whole, on the top plank beside the masthead.

There were shouts all around, now; running, clattering, on ship and on sh.o.r.e. Beauty felt himself jumped from behind, spun around twice, and pulled violently down by many hands. He threw someone into the water, but others beat him viciously about the head and flanks, and he felt himself starting to sink.

Suddenly there was a dark swirling whoosh, and Aba was in the fray. He killed two of the attackers rapidly, slashing their necks with his talons. Beauty mortally wounded another, thrusting one of his loose arrows hard through the beast's ear. A Python got in the melee, winding up Aba's left arm, twisting it over, dislocating his shoulder. He groaned in pain. Three more Monkeys ran up, and then a boatload of Elk-men piled on. Soon Beauty and Aba slid into unconsciousness, to the myriad blows of fist and bludgeon.

They awoke with a start on the foredeck of the Tai-Phung, doused with cold water. Angry faces surrounded them. Someone kicked Beauty in the stomach, and he threw up.

The eight-armed Shiva spoke: "Sun you, too li ch'yeng no loo. Chao rama no ling see."

The giant Parrot looked down at the crumpled figures of Beauty and Aba and translated the Shiva's remarks: "She say you very unwise. She say tomorrow at noon she make example of you to rest of city."

"Oan liao ch'i soong lo," the Shiva added.

The parrot threw back his head in delight. "She say you be very sorry then." Whereupon he screeched gaily: "Rawhk!"

Fat, foot-long Glowworms squirmed slowly all around the deck, shedding a whitish light. Beauty watched the faces of his captors in the glimmering and thought how like stories of the Underworld it looked.

He was dragged down into the hold with Aba, brutally tied up, and dumped into a small cargo room. They sat back to back in an inch of water. Two of the large sluglike Glowworms writhed together in one corner, a milky excreta oozing from the end of one, clouding the water at that end of the room.

Aba leaned forward and peered through a crack in the wall he faced: in the next room, close to a hundred gaunt, naked Humans crouched, slept, stared, their wrists all cut, bruised, or bleeding: the food supply for the Vampire slaves tied to the masts. Aba hissed. He leaned back, tried to work his bonds free, and gasped in pain: his shoulder was still dislocated.

"Are you badly hurt?" Beauty asked.

Aba closed his eyes and sighed. "They drugged me at the hotel-the concierge, I imagine. The wine."

"And then?"

"And then they were on me when I awoke. And then you saved me, and then I" didn't save you." He was trying to close his mind to the pain in his arm.

"There must be a way out of this abominable ship." Beauty squirmed fiercely, but the ropes cut into his wrists and ankles. The Glowworms began giving off an odd odor.

"There must be reason to this," Aba muttered. "If only the reason were clear . . ."

"What is clear is that there is no reason . . ." Beauty shook his head.

"But we can't just give up."

"When there is nothing to do, you must do nothing." Beauty smiled, recalling Jasmine's words. For a moment, he had almost lost his equilibrium again; but now he once more felt cool.

"There is much to do," Aba whispered. He rolled over, in great pain, and kicked a crate to the floor from its perch. It hit with a splash and split open, spilling its contents in the shallow water: more Glowworms, twelve of them, each one to two feet long, all plump and squirmy.

Beauty almost gagged, but Aba started to laugh. He laughed and laughed so hard he almost cried from the pain in his jiggling shoulder, but he kept laughing, until Beauty started laughing, too, and then neither could stop. Finally, wheezing and panting, they petered out. Then Aba began to sing, in a booming ba.s.s voice, old Vampire ballads and spirituals.

Oh, I love thee, b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, Your ruby lips, la.s.s, The sweetest sherry; Your pulse against my Tremblin' lips, dear, I take you gently, In gentle sips, dear. and: White is the blush of my true love's skin,'

And red the blue vein it beholds, But sleep, now, my darlin', We'll weep in the mornin", For you've gotten so stiff and so cold, Oh, you've gotten so stiff and so cold.

He sang this last one over and over, and soon Beauty was joining in, harmonizing, singing slower at the sad parts. There was rustling at the other side of the wall, and Aba could see the Human slaves crowding around the peephole, watching them, hearing them sing so movingly.

There was suddenly a loud crash, and parts of the outer wall-the sea-side wall of the little room, which was, in faet, the hull of the ship-caved explosively into the room several times in rapid succession, leaving first a small hole, then a large hole, and finally a splintered, gaping hole in the wall-the bottom edge of which was actually below the water line, so that now a gusher of sea water was roaring in. With unrestrained amazement, Beauty stared through the opening at the small sailboat that bobbed just outside the shattered hull; and standing in it, the grinning figure of D'Ursu Magna, holding the biggest sledge hammer Beauty had ever seen.

D'Ursu jumped into the flooding cargo room, fell in the rising frothing water, then stood and quickly cut Beauty's and Aba's ropes. Jumping out again was harder-against the incoming rush-but somehow all three of them made it. In the opaque darkness, n.o.body from the ship could see where or who to shoot at, and in any case, they were all more than occupied trying to evacuate that part of the hold, seal off that section, repair the startling breach in the planking. By the time D'Ursu's little craft had sailed thirty yards toward the mouth of the harbor, the Tai-Phung was already beginning to list a bit.

By the tune the small sailboat had reached the mouth of the harbor, Beauty had put Aba's arm back into its socket. And by the tune the little sailboat was out on the open sea, the three comrades had calmed down enough to tell one another their stories.

"This doctor was crazy," grumbled D'Ursu. "So I had to leave. He wouldn't tell me where you'd gone-Humans love secrets, you know-but you left a trail of smells even the stinking city couldn't cover. Then, by evening, of course, absolutely everyone was jabbering about the Centaur and the Vampire who'd been captured by the Tai-Phung, so I knew I had to help you out of trouble again."

"But how did you ever get this boat?" Beauty demanded. "I looked for hours-no one was renting."

"Renting?" D'Ursu looked askance. "Another Human invention. I just took the d.a.m.n boat. That terrible singing told me where to find you-and smashing the bottom of the ship in with that iron hammer was the greatest trick I ever played. And that's my story!" D'Ursu roared, laughing.

The others laughed, too, then tended their wounds in the sea water, in the cool night air, in the laughter of the dancing stars, as the little boat sailed gently south, toward the darkness at the mouth of the Sticks River.

CHAPTER 6: Queen Takes Knight; Knight Mates.

JOSHUA tensed as the door to his cell swung open. His neck was black and blue from repeated Vampire bites; his skin had the pallor of blood loss mixed with fear. But no Vampire entered this time, and no Neuroman. This was a Human.

A girl. Naked, frail, her head shaved. A thick black cable .plugged into the back of her skull trailed down to the floor and out the door. She held a silver bowl filled with liquid.

Josh tried to stand, but he was shaky from anemia.

"Don't get up," said the girl. "You must be awful weak." Her voice was thin, as if it got little use.

"Yes, I am," he replied. She understood. She was like him. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm just a little bit." She began unb.u.t.toning his shirt.

"A little bit of what?" He was too tired to resist her, whatever it was she wanted, so he just lay back.

"A little bit of the Queen. She's all of me, of course." She pulled off his shirt, untied his pants.

"But there is no queen," he protested weakly. "It's just you pitiful slaves, wired like animals to the Neuromans' computer."

She took off his pants, pushed him flat on the bed. She was stronger than her atrophic arms made her appear. "Well I happen to be in direct communication with the Queen-the Queen in me, anyway-and we laugh at your innocence. Ha, ha, ha."

She took a sponge from her silver bowl and began gently washing him with the clear, perfumed liquid. It was cool and soporific, and Josh relaxed in spite of himself.

"What do you want of me?" he asked.

"To be open, and tranquil, and ready."

The lavage seemed to give him strength, its sweet aroma to arouse him. She brought the engorged sponge to his loins, where her silky fingers stroked tensions out, warmth in.

"Ready for what?" he murmured. It was long since he had been with a woman.

"For your time with the Queen," she whispered. Her own body was responding now, hard and soft and flushed.

"The Queen in you?" he suggested. He was getting lightheaded. His hand had fallen into the silver bowl. He raised it, dripping the slippery perfume, and drew his fingers along the line of her breast, weighed its ma.s.s in his palm.

She quivered. "No, the Queen without," she sighed, and pulled away.

"Wait," he pleaded, but she withdrew quickly, backed out the door, and was gone.

He stood to catch her, but his knees melted, and he collapsed to the floor. For many minutes, he sat sobbing.

When the door opened again, it was Ugo, the Vampire, who stood there.

"The Queen will see you now," he snarled, picking the young man up and supporting him out the door.

Josh was terrified his blood was to be drained again; but that was not what happened. Instead, he was led by Ugo down half a dozen empty corridors, up two flights of stairs, into a laboratory. Here lights of various wavelengths were shone on him; his body was soaped, steamed, scrubbed, and blown dry; sound-generation devices buffeted him with vibration. This was Final Decontamination.

He suspected the end was near, and in his mind prepared himself for the Dark Journey.

He was pointed down a red-lit hallway; at its end, three doors: LIMBO, NIRVANA, COMMUNION. The t.i.tles jerked him out of his half-trance-he had been here before. Five years before. He tried to turn back, but the door behind him was closed. There was nothing he could do but walk ahead, into his past.

He crossed the corridor, opened the door labeled COMMUNION, and entered. It was as he remembered. Row after row of Human beings, lying still as Earth, their heads shaved and trailing black cables that twisted down the aisles like serpentine thoughts crawling from the brains of the eternal sleepers.

It tightened the pit of Joshua's stomach. He stepped forward-to free them, as he had done once before-but was stopped by an electrified wire grid that now separated the walkway from the room. He hadn't noticed it at first, his attention was so focused on the bodies; but when he walked into it, it sparked and jolted him, and he jumped back.