“So that w-w-w-was … according to the SDF monitors … the d-d-date of the death of the last remaining Poets’ City dweller,” he said. “The last except for y-y-you, that is, Martin.”
I shrugged and began moving around the table. I needed to get to Billy without getting the manuscript in the way.
“You know, you haven’t f-f-f-finished it, Martin,” he said in his deep, sad voice. “There is still some chance that humanity s-s-s-survives the Fall.”
“No,” I said and sidled closer.
“But you can’t write it, can you, Martin? You can’t c-c-c-compose this poetry unless your m-m-muse is shedding blood, can you?”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Perhaps. But a fascinating coincidence. Have you ever wondered why you have been spared, Martin?”
I shrugged again and slid another stack of papers out of his reach. I was taller, stronger, and meaner than Billy, but I had to be sure that none of the manuscript would be damaged if he struggled as I lifted him out of his seat and threw him out.
“It’s t-t-t-time we did something about this problem,” said my patron.
“No,” I said, “it’s time you left.” I shoved the last stacks of poetry aside and raised my arms, surprised to see a brass candlestick in one hand.
“Stop right there, please,” King Billy said softly and lifted a neural stunner from his lap.
I paused only a second. Then I laughed. “You miserable little hangdog fraud,” I said. “You couldn’t use a fucking weapon if your life depended on it.”
I stepped forward to beat him up and throw him out.
My cheek was against the stone of the courtyard but one eye was open enough for me to see that stars still shone through the broken latticework of the galleria dome. I could not blink. My limbs and torso tingled with the pinpricks of returning sensation, as if my entire body had fallen asleep and was now coming painfully awake. It made me want to scream, but my jaw and tongue refused to work. Suddenly I was lifted and propped against a stone bench so that I could see the courtyard and the dry fountain which Rithmet Corbet had designed. The bronze Laocoön wrestled with bronze snakes in the flickering illumination of the predawn meteor showers.
“I’m s-s-sorry, Martin,” came a familiar voice, “b-b-but this m-m-madness has to end.” King Billy came into my field of view carrying a tall stack of manuscript. Other heaps of pages lay on the shelf of the fountain at the foot of the metal Trojan. An open bucket of kerosene sat nearby.
I managed to blink. My eyelids moved like rusted iron.
“The stun should w-w-wear off any s-s-s … any minute,” said King Billy. He reached into the fountain, raised a sheaf of manuscript, and ignited it with a flick of his cigarette lighter.
“No!” I managed to scream through clenched jaws.
The flames danced and died. King Billy let the ashes drop into the fountain and lifted another stack of pages, rolling them into a cylinder. Tears glistened on lined cheeks illuminated by flame. “You c-c-called it f-f-forth,” gasped the little man. “It must be f-f-finished.”
I struggled to rise. My arms and legs jerked like a marionette’s mishandled limbs. The pain was incredible. I screamed again and the agonized sound echoed from marble and granite.
King Billy lifted a fat sheaf of papers and paused to read from the top page:
“Without story or prop
But my own weak mortality, I bore
The load of this eternal quietude.
The unchanging gloom, and the three fixed shapes
Ponderous upon my senses a whole moon.
For by my burning brain I measured sure
Her silver seasons shedded on the night
And ever day by day I thought I grew
More gaunt and ghostly—Oftentimes I prayed,
Intense, that Death would take me from the vale
And all its burdens—Gasping with despair
Of change, hour after hour I cursed myself.”
King Billy raised his face to the stars and consigned this page to flame.
“No!” I cried again and forced my legs to bend. I got to one knee, tried to steady myself with an arm ablaze with pinpricks, and fell on my side.
The shadow in the cape lifted a stack too thick to roll and peered at it in the dim light.
“Then I saw a wan face
Not pinned by human sorrows, but bright blanched
By an immortal sickness which kills not;
It works a constant change, which happy death
Can put no end to; deathwards progressing
To no death was that visage; it had passed
The lily and the snow; and beyond these
I must not think now, though I saw that face …”
King Billy moved his lighter and this and fifty other pages burst into flame. He dropped the burning papers into the fountain and reached for more.
“Please!” I cried and pulled myself up, stiffening my legs against the twitches of random nerve impulses while leaning against the stone bench. “Please.”
The third figure did not actually appear so much as allow its presence to impinge upon my consciousness; it was as if it always had been there and King Billy and I had failed to notice it until the flames grew bright enough. Impossibly tall, four-armed, molded in chrome and cartilage, the Shrike turned its red gaze on us.
King Billy gasped, stepped back, and then moved forward to feed more cantos to the fire. Embers rose on warm drafts. A flight of doves burst from the vine-choked girders of the broken dome with an explosion of wing sound.
I moved forward in a motion more lurch than step. The Shrike did not move, did not shift its bloody gaze.
“Go!” cried King Billy, stutter forgotten, voice exalted, a blazing mass of poetry in each hand. “Return to the pit from whence you came!”
The Shrike seemed to incline its head ever so slightly. Red light gleamed on sharp surfaces.
“My lord!” I cried, although to King Billy or the apparition from hell I did not know then and know not now. I staggered the last few paces and reached for Billy’s arm.
He was not there. One second the aging King was a hand’s length from me and in the next instant he was ten meters away, raised high above the courtyard stones. Fingers like steel thorns pierced his arms and chest and thighs, but he still writhed and my Cantos burned in his fists. The Shrike held him out like a father offering his son for baptism.
“Destroy it!” Billy cried, his pinned arms making pitiful gestures. “Destroy it!”
I stopped at the fountain’s edge, tottered weakly against the rim. At first I thought he meant destroy the Shrike … and then I thought he meant the poem … and then I realized that he meant both. A thousand pages and more of manuscript lay tumbled in the dry fountain. I picked up the bucket of kerosene.
The Shrike did not move except to pull King Billy slowly back against his chest in an oddly affectionate motion. Billy writhed and screamed silently as a long steel thorn emerged from his harlequin silk just above the breastbone. I stood there stupidly and thought of butterfly collections I had displayed as a child. Slowly, mechanically, I sloshed kerosene on the scattered pages.
“End it!” gasped King Billy. “Martin, for the love of God!”