He realized he was sitting on the stained linoleum floor. There were hands beneath his arms, yanking him to his feet. Tach stared up into Blaise's exulting face. Lips skinning back in a snarl, the Takisian psi lord tried to gather his power and found-nothing.
Blaise laughed in great gusting whoops. It was a maddening, terrifying sound.
"Oh, Grandpa." Tachyon was swung up into the teenager's arms. "You're going to wish I had only killed you." Fury exploded behind his eyes, and Tach swung hard at Blaise's face. Connected, and then froze in shock: There was a hand at the end of his right arm! Chipped pink polish created an odd piebald effect on the nails. Bile clawed at the back of his throat.
Blaise flung him down on the mattress. Tachyon fought to remain conscious. The very deepest part of himself. That which was Tachyon ran screaming and yammering about his head. Searching for what had been lost. Found only silence, darkness. My power, he wailed.
A tearing sound, and cold air struck Tach's chest. Rough hands gripped the waistband of the blue jeans, broke the button, ripped open the zipper. Blaise's nails gouged into his legs as the boy yanked down the pants. They snagged. Muttering oaths, Blaise crawled backward and started to pull off the tennis shoes. It was involuntary. Later he would regret it, but Tach kicked Blaise square in the face.
Blood from Blaise's broken nose spattered on Tachyon's bare legs, on the filthy tiles. Blaise twined a hand in Tach's hair, pulled him up, and slugged him in the face. Tachyon tried to defend, to respond, but he felt weak, disoriented. He knew he had been jumped, one part of him even acknowledged to what, but acceptance was impossible.
This isn't happening. This can't be happening. Not to me. He hurt too much to keep fighting. Tears and blood made a slimy mixture on his face. Blaise stood up. He seemed a colossus towering spraddle-legged over Tach's prone body. Slowly he unzipped, pulled out his rigid penis. Tachyon thought he had endured the worst this or any world had to offer. He was wrong.
Muscles shivered with strain, but still she held him at bay. He had not yet managed to violate her. Blaise was muttering curses as he gripped the soft flesh around her knees and tried to yank her legs apart. She tried to claw his eyes, but he was too quick for her.
Suddenly Blaise pulled her upright by the hair and drove two punishing blows into her gut. Air gusted out like a deflating balloon, and Tachyon wretched. Her legs went flaccid.
"Hold him," ordered Blaise..
Two boys jumped to obey. One on each leg, they played make-a-wish with the shuddering pain-racked body.
With a coarse grin, Blaise raked his nails across the breasts, cruelly twisted the nipples. Involuntarily, Tach yelped. Gentle now, the fingers trailed across the waist, the slight curve of the belly, brushed the mons.
Tach screamed, and Blaise was on him like a wild animal. Teeth tore at his lips and breasts. Methodically Blaise pounded at Tachyon, driving deeper into her.
The room was echoing with his screams. With the cheers of the onlookers.
"NO, NO! STOP IT! STOP IT!" The girl in his body screaming her protest.
How odd, Tachyon thought as consciousness slipped from her. I hadn't realized my voice was so deep.
The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat
III
There are times when life is good…
Sometimes the pleasure even comes from odd sources. I've had only a few conversations with Prime. He isn't on the Rox much; when he is, he tends to avoid me. It's because he knows that I can see through his iceman facade. It's because he knows that I see all the deepening cracks behind the smooth cold exterior. He knows that I see the obsession that torments him and titillates him all at the same time.
All the pressure, pent up for years and years and years behind his emotionless wall (not as good a wall as mine), and David-poor David-cracked it with just his presence. David's death was a jackhammer blow. Walls: I have mine; Prime has his; and his is crumbling as the Berlin Wall crumbled last month.
Or… I've thought of it another way, too, sometimes. Prime, if you watch him, is like a dormant volcano all covered with snow, but steaming through fumaroles that hint at the turmoil underneath.
That's a better image, overall. And I wonder when he's going to explode. I worry, too, because Prime holds Blaise in check. Without Prime…
I was about to witness the unveiling when Kafka came rattling into the lobby, all excited. He hardly glanced at the huge draped package set before me. All out of breath, he just asked where it came from.
"It's a present from Nelson Dixon." Latham-Prime-stood next to the drapes. He sniffed, still playing iceman. Blaise wasn't there, though Molly Bolt and K.C. were. The laughter of my jokers drifted down from the balcony and around the lobby. Peanut beat his one arm against my side, guffawing. I beamed down at the dimwitted joker in affection. Shroud, Marigold, Vomitus, Video, Elmomaybe a half a hundred all told in the lobby area, and all their thoughts crowded into my mind.
No wonder I'm so big. I have to hold so many people. Kafka looked as bewildered as a roach can look. He repeated what I'd just said, obviously confused.
"Well, Dixon signed the check," I told him. "Nice of him, wasn't it?"
Kafka blinked several times. "Well, I don't know where he got it, and I certainly don't have the foggiest notion of why it works, but it's humming right along. I hooked it up."
Sometimes even mind readers are confused. Belatedly, I looked at the images in Kafka's head and realized we weren't talking about the same thing at all. He was talking about a generator. I told him that I was glad he'd finally managed to get his hands on one to bring over to the Rox.
Kafka just shook his head (well, his whole body, actually). "You didn't buy it, Governor?" More confusion radiated from the joker. He looked at me, at Prime, at Peanut and the rest of the jokers gathered around. "It was sitting there in the subbasement, and it wasn't there two days ago. It doesn't look like any generator I've ever seen."
The picture in his mind looked exactly like a generator to me, but Kafka sighed. "I have no idea what's fueling it or why it's running, either," he continued. "I checked out the readings, and it's pumping out the amps, nice and steady. I ran the west wing's circuits to it. We have lights, heat, and power…"
About then, he stopped, noticing Prime's present to me for the first time.
Prime waved his hand toward the drapes. "A little gift to the governor from us," Prime told him. "The first royalty statement. Bloat's suggestion to myself and the other jumpers has worked out well." He yanked at the covering, and dirty canvas rippled to the floor. All the jokers gasped.
It was beautiful. More stunning than any of the plates I'd seen in the high school art history texts or in the poster I used to have taped to my bedroom wall. The painting-the triptych-stood five feet high, maybe four wide, in an ornate wooden case. On the front were scenes of the Taking of Christ and the Carrying of the Cross, but what I really wanted to see was on the interior panels. I gestured to Peanut and Elmo, telling them to hurry up and open it.
They opened the outer panels, revealing the brilliant fantastic landscape inside. Around the room I felt waves of admiration and surprise rippling out.
"The Temptation of St. Anthony. Hieronymous Bosch," I said for the benefit of those who didn't know the work. "Previously at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon and now appearing exclusively in the Rox."
I chuckled, loud and long. It was indeed glorious. Bosch didn't know it, but he was painting the post-wild card world before it ever existed. I've often wondered if it wasn't a flash of prescience-no one else in his time was doing anything like this. I can imagine it as my Rox. It would be a wondrous place, a glorious vision.
You know Bosch, don't you? In his head grotesqueries abounded; his brush gave forth a torrent of human forms misshapen, altered, and tormented; his imagination overflowed with all the demons of hell and the icons of a superstitious age-at least that's what my teachers said.