Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

Rivas was somehow certain that if he said «Yes» now, he would not be able to take it back later; so he pursed his lips and rapidly whistled the first ten notes of Peter and the Wolf while simultaneously doing a gunning drum accompaniment with his knife and fork against the tabletop—and then a number of things happened all at once: Jaybush collapsed unconscious, Sister Sue registered clear surprise for the first time that evening, and a slingshot-propelled stone the size of a golf ball slammed hard into Rivas's solar plexus. He was knocked back almost out of his seat, and for a moment he hung half off the raft, staring down—then his pain-clenched muscles relaxed and he slumped back down and forward across his plate, sending huge sport shrimps rolling away across the table, and he lay that way for a while, gagging and retching to get air into his abused lungs. He'd glimpsed something in the water below him, but the agony in his chest left him no attention for it.

When, still wheezing, Rivas straightened up, Jaybush had recovered and was blinking around. «Well!» said the fat man with somewhat forced joviality. «You did it, boy. As surely as if you'd cut her throat with a knife. I'm sorry, Sister Sue, but Rivas has killed you.»

Sister Sue smiled brilliantly at Rivas and caressed her automatic.

Urania, who didn't seem to be following much of this, stared. «Rivas? Greg?»

Rivas nodded, and then managed to choke out, «Yes.»

A moment later he was able to add, «Came to . . . rescue you.» He looked at Jaybush. «That's why . . . no musicians in the renaissance you . . . artificially induced for us? Because music . . . renders you unconscious?»

Jaybush waved his massive arms. «You're all dead!» he called up to the people on the tiers and bridges. He waved at the people on the other rafts. «Everyone!» He lowered his arms and remarked to Rivas, «Yes, that's why. And it's why I still try to suppress it, and why the pocalocas stomp anybody who even whistles a tune. It isn't all music that does it, but I believe a blanket policy is best. It's mainly the irregular rhythms you call gunning, and melodies with the kind of notes they used to call accidentals. Apparently my brain waves correspond in some fashion to your musical scale and times, and are damped out by certain violations of them. If you do that again, of course, my deaf guards will silence you again, and I'll have them bind and gag you so that you needn't feel called upon to interfere when I set about draining these two ladies in the most pleasurable way.» He smiled. «You know, in the buoyancy of salt water I am surprisingly agile, which of course is why I like to have a lot of canals available to me.» His smile grew broader and more kindly. «I really think we understand each other. And I don't see why you should need time to consider my really very generous offer, so I won't give you any time.»

He extended his finger again toward Sister Windchime. «Will you link with me or not? Answer!»

Rivas remembered the glimpse he'd got of the water under the raft, and belatedly he realized what he'd seen down there. At first he'd assumed that it was the drifting corpse of one of the face-divers . . . but it had been moving.

He remembered Sevatividam's unease—outright fear, in fact—when the planet of the floating globes and walruslike creatures had been picked clean; the walrus things were all dead, but there were hungry things swimming among the fallen globes . . . sentient replicas of the original creatures, each one accidentally formed when one of the originals had received Sevatividam's touch while in extreme pain . . . and Sevatividam had feared them, for though attempting to drain him would kill any venturesome replica, totally overload it, the process would harm Sevatividam too . . .

Rivas bit his middle knuckle thoughtfully—and bit a section of skin right off, though he was careful not to wince. Then he lowered his hand into the water below his submerged chair and let the blood leak into the water.

Forgive me, he thought, trying to project the thought, as thoughts had been projected at him when, four days ago, his soul had hung bodiless in the sky over the Regroup Tent. I'm yours, he thought now, come and take me. I'm sorry I hurt you, sorry I fled from you. Come take my blood.

Sevatividam's finger moved closer to Sister Windchime.

«Wait,» Rivas snapped. He'd felt a surge in the water under his hand. «I'll give me to you—the part of me you're interested in, anyway.»

«My dear boy,» said Sevatividam, lowering his hand.

Rivas felt teeth clamp onto his hand. He turned his surprised gasp into a smile—and then, contorting like a man trying very hard to strike a match on the seat of his pants, he yanked the hemogoblin up through the hole.

In the instant of general stunned surprise he flung the squealing thing directly into Sevatividam's face, and as a follow-through to the action he rolled forward out of his submerged seat, somersaulted across the raft—aware of the bang and aspirated thop of bullets being lashed past very close to him—and dove into the water, drawing his knife with his bitten left hand as he sank.

He had no idea what to do now. He had probably got himself and Uri and Sister Windchime killed, but he was certain they'd all been doomed anyway.

Then he was jarred by a solid boom and rattle of bubbles. Something big had impacted very hard with the water. There were further booms as more stuff crashed in, and thinking that whatever was going on might at least be distracting the gunmen, he kicked up to the surface.

It was even noisier out in the air than it had been under water. There were mountainous rendings and crackings from overhead, and the long screams of people falling, and the evidently random pop and ricochet of gunfire, but Rivas's attention was drawn to the raft he'd vacated moments ago– and not just because of the pain-convulsed figure of Sister Sue, who had clearly caught at least one of the bullets meant for Rivas.

A man trying to scream while inflating a balloon would probably have produced sounds like the ones Sevatividam was making now, and as Rivas blinked up at the spectacle he saw Sevatividam's bulk visibly diminishing. The Messiah's narrowing arms were tearing at a luminous membrane that covered his head, and during the couple of seconds it took Rivas to swim to the raft and scramble back aboard, the membrane—which was twitching and pulsing independent of Sevatividam's wrenching at it—doubled the intensity of its glow, then tripled it, and then began actually to flicker with pale flames.

Another thing rushed down through the smoky air and exploded a splash when it hit the water, and Rivas realized that it was masonry, that the whole structure was coming down. Because Sevatividam was losing power?

Sister Windchime had already got up out of her chair, and Rivas shouted at Uri, «Up! Come on! We've got to get out of here!»

Uri sobbed and extended her hands—one of which still clutched the remains of a taco—toward Jaybush. «Lord, save us!» she wailed.

Rivas put down his knife, drew back his left hand and balled it into a fist, and then carefully gave her a solid downward punch next to her chin. Her mouth was knocked open, but clacked shut again when her head hit the table. «Get a boat,» he shouted to Sister Windchime, «and get her and you into it.» He retrieved his knife and turned to Jaybush. A bullet sang past and actually stung the end of his nose, so he crowded closer to the Messiah, almost hugging him.

It hurt to be that close, for the hemogoblin was definitely burning now, but through its dazzlingly vaporizing substance Rivas could see Sevatividam's eyes glaring specifically up at him, full of agony but full of promise too.