John Shirley - Wetbones

Like Amy, Prentice thought.

Jeff heaved a sigh of aggravation. Kenson didn't seem to notice. He continued, "The Akishra withdraw after the victims are used up and too far gone to be helped. And not coherent enough to be listened to. They become withered up street people, if they live that long, you see'em dying in vacant lots, babblin'… It's kind of funny, though. I mean, it's not as if every kind of pleasure attracts the Akishra. Only the kind that's… like a sickness in you. That's the kind that uses up bits of your soul, y'know. Sometimes if you change direction you can break away from them. the addict voice they plant in you gets fainter and fainter, like, and they give up and leave. But if you were one of us, with the real psychic communication – well, eventually you come back to 'em. And that's because you're addicted to the Akishra connection itself. Addicted to the ecstasy. The Reward. It's… more than you can imagine, when you play along with the Primes. That's all I can say in my defense – some of the things I took part in, man, with no hesitation and no thinking, it's sickening to remember and it's easy to judge me but once your pleasure buttons are pushed like that, you're fucked. You get programmed. You get addicted. And the fuckin' Akishra take advantage of that. So it's like it's this addict part of your brain conspirin' with the fuckin' worms…"

"That's it," Jeff said, standing up suddenly. "That's all of this bullshit I can handle. I'm sorry, Mr. Kenson. You were great, by the way, in The Bishop's Daughter. Now I gotta hit the road." He turned to Prentice. "I'm gonna call Blume again. You won't believe this message he left on my machine. He's playing with my head, the fucking drunk."

"You like prostitutes, Mr. Teitelbaum?" Kenson asked, pausing to cough afterwards. "It's hookers, right? Maybe two a day sometimes."

Jeff turned to gape at him. "What?"

"I can see the sex addict worms on you, man. And it's a kind people get from using women in a professional way. Sick sex. Impersonal and nasty in your car. They give you head, most of the time, probably, right there in the car. Lots of guys with dough are addicted to it. The women are so accessible and some of them are surprisingly good lookin'. Sometimes you like to go to those brothels where they line up for you and you pick 'em, I bet. That's the part you really like – you point and say that one and she gives it up. And it's an addictive charge you get outta that. Your worms are real thick around your -"

"Shut the fuck up, Kenson!" Jeff said dangerously. His face mottled red.

"It's true, isn't it? And how'd I know? You going to tell me I had you followed?"

Jeff looked at Prentice who was careful not to look back at him or smile. Prentice had been wondering how one guy could take so many "meetings".

Jeff was breathing hard. He spun on his heel and shoved past Prentice, storming out the door. Prentice went to the chair and sank into it with a thump. "Kenson – you too tired to answer a couple of questions?"

"You don't think I'm full of shit, too?"

"I – don't think you're full of shit. No. Is there some way that… well, suppose I was having sex with a girl and she had an arrangement with these Akishra prime, could she, uh, enhance the experience through them to kind of draw me in and uh…?"

"Sure. That's Lissa's favourite thing. You know her?"

Prentice's limbs suddenly felt leaden on his bones, as if truth had tripled gravity. In a small voice, he said. "Yeah. I do."

Kenson nodded. He reached up and took another long hit of oxygen. Then he held the mask on his lap and said, "If you can crank my bed down a little I could go on for a few minutes more maybe…"

Prentice was sitting within reach of the two control buttons, on a box just out of Kenson's reach. He pressed the lower button and the bed whined to itself as it lowered the top end of the mattress almost to horizontal. "That's good," Kenson said. "Right there. I need a little elevation… Well, now. What you want to know?"

"Besides the Akishra – are there other creatures on the Astral Plane, or whatever you call it? Maybe something more…"

"Benevolent? Sure." He scowled. "But they're haughty bastards. The higher spirits. The Akishra are just a kind of animal. Etheric animals. But the higher ones… some of them are things that only help you if they bother to take any notice of you, and some of them are nasty fucks that are always fighting. They're always playing a kind of game… well, Judy called it a 'dance'… the dance of the ones who construct, who grow things, with the ones who destroy things… I don't pretend to understand all that very much. All I know is, the so-called 'good' ones are there, but they never did shit for me. They're hard to get in touch with and what I heard it gets harder all the time.

"See, the Akishra, and the other predators, all your garden variety demons, they reproduce in cycles. And they got going with this really big reproduction cycle a couple of times in this century – most recently in the middle 1970s. Started to spread through the world, usually showing their works through your serial killers, your child molesters, your Republican Secretaries of the Interior, vicious assholes of all kinds. Usually they aren't so – what's that word. Uh… symbiotic. They're usually not so symbiotic as they are with Denver and 'his toy-boys. Well anyway, the Akishra are gearin' up for another big repro cycle." He chuckled creakily. "You think there's a lot of murderous lunatics out there now? They cultivate those fuckers… Just wait a few days till the cycle's complete. Denver's got the incubator out there at… oh God." He lapsed into silence, his eyes closed, hands clenching.

"You want a doctor?" Prentice asked.

Kenson shook his head. His shoulders quivered. After a few moments his eyes fluttered open. He lay there looking into nowhere, murmuring, "One thing, Jeff…"

Prentice didn't correct his confusion about who he was talking to. He could see Kenson was drifting.

"… one thing to… get clear… the human hosts of Akishra… they always… always offer themselves up willingly. Whether or not they know it… know it consciously… they always…" He shook his head and made a shooing gesture-with his hand.

Feeling unreal, Prentice got up to look for Jeff.

He saw Jeff on the phone in the lobby, trying to reach Blume. Prentice called to him, "Hey Jeff – I'm gonna wait for you in the parking lot."

Jeff nodded and said, into the phone, "He's what? When? So who am I talking to? Sergeant what?"

Prentice thought, Now what? He didn't want to know, quite yet. The story Kenson had told him was too much to deal with already. If it were true. Now, stepping out into a chilly evening the blotted sky promising rain – Kenson's tale once more seemed like raving. He probably had some disease and some kind of occult hobbyhorse and he'd slung all this together in a paranoid fantasy to explain his illness.

But he knew Lissa. And he'd said -

"Hello, Tom."

She was there. Lissa, just getting out of a convertible BMW. Prentice felt his legs weaken, looking at her. He thought he felt Amy somewhere in the background, trying to tell him something. But he ignored the fantasy and walked over to Lissa. She wore black jeans, a red halter-top, red spike heels. The heels looked particularly sexy with the jeans, somehow. He stopped just out of her reach. "Hi! How'd you track me down!"

She glanced past him at the hospital. He started to turn, to see what she was looking at, or who but she came closer and touched his arm as if to hold his gaze. "Hey – are you standing me up? Weren't you supposed to pick me up about an hour ago? For the party?"

" Is there a party?"

She looked at him in a fair reading of hurt surprise. "Why would I say there was if there wasn't?"