Robert Silverberg: Thorns

“I thought you’d be out there somewhere,” Burris said. “Come in. Come in. We’d like to talk with you.”

“Minner, don’t hurt him,” Lona said. “He’s only a tool.”

“He can answer some questions. Won’t you, Bart?”

Aoudad moistened his lips. His eyes flicked warily from face to face.

Burris hit him.

The hand came up with blinding speed. Lona didn’t see it, and neither did Aoudad, but the man’s head shot back and he thumped heavily into the wall. Burris gave him no chance to defend himself. Aoudad clung blearily to the wall as the blows landed. Finally he sagged, eyes still open, face bloody.

“Talk to us,” Burris said. “Talk to us about Duncan Chalk.”

Later they left her room. Aoudad remained behind, sleeping peacefully. In the street below they found his car, waiting on an uptake ramp. Burris started it and headed it toward Chalk’s office building.

“We were making a mistake,” he said, “trying to change ourselves back to what we once were. We are our own essences. I am the mutilated starman. You are the girl with a hundred babies. It’s a mistake to try to flee.”

“Even if we could flee.”

“Even if we could. They could give me a different body someday, yes, and where would that put me? I’d have lost what I am now, and I’d have gained nothing. I’d lose myself. And they could give you two of your babies, perhaps, but what about the other ninety-eight? What’s done is done. The fact of your essence has absorbed you. And mine me. Is that too cloudy for you?”

“You’re saying that we have to face up squarely to what we are, Minner.”

“That’s it. That’s it. No more running away. No more brooding. No more hatred.”

“But the world—the normal people—”

“It’s us against them. They want to devour us. They want to put us in the freak show. We have to fight back, Lona!”

The car halted. There was the low, windowless building. They entered, and, yes, Chalk would see them, if they would only wait awhile in an outer room. They waited. They sat side by side, scarcely looking at each other. In her hands Lona held the potted cactus. It was the only possession she had taken from her room. They were welcome to the rest.

Burris said quietly, “Turn the anguish outward. There’s no other way we can fight.”

Leontes d’Amore appeared. “Chalk will see you now,” he said.

Up the crystal rungs. Toward the immense figure in the high throne.

“Lona? Burris? Together again?” Chalk asked. He laughed boomingly and tapped his belly. He clapped his hands on the columns of his thighs.

“You dined well on us, didn’t you, Chalk?” Burris asked.

The laughter died away. Abruptly Chalk was sitting up, tense, wary. He seemed almost to be a thin man now, ready to take to his heels.

Lona said, “It’s nearly evening. We’ve brought you your dinner, Duncan.”

They stood facing him. Burris slipped his arm around her slender waist. Chalk’s lips moved. No sounds came out, and his hand did not quite reach the alarm lever on his desk. The pudgy fingers fanned wide. Chalk contemplated them.

“For you,” Burris said. “With our compliments. Our love.”

Shared emotion flooded from them in shining waves.

It was a torrent Chalk could not withstand. He moved from side to side, buffeted by the furious stream, one side of his mouth quirking upward, then the other. A trail of spittle appeared on his chin. His head jerked sharply three times. Robot-like, he crossed and uncrossed his thick arms.

Burris clung so tightly to Lona that her ribs protested.

Did flames dance crackling along Chalk’s desk? Did rivers of raw electrons become visible and glow green before him? He writhed, unable to move, as they gave him their souls in passionate intensity. He fed. But he could not digest. He grew more bloated. His face was bright with sweat.

No word was spoken.

Sink, white whale! Lash your mighty flukes and go down!

Retro me, Satanas!

Here’s fire; come, Faustus, set it on.

Glad tidings from great Lucifer.

Chalk moved now. He spun in his chair, breaking from stasis, slamming his fleshy arms again and again onto the desk. He was bathed in the blood of the Albatross. He quivered, jerked, quivered again. The scream that left his lips was no more than a thin, feeble whine delivered by a gaping maw. Now he was strung taut, now he twanged with the rhythms of destruction…

And then came slackness.

The eyeballs rolled. The lips drooped. The massive shoulders slumped. The cheeks sagged.

Consummatum est; this bill is ended.

All three figures were motionless: those who had hurled their souls, and he who had received them. One of the three would never move again.

Burris was the first to recover. It was an effort even to draw breath. To give power to his lips and tongue was a colossal task. He swung around, recovering the knowledge of his limbs, and put his hands on Lona. She was death-pale, frozen in her place. As he touched her, the strength seemed to flow swiftly back into her.

“We can’t stay here any longer,” he said gently.

They left, slowly, dwelling now in extreme old age, but growing younger as they descended the crystal rungs. Vitality returned. It would be many days before they had fully replenished themselves, but at least there would be no further drain.

No one interfered with them as they left the building.

Night had fallen. Winter was past, and the gray haze of a spring evening covered the city. The stars were barely visible. A faint chill still lingered, but neither of them shivered in the coolness.

“This world has no place for us,” Burris said.

“It would only try to eat us. As he tried.”

“We defeated him. But we can’t defeat a whole world.”

“Where will we go?”

Burris looked upward. “Come with me to Manipool. We’ll visit the demons for Sunday tea.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Will you go there with me?”

“Yes.”

They walked toward the car.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Very tired. So tired I can scarcely move. But I feel alive. More alive with every step. For the first time, Minner, I feel really alive.”

“As do I.”

“Your body—does it hurt you now?”

“I love my body,” he said.

“Despite the pain?”

“Because of the pain,” he said. “It shows that I live. That I feel.” He turned to her and took the cactus from her hands. The clouds parted. The thorns gleamed by starlight. “To be alive—to feel, even to feel pain—how important that is, Lona!”

He broke a small limb from the plant and pressed it into the flesh of her hand. The thorns sank deep. She flinched only for a moment. Tiny droplets of blood appeared. From the cactus she took a second limb, and pressed it to him. It was difficult, breaking through that impervious skin of his, but the thorns did penetrate at last. He smiled as the blood began to flow. He touched her wounded hand to his lips, and she his hand to hers.

“We bleed,” she said. “We feel, We live.”

“Pain is instructive,” said Burris, and they walked more quickly.