It was like a splash of white light under me, the moon shining on that
wonderful world. I looked ahead toward those giant spires of that
colossal city. Built for ten men, ten freaks. A city of thought.
That one tower stuck up half again as high as the rest of the City. A
blue dangerous looking light shone from its top. There wasn't any use
drawing this appointment out, I thought. And a fast appearance might
give me an advantage of surprise, if I had any advantage at all, and I
doubted that.
"There," I thought, "is where I want to be next. On top of that
building, facing Durach. _Now!_"
And I was there.
5
Remember Me?
Durach was waiting for me. Not LeStrang; nothing that looked like
LeStrang. This was the real Durach, and he was not something you would
want to see a second time, nor anything you would care to remember, if
you could help it.
He wasn't human; he was a monster, a freak. Yet, he looked much like
anyone else. It was the inside of him that was so different.
Durach wasn't alone as I found myself standing there before him. Two
women and several men were in the big arched room with him. None of
them were any more pleasant on the inside than Durach. Jelahn's dive
on the North Canal seemed like the memory of an anteroom to paradise
compared with the feeling in this room of Durach's.
It was filthy and obscene, and it made me mad; it made me shaking mad
to think that a chance thing like these freaks had been sent into the
Fourth Stage world of Mohln where they didn't belong, to contaminate
it, and bring hate and destruction and death to a world that had put a
few men at least on the edge of marvelous super life.
Durach was bigger than he had been in the personality of LeStrang, a
personality he had given to people by suggestion. He was on a couch of
bright red that seemed to writhe under him. Durach was a fat white man
with white hair, his fat wrapped up in a tight-fitting shiny stuff like
resensilk. His face was soft and his eyes wide and bland and blue. Pale
jowls hung over his collar on either side, and under his beaked nose
was a small, pursed, red button of a mouth.
Silly little mouth, I thought. I wanted to laugh at it, but I didn't; I
couldn't laugh. I couldn't do much of anything except stand there and
try to figure out what I was really doing here--wherever I was.
The women and men around the room looked at me, very silently, terribly
curious, and far away. Durach's little red mouth smiled at me. No one
said anything. They just thought--about the ways I could look dead--and
about the many ways it was possible for me to become dead--ways that
can take so long.
And there were other thoughts pounding at my skull. They were laughing
at me; they were feeling sorry for me, and they were thinking I was an
idiot, at least.
I felt like a silly little mortal suddenly brought before a bunch of
wicked gods. And then it hit me--
_That's just about what I was!_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account