The Man Who Melted (3 page)

The room was a cell. It smelled of urine, contained an open toilet, a wall sink, a discolored bidet, a filthy mattress on the metal floor, a computer console and a psyconductor with its cowls and mesh of wires, and a wooden folding chair. On the pallet lay Josiane, or a woman who looked exactly like her. She was naked and perspiring heavily. Mantle almost cried, for her face and small breasts were black and blue. Her hair was blonde and curly, although it was matted with dirt and clotted blood. She looked up at him, her limpid eyes as blue as his own; but she was looking through him, through the walls and the world, and back into the dark places of her mind.

“Well,” Melzi said, sharing a glance with Vittorio, “that certainly looks like your little bird.”

“Here are her papers,” Vittorio said to Mantle in an American accent, which was the current fashion; and then he passed Mantle a large envelope. But Mantle just held it; he was lost. His memory was jarred, and he slipped
back to the first time, in the old house in Cayuga, when there were still spruce and fir covering the mountain. But he didn't care about trees then. He was fourteen and Josiane was eleven—but developed for her age—and she came into his room and they lay on the bed and talked and she jerked him off as she had done since she was eight or nine, and he rolled over on top of her, stared steadily into her face and entered her. Then stopped, as if tasting some kind of delicious, warm ice cream, and they just stared at each other, moving up and down, breath only slightly quickened. It was more a way of talking.

Another memory came back to him: the face of a young woman in a crowd. The same face as the woman on the mattress.

“
Signore
, come back to the world,” Vittorio said, and Melzi chuckled.

Mantle shook his head as if he had slipped from one world to another and mumbled, “Josiane.” Then he rushed to the psyconductor, grabbed two cowls from the top of the console, and lunged toward her, intent on hooking into her thoughts; but Melzi caught him and pulled him away. “Are you that determined to burn your brain?” Melzi asked. “At least let me look at her first.”

“We have many customers who wish to hook-into Screamers,” Vittorio said. “But they must pay first. It's a policy of the house.”

Melzi squatted beside the woman and examined her with an instrument that projected a superimposed holographic image of Josiane over her face. After several minutes, he raised the magnification and disappeared the holographic image.

“Whoever did this work was a real artist,” Melzi said. “Her face corresponds exactly to the hollie. But you see, right there?” He indicated a dry area just below her earlobe. “You see, the pores are open everywhere else but in that tiny spot.” He raised the magnification several more powers. “There you can see the faint thread of a suture. A recent job. He should have been just a
little
more careful and covered
that
up.”

Mantle pushed Melzi out of the way and examined her himself. He felt anger and frustration burning through him, returning more violently than ever before. He began to shake. Once again he had tried to fool himself, this time with a burned-up Screamer, a
grido
, a
crieuse
—but she was not his wife!

“I don't think you would wish to hook-into that woman,” Melzi said. “She is not—”

“But you must admit,
Signore
,” Vittorio said, “she looks exactly like the hollies with which we were provided.” Then Vittorio said to Melzi, “She was supposed to have been completely checked out by the man who brought her to me.”

Melzi only shrugged.

“My contact is a reputable man; he will be very unhappy—”

Then Mantle snapped completely—it was as if someone, or something, had suddenly taken him over. He punched Vittorio in the abdomen before Melzi could stop him. At once, the door to the hallway slammed open and one of Vittorio's men entered. The man was big and had the dead look of the street about him. As Mantle turned, the man struck him hard in the chest and pushed him savagely against the wall. Mantle overcame his nausea and tried to free himself, but Vittorio's man was too strong.

Melzi watched, his mouth pursed as if he were amused. “You must forgive my client,” he said to Vittorio. “He's not right in the head. He—”

“Now he
will
buy the girl,” Vittorio said, still gasping for breath. He kept smoothing down his suit.

“Don't even argue,” Melzi said to Mantle. Melzi nodded to Vittorio; and Vittorio, in his turn, told his man to release Mantle. Mantle made the credit transaction by applying his hand to the glass face of the computer console.

He had bought the woman.

“You realize that this is simply a transfer of funds from one account to another,” Vittorio said, having recovered himself. “It cannot possibly be traced.”

A matronly domestic entered the room with clothes for the woman and various messages for Vittorio.

“Get her dressed and let's get out of here,” Mantle said impatiently.

“I named her Victoria. She'll answer to that if she'll answer at all,” Vittorio said. He nodded curtly to Melzi and left the room. His man followed.

Mantle felt his flesh crawl. He was sure that Vittorio had abused her. “Let's get out of here. Now!”

“Let the girl finish dressing,” Melzi said. “I am in no rush to be on the streets. Just a few minutes ago you were going to hook-into her and now—”

“Now,” Mantle repeated. And he held out his hand to Victoria, who grinned at him, just as Josiane used to do.

The streets were empty—not a shadow moving, not a sound. It was dark, but the crooked, and usually deadly, intersecting streets were well lit, for anyone caught trying to break one of the kliegs would be torn limb from limb. The common folk had their own notions of law. However, enough lamps were broken to create a patchwork effect of white, black, and gray.

They were almost out of Spacca. Victoria seemed suddenly alert, her head cocked, as if listening to someone who was talking too low.

“I don't like this,” Mantle said. His chest was aching, but he ignored it.

“It is very bad,” Melzi agreed. “It's going to be a big one this time. I didn't expect anything like this to happen again so soon. I didn't think there were enough Screamers to do it. But you never know. All we can do is hurry. There's nothing to stop us, at least.”

Mantle repressed an urge to slow down. He was curious, not really afraid.
That
, he knew, was dangerous. If Mantle was caught in a crowd of Screamers, he might not be able to resist becoming like them—very few could.

“The girl is slowing us down,” Melzi said, grasping her arm and dragging her forward. “We don't have much time. The farther we are from Spacca, the safer.”

“I don't see anything yet,” Mantle said.

“
Jesù
, can't you feel it? Come on, hurry.”

Mantle took her other arm. “Don't hurt her, Melzi,” Mantle said. “You're
hurting
her, let go of her arm.”

“She may look like your wife,
Signore
, but she's still a
grido
. She feels nothing. She's not in this world. I can smell that.”

Victoria suddenly started dragging her feet. She shook her head back and forth, her eyes closed, face placid, as if listening to music.

“We can't drag her like this,” Melzi said. “Come on, little bird, wake up.” He slapped her back and forth on the face.

“Leave her alone!” Mantle said, bracing her arms as she fell to her knees. Her head was cocked, and she began to smile.

“I'm leaving, and so are you,” Melzi said. “I contracted to bring you home, and so I shall.” He pointed his heat weapon at Mantle. “Please forgive me,
Signore
, but if you do not come along, I will have to kill her. The smell
of
grido
is so strong all around us that I can hardly breathe. We've no time to waste. Now leave her be.”

Mantle felt something in the air, electricity, as if a powerful storm were about to break, only its potential energy seemed sentient. Suddenly Victoria began to scream. Long, cold streamers of sound. Melzi—who was sweating profusely and looking around in nervous, darting movements as if he were about to be attacked from every side—shot Victoria in the throat, just as he had shot the other woman. Mantle shouted, but it was too late. He was overcome with hatred and disgust and sorrow. For that instant, it
was
Josiane whom Melzi had shot.

In return, Mantle shot Melzi, twice in the chest and once in the groin. It was as if Mantle's hand had a will of its own.

“But she will attract the others,” Melzi whispered, referring to the Screamers. He looked nothing but surprised for a second, and then collapsed.

Mantle heard a distant roaring like faraway breakers. For an instant he was a child again, listening to the ocean calling his name. Then he saw the first Screamers running toward him, heads thrown back as they howled at the heavens like wolves. Thousands of them crowded the streets and alleyways, turning Spacca into commotion. Melzi had been right. The mob would converge upon them. It was a many-headed beast screaming for blood and Mantle, as if in response to Victoria's call.

Mantle had enough time to turn and run, but when he tried, Victoria rose before him like a ghost. She called to him, promised that she was Josiane. Her skin was translucent, her rags diaphanous, and her voice was that of the Screamers.

He heard Josiane's voice calling him, then a thousand voices, all Josiane's….

The Screamers were all around him, pushing him, pressing against him, tempting him, a thousand sirens promising darkness and cold love. Mantle looked around, shaking his head in one direction, then another; and saw that
everyone
looked like Josiane. Then everyone turned into Mantle's dead mother, and an instant later, the features of every Screamer's face melted like hot wax. The mob took on the angry face of Mantle's dead father, then his dead brother. Every Screamer was changing, melting into someone Mantle had known or loved or hated.

“Stop it!” Mantle screamed as everyone turned into Carl Pfeiffer, an old
friend and enemy. But Mantle was caught, another Screamer. He was running with them—south, past the Via Diaz, through the ruins of burned-out buildings and garbage-strewn streets, over the seamless macadam that covered the cobblestone roads once used by Romans. He screamed, lost in the mob. He could hear the thoughts of every other Screamer. Their cries and screams were the rhythms of fire and transcendence and death. He felt silvery music as the dark voices rustled his childhood memories like wheat in a field. He felt transformed, transported into the hot eye of a hurricane.

But a part of Mantle's mind resisted the dark, telepathic nets of the screaming mob, even now. Like a man pulling himself out of deepest sleep, he wrenched himself away. But he was only swallowed again, submerged in the undertow of minds.

Suddenly, he felt a blunt pain in his arm and shoulder—a Screamer running beside Mantle tripped and pushed him against the ragged stone side of the building. Although he couldn't stop himself from running or screaming with the others, he concentrated on the pain. He used it to close himself from the Circaen voices long enough to slow his gait until the mob was ahead of him. Then he fell to the macadam, exhausted and dazed.

Later, he would remember everything but the Screamer attack.

TWO

The boardwalk creaked as Mantle walked, and the strong noontime sunlight turned the bistros, boardwalk feelies, and open-air restaurants white as bones in a desert. Once again he tried to remember what had happened to him last week in Naples, but his mind's eye was closed. Memory was lost in darkness.

He shivered as if he had remembered something painful, which quickly slipped away from him. He
knew
that he had been attacked by Screamers in Naples; he just couldn't remember. He remembered finding Victoria and shooting Melzi—he winced, just thinking about that—and then waking up in a hospital hallway that was lined with cots. He had suffered a mild concussion, and his arms and chest were black and blue. He had left the hospital as soon as he could to recuperate in the privacy of his hotel room.

Now that he was back in Cannes, he felt like himself again. Whatever had happened in Naples was like a dream. But he walked quickly, impatiently, as if he could walk his way through his amnesia: he was expecting an important phone call from Francois Pretre, a minister of the Church of the Christian Criers.

To his right was the ancient Boulevard de la Croisette, elegant but deteriorated, its rare gardens untended and its cement promenade cracked and broken. But still, it was the meeting place of the gentry, especially in the winter when expatriates, spies, political exiles, and reporters from all over Europe and the Americas would gather. Since Naples had first fallen to the Screamer mobs, the Boulevard de la Croisette had become what the Via Roma had once been: an informal center for intrigue and exchange of information.

The boardwalk ended, and Mantle crossed over to the boulevard. The computer plug whispered it was time for his pill. He felt a surge of anger and took the plug from his ear. He didn't need drugs to calm himself. He counted trees and inhaled the salty, decaying odors of the Mediterranean. Torn pieces of newsfax capered toward him in the wind like pigeons chasing bread. He passed an old woman cleaning the street in front of a dingy bistro called “Club California.” She gave him a nasty look and stirred dust devils into the air.

He nodded to her and walked toward the old La Castre Museum. He would be home soon. The sea was behind him; the streets noisy with vendors and children and congregating neighbors. He passed his friend Joan's apartment and felt the old pangs of guilt. But he didn't stop. He would make amends later. She would understand. She always had.

He could feel a sort of electricity around him, as if a storm were brewing. Yet, there was not a cloud in the sky. But today would be a good day. It would bring him closer to Josiane. Perhaps Pretre would finally call to grant him permission to hook-into a dead Screamer.

Perhaps Mantle could find Josiane inside a dead man's mind.

Carl Pfeiffer stood outside Mantle's house in Old Town.

Mantle lived in a faded, dirty-looking yellow house with common walls and noisy neighbors—just under the clock tower, the grand machine that ruled ancient Cannes. Before the close-packed, tile-roofed, chimneyed houses
were the square and the Church of Good Hope; then more houses and shops, less deteriorated and with a better view of the harbor and the misted island of Ste-Marguerite.

Before Mantle could change direction, Pfeiffer saw him and was shouting and waving his hands.

What the hell is he doing
here
? Mantle asked himself, already feeling trapped. Too late now to turn back on the Rue Perrissol, to try to find Joan and kill time until Pfeffer grew tired and left. He wouldn't even have to miss Pretre; Mantle would have an excuse to call
him
.

“I've been waiting here for an hour,” Pfeiffer said, taking a backward step as if Mantle had given him a push. Indeed, the thought had crossed his mind. “I left a message on your telie yesterday,” Pfeiffer continued. “Haven't you been home? Don't you check the Net for messages?” He gave Mantle a condescending look.

The Reverend Pretre refused to leave any messages on the Net, so Mantle had not bothered to check it.

“You could at least pretend to be happy to see me,” Pfeiffer said. “It's been a long time.”

“This is a surprise, Carl,” Mantle said, worrying his keys out of his pocket. His voice was still hoarse. “Yes, it has been a long time.”

“You're still angry about the past, aren't you?” Pfeiffer asked—more a statement than a question. “After all these years, let things die.”

“I can't remember the past, remember?” But Pfeiffer could, and Mantle hated him for that.

“Whatever you may think, I was always your friend.”

“Let's not go into that.” Their friendship had been ruinous, built upon the premise that Pfeiffer would succeed and Mantle would fail. Pfeiffer had always done his part. Now that Mantle's life had caved in, he was making an entrance.

“This is just a visit, not work-related at all,” Pfeiffer said as if Mantle had asked a question. Again that condescending look, but that was Pfeiffer's way. He was a stout man with a boyish face and a shock of blond and silvery-gray hair. Pfeiffer looked like the successful reporter: expensive clothes that seemed slightly worn, sureness of manner, steady stare—an apple-pie, good-old-hometown
boy, definitely a media man, not a shut-in newsfax technician like Mantle, but an actor, a holographic image seen every night in the millions of American living rooms. Pfeiffer was the good doctor who could make the daily dose of bad news palatable to his patients. Mantle, on the other hand, looked too menacing to deliver news. He had a tight, hard face, high cheekbones, deeply set pale blue eyes, and a strong, cleft chin. He looked younger than his forty years.

Mantle was surprised that Carl had not yet recited his latest accomplishments and good fortune.

“I must say that things have been going quite well for me,” Pfeiffer said as if on cue. “Have you seen any of my shows?” He picked up a thin brown suitcase behind him.

“Did you camouflage your bag?” Mantle asked, but Pfeiffer only chuckled.

As he followed Mantle up a flight of stairs, he told him of his recent books—he was a readable, if somewhat pedantic essayist, and sold everything he wrote to the popular fax magazines. It was depressing to think of Pfeiffer's gems of wisdom oozing out of every living-room computer terminal in America. His collected essays were bound in hardcover, an honor indeed; and the best thing of all was that he had also been doing fiction again (his fiction was terrible); and of course, he was selling it under a pseudonym; and, yes, he had sold a novel, finally, and it would be in covers first and
then
go to fax for a huge amount of money; and he was taking a leave of absence to complete the book.

Are you still jealous? Mantle asked himself, or was that burned out too? But that was unimportant now. Only one thing was important: Pretre must call today.

The hallway was dark, windowless except for the top landing, which had a yellow and red and orange stained-glass window, and, in marked contrast to the rest of the hall, was also clean. Mme. Acte and her flabby-fat daughter swept daily, but neither bothered to use a dustpan, and Mantle did not care enough to clean up the mess they left on his landing. They were his only tenants.

As Mantle opened the door to his flat, he excused himself and rushed into the living room to make a quick check of the computer for coded messages. There were none.

“It's all right, come in,” he said to Pfeiffer, who was waiting at the door.

“You did get my messages, didn't you,” Pfeiffer said. It wasn't a question.

Ignoring that, Mantle said, “I'm afraid everything's a bit of a mess.” Mme. Acte and her daughter used to clean house for him in lieu of rent, but he couldn't stand them fumbling about in his rooms, arguing, and fingering through his personal effects. They suffered the indignity of free housing by sweeping their dirt onto his landing.

Pfeiffer set his bag down in the middle of the living room (and surely he intended to stay as long as he could), then sniffed around like a tawny, compact animal. The room had large high windows that caught the morning light. Situated before the windows, upon a brightly colored drop cloth, were two easels and a ruined satinwood desk littered with broken paint cylinders and brushes. Piled upon and around a paint-smeared video console and the ever-present computer terminal were piles of books in covers, fax and fische, and disordered stacks of gessoed canvas boards.

The plaster-chipped walls were covered with Mantle's own paintings and graphics, with the exception of a few etchings and woodcuts by Fiske Boyd, a little-known twentieth-century artist. Most of the paintings were land- and seascapes; Mantle especially loved the perched villages, such as Eze and Mons. As he frequently traveled the old Esterel Road, many of the paintings depicted the red porphyry of the Esterel Massif and the Calanques, the deep, rugged inlets. Upon first look, some of his paintings appeared to be vague, almost smoky-looking, but shapes seemed to form as one stared into the milky canvases enclosed in heavy frames; they gained definition and color, as if the viewer were somehow superimposing his own imagination upon them. Then, for an instant, the paintings would appear to be as clear and defined as old photographs.

Mantle watched Pfeiffer inspect the room. Short, squat, freckled Pfeiffer with his baby face and widely set eyes and high cheekbones. How long have we known each other? It must be twenty years. All that hate and love wasted like a bad marriage. Now there was the old silence between them and all the walls of the past. Although he wanted to push through the barriers and reach Pfeiffer, kindle the warmth of the old days (and extract Pfeiffer's memories of Josiane like teeth), he felt repelled by this familiar stranger. Stymied, Mantle kept quiet, watched, and waited.

“This one is very good,” Pfeiffer said, staring at a large fantastical
painting of a dead bird in the woods. It was centered on the far narrow wall of the living room. The painting commanded the space; one would not even notice the floral-figured easy chair beneath it.

Mantle laughed softly.

“What's so funny?” Pfeiffer asked, turning around, then back to the painting. “I think this is a very good piece of work, even though the subject matter is a bit depressing.”

“I know the work is very good,” Mantle said, walking across the room, taking the advantage. “That wasn't what I was laughing at.”

“Well…?”

“I was laughing at you, old friend.” Pfeiffer scowled, as expected. “I painted this for you some time ago,” Mantle continued. “You can take it back with you, if you like.”

“Well, thank you, but I don't know.” Pfeiffer's voice lowered in register. “Why did you laugh?”

“Because I painted it for you and, predictably, you took the bait. You nosed over to the Dead Bird without a hesitation.”

“So what?”

“I'll show you,” Mantle said. He stood before the painting; it was at eye level. “Look at the sky. There, where the dark, fist-shaped cloud meets the lighter one, what do you see?”

“I see two clouds. What should I see?”

“Step back a bit, and don't stare into the painting as if to burn a hole in it,” Mantle said. “You see the black cloud as the figure and the white as the ground because there is so much more white area. That's a decoy. Try looking at the white area as figure and the dark as ground. Now what do you see? Don't strain to look: it will come into focus.”

“I see letters, I think,” Pfeiffer said.

“And what do they spell?”

Pfeiffer shook his head; it was more like a twitch. “T-O-D.
Tod
. Why, that's the German word for death. Is that really in there?”

“Yes,” Mantle said. “It's part of a mosaic using
tod
and
tot
. If you look closely, you can also make out the words
death
and variants such as
deth
, over there.” Mantle pointed to a shaded area in the sky.

“Why did you do that?” Pfeiffer asked.

“They're subliminal embeds. Surely you're familiar with them—”

“Of course I am,” Pfeiffer replied, his voice a bit loud. “But why use death, or
tod
, or whatever—other than to be morbid.”

“They're subliminal triggers. Your greatest fear was death, remember? You used to talk about it all the time.” Mantle waited a beat, “Step back a bit and look into the forest—there, in the left corner where the crawlers are. What do you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Look away from the painting,” Mantle said. “Now look again.”

“Why it's Caroline's face, I can see it. It's a real
trompe l'oeil
.” Pfeiffer's face seemed to darken. “What else have you hidden in there?”

“That you'll have to discover yourself,” Mantle said. He couldn't tell Pfeiffer that the subliminal portrait of his wife was surrounded by genitals. Sweet, sexless, self-contained Caroline, radiant in a wreath of cocks.

“Then there are more subembeds?”

“Quite a bit more,” Mantle replied, feeling relieved yet guilty. He was acting like a vengeful child. The past was dead, let it be, he thought.

“Do you really expect me to take that painting?”

“That's up to you.” Mantle walked into the sitting room where he kept a small bar, and Pfeiffer followed. This room contained another desk, this one walnut with a drop front, several austere high-backed chairs, a discolored gilt frame mirror, and a blond Kirman carpet, which brightened the room considerably. This room had one small slat window; bookcases covered the walls. Mantle stepped behind the bar. “Fix you a drink?”

“You did that to hurt me, didn't you,” Pfeiffer said—more a statement than a question. Pfeiffer the innocent, Mantle thought, and in a way it was true. Pfeiffer the paradox.

“Yes, I suppose I did. Old wounds heal slowly and all that. I'm sorry.”

“Well, let's try to forget it,” Pfeiffer said. “It was a long time ago that we had our trouble, wasn't it, although even now I'm not sure what happened, what was going on in your mind.”