Kings of Infinite Space

THIRTY-NINE

“OKAY, I’VE HAD ENOUGH,” said Paul in a loud voice, to no one in particular. “I want to wake up now.”

This only provoked a grumble of laughter from the crowd of men below and even a hollow chuckle from Stanley Tulendij. Olivia issued an exasperated gasp. “Very droll, Professor,” called out Colonel from the edge of the pool.

“No, seriously,” said Paul. Callie looked up at him beseechingly, and Paul looked away, unable to bear it. “This isn’t funny anymore. I’m not enjoying this.”

Stanley Tulendij, his lipless mouth fixed in a cadaverous grin, bent close to Paul. “She won’t feel a thing,” he said with an avuncular wink. “Not for long, anyway.”

The murmuring from below—“Meat! Meat! Meat!”—grew even louder, and Paul looked down to see the crowd parting for J.J., who approached the pool ceremoniously bearing the big knife across his upturned palms. At the edge of the pool, he handed it off to Bob Wier, who grimaced and handled the blade as if it were red hot, immediately passing it off to Colonel, who took it solemnly. He held the handle with one hand and laid the gleaming blade lightly across his other palm. He stepped across the trembling pool on the stepping stones and started up the slope, his shining eyes fixed on Paul.

“Wait a minute.” Paul backed up against the base of the big, sagging pillar behind him. “Let’s just stop for a second.” Callie was trembling. The soles of her sandals were bent back as she knelt on the sweating stone. She wore the same clothes she’d had on when she’d left his apartment — jeans, a man’s old Oxford shirt — and she’d left his apartment, Paul thought, before he had started dreaming. Maybe, he thought frantically, her presence in his apartment had been part of the dream as well, and he began desperately to wonder just how far back it went. Had his affair with Callie been a dream all along? Had his wooing by Colonel and his cronies been a dream? Maybe all of it had been a dream, he thought, feeling the sweat pouring down his temples: his job at TxDoGS, his life with Kymberly in the suburban ranch house, maybe even his whole experience in Texas. None of this ever happened, he thought. I never lost my teaching job, I never got divorced. I never drowned a cat in a bathtub. This is a fantasy, a cautionary tale, and I’m fast asleep in Iowa, with Lizzie snoring beside me and Charlotte, dear, sweet Charlotte, purring happily at my feet. He glanced all around him for some definitive sign of unreality, but all he saw were the wide eyes of the pale men watching him from below and the dripping stalactites above, pointing at him like spears.

By now Colonel had reached the ledge, and he knelt on the top step and fixed Paul with his gaze and lifted the knife towards him.

“What about her?” cried Paul, pointing at Olivia. “I mean, I gave you her already, right?”

The crowd of murmuring men gasped as one, and Olivia dropped her jaw and goggled at Paul. Colonel sighed and looked exasperated, but before he could speak, Olivia had placed her clenched fists on her hips.

“Outrageous!” she cried. “Outrageous!” She swung her ferocious gaze from Paul to Stanley Tulendij, who grinned weakly.

“Now, dearest,” he said, waving his wobbly palms at her.

“Stanley,” said Olivia, her lower lip trembling, “are you going to let this, this person speak about me in that manner?”

“Now, sweetness,” said Stanley Tulendij, and he crossed in front of Paul to comfort Olivia. His arms curled around her; his pale fingers twitched on her bare shoulders. Olivia pressed herself against the wide, blue lapels of his garish tux. “Outrageous,” she sniffled.

Below, the pale men shuffled in place and mumbled to themselves. At the front of the crowd J.J. bobbed anxiously from foot to foot, while Bob Wier clutched his own elbows, looking nearly as pale as the cave dwellers pressed around him. Colonel hissed at Paul to get his attention, and Paul came warily forward, crouching next to Callie, whose eyes darted frantically in every direction.

“Suck it up, Professor,” Colonel whispered. The knife quivered in his hands, casting its gleam across Paul and Callie’s faces. “We’ve all done this. J.J. gave them his girlfriend, and believe me, J.J. doesn’t come across a girlfriend very often. Hell, Bob here gave up his wife.”

Callie groaned. At the foot of the slope, Bob Wier looked up as if he’d heard his name. His eyes widened, and his face paled even more. Suddenly he turned away from the pool. J.J. grabbed at him, but Bob twisted free and pushed back through the crowd towards the rear. J.J. shrugged and faced front again.

“But you didn’t,” whispered Paul, “give up your wife.”

Colonel’s bright eyes narrowed. “You ain’t the only one, Professor, who’s ever had a wild little mustang. Yasumi never knew about her.” He lifted the corner of his lips in a lubricious grin. “You know how it is.”

Callie was watching Paul now, sidelong.

“About cheating on my wife?” said Paul, struggling to control his voice. “Or human sacrifice?”

Colonel shrugged and said, “Call it whatever you want, Paul. We all do it.” He grinned again. “Are we not men?”

“Alright, that’s it!” barked Olivia, and everyone turned to see her push out of Stanley Tulendij’s embrace. She loomed over Paul with one fist balled against her hip, while Stanley Tulendij dithered behind her.

“Are you going to let this slacker, this Yankee get away with this?” she declared, sweeping the crowd below with her furious gaze. “Because correct me if I’m wrong, but these other three losers have already done it.” She gestured with her free hand, her red glove taking in Colonel and J.J. Bob Wier was across the room, doggedly stuffing more wood into the firebox of one of the smokers.

“So what makes Paul so special? Is it because he has a pee aitch dee?” She waved her long, red, satin finger in the air, sistah style. “Puh-leeze. He’s here, he’s accepted the benefits y’all have offered him, and now it’s time for him to do his duty.”

The crowd below was rapt. Their mouths hung open, their teeth glistened, their eyes shone with something like adoration. Even J.J.’s eyes were twinkling. Olivia drew a breath, then she stooped and hooked the satiny fingers of one hand through the collar of Callie’s shirt, and the fingers of her other hand through Paul’s collar, and hauled them both to their feet. Colonel stood, too, under his own steam. Paul felt something smooth and cool and hard against his right palm, and Colonel closed Paul’s fingers around the handle of the knife. Olivia lifted Paul’s left hand around Callie’s shoulders and placed his palm under her chin. Callie flinched at the touch. She had squeezed her eyes shut, and Paul could feel her shuddering.

Olivia stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “So get with the program, mister,” she declared, “and cut her throat.”

Paul’s hand trembled under Callie’s chin, so he dropped it to her shoulder. She flinched again; her breath hissed in hot bursts through her nose.

“It’s okay,” Paul whispered. “This isn’t really happening. This is a dream. You’re not even here.”

“Mmm mmm mmm!” Callie said through the gag.

“I’m waiting,” said Olivia.

“Now, Paul,” said Colonel, holding up his palms and rocking on the balls of his feet, “each of these gentlemen behind me is crazier than a jaybird and hungrier than a coyote. They’re fixed to eat something tonight, and if it’s not her, well, then, we go to Plan B.” He glanced back at the crowd. They were pressing forward, licking their lips, gnashing their teeth, drooling. “Let’s just say,” Colonel said in a low voice, “we’re having you for dinner, Professor, one way or the other.”

Paul could scarcely see six inches beyond his nose; everything else was washed out of all recognition. His mind raced as if he were a dying man reliving his life in an instant. Behind his eyeballs he saw an almost comically speeded-up highlight reel of every bad decision he’d ever made, in glorious, unfaded, mid-fifties Technicolor: himself at his computer, not finishing his book; himself and Kymberly, cheating on Lizzie in his marriage bed; himself cheating on Kymberly with Oksana, et al.; himself lowering the howling Charlotte in her cat carrier into the bathtub and turning the taps on full blast; himself sprawled uselessly on the bed, listening to Callie drive away. .

His heart twisted with regret, and his vision was further blurred with tears. The humid, smoky air around him seemed to cool for a moment, as if he stood in the doorway of a freezer, and for one, delirious instant he swore he felt the smooth, sidelong brush of a cat winding a figure eight between his legs. Then the silky pressure faded and the cave’s dankness once again clung to his skin. His vision cleared as if someone had wiped his eyes, and one thought somehow rang as clear as a chime at the center of his head: If this is a dream, if none of this really matters, then why not be a hero?

“I won’t do it,” he breathed, and he tightened his arm around Callie’s shoulders, pulling her closer. She tensed under his grip, but he held on tightly. Colonel edged towards him, reaching for the knife. Olivia vibrated with fury a few feet away, while Stanley Tulendij, his eyes alight, twitched behind her. The crowd below strained forward, nearly pushing J.J. into the water. Across the cave Paul saw Bob Wier pushing one more log into the blazing firebox with the iron poker. The smoker was overheating; smoke gushed from the chimney and puffed from the seams of the doors.

“No,” Paul said louder, “I won’t do it.” The knife trembled so violently in his hand that Paul was afraid he was going to drop it, but he waved it unsteadily at the Colonel.

“Mm mm!” said Callie through the gag. “Mm mm!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, we’ll be here all night,” said Olivia. “I’ll do it.”

Paul turned to fend her off, but Colonel grabbed his wrist in a crushing grip. Callie struggled in Paul’s grasp; Paul tottered at the edge of the stony ledge; Colonel squeezed his wrist ferociously, and the knife loosened in Paul’s grip.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” bellowed Bob Wier from across the cave. Reflexively everyone turned to see him heaving on the wooden handle at one end of the smoker. He had kicked the chocks away from the front wheels, and slowly the smoker started to roll forward down the incline. Grimacing and white-faced, Bob dug in with his loafers and pushed the handle from behind, and the smoker picked up speed across the cave, its wheels squealing, its metal panels rattling. Bob had opened the door of the firebox at the front end, and as the smoker rolled faster, flames streamed backwards out of the box, scorching the sides of the drum and sending hot sparks and glowing embers bounding along the cave floor. “ ‘I will pour out my wrath upon you,’ ” cried Bob Wier, banging the long iron poker on the drum of the smoker, “ ‘and breathe out my fiery anger against you!’ ”

“What the hell?” said Colonel, loosening his grip on Paul’s wrist for an instant. Paul tightened his grasp on the knife and, still clutching Callie, yanked his hand free, slashing Colonel deep across his forearm.

“Son of a bitch!” cried Colonel, jerking his arm into the air. He nearly toppled backwards down the slope. The gash in his sleeve flapped, blood soaking into the fabric.

“Ezekiel!” panted Bob Wier, “twenty-one. . thirty-one,” and with a final, mighty effort, he heaved the smoker, jouncing and rattling and flaming, into the crowd. It rocketed down the incline towards the pool like a runaway little locomotive, the blunt snout of its firebox breathing flame and streaming black smoke. The pale, homeless men tumbled away from the blazing firebox in every direction, squealing as the sparks shot among them. Bob Wier charged right behind the smoker, swinging the poker with both hands like a club, sending some pale men flying while others scrabbled away spiderwise on their hands and knees. J.J. scrambled backwards on his ass, like a crab.

“Run, Paul!” cried Bob Wier breathlessly over the tremendous clatter of the runaway smoker. “Take her and run!”

The smoker thundered to the edge of the pool and tumbled in, roaring firebox first. A great wave of cave water heaved over the lip of the pool and washed squealing pale men across the floor, and an immense eruption of steam boiled out of the water, a roiling, hissing cloud that shot to the ceiling and gusted to either side, obscuring the flailing Bob Wier and the sliding homeless men. The wave of cave water sloshed high up the slope out of the cloud, and Colonel, still cursing, pedaled wildly on the slick rock, then toppled backwards, sliding on his back through the water into the steam. Callie broke away from Paul, only to be confronted by a wild-eyed Stanley Tulendij, who hunkered down on his long legs and spread his hands wide like a knife fighter. Callie hollered something through her gag and planted her foot in the old man’s groin, and he gasped long and loud and crumpled in his tux like a bag of bones. Steely-eyed Olivia tried to do the same to Paul, but he staggered backwards, waving the knife, and Olivia lost her balance in her long skirt, landing hard on her hip and sliding down the slick rock into the water, vanishing into the steam.

“Callie,” gasped Paul. Gusts of hot steam wafted past him, and he lost her. But before he could call out again, she shouldered past him like a running back, leaping in long strides down the slope towards the cubescape, losing her footing at last and sliding on her backside into the water.

“I’m coming!” cried Paul, and he dropped to his ass with spine-crushing force and tobogganed after her down the rock. Because of its clarity, the water had looked only a few inches deep, but it turned out to be waist high and, despite the steam, piercingly cold. The shock of it made Paul gasp, and he stumbled, dunking himself, and came up sputtering and waving the knife.

“I’m coming!” he gasped again, but Callie was charging through water up to her waist, swinging her shoulders. She reached the edge and without looking back gripped a stalagmite with her bound hands and hoisted herself, streaming with water, out of the pool. Paul struggled after her through the freezing water, and he glanced back and saw that the steam was slowly dissipating. The spot where the smoker had gone into the pool was still bubbling like a hot spring, and one end of the drum was heeling over like a sinking oil tanker. Somewhere in the mist both Olivia and Colonel were shouting, and through the fading cloud of steam Paul saw the dim silhouette of Bob Wier still laying about him like Beowulf with the poker. “Praise.. Jesus. .,” he gasped, connecting with a solid thud, but he was slowly being pulled down by the swarming heap of pale men.

At the edge of the pool Paul hauled himself out, his clothes clinging and heavy with water. Kneeling on the cold, gritty stone, panting for breath, he saw a few of the nearer figures in the cloud of steam glancing back at him, and he heaved himself to his feet and started after Callie, towards the cubes. He’d lost his sandals in the water, and his feet slapped painfully against the hard surface of the floor, leaving muddy prints in the grit. He still had the knife, though, and he held it before him as he entered the main aisle of the cubicles, the threadbare carpet feeling grainy and rough under his feet. At the junction of the two main aisles, he found Callie crouched with her back to the cube wall, out of sight of the far end of the cave. She had lifted her bound hands to her face and was trying to pry off the gag with her thumbs. Her shirt was plastered to her skin, and she was trembling.

“Wait,” said Paul, and he crouched before her and tried to take her wrist. She jerked her hands away at first, her eyes angry and wild, but Paul showed her the trembling knife, and she nodded curtly, offering her bound wrists. Paul steadied the knife with both hands and sawed through the cords, and Callie flung the scraps away and reached behind her head and tore off the gag. Rubbing her wrists, she opened her mouth wide and drew a long, wheezing breath.

“Callie,” Paul said, glancing round the corner down the aisle into the far end of the cave. The steam had mushroomed to a haze up under the roof, and Paul saw a wriggling heap of men. Bob Wier was nowhere to be seen. Some of the men in the heap were raising their fists and hammering something out of sight, but others were reaching into the heap and coming out again with ragged scraps of something in their fists. One pale face lifted above the scrum, its teeth smeared with blood. Paul looked away.

“We have to. .,” he began, but Callie braced her back against the cube wall and kicked him in the chest. She had lost her sandals, too, but the solid blow of her bare heel knocked Paul on his ass and sent the knife skittering across the carpet.

“Motherfucker!” she said, careful to keep her voice low. “What have you done?”

“Callie!” Paul gasped. “It’s okay! This is a dream. This isn’t happening.”

“Then wake up!” she snapped, crouching forward, getting her feet under her. “It may not be happening to you, but it’s sure as hell happening to me!” She glanced around the corner, and Paul followed her gaze. The heap of wriggling men had collapsed in on itself. J.J. was off to one side, stomping angrily in a circle. Colonel was standing, but bent nearly double, gasping and clutching his arm. Olivia Haddock had pulled her gown up to her knees and stripped off her gloves and her homecoming sash, and she was crawling up the slope towards Stanley Tulendij, who lay in the fetal position at the base of the big phallic rock.

“Listen,” said Paul, but Callie whirled on him and said, “The only thing I want to hear from you is how I get out of here.”

Paul met her eyes and nearly burst into hysterical laughter. But he mastered himself and glanced up the aisle, towards the passage where he and Bob Wier and the procession of pale men had entered. Callie started convulsively in that direction, but Paul grabbed her arm. “Not that way,” Paul hissed. “It’s too far, and we’ll get lost.” He glanced up the other aisle, towards the ravenous heap of pale men ripping Bob Wier to shreds. “They’ll know a way to get ahead of us.”

The light in Callie’s eyes nearly flared into panic, but then she looked past him and her eyes focused on the pole ladder at the junction of the aisles. She pulled free of Paul and dashed, crouching, to the ladder. She lifted her head warily over the cube horizon and then started to climb, lifting her knees and placing her feet without looking, her gaze fixed on the pole above her.

“I don’t know where this goes,” Paul hissed, but he had already scrambled after her to the foot of the ladder. Above him Callie’s backside disappeared into the glare of the lights. “Oh boy,” breathed Paul, and he grasped one rung and stepped up onto another and started to climb.

Before he knew it, Paul had risen past the fluorescent fixtures, up into the coils and loops of black wiring. Above him he saw Callie climbing as energetically as a monkey, while below he saw the dusty metal cowls of the lights and, below that, the cubescape laid out like a map, each cubicle fitted with a battered little computer, each desktop covered with neat stacks of paperwork and littered with pens and highlighters and coffee cups. Paul struggled upward, his arms and legs beginning to tremble, and he glanced down the length of the cave and saw the pale men still swarming over the livid scraps of Bob on the floor. Colonel was sitting at one of the folding tables while J.J. bound his arm with a dishtowel; Olivia had propped Stanley Tulendij up into a sitting position and was stroking his large, white forehead with one of her limp, sodden gloves. The pool was still sloshing from side to side; tendrils of steam still wafted from the surface of the water; and in the rippling refractions Paul saw the wreck of the smoker with its legs up like a drowned black dragon.

He looked away, suddenly afraid that his mere gaze would draw other gazes in return. Above him the pole ladder rose into a perfectly round hole drilled into the ceiling, wide enough for a person, the edge of the hole rimmed already with the stumpy beginnings of dripping stalactites. Callie was already ascending into the hole, and Paul’s heart lifted. We’re almost there, he thought, a few more seconds and we’re out of sight. He pulled harder; above him only the dirty soles of Callie’s feet were visible in the hole.

“Callie!” Paul whispered eagerly. “Wait for me!”

Some trick of the cave, some subterranean acoustical freak, caught his whisper and magnified it, and it echoed round the walls of the cavern like a pinball, bounding off the ceiling, ricocheting off the stalactites, reverberating against the walls. All the faces of the homeless men turned as one, like sea anemones, away from the shredded form that had held their attention, and looked up towards the source of the echo. Colonel and J.J. glanced up angrily through the glare of the fluorescent lights. At the base of the pillar, Olivia Haddock leaped to her feet, letting Stanley Tulendij fall over like a sack of meal.

“There they go!” she shrieked. “Bite them! Kill them! Off with their heads!”

With an awful, yearning groan, the pale men leaped up and swarmed down the cave towards the cubicles and the ladder. Colonel jumped up, shoved J.J. aside, and started after them. Paul looked away and climbed frantically towards the hole. Suddenly, Callie’s face loomed out of the darkness. She reached down and grabbed Paul’s arm and hauled him up into the gloom.

“Nice work, jackass,” she said. “Come on.”