The Man Who Melted (8 page)

After a few steps, he said, “Yes. Tonight I do.”

They would take a transpod to Mandelieu, and from there take a flyer to Paris. A quick shuttle.

FIVE

The ceremony was not being held on Dramont Beach, which was tar-soaked and dead, but around the ruins of the old watchtower that had been built during the reign of Queen Jeanne. Semaphores blinked on and off to warn passing ships of land. Clouds boiled about the moon, shadows flicked here and there, a ghostly mist pervaded. The ruins looked like natural formations, as natural as the monsters made of porphyry rock that guarded the Gulf of Frejus, or the rocks of Cap Roux, or Mount Vinaigre lost in the mists. Wind and pounding surf created a background of white noise that somehow made one imagine that there was no sound in this place, only the flittering of ghosts and gods. A perfect place for an oracle: here nature itself was dreaming.

There were at least two hundred people, mostly women, gathered in and around the ruins. They stood so still that one might mistake them for rocks in the veiling mist. Only the children moved about.

Pretre had left Mantle with Roberta, who had met them at the watchtower. She was a large-boned woman, tall and awkward-looking and attractive. Her face was rather long, yet delicate; its hard, sharp features were relieved by a full mouth and a halo of frizzy blonde hair.

“The ceremony will take place over there,” Roberta said, pointing west toward what looked to be dolmens at the edge of the olive trees.

“Why is everyone standing still as statues?” Mantle asked.

“They're praying, preparing a bridge from this world to the dark spaces.”

Mantle frowned and asked, “And why so many women?”

Roberta squeezed his hand and asked, “Do you have something against women?” Mantle smiled, in spite of himself. “Women are not as laterialized as men,” she said. “Unlike most men, we retain some residual language function in the right hemisphere of our brains. You work for the fax; you should be aware of that. Why do you think most of the Nouveau Oracles are women, as were the old? It's purely practical, I assure you. Women learn it easier.” Her accent was light and her voice mellifluous, soothing as the drone of the surf and the sliding of shadows.

They walked toward the dolmens, and Mantle had the disquieting sensation that someone, or something, unseen was watching him.

“I know you believe we're all crazy,” she continued, “but you should try to put yourself in the right mind for this if you want it to work. You'll have to let go, let everything that happens take you over, block yourself out—”

“I can't,” Mantle said roughly, surprised at himself for blurting out the words. But the anxiety was growing inside him—that feeling of being watched by demons and devils as solid as stone who would collect him somewhere in the night, as if he were in a great maze. “I feel as if I'm being watched. I can't shake it.”

“Then let yourself be watched,” she said. “There are Criers hereabouts. Some alive and some dead, hovering between our world and the dark spaces. Their presence can be a comfort, as if you're riding on their thoughts. That's what those around us are doing. The Criers alone can induce visions, without any hook-in or—”

Mantle shuddered at the thought of so many Screamers, and something opened up inside him. He remembered. He flashed back to New York City.
Remembered fighting the mind of the crowd. Being rent by screams and by thoughts as sharp and clear as breaking crystal. The crowd was telepathic, a many-headed beast trying to devour him.

“Come on,” she said, pulling Mantle's arm around her waist, just as Joan often did. “You're thinking bad thoughts, I can feel it.” She smiled, as if to make light of it, and said, “Let the Criers guide your thoughts. You'll be safer that way, and I'll stay with you, even hook-in with you, if you like.”

“So I'm
your
ticket to hook-in,” Mantle said, regretting his words and tone of voice. Even against his will, he had to admit that he felt safer with her. He had thrown Joan away—Wasn't that enough? he asked himself. But, like Pretre, Roberta had a slippery mind, which frightened him.

Mantle thought about Joan. Now he wanted her, now he needed her. I love you, I know you….

“It's my time to hook-in,” Roberta said. “With or without you.”

“What's the danger of being discovered by locals?” he asked, changing the subject. They passed a group of long-haired
boutades
, faces rouged and lined. The boutadniks were naked, so as to expose the male and female sex organs implanted on their chests and arms. Standing beside the
boutades
were several children and a few locals in costume, probably the children's parents. Mantle gave the
boutades
a sour look and then turned his face, as if they represented everything he hated about the modern world.

“This is a religious area, and most of the gentlefolk protect us,” Roberta said. “We have used this place since the incorporation of the church. It's holy.

There are many Criers hereabouts, for death is a friend in holy places, and the police usually leave us alone. With the locals on our side, it's more difficult for them…. But, of course, there is always danger for us. We've been raided before and will probably be raided again. The police have sent some of us to the other side.”

“You mean during a raid.”

Roberta nodded, as if the words “safety” and “danger” could easily mean the same thing to her.

“Then why return to this place?” Mantle asked.

“Because the voices of the Criers are strong here. Why was there an oracle at Delphi, at Dodona, at Ptoa, at Branchidae, at Patara?”

“Perhaps it's the surrounds….”

“Just believe that the voices are strong here,” Roberta said. They stopped near the dolmen. Scattered rocks looked like the skeletal remains of a giant or a great fantastical beast conjured up by the elements and the play of shadows and wan moonlight. The converts were moving silently as specters now, gathering around the dolmen. They all looked like old men and women; even the
boutades
were hunched over, as if the foul, salt-heavy atmosphere had anesthetized them and they were gradually falling asleep on their feet. They seemed to fill up the night like cobblestones in a road.

“It's what happens inside you that's important,” Roberta continued. “If you can feel something profound, does it matter what triggers it? Does it matter if it be the holy words of a prayer, the play of light through a window, or a plastic bauble sparkling on the ground? You must try to believe in what happens around you. Let yourself be focused into a trance; forget your left brain and your rational world. Live in the inside of things tonight. If you want to find your wife, you'll have to play along.”

“Isn't the hook-in enough?” Mantle asked.

“No, you're dealing with Criers, remember? Our ceremony is a gathering on both sides like—on a mundane level—a seance. Those who have crossed into the dark spaces gather to accept you. Without a ceremony, they might reject you as an intruder; or hooking into the dying Crier might take you to places you have no desire to go, the edges, the dead places where you would be lost. Of course, there is always the chance…”

“That building looks like a tomb,” Mantle said, feeling a chill. He was looking at the dolmen, which was a circular affair about three meters in diameter and four meters high. It was surrounded by a parapet of ocher-stained paving stones. Large rectangular stones jutted out from the ground around it like grave markers.

“It's both a tomb and a temple,” she said, almost in a whisper, as if she too were about to fall asleep. There was something palpable in the air, a silence, a straining, an anticipation of what was to come.

“Then a Screamer is inside?” Mantle asked. “When do we go inside and hook-in?”

“Pretre is making him ready,” Roberta said, as if annoyed at being interrupted
from a conversation that only she could hear. “These people around us”—and Roberta made a gesture with her arm—“have been purifying themselves here for days without food or drink, and they will not even be able to plug-in. But many will hear the voices, see into the dark. This ceremony is for them, too.”

Now that Mantle was so close to possibly finding Josiane, he felt empty, as if it didn't really matter, as if none of this were real. It began to rain lightly, and then the rain turned to mist, which smoked on the ocean like steam from a demon's cauldron.

Yes, Mantle thought, trying to fight down the chill of fear, it's all typical: the spooky surroundings, the temple, the ritual, the bicameral paradigm, all here. But rational thought could not assuage Mantle's anxiety, which came from that part of his being that felt kinship with darkness and superstition and intuition. It was because of the darkness inside him that he was here.

The crowd began to chant, first in whispers, then louder,
Aria amari isa, vena arniria asaria
, over and over, chanting louder now, and faster, then lower and slower, waiting to become possessed by dead Screamers, waiting for the gifted to become the vessels of the gods and pour out their incomprehensible words, the words of fire and wind.

Mantle was subvocalizing in time with the others. He caught himself and said, “Christ, are they speaking in tongues now?”

“Are you upset at being affected even a little?” Roberta countered. She was alert as a taxkeeper.

“This is a ragpicker's religion. Take a little from this religion, a little from that, mix it up for yourself. The Japanese would appreciate this.”

“How does a Jew who is part Indian rationalize his prejudices?” Roberta asked. Mantle felt his face become warm, and he flashed back to Joan writing a dossier on him for Pretre. “If you want a healthy and successful experience with the Crier,” Roberta said, “then you must stop being critical and loosen up. Or do you want to get lost forever inside our temple?” Her smile conveyed only irony.

Mantle noticed the statues scattered around the ruins between the gnarly, high-hatted olive trees. Now—all at once—he could see them, as if a subliminal engineer had been at work here. All the statues were alike: smooth stone
heads entirely without features except for those created by shadows. He now noticed that the
boutades
and older people next to him were fingering small figurines, but he could not see them clearly; he guessed that they were smaller versions of the big smooth-faced statues.

The chanting became white noise to Mantle, as primordial and eternal as the surf churning behind him.

“Don't you find it difficult to accept the worship of idols?” he asked, genuinely curious; but a note of sarcasm had crept into his voice.

“I don't find it difficult,” Roberta said, “but, then, I have heard them speak.” Mantle groaned. “Would you feel better if I told you that the statues are merely devices for narrowing my consciousness?” She paused, then asked, “Do you believe that man has a soul, a divine spirit?”

Sensing a trap, Mantle said, “I don't know. Being a Jew, I've never given it much thought. Jews just die, they don't worry about heaven or the state of their souls.”

“But Indians do,” she said, flashing him a smile, giving him no escape this time. “All modern religions presume a soul, as did the ancients. It's God's breath, a speck of eternity carried within us. But what poor vessels we are to carry eternity! We sweat, shit, get sick, die, decompose. If even we can have a soul, flimsy flesh creatures, how much easier, how much more plausible, that perfect stone would be the vessel for the divine. It's virtually changeless, can be sculpted into the most beautiful forms, cannot be defiled by human passions, and is much more enduring than any flesh.”

“Do you actually believe that?”

“I don't need to,” Roberta said. “I look upon the stone and
see
it speak; I hear the Crier just as I hear you.”

Jesus! Mantle said to himself.

“And Jesus to you,” Roberta said, smiling.

The worshipers, the old people and
boutades
, the children, the townsfolk and well-kept men and women—these representatives of different classes and cultures and styles—were all shaking and crying and sweating and praying and singing in tongues, passing between consciousness and trance, seeing into the dark places, the dead places, without hooking in.

“Let it happen,” Roberta whispered.

Mantle listened for what seemed only a minute, transfixed by the pounding, persistent
Aria ariari isa, vena amiria asaria
: nonsense words that somehow meant something if only he could find the rhythm, if only he could focus his mind….

His thoughts were like sparks in the wind. He had not been sucked into a trance: he could still analyze and categorize and look ahead with dread and longing to the imminent hook-in.

The music seemed to be all around him; he was being carried along on the accented and unaccented syllables of the
Aria
, which was as precise as poetry, but without sense—at least without sense for the analytical left hemisphere of his brain.

He was drifting in slow-time. His mind was clogged with incomprehensible words. Roberta read my thoughts, Mantle told himself, feeling a rush of anxiety which at the same time seemed somehow isolated from him. But that was so long ago, he thought.

He tried to shake himself loose from the mock-Screamers around him.

“Have you dusted the air with hallucinogens?” he asked Roberta.

“Would that help you?”

“That's no answer,” Mantle said, looking around, trying to keep everything in focus. He looked at the idols and saw that they had faces now. Perhaps it was the face of the Screamer in the tomb. A large stone near the dolmen had a woman's face. It was Josiane's—it seemed to move, to stare at him. The image was inside the stone and perfectly three-dimensional. He blinked, and it disappeared.

“That's a cheap fucking trick,” Mantle said.

“What's that?” Her voice rose in rhythm with
ariari isa
.

The images on your idols: they're laser-projected. Are you using a full complement of subliminals? Very sophisticated for such a
primitive
ceremony.”