I walked along Devotion Street, an airy boulevard devoted mostly to restaurants. I let the bright Nullaquan sun touch my face, pale from months behind a mask. I stopped at an outdoor table at one of the restaurants. I had traded in my duffel bag for a smart suitcase. I opened it and took out my only keepsake from Dalusa: a single strand of her hair that I had found in her tent I didn’t dare handle it often, for fear that it would disintegrate, so I usually kept it coiled up inside a little metal canister. Later I had it encased in plastic as a memento.
I put the strand back jnto the suitcase and closed It I ordered a beer. As I drank it I felt an attack of loneliness.
Normally I was self-sufficient, and the sudden sharp stab surprised me. Perhaps it was the lingering pain of Dalusa’s death; the image of her perfect face swam before me. When she had gone for the last time, she took a great deal of me with her; I felt scoured inside, hollow and in need.
The rational thing to do would have been to go straight to the starship terminal and buy a ticket on the first ship out.
But I felt a sudden urge to visit the New House. The long months, the manifold catastrophes had partially erased my grievances. When the facts were faced, the New House was all I had for a home, its inhabitants were the nearest things I had to friends. I owed it to myself to see them; I owed it to them to warn them about meddling in Nullaqua’s frightening cultural symbiosis.
There was also the prospect of vengeance, surprisingly sweet. It might be dangerous to taunt them with my supply of syncophine, perhaps the last left in the Highisle. But they all had money. An extravagant payment would go far toward modifying my resentment. And I was lonely.
Accordingly, I took a commuter train to Piety Street and walked four blocks to the New House. It was dusk, but none of the lights were on. My mind was suddenly thronged with suspicions. My own withdrawal symptoms had been sharper than I liked to admit, and it suddenly struck me the reserves of Flare at the New House must have gotten awfully thin. Perhaps they had lacked the restraint to ration their last gallon properly.
I began to have severe misgivings. I repressed my fantasies and tried the door; it was unlocked.
It was dark inside. I turned on the light The living room was a shambles. The couch had been gutted, its meager stuffing showing at a dozen places. Dust was thick on the carpet The chairs were gone.
My nostrils, sensitive from long deprivation, detected a faint sick-sweet rotting odor. I followed it into the hall, stepping over the shattered remains of Simon the poet’s lute.
The odor was strongest by the hall closet-I jerked it open. The released stench was overwhelming; my gorge rose. Huddled in the bottom of the closet, his throat slashed, was old Timon Hadji-Ali. He had finally met the death he sought so avidly. His eyeballs, wide and staring, were covered with a thick patina of dust. His lined, senescent face was slightly bloated from decomposition; a blackened tongue showed between teeth exposed in a death, grin. He had been dead for several weeks.
I began to search the rest of the house. A telltale stench warned me at the door to Mr. and Mrs. Undine’s room.
At last I gave in to morbid curiosity and opened it They had hung themselves. No one had bothered to cut them down, but they had long since ceased to sway. They were nude, and still linked in a necro-erotic embrace. Their arms were loosely tied around one another at the wrists. Someone had helped them do that Soneone had also dug the implanted jewels out of their bodies with a knife. Their barrel chests were spotted with shallow, blackened wounds.
I shut the door, breathing slowly.
All the toilets in the house were clogged and stinking. I went into my own room. Everything I owned had been stolen, except, for my best suit of clothes. Those clothes were spread-eagled in the center of my double bed, pinned to the musty mattress with a knife through the heart of my empty jacket.
I went straight for the syncophine, uncapped one of the bottles, and took a small sip. Chemical frenzy dug into my brain; with chattering teeth, I took the bottles out of my suitcase.
Carrying all four bottles, I went back to the hall closet “Here, Timon,” I said, handing him one of the bottles. “SoVry it took me so long.”
I went to the Undines. It was easy to stick two of the bottles into their stiffened hands. “I won’t be needing these,” I said. “I’d like you two to have them.”
I went to my bedroom. I took one of the empty sleeves and folded it gently over the last bottle. “Here, John,” I said. “You deserve this, since you fought for it so hard, and so long, too. I’m sorry it was so hard to get—I’m sorry for all you dead people.”
I got my suitcase, left the house, and locked the door behind me.
I had always filled the emptiness with drugs. Now I had withdrawal symptoms to look forward to, and a harrowing reeducation in the meaning of pain.
I’d live. I’d endured worse in the days that drove me to discover drugs in the first place. I had no illusions about drugs; they held no romantic haze. They were just a way to make the mind work differently. The mind, the-me, was still there, mutable, magical, no matter what friendly poisons subjected me to their kindly attack. I was strong; my friends had been weak. We had all been crippled, but they had allowed themselves to be devoured by their own carnivorous crutches.
I drew no grim moral lessons, made no rash vows. It was only a misfortune, an accidental trap set by witless Confederates. If my friends deserved punishment, it was only for lack of moderation.
Moderation was survival. Sometimes moderation could only be achieved by an act of fanaticism. I was leaving before Flare began exacting payment for the joy it had’ given me, removing myself bodily before it could put me further in its debt. I would suffer on a starship.
I had to leave. Relying on willpower was the height of stupidity; it could not stop me from falling back into my old personality patterns. Cold turkey withdrawal would send me burrowing after the guts of dustwhales as irresitably, as blamelessly as iron leaps for a magnet.
Surely it was only a matter of time until I found something else to fill the aching vacuum: truth or duty, honor, beauty, love or wisdom, something. . .
I thought about it at the starport, sitting on a whalehide chair and watching two emaciated Confederate officers playing chess. Somewhere a purpose awaited me, in the long centuries before Death claimed me, if he could.
For a start, I would visit Venice.