The Man Who Melted (30 page)

Mantle felt Pfeiffer's profound pain and sorrow magnified by every Screamer in the crowd. He couldn't stand the barrage of dark remorse, the cold melancholy of death.

He screamed. He poured out his spirit. He lost himself to the dead ghosts of those he had killed and wronged.

He died, even though his blood coursed and his heart pounded.

He was wrenched into the dark spaces.

As he made his passage, he electrified the crowd into unity.

A thousand voices joined him, and their screams spread like waves, until they became a sheet of noise, solid and dark and metallic, an outpouring of the dark spaces. The sound was coherent, a verbal lasing.

And Mantle was the insect around which the cocoon of sound had been woven. He had become the crystal when he killed Pfeiffer. When he killed Josiane. Now he was the seed. Now he was the field, a field of black and silver upon which the many would turn into the One.

He
was the dark spaces.
He
was the Great Scream.

He was the crowd. They were his thoughts.

He was death….

Living and dying were the same now.

The crowd rushed toward the tanks and police platforms that had suddenly appeared and were now gliding down the streets, lasing everyone in their path. Hundreds were killed in seconds, only to be replaced by others who would scream their way into death.

One by one, the tanks and police platforms were overwhelmed by sheer numbers and crippled by needle bombs. The crowd took over the machines. The buildings on both sides of Atlantic Avenue were lased into rubble. A support tower fell, destroying a city block and creating havoc above, for the webbing of the city was delicate and much of the undercity was the foundation for the upside world. The heat shock was tremendous. Streets were steaming, as if suddenly turned into a smoking jungle of plasteel and stone. Girders and hanging cable were the flora, just as the screaming crowd was the fauna of this new Amazon.

Mantle was the core of the soft machine that was intent on destroying itself and everything else, but as he ran he still screamed for Joan. “I'm sorry, Joan….” He repeated the words over and over without comprehension, as if he were speaking in tongues.

He had no sense of self…no sense of place…no sense of time.

He was blind.

A sleeper between howling dreams.

As buildings exploded into white incandescence, and crystalline passtubes crashed around him, Mantle ran screaming through the burning undercity. But he felt no motion, heard no sound, saw nothing but endless darkness.

Yet, voices called him, whispered in his head until dreams began to form into icy patterns like frost on a cold, dark window.

And so Mantle dreamed…dreamed of his past, of Joan and Josiane and Pfeiffer, while silvery voices called him through the darkness. But one voice was clearer than the rest.

It was like a bright shaft of light.

It was Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer was calling him, connecting from Screamer to Screamer, from
circuit
to
circuit
, reaching him through the dark spaces. Pfeiffer's thoughts, his very being, cut through the searing thoughts of distant Screamers.

Thus he wove his own bright skein from Joan to Mantle.

As the old
circuit fantome
flashed back to life, Mantle was electrified into consciousness. His lungs burned. His chest and arms felt as if they had been closed in a vise. If he didn't stop and break away from the screaming mob, he knew he would die. His heart would explode. He would be trampled, crushed by silver thoughts and bloody feet.

But he was still caught in the undertow of the dark spaces.

“Joan!” he called, sensing her presence. “Joan….”

He focused his entire consciousness on the
circuit fantome
, drew strength from it, and broke away from the crowd.

He found himself on the beach, kneeling in cold, wet sand. Smoke from the burning buildings stung his throat, made his eyes water. The Screamers had left him behind. He could hear them roaring in the distance like armies clashing in battle, moving northward away from him into Coney Island Complex. The Net glowed dully above him—all that upside glass and plasteel reflecting the fires below. Around him, scattered like shells across the beach, were dead Screamers.

The beach surely seemed dead, deserted by the spirits of the Screamers.

Yet Mantle could sense Pfeiffer's presence. It was as if he, too, had been left behind. Two ghosts on the beach. “Carl, are you here?” Mantle asked. He held quite still, holding his breath for a few seconds, listening, then exhaling. All he could hear were waves breaking on rocks and steel…but he
felt
Pfeiffer's spirit. It was as if they were sharing old memories, a nostalgic sadness.

“Ray…” a voice called him; and Joan's thoughts washed over him like warm water…came to him as words and visions. She was alive and near and, through the
circuit
that was now as strong as sight, Mantle knew where she was. She whispered to him just as she had when he was adrift on a sea filled with ice and debris.

Mantle started back along the beach to find her.

Beside him, the ocean began to turn gray with wan morning light. The water was filled with debris and bodies….

As before….

Joan was waiting for him on the far end of a huge steel pier. It was a turn-of-the-century antique, a neodecadent grotesquerie that had in fact been built for a World's Fair. It had towers and girders and suspension cables like a bridge.

Mantle sat down beside Joan, and they huddled together in the dampness. They stared far out to sea, as if waiting for the RMS
Titanic
to appear resplendent over the horizon. They didn't speak for a time, didn't hold hands or embrace. They just leaned against each other, exhausted. The
circuit
was still alive but muffled, as if proximity had somehow put it out of focus.

“Do you want to go home?” Joan finally asked, breaking the silence.

Mantle didn't…couldn't answer.

“I can still feel Carl,” she said, then suddenly laughed—a short, harsh cry. “The poor bastard had to get us in out of the rain even after—”

“Even after I killed him,” Mantle said, feeling the old numbing isolation, reading her thoughts about the umbrella, the
ménage
with Pfeiffer.

“He broke loose from the dark spaces to get us away from the Screamers.”

“Absolution,” Mantle mumbled.

“But not for you, right?” Joan said harshly, and Mantle felt the full force of her anger through the
circuit
. He flinched. “You've got your past now,” she continued. “Let's try to live with it…. Let's try to live.”

Mantle felt something distant collapse, and a weight seemed to lift from him, releasing him.

Perhaps the Great Scream was breaking up.

He nodded, then embraced Joan awkwardly, gingerly, as if for the first time.

And Pfeifer dissipated like smoke into the open air….

JACK DANN is a multiple award–winning author who has written or edited over sixty-five books, including the groundbreaking novels
Junction
,
Starhiker
,
The Man Who Melted
,
The Memory Cathedral
—which is an international best seller—the Civil War novel
The Silent
, and
Bad Medicine
, which has been compared to the works of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson and called “the best road novel since the Easy Rider days.”

Dann's work has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, Castaneda, J. G. Ballard, Mark Twain, and Philip K. Dick. Philip K. Dick, author of the stories from which the films
Blade Runner
and
Total Recall
were made, wrote that “
Junction
is where Ursula Le Guin's
Lathe of Heaven
and Tony Boucher's ‘The Quest for Saint Aquin' meet…and yet it's an entirely new novel…. I may very well be basing some of my future work on
Junction
.” Best-selling author Marion Zimmer Bradley called
Starhiker
“a superb book…it will not give up all its delights, all its perfections, on one reading.”

Library Journal
has called Dann “…a true poet who can create pictures with a few perfect words.” Roger Zelazny thought he was a reality magician, and
Best Sellers
has said that “Jack Dann is a mind-warlock whose magicks will confound, disorient, shock, and delight.” The
Washington Post Book World
compared his novel
The Man Who Melted
with Ingmar Bergman's film
The Seventh Seal
.

His books have been translated into thirteen languages, and his short stories have appeared in
Omni
and
Playboy
and other major magazines and anthologies. He is the editor of the anthology
Wandering Stars
, one of the most acclaimed American anthologies of the 1970s, and several other well-known anthologies such as
More Wandering Stars
.
Wandering Stars
and
More Wandering Stars
have just been reprinted in the United States. Dann also edits the multivolume Magic Tales series with Gardner Dozois and is a consulting editor for TOR Books.

He is a recipient of the Nebula Award, the Australian Aurealis Award (twice), the Ditmar Award (three times), the World Fantasy Award, the Peter McNamara Achievement Award, and the
Premios Gilgamés de Narrativa Fantastica
award. Dann has also been honored by the Mark Twain Society (Esteemed Knight).

High Steel
, a novel coauthored with Jack C. Haldeman II, was published in 1993 by TOR Books. Critic John Clute called it “a predator…a cat with blazing eyes gorging on the good meat of genre. It is most highly recommended.” A sequel entitled
Ghost Dance
is in progress.

Dann's
major
historical novel about Leonardo da Vinci—titled
The Memory Cathedral
—was first published by Bantam Books in December 1995 to rave reviews. It has been published in ten languages to date. It won the Australian Aurealis Award in 1997, was number one on
The Age
bestseller list, and a story based on the novel was awarded the Nebula Award.
The Memory Cathedral
was also shortlisted for the Audio Book of the Year, which was part of the 1998 Braille & Talking Book Library Awards.

Morgan Llwelyn called
The Memory Cathedral
“a book to cherish, a validation of the novelist'sart and fully worthy of its extraordinary subject.” The
San Francisco Chronicle
called it “A grand accomplishment,”
Kirkus Reviews
thought it was “An impressive accomplishment,” and
True Review
said, “Read this important novel, be challenged by it; you literally haven't seen anything like it.”

Dann's novel about the American Civil War,
The Silent
, has been published by Bantam in the United States, Lübbe in Germany, and HarperCollins in Australia.
Library Journal
chose the novel as one of its “Hot Picks” and wrote: “This is narrative storytelling at its best—so highly charged emotionally
as to constitute a kind of poetry from hell. Most emphatically recommended.” Peter Straub said, “This tale of America'sgreatest trauma is full of mystery, wonder, and the kind of narrative inventiveness that makes other novelists want to hide under the bed.” And the
Australian
called it “an extraordinary achievement.”

His novel
Bad Medicine
(titled
Counting Coup
in the United States), a contemporary road novel, has been described by the
Courier Mail
as “perhaps the best road novel since the Easy Rider days.”

Dann is also the coeditor (with Janeen Webb) of the groundbreaking Australian anthology
Dreaming Down-Under
, which Peter Goldsworthy has called “the biggest, boldest, most controversial collection of original fiction ever published in Australia.” It has won Australia's Ditmar Award and is the first Australian book ever to win the prestigious World Fantasy Award. His recent anthology
Gathering the Bones
, of which he is a coeditor, is included in
Library Journal'
s Best Genre Fiction of 2003 and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award.

Dann's stories have been collected in
Timetipping
,
Visitations
, and the retrospective short story collection
Jubilee: The Essential Jack Dann
. The
West Australian
said it was “Sometimes frightening, sometimes funny, erudite, inventive, beautifully written and always intriguing.
Jubilee
is a celebration of the talent of a remarkable storyteller.” His collaborative stories can be found in the collection
The Fiction Factory
.

Dann's latest novel,
The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean
, is published by HarperCollins Flamingo in Australia and Morrow in the United States. The
West Australian
called it “an amazingly evocative and utterly convincing picture of the era, down to details of the smells and sensations—and even more importantly, the way of thinking.”
Locus
wrote: “
The Rebel
is a significant and very gripping novel, a welcome addition to Jack Dann's growing oeuvre of speculative historical novels, sustaining further his long-standing contemplation of the modalities of myth and memory. This is alternate history with passion and difference.”

As part of its Bibliographies of Modern Authors series, the Borgo Press has published an annotated bibliography and guide titled
The Work of Jack Dann
. An updated second edition is in progress. Dann is also listed in
Contemporary
Authors
and the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series;
The International Authors and Writers Who's Who
;
Personalities of America
;
Men of Achievement
;
Who's Who in Writers, Editors, and Poets, United States and Canada
;
Dictionary of International Biography
;
Directory of Distinguished Americans
;
Outstanding Writers of the 20th Century
; and
Who's Who in the World.

Dann lives in Australia on a farm overlooking the sea and “commutes” back and forth to Los Angeles and New York.