Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Out of love, Michael called up his living father.

His avenging father wore mirror shades and his Marine uniform and stood six foot four. He put a hand on Nick's shoulder. Nick spun around and gaped in terror. Michael's father hauled him to his feet and held him and bore him off.

Michael sent Nick back up the nerve into eternity to Nick's own unilluminated self. The air closed shut over them all.

Did we learn anything?

Michael woke up in crisp white sheets. He smelled them first, and then opened his eyes, and saw pale blue walls. Ebru was sitting on a small hard chair, legs crossed, reading a magazine.

Michael wanted to ask her the time. He couldn't talk. Something harsh and foreign was stuck into his nose and down his gullet and it was long and slithering, and he thought it was some kind of worm. He cried aloud and tried to hoist it out of him.

Ebru's head snapped up. Inshallah , she murmured and launched herself beside him, grabbing his wrists. 'No, Michael, no. It's OK, Michael.'

'Awwww!' was all he could say. His throat was unbelievably parched. He could feel these things reaching all the way down into his belly. My God, what were they?

'Sssh. Rest, Michael. You have been sick. You are in hospital. Sssh.'

He calmed down, panting. He ached in all his joints, and his feet felt huge and his knuckles looked swollen – swollen and gnarled at the same time.

'Do not try to talk, Michael. OK? OK Michael, you just nod your head, OK. I am going now just to get the doctor. Leave those things, OK.' She ran out of the room and her sneakers on the linoleum made noises like mice.

Michael looked around. Hills and valleys of sheets rippled over him. There was a drip feed into one of his arms. The skin on his hands had gone scaly, and his wrists and forearms were the same width. There was tape, like a very thick moustache, on his upper lip.

He tried to think, but it was as though his brain was elsewhere, huge and fiery and unwilling to cram itself back into his tiny skull. It waited, half-unsure that it wanted to be there.

Nick tried to kill me. That's why I'm here. In sudden alarm, his hands skittered down the hospital cloak, to his chest. There were no bolts and stitches, no swollen tissue. The knife wounds were gone.

The door thumped. Ebru stood in the doorway holding it open as if remembering her manners, her eyes round with something like fear. A male nurse bustled in around her. He was small, neat, pale, friendly, cold. He reminded Michael of Nick.

'All right, Mr Blasco, let's have a look at you.'

'What day is it?' Michael sounded like Donald Duck.

The nurse chuckled. 'I wouldn't try to talk if I were you.'

Ebru still clung to the lintel of the door. 'It's Thursday, Michael.'

He'd been out of it for several days.

The nurse leaned over and propped open one of Michael's eyes and shone a light into it. 'Do you feel dizzy or weak?'

Michael nodded his head.

'I'm not surprised.'

Neither am I. I came back from the dead.

'You're not that bad, considering. If you're awake, we can probably get rid of the tubes. Hold still, this is going to give you a free shave.' The male nurse grinned as if he'd said something funny.

As it was torn off his upper lip, the tape sounded as if the nurse were ripping up Michael's best shirts. It did hurt, uprooting stubble.

'Are you ready? These are coming out now.'

With a certain degree of professional skill, the nurse began to haul at the tubes as if pulling a barge. It didn't hurt, exactly. It was just horrible having something slither up through the hiatus valve, then up his gorge. Michael began to retch. The tubes heaved their way through his nasal membranes, burning with stomach acid and smelling of vomit. Michael coughed and expelled the tubes at the nurse, with fluids.

The male nurse smiled and sneered at the same time. 'Right,' he said, wrapping up the tubes and placing them in a bag. 'We can feed you properly now. Which is more than you were doing for yourself.'

He began to haul off surgical gloves, like a trick anxious to get home whipping off a condom. 'You've been a silly boy, haven't you? You'd have left us, if your colleague here hadn't come to find out where you were. So, they're going to send you to some counselling. Find out what that's all about. Otherwise, you'll be fit as a fiddle in no time.'

'You sound,' croaked Michael, 'as if you think I don't deserve to be.'

The male nurse didn't respond. He polished off the task of throwing out the gloves as well. He sealed the bag in silence. 'Dr O'Connor will be here soon,' he said to Ebru. Then he was gone.

Ebru stared at him for a few moments. 'Michael,' she said, shaking her head. 'Michael, what happened?'

Michael wasn't sure. 'What do they say is wrong?'

'They say you must have had nothing to eat for weeks.' Her hands twisted. 'They think it is an eating disorder.'

Aw. Michael understood. Nick had done all the cooking. All those takeaways, curries and stews; they were all undone. All those neatly packed lunches. They now no longer existed. Angels cannot really even care for people.

'I'll show you what happened,' said Michael.

And he called Nick back.

The air did a belly dance and unveiled, and Nick came back.

'Oh shit,' he said. And then. 'Ooooh shit!'

Ebru gave a faint little cry.

Michael told her. 'Keep well back from him, he is dangerous.'

Nick froze, looking watchful.

'I'm going to let you live, Nick.'

Ebru was at some kind of end. 'Michael, what is this?'

Michael kept talking to Nick. 'I'm doing this for my sake, because I do not kill. Also, I wanted my colleague here to know that I am not crazy.'

'I've learned my lesson,' said Nick.

'Oh no you haven't. It will take a lot longer than that for you to think your way through it.'

Ebru was still hiding her heart under her hand. 'Michael, where did he come from?'

Nick answered her. 'From eternity, love. I'm an Angel. Michael makes what he calls Angels. He thinks he's God.'

'No I don't.'

The blue eyes were fixed upon him. 'You're God to me. Shall I tell you what's going to happen to you, Michael? You're going to have the same life that God had.' Nick gave a narrow amused little smile. 'And God has had a terrible life.' He sniffed. 'He keeps trying to do good.'

'I'm going to put you where you can do no harm. You know how they seal radioactive material away? They drop it into salt caverns a mile deep and the salt migrates and closes, so nothing can get out. I'm going to put you into one of those caverns, Nick. And I'll give you companions. You can make a kind of porn with them, if that's all you think they're good for. They can be your little demons.'

Nick was sourly resigned. 'I always said. Prison went with the territory.'

'Then maybe prison is what you want.'

'Watcha.' Nick made his fingers into a pistol.

You could have been such a handsome devil, Nick. You could have been one of those bitchy stand-up comedians who trade on their whiff of cordite, and who mellow with success. A chat show host? Or a racing car driver, something flash with sporting gear and sponsorship but nothing actually athletic. Anything that required aggression and the common touch. What you will need to become now, is a philosopher.

'Be yourself,' said Michael, and cast him down.

The air folded around Nick like a pair of closing buttocks.

The room was still, except for the sweat trickling down Ebru's forehead.

'Michael. What was that?'

Michael sat up. He was very weak, but he had been fed and rehydrated. He felt light as if his bones were hollow. Michael felt like a bird.

'I'll explain,' he promised. 'Excuse me while I dress. There is something I need to do.'