“If you want to meet her, she’s here now.”
Ed felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He kept himself firmly facing away.
“I just need a job,” he said.
“And we have one for you,” said a different voice.
Tiny lights began to pour into the room from somewhere behind Ed. He knew where they must be coming from. Nothing would be gained by admitting it, though: an admission like that could fuck up everything. I’ve seen a lot, Ed told himself, but I don’t want the shadow operators in my life. The receptionist had put the fishtank down on the floor. White motes were pouring from her nostrils, from her mouth and eyes. Something pulled Ed’s head round so that like it or not he had to witness this event: give it form by recognising it. The lights were like foam and diamonds. They had some kind of music with them, like the sound of the algorithm itself. Soon enough there was no receptionist, only the operator that had been running her, now busily reassembling itself as the little oriental woman he had already shot on Yulgrave Street. The exchange was denim for slit cheongsam, Oort Country drawl for fiercely plucked eyebrows and the faintest delicate swallowing of consonants. After the transition was complete, her face shifted in and out of its own shadows, old then young, young then old. Strange then perfect. She had the charisma of some unreal alien thing, more powerful than sex though you felt it like that.
“Things here are truly fucked up,” Ed whispered. “Lucky I can just run away.”
Sandra Shen smiled up at him.
“I’m afraid not, Ed,” she said. “This isn’t a tank parlour. There are consequences out here. Do you want the job or don’t you?” Before he could answer this, she went on: “If not, Bella Cray would like a word.”
“Hey, that’s a threat.”
She shook her head fractionally. Ed looked down at her, trying to see what colour her eyes were. She smiled at his anxiety.
“Let me tell you something about yourself,” she suggested.
“Oh ho. Now we get to it. How you know all about me though you never saw me before?” He grinned. “What’s in the fishtank?” he said, trying to see past her to where it lay on the floor. “I’ve wondered about that.”
“First things first. Ed, I’ll tell you a secret about yourself. You’re easily bored.”
Ed blew on his fingers to indicate scorching.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s something I never once thought of.”
“No,” she said. “Not that boredom. Not the boredom you manage from a dipship or a twink-tank. You’ve been hiding the real boredom behind that your whole life.” Ed shrugged a little, tried to look away, but now her eyes held his somehow, and he couldn’t. “You have a bored soul, Ed; they handed it to you before you were born. Enjoy sex, Ed? It’s to fill that hole. Enjoy the tank? It fills the hole. Prefer things edgy? You aren’t whole, Ed: it’s to fill you up, that’s the story of it. Another thing anyone can see about you, even Annie Glyph: you have a piece missing.”
Ed had heard this more often than she thought, though usually in different circumstances he had to admit.
“So?” he said.
She stepped to one side.
“So now you can look in the fishtank.”
Ed opened his mouth. He closed it again. Suckered in some way he didn’t follow. He knew he would do it, out of that very boredom she mentioned. He looked sideways in the light leaking through the open door. Kefahuchi light, which made Sandra Shen harder, not easier, to see. He opened his mouth to say something, but she got there first. “The show needs a prophet, Ed.” She started to turn away. “That’s the opening. That’s the deal. And you know, Annie could do with a little more cash. There’s not much left after she scores the café électrique.”
Ed swallowed.
Sea shushing behind the dunes. An empty bar full of dust and Tract-light. A man kneels with his head inside some kind of fishtank, unable to pull himself free, as if whatever smoky yet gelid substance that fills it has clutched him and is already trying to digest him. His hands tug at the tank, his arm muscles bulge. Sweat pours off him in the shitty light, his feet kick and rattle against the floorboards, and—under the impression that he is screaming—he produces a faint, very high-pitched whining noise.
After some minutes this activity declines. The oriental woman lights an unfiltered cigarette, watching him intently. She smokes for a while, removes a shred of tobacco from her lip, then prompts him:
“What do you see?”
“Eels. Like eels swimming away from me.”
A pause. His feet drum the floor again. Then he says thickly: “Too many things can happen. You know?”
The woman blows out smoke, shakes her head.
“It won’t do for an audience, Ed. Try again.” She makes a complex gesture with her cigarette. “All the things it might be,” she reminds him, as if she has reminded him before: “the one thing it is.”
“But the pain.”
She doesn’t seem to care about the pain. “Go ahead.”
“Too many things can happen,” he repeats. “You know.”
“I do know,” she says, in a more sympathetic voice. She bends down to touch his knotted shoulders briefly and absentmindedly, like someone calming an animal. It’s a kind of animal she knows very well, one with which she has considerable experience. Her voice is full of the sexual charisma of old, alien, made-up things. “I do know, Ed, honestly. But try to see in more dimensions. Because this is circus, baby. Do you understand? It’s entertainment. We’ve got to give them something.”
When Ed Chianese came to, it was three in the morning. Sprawled facedown on the oceanside at the back of the Dunes Motel, he gently felt his face. It wasn’t as sticky as he had expected: though the skin seemed smoother than usual and slightly sore, as if he had used cheap exfoliant before a night out. He was tired, but everything—the dunes, the tidewrack, the surf—looked and smelled and sounded very sharp. At first he thought he was alone. But there was Madam Shen, standing over him, her little black shoes sinking into the soft sand, the Tract burning up the night sky behind her.
Ed groaned. He closed his eyes. Vertigo was on him instantly, an after-image of the Tract pinwheeling against the nothing blackness.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he whispered.
Sandra Shen seemed to shrug. “It’s the job,” she said.
Ed tried to laugh. “No wonder you can’t fill it.”
He rubbed his face again, felt in his hair. Nothing. At the same time knew he would never get rid of the sensation of that stuff, sucking at him. And this was the thing about it: it wasn’t actually in the tank. Or if it was it was somewhere else as well . . .
“What did I say? Did I say I’d seen anything?”
“You did well for your first lesson.”
“What is that stuff? Is it still on me? What’s it done to me?”
She knelt briefly beside him, stroking his hair back from his forehead. “Poor Ed,” she said. He felt her breath on his face. “Prophecy!” she said. “It’s a black art yet, and you’re at the forefront of it. But try and see it like this: everyone’s lost. Ordinary people, they walk down the street, they’ve all had bad directions: everyone has to find their way. It’s not so hard. They do it on a daily basis.”
For a moment it looked as if she might say something more. Then she patted him on the back, picked up the fishtank and trudged off with it under her arm, up over the dunes and back to the circus. Ed crawled away through the marram grass to where he could throw up quietly. He had bitten his tongue, he discovered, while he was trying to lever the fishtank off his head.
He had already made up his mind to try and forget the stuff he saw in there. That stuff made tank withdrawal seem like fun.