Night of Light

  Well, that was the first, and last, time. He was here because of that time. Or was he? Even if he'd not gone insane with passion, wouldn't he have killed her anyway, later on, simply because logic would demand it? And simply because he could not stand the idea of the most beautiful being in the universe soiled and swollen, monstrous. . .

  Maybe. It didn't matter what might have happened. What did happen was the only thing for a realist to consider.

  There was the matter of her cells, which should be female but would not be if they were mirror-images of his. And there was the matter of her brain. -- Even if her body could be created female because of his knowledge of organs and of structure of genes, the brain would not be Mary's. Its original shaping, plus the billions of sub-microscopic groovings her memories would make, these would be beyond his power, conscious or unconscious.

  No, if she had a brain, and she must have, then it would be his, John Carmody's brain. And if his, then it must contain his memories, his attitudes. It would be bewildered at finding itself in Mary's body, would not know what to do, to think. But, being John Carmody, it would find a way to make the most of the situation.

  He laughed at the thought. Why didn't he find her? He would then have the perfect woman, her flawless beauty plus his mind, which would agree absolutely with him. Sublime self-abuse.

  Again he laughed. Mary had used that term herself in that last blazing moment before he went completely under. She had said that to him she was not a woman, a wife, but merely a superior instrument for making love to himself. She had never had that glorious feeling of being one flesh that should rightfully come to a loving and passionate wife, no, she had always felt alone. And she had had to go to another man, and then she had never really experienced the wonder of the two-made-one because she knew all the time that she was sinning and would have to cleanse herself through confession and repentance. Even that rightful sensation was spoiled for her. Nevertheless, she had felt more like a wife and a woman with this man than with her own husband.

  Well, as he'd said, that was that. Dismiss the past. Think of the thing that looks like Mary.

  (He was glad this thing was taking place outside him, not in him, as it did with the others. Perhaps he did have a frozen soul, but if so, it was good to have one. The iciness repelled subjectivity, made the unconscious happen outside him, and he could deal with that, with a host of Marys, whereas he'd have been helpless if he'd been like that epileptic girl or Mrs. Kri's husband or the cancer-devoured owner of this car.)

  Think of the thing that looks like Mary.

  If she -- it -- was conceived out of your head, like Athena from Zeus's -- then at the moment of birth she had, as far as you know, your mind. But from that moment on, she becomes an independent being, one with thoughts and motivations of her own. Now, John Carmody, if you somehow found yourself dispossessed of your native body, lodged in the flesh of a woman you had murdered, and knew at the same time that the other you was in your first body, what would you do?

  "I," he said, murmuring to himself, "would accept at once the fact that I was where I was, that I could not get out. I would define the limitations I had to work within, and would then set to work. And what would I do? What would I want? I would want to get off Dante's Joy and go to Earth or some Federation planet, where I could easily find myself a rich husband, could insist on being his number one wife. Why not? I'd be the most beautiful woman in the world."

  He chuckled at that thought. More than once he'd imagined himself as a woman, wondering what it would really be like, envious as far as it was possible for him to envy, because a lovely woman with his brain would have the universe by the tail, as tight a hold as you could get on the tail of this wildly bucking universe.

  He'd --

  And then his hands tightened on the steering wheel and he sat up straight as if the new idea had been a hot poker rammed into him.

  "Why didn't I think of that sooner?" he said loudly. "My God, if she and I can come to some arrangement -- and even if we can't, I'll find some way of forcing her -- why, why, she is the perfect alibi! I never did confess that I killed her, not to the authorities, anyway. And they never found the slightest trace of her. So, if I come back to Earth with her and say, 'Gentlemen, here is my wife. It's as I told you, she'd disappeared, and it turns out that she had an accident, was hit on the head, lost her memory, and somehow found her way to Dante's Joy. . . well, sure it sounds like a romantic novel, but remember such a thing does happen every now and then. What, you don't believe it? Well, gentlemen, take her fingerprints, photograph the pattern of blood vessels in her retina, type her blood, give her an EEG. . .' Ah . . . !"

  Ah, but wouldn't all those identification marks be John Carmody's if her cells were mirror-images of his? Possibly. But there was also the chance that she might have her own. He had seen the photographs of all of them, more than once, and while he couldn't consciously reproduce them, it might be that his unconscious, which presumably held an exact file of them, would have reconstructed them in this Mary-thing.

  But the EEG. If that gray pulse in her skull were his. . .

  Well, sometimes the pattern did change if the brain had been injured, and that disconcerting feature might be the thing to verify her story. But what about the zeta wave? That would indicate she was a male, and one glance from the authorities or anybody else would be enough to disprove that. Their next step would be to hold her for examination. The only time the zeta wave changed its rhythm from female to masculine or vice versa was when the subject changed sex. And examination would show that she was female, that her hormones were predominantly female. Or would it? If her cells were mirror-images of his, then the genes would be masculine, and perhaps the hormones, too. And what about an internal search? Would it expose female organs or would she internally be his duplicate?

  For a second he was downcast, but his racing brain seized upon another alibi. Of course! She'd been on Dante's Joy during the seven days of the Chance, hadn't she? And that meant that she would probably undergo some strange change, didn't it? So, the discrepancies turned up in the laboratory, the brain waves, the hormones, even the contradictory internal organs, all these would be the result of her taking the Chance. She might attract considerable publicity, and she'd have to have a definite, unshakable story, but if she had his rigid will and iron nerves (and she would), then she'd stick it through and would demand her rights as a citizen of the Federation, and however reluctant, they'd have to allow her her freedom. After that, what a team she and John Carmody would make!

  If she were inclined to be cooperative, though, why hadn't she kept her telephone contact with him, arranged to meet him? If she had his brain, wouldn't she have thought of the same thing he had?

  He frowned and whistled softly through his teeth. There was always one possibility he couldn't afford to ignore, even if he didn't like it. Perhaps she was not a female John Carmody.

  Perhaps she was Mary.

  He'd have to find out when he met her. In the meantime, his original plans were changed only slightly, to adjust to the realities of the situation. The gun in his coat pocket would still be used to give him the original, the unique, thrill he had promised himself.

  At this moment he dimly saw, through the purplish halo cast by a street lamp, a man and a woman. The woman was clothed, but the man was nude. They were locked in each other's arms, the woman leaning against the iron pillar of the lamp, forced back by the man's passionate strength. Forced? She was cooperating to the full.

  Carmody laughed.

  At that harsh sound, slapping the heavy silence of the night across the face, the man jerked his head upwards, gazed wide-eyed at the Earthman.

  It was Skelder, but a Skelder scarcely recognizable. The long features seemed to have become even more elongated, the shaven skull had sprouted a light fuzz that looked golden even in this dark light, and the body, which had shed the monkish robes, showed a monstrous deformity of leg, a crookedness halfway between a man's limb and an animal's. A
lmost it was as if the bones had become flaccid and during the softness the legs had begun growing backwards. The naked feet themselves were extended from the legs so that he walked on tiptoe, like a ballerina, and they seemed to be covered with a light yellow shell that glistened like a hoof.

  "The goat's foot!" said Carmody loudly, unable to restrain his delight.

  Skelder loosed the woman and turned completely towards Carmody, revealing in his face, the definitely caprine lines and in his body the satyr's abnormal yet fascinating repulsiveness.

  Carmody threw back his head to laugh again, but stopped, his mouth open, suddenly choking.

  The woman was Mary.

  While he stared at her, paralyzed, she smiled at him, waved her hand gaily, then took Skelder's hand and started to walk off into the darkness with him, her hips swaying exaggeratedly in the age-old streetwalker's rhythm. The effect was, or would have been in other circumstances, half-comical, because of the six-months fat around waist and buttocks.

  At the same time, Carmody was struck with a feeling he'd never had before, a melting heart-beating, wild sensation directed towards Skelder, mixed with a cold laughter at himself. He felt a terrible invincible longing for the monstrous priest but knew also that he was standing off to one corner and laughing sneeringly at himself. And underneath this was a slowly rising tide, threatening to overwhelm in time the other feelings, a not-to-be denied lust for Mary, tinged with a horror at himself for that lust and the strangeness of being ripped apart.

  Against this host of invaders there was but one defense, and he took it immediately, springing out of the car, running around the hood, raising his gun, firing through the red mist that had replaced the purple.

  Skelder, whinnying, threw himself to the ground and rolled over and over, a long bundle of gray-white laundry in the uncertain light, blown by the winds of desperation, disappearing in the darkness of the shadow of a tremendous flying buttress.

  Mary whirled around, her open mouth a dark O in her pale face, her hands white birds imploring for mercy, then she dropped heavily.

  And John Carmody staggered as he was struck one heavy blow after another in the chest and the stomach, felt his heart and viscera blasted apart, felt himself falling, falling, blood cascading all over him, falling into a darkness.

  Someone had suddenly opened fire upon him, he thought, and this was the end and good-bye and good riddance and the universe had the last laugh. . .

  And then he found he was awake, on his back, thinking these thoughts, staring straight up at the purple glove of the moon, a monstrous gauntlet flung into the sky by a monstrous knight. Come on, Sir John Carmody, fat little man clad in thin-skinned armor, enter the lists.

  "Always game," he muttered to himself and rose unsteadily to his feet, his hands going unbelievingly over his body, groping for the great holes that he could have sworn were there. But they weren't; the flesh was unbroken, and his clothes were innocent of blood. Wet, yes, but with his sweat.

  So that is how it is to die, he thought. It is horrible because it makes you feel so helpless, like a baby in the grip of an adult squeezing the life out of you, not because it hates you but because it must kill in the order of things, and squeezing is the only way it knows to carry out its order.

  Stupefied at first, he was beginning to think clearly now. Obviously, those strange to-be-avoided-at-all-costs-even-to-losing-one's-temper sensations were those felt by Skelder and the Mary-thing, and the impact of the bullets tearing into her body had somehow been communicated to him, the shock so great that he'd lost consciousness or else his body had for that moment been fooled into thinking it was dead.

  What if it had insisted on thinking so? Then he'd really be dead, wouldn't he?

  Well, what of it?

  "Don't fool yourself, Carmody," he said. "Whatever you do, don't fool yourself. You felt scared. . . to death. You called out for somebody to help you. Who? Mary? I don't think so, though it may have been. My mother? But her name is Mary. Well, it doesn't matter; the thing is that I, this thing up here," he said, tapping his skull, "was not responsible, it was John Carmody the child calling out, the youngster buried in me that used to cry for Mommy, in vain, because Mommy was usually out somewhere, working, or out with some man, anyway, always out, and I, I was alone and she wouldn't have come except to tell me what a little monster I was. . ."

  He walked over to Mary and turned her over.

  A cry from the darkness made him jump. He whirled, his gun ready, but saw no one. "Skelder?" he called.

  For answer he got another terrible cry, more like an animal's than a man's.

  The street ran straight for a hundred yards ahead of him, then turned at a right angle. On the corner was a tall building, each of whose six stories overhung the one beneath, making it look like a telescope whose small end was stuck in the ground. Out of its shadows dashed Ralloux, his face twisted in agony. Seeing Carmody, he slowed to a walk.

  "Stand to one side, John!" he cried. "You don' t have to be in it, even if I do. Get out of it! I will take your place! I want to be in it! There's room for only one, and that space is reserved for me!"

  "What the hell are you talking about?" growled Carmody. Warily, he kept his automatic pointed at the monk. No telling what maneuver this chaotic talk was supposed to cover up.

  "Hell! I am talking about Hell. Don't you see that flame, feel it? It burns me when I am in it, and it burns others when I am not in it. Stand to one side, John, and let me relieve you of its pain. It will hold still long enough to consume me entirely, then, as I begin to adjust myself to it, it runs off and I must chase it down, because it settles around some other tortured soul and will not leave him unless I offer to dive into it again. And I do, no matter what the pain."

  "You really are crazy," said Carmody. "You --"

  And then he was screaming, had flung away his gun, was beating at his clothes, was rolling on the ground.

  Just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. He sat up, shaking, sobbing uncontrollably.

  "God, I thought I was on fire!"

  Ralloux had stepped forward onto the space occupied by Carmody and was standing there with his fists clenched and his eyes roaming desperately as if looking for some escape from his invisible prison. But seeing Carmody walking toward him, he fixed his gaze upon him and said, "Carmody, nobody deserves this, no matter how wicked! Not even you."

  "That's nice," replied Carmody, but there was little of the old mocking tone in his voice. He knew now what the monk was suffering from. It was the how that bothered him. How could Ralloux project a subjective hallucination into another person, and make that person feel it as intensely as he did? The only thing he could think of was that the sun's curious action developed enormously in certain persons their ESP powers, or, if he discounted that, that it could transmit the neural activities of one person to another without direct contact. No mystery in that, certainly; it was within the known limitations of the universe. Radio transmitted sound, in a manner of speaking, just as TV did pictures; what you heard wasn't the original person, but the effect was the same, or just as good. However this was done, it was effective. He remembered now how he had felt in himself the bullets smashing into Mary, and had experienced the terror of death -- whether it was his terror or Mary's didn't matter, and. . . would everybody he met during the seven nights transmit to him their feelings, and he be helpless to resist them?

  No, not helpless; he could kill the authors of the emotions, the generators and broadcasters of this power.

  "Carmody," shouted Ralloux, seemingly trying by the loudness of his voice to deafen the pain of the fire, "Carmody, you must understand that I do not have to stand in this flame. No, the flame does not follow me, I follow it and will not allow it to escape. I want to be in Hell.

  "But you must not understand by that that I have lost my faith, have rejected my religion, and therefore have been flung headlong into the place where the flames are. No, I believe even more firmly in the teachings of the Church
than before! I cannot disbelieve! But. . . I voluntarily have consigned myself to the flame, for I cannot believe that it is right to doom ninety-nine percent of God-created souls to hell. Or, if it is right, then I will be among the wrong.

  "Believing absolutely every iota of the Creed, I still refuse to go to my rightful place among the blessed, if such a place was ever reserved for me! No, Carmody, I range myself among the eternally damned, as a protest against divine injustice. If a fraction only are to be spared, or even if things were reversed, and ninety-nine point nine nine nine to the ninety-ninth place souls were to be saved, and one solitary soul were to have Hell all to itself, I should renounce Heaven and stand in the flames with that piteous soul, and I should say, 'Brother, you are not alone, for I am here with you to eternity or until God relents.' But you would not hear one word of blasphemy from me, nor one word of pleading for mercy. I should stand and burn until that one soul were freed of its torment and could go to join the ninety-nine point nine nine nine to the ninety-ninth place. I. . ."

  "Raving mad," said Carmody, but he was not so sure. Though Ralloux's face was contorted in agony, the look of dissonance, the splitting effect, as of two warring forces, was gone. He now appeared, though in pain, to be at one with himself. Whatever it was that had seemed to tear him apart from within was gone.

  Carmody could not think of what it was that could cause the cleavage to vanish, especially now when, under the circumstances, he would have thought it'd be even more stressed. Shrugging, he turned to walk back toward the car. Ralloux yelled something else, something warning yet at the same time entreating. The next second, Carmody felt that terrible searing heat at his back; his clothes seemed to smoke and his flesh gave a silent scream.