“You said there were six realms,” he said.
“The sixth is the emptiness.” She proffered a jet-black cube, devoid of runes. “It has no Lord or Lady, it is where lost spirits flee.” She crossed her arms in front of herself, fingers touching her shoulders, bracelets falling to the crook of her elbows. She reminded Dariat of a statue of Shiva he’d seen in one of Valisk’s four temples; Shiva as Nataraja, king of dancers. “A terrible place,” Anastasia Rigel murmured coolly.
“You don’t think I have any hope?” he asked, suddenly annoyed at this primitive paganish nonsense again.
“You resist it.”
“No, I don’t. I’ve got lots of hope. I’m going to run this habitat one day,” he added. She ought to be impressed by that.
Her head was shaken gently, hair partly obscuring her face. “That is Anstid deceiving you, Dariat. You spend so much time in his realm, he has an unholy grip upon your spirit.”
“How do you know?” he said scornfully.
“These are called Thoale stones. He is the Lord I am beholden to. He shows me what is to unfold.” A slight, droll smile flickered over her lips. “Sometimes Tarrug intervenes. He shows me things I should not see, or events I cannot understand.”
“How do the stones work?”
“Each face is carved with the rune of a realm. I read the combinations, how they fall, or in the case of the emptiness where it falls in relation to the others. Would you like to know what your future contains?”
“Yeah. Go on.”
“Pick up each crystal, hold it in your hands for a moment, try to impress it with your essence, then put it in the bag.”
He picked up the clear one, naturally. Love Lady. “How do I impress it?”
She just shrugged.
He squeezed the crystals one at a time, feeling increasingly stupid, and dropped them in the goatskin bag. Anastasia Rigel shook the bag, then tipped the crystals out.
“What does it say?” Dariat asked, a shade too eagerly for someone who was supposed to be sceptical.
She stared at them a while, eyes flicking anxiously between the runes.
“Greatness,” she said eventually. “You will come to greatness.”
“Hey, yeah!”
Her hand came up, silencing him. “It will not last. You shine so bright, Dariat, but for such a short time, and it is a dark flame which ignites you.”
“Then what?” he asked, disgruntled.
“Pain, death.”
“Death?”
“Not yours. Many people, but not yours.”
Anastasia Rigel didn’t offer to sleep with him that time. Nor any of his visits during the month which followed. They walked round the savannah together, talking inanities, almost as brother and sister. She would tell him about the Starbridge philosophy, the idiosyncrasies of the realms. He listened, but became lost and impatient with a worldview which seemed to have little internal logic. In return he told her of his father, the resentment and the confusion of loss; mainly in the hope she’d feel sorry for him. He took her down into a starscraper; she said she’d never been in one before. She didn’t like it, the confining walls of the apartments, although she was fascinated by the slowly spinning starfield outside.
The sexual tension died down from its initial high-voltage peak, though it was never laid to rest. It became a sort of game, jibes and smirks, played for points that neither knew how to win. Dariat enjoyed her company a lot. Someone who treated him fairly, who took time to hear what he said. Because she wanted to. He could never quite understand what she got out of the arrangement. She read his future several times, though none of the readings ever proved quite as dire as the first.
Dariat spent more and more time with her, almost divorcing himself from the culture lived out in the starscrapers and industrial stations (except for keeping up on his didactic courses). The portentous aspirations in his mind lost their grip when he was in her presence.
He learnt how to milk a goat, not that he particularly wanted to. They were smelly, bad-tempered creatures. She cooked him fish which she caught in the streams, and showed him which plants had edible roots. He found out about the tribe’s way of life, how they sold a lot of their handicrafts to starship crews, chiefly the rugs and pottery, how they shunned technology. “Except for nanonic medical packages,” she said wryly. “Amazing how many women become technocrats around childbirth time.” He went to some of their ceremonies, which seemed little more than open air parties where everyone drank a strong distilled spirit, and sang gospel hymns late into the night.
One evening, when she was wearing just a simple white cotton poncho, she invited him into her tepee. He felt all the sexual heat return as the outline of her body was revealed through the fabric by the light of the tepee’s meagre oil lamp. There was some kind of clay pot in the centre with a snakelike hose coming from the side. It was smoking docilely, filling the air with a funny sweet and sour scent.
Anastasia took a puff on the pipe, and shivered as if she’d swallowed a triple whisky. “Try some,” she said, her voice rich with challenge.
“What is it?”
“A wide gate into Tarrug’s realm. You’ll like it. Anstid won’t. He’ll lose all control over you.”
He looked at the crimped end of the tube, still wet from her mouth. He wanted to try it. He was frightened. Her eyes were very wide.
She tipped her head back, expelling two long plumes of smoke from her nostrils. “Don’t you want to explore the realm of mischief with me?”
Dariat put the tube in his mouth and sucked. The next minute he was coughing violently.
“Not so hard,” she said. Her voice sounded all furred. “Take it down slow. Feel it float through your bones.”
He did as he was told.
“They’re hollow, you know, your bones.” Her smile was wide, shining like the light-tube against her black face.
The world spun round. He could feel the habitat moving, stars whipping round faster and faster, smearing across space. Smeared like cream. He giggled. Anastasia Rigel gave him a long, knowing grin, and took another drag on the tube.
Space was pink. Stars were black. Water smelt of cheese. “I love you,” he told her. “I love you, I love you.” The tepee walls were palpitating in and out. He was in the belly of some huge beast, just like Jonah.
>
“What did you say?”
>
“My hands are green,” he explained patiently.
“Are they?” Anastasia Rigel asked. “That’s interesting.”
>
“Tarrug?” Dariat asked. Anastasia had said that was who they were going to visit. “Hello, Tarrug. I can hear him. He’s talking to me.”
Anastasia Rigel was at right angles to him. She pulled the poncho off over her head, sitting crosslegged and naked on the rug. Now she was totally upside-down. Her nipples were black eyes following him.
“That’s not Tarrug you hear,” she said. “That’s Anstid.”
“Anstid. Hi!”
>
“I don’t want you to.”
>
Dariat very deliberately stuck the tube in his mouth, and inhaled until his lungs were about to burst. His cheeks puffed out. Anastasia Rigel leant forwards and took the tube from between his lips. “Enough.”
The tepee was spinning in the opposite direction to the habitat, and outside it was raining shoes. Black leather shoes with scarlet buckles.
. Dariat, stand up, boy. Walk outside, get some fresh air. There’s some medical nanonic packages in the village, the headman’s got some. They can straighten out your blood chemistry.>>
Dariat’s giggles returned. “Piss off.”
>
“No.”
>
Dariat squeezed his eyes shut. The colours were behind his eyelids too.
“I am not like him.”
>
“Go away!” Even stoned, he could tell this wasn’t part of the trip. This was more. This was much much worse.
“Is he hurting you, baby?” Anastasia Rigel asked.
“Yes.”
>
“Stop it,” Dariat screamed.
>
“Don’t listen to him, baby. Close your mind.”
>
“Please, both of you, stop it. Leave me alone.”
>
Dariat tried to rise. He got up to his knees, then fell into Anastasia’s lap.
“You’re mine now,” she said gladly.
>
Her hands ran over his clothes, opening seals. Kisses with the sharp cold impact of hailstones fell on his face. “This is what you wanted, what you always wanted,” she breathed in his ear. “Me.”
The nauseating colour stripes blitzing his sight swirled into blackness.
Her hot skin sliding up and down against him. Weight pressing against every part of him. He was doing it! He was fucking! Tears poured out of his eyes.
“That’s right, baby. Up inside me. Purge him. Purge him with me. Fly, fly into Venus and Chi-ri. Leave him behind. Free yourself.”
>
Dariat woke feeling awful. He was lying on the stiff tousled grass of the tepee without a stitch of clothing. The entrance flap was open, a slice of bright morning light sliding through. A heavy dew mottled his legs.
Something had died and decomposed in his mouth, his tongue by the feel of it. Anastasia Rigel was lying beside him. Naked and beautiful. Arms tucked up against her chest.
Last night. I fucked her. I did it!
He tried to smother an ecstatic laugh.
>
Dariat screamed. It was inside his head. Anstid. The realm demigod.
He jerked around, hugging himself, biting his lower lip so hard he drew blood.
>
“What are you?”
Anastasia Rigel woke up, blinking against the light. She ran her hand through her wild hair and sat up, looking at him with a curious expression.
>
“A lost spirit from the emptiness?” he asked, wide eyed with fright.
>
Information from his didactic history courses tumbled into his thoughts.
“Rubra?” The idea didn’t make him feel any better at all.
>
“Yes, sir.”
>
“What are you saying, baby?” Anastasia Rigel asked. “Are you still tripping?”
“No. It’s Rubra, he’s ... We’re talking.”
She pulled the white poncho round herself, giving him an alarmed look.
> Rubra said. >
>
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He started to pick up his clothes.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home.”
“He told you to.”
“I ... What is there here?”
She gave him a forlorn look over the white poncho which was still clasped to her body. “Me. Your friend. Your lover.”
He shook his head.
“I’m human. That’s more than he is.”
>
Dariat pulled on his shoes. He paused by the entrance flap.
“It’s Anstid,” she said in a mournful tone. “That’s who you really talk to.”
>
Dariat walked slowly out of the village. Some of the elders gave him strange looks as he passed their steaming cooking pits. They couldn’t understand. Why would anyone leave Anastasia’s bed?
>
Now Dariat knew what he was, what he was destined for, the didactic courses took on a whole new level of importance. He listened to Rubra’s advice on the specializations he needed, the grades he had to achieve. He became obedient, and a shade resentful at his own compliance. But what else was there? Starbridge?
In return for acquiescence Rubra taught him how to use the affinity bond with the habitat. How to access the sensitive cells to see what was going on, how he could call on vast amounts of processing power, the tremendous amount of stored data that was available.
One of the first things Rubra did was to guide him through a list of possible replacement girls, eager to bury the lingering traces of yearning for Anastasia Rigel. Dariat felt like a voyeuristic ghost, watching the prospective candidates through the sensitive cells; seeing them at home, talking to their friends. Some of them he watched having sex with their boyfriends, two with other girls, which was exciting.
Rubra didn’t seem to object to these prolonged observations. At least it meant he didn’t have to pay for bluesense fleks any more.
One girl he chanced on was nice, Chilone, nine months older than him. As black as Anastasia (which was what first caught his attention), but with dark auburn hair. Shy and pretty, who talked a lot about sex and boys with her girl friends.
Still he hesitated from meeting her, even though he knew her daily routine, knew her interests, what to say, which day clubs she belonged to. He could contrive a dozen encounters.
> Rubra told him after a week of cautious scrutiny. >
>
>
That was
something he’d never done, not using the habitat’s perception faculty to spy on her. But the tone Rubra used had a hint of cruel amusement in it.
Anastasia had a lover, Mersin Columba, another Starbridge. A man in his forties; overweight, balding, with white pallid skin. They looked horrible locked together. Anastasia flinched silently as she lay underneath his pumping body.
The old white-hot infantile fury rose into Dariat’s mind. He wanted to save her from the repellent humiliation; his beautiful girl who had loved him.
>
Like juvenile Edenists, it hadn’t taken Dariat long to discover how to fox the habitat’s sensitive cells. Unless Rubra’s principal personality pattern was concentrating on him in particular, the autonomous monitoring of the subroutines could be circumvented.
Dariat used the sensitive cells to follow Mersin Columba out of the tepee. The podgy oaf had a smug smile on his face as he made his way down to the stream. Anastasia Rigel was curled up on her rug, staring at nothing.
Mersin Columba made his way down the valley before stripping off his shirt and trousers. He splashed into a wide pool, and began to wash off the smell and stains of sex.
The first blow from Dariat’s wooden cudgel caught him on the side of his head, tearing his ear. He grunted and dropped to his knees. The second blow smashed across the crown of his skull.
>
Dariat aimed another blow; laughing at the surprise on the man’s face.
Nobody does that to my girl. Nobody does that to me! A cascade of blows rained down on Mersin Columba’s unprotected head. Rubra’s furious demands were reduced to a wasp’s buzz at the back of Dariat’s raging mind. He was vengeance. He was omnipotent, more than any realm Lord. He struck and struck, and it felt good.
The water pushed at Mersin Columba’s inert body. Long ribbons of blood wept from the battered head, turned to tattered curlicues by the current.
Dariat stood over him. The bloody length of wood dropped from his fingers.
> Rubra said. The silent voice lacked its usual conviction.
Dariat shivered suddenly. His heart was pumping hard.