infinities (5 page)

Carrington makes a modest gesture, not owning to such insight.

"I presume," Devereaux goes on, "that you summoned me here to find out why, why for the past twenty years I have indulged in such psychotherapy?"

He suspects that Carrington is wary of coming right out and saying that he wishes to record his very last act. Devereaux has the reputation of a temperamental recluse, an artist who might not view kindly the trivialisation of his death on prime-time vid-vision.

But why else did Carrington summon him, other than to secure the rights to his ultimate performance?

Carrington surprises him by saying, casually, "But I know why you have resorted to these acts."

"You do?" Devereaux walks to the wall-window and stares out at the scintillating city. Surely, even so celebrated a journalist as Daniel Carrington could not successfully investigate events so far away, so long ago?

He turns, facing Carrington. "Perhaps you would care to explain?"

"By all means," Carrington says. "First, Jean-Philipe Devereaux is a
non-de-plume
, the name you took when you began your performances."

"Bravo!"

"Please, hear me out. Your real name is Jacques Minot, born in Orleans, 2060. You trained at the Orly Institute in Paris, graduated with honours and joined the Chantilly Line as a co-pilot on the bigship
Voltaire's Revenge
."

Devereaux — for although Carrington is correct, he will be Devereaux to his dying day — hangs an exaggerated bow. "I applaud your investigative skills, M. Carrington." He is oddly disturbed by the extent of Carrington's knowledge. He wanted to confess to him, admittedly — but in his own time.

Carrington continues, "You served on the
Voltaire
for ten years, then twenty years ago you were promoted to pilot and given your own 'ship, the
Pride of Bellatrix
. The same year you made the 'push to Janus, Aldebaran, and on the darkside of that planet something happened."

"But you don't know what?" He feels relief that Carrington does not know everything, that he will after all be able to confess.

"No, I do not know what happened," Carrington says. "But I know that it was enough to make you quit your job and perfect your bizarre art."

"I must applaud you. I never thought I would live to hear my past delineated with such clinical objectivity." He pauses. "But tell me — if you know nothing about what happened on Janus, how can you be so sure of my guilt?"

Carrington smiles, almost to himself. "You were a little insane when you landed on Venus all those years ago — perhaps you still are. You found a street kid. You gave him your laser and a lot of creds and told him to burn a hole in your head. You told him that you deserved it. Not that he needed any justification — all he wanted was the cash. But he couldn't bring himself to laser your head. He put a hole in your heart instead, figuring it was all the same anyway — you'd be just as dead. Except it wasn't the same at all. When the medics found that you were carrying a pilot's Spider Augmentation and had the creds to pay for rehabilitation, they brought you back. After that..." Carrington shrugs. "I think you developed a taste for dying as a way of assuaging your conscience. You turned it into an art form and it paid for your resurrections."

Devereaux says, "I take it you found the boy?"

Carrington makes a non-committal gesture, as if to say that he cannot divulge his sources.

Outside, lightning zigzags from the dense cloudrace, filling the room with an actinic stutter. Seconds later a cannonade of thunder trundles overhead.

"How did you find out?" Devereaux asks. "About my past, about what I intend to do?"

"What
do
you intend, M. Devereaux?"

Carrington's attitude surprises him. What might he gain by feigning ignorance?

"Let me proposition you, M. Carrington. You can have the exclusive rights to my absolute suicide, if you will listen to my confession..." Such a
small
price to pay.

"Your suicide?"

"Not just another performance — this will be the real thing. I have played with death long enough to know that nothing but true extinction can pay for what I did. Or did you think I planned an ultimate
physical
suicide, and that I intended to live on in my Augmentation, immortal? Now that would be a living hell!"

But Daniel Carrington is shocked. He stares at Devereaux, slowly shaking his head.

"No..." he says. "No, I can't let you do that."

Devereaux is flustered. "But come, isn't that why you wanted to see me? To arrange to broadcast the ultimate event?"

From the inside of his roll-neck jacket, Carrington withdraws a pistol. It is a karque-hunter's dart gun. He holds it in both hands and levels it at Devereaux.

"Do you think for a minute that I like what I do, M. Devereaux?"

"Why, my dear man..."

"Do you think I enjoy living with death? Christ, everyone on the planet despises me. I have this..." he gestures to his scarred face "...as a continual reminder."

Devereaux tries to be placatory. He is non-plussed.

"You didn't want to meet me to ask my permission—?" he begins.

"I asked you here to kill you," Carrington smiles.

Devereaux is sardonic. "With that?" he says. "My dear man, you'll need more than a dart gun to destroy my Spider." He pauses, peering at him. "But why?" he whispers.

"I've hated you for so long, Devereaux," Carrington smiles. "Of course, I naturally assumed you were dead — but I still felt hatred."

~

"You...?" Devereaux says. He recalls the kid he picked up, all those years ago.

"I didn't realise you'd survived, you see," Carrington says. "All I could think about was that you'd used me to kill yourself." He pauses. "Then I saw your picture on the vid, read about your forthcoming trip to Venus — and I knew I needed revenge. I had to kill you."

He fires without warning. The bolt hits Devereaux in the chest and kills him instantly — kills, that is, the body, the meat, the biological entity that is Jean-Philipe Devereaux. As the body falls to the floor, Devereaux finds himself in the sensorium of his Spider.

"Monsieur Carrington..." His transistorised voice issues from his unmoving lips. "There is a laser in the inside pocket of my jacket. If you set it at maximum, it will despatch my Augmentation."

Carrington is standing over him, staring down.

"But first..." Devereaux pleads. "First, please, let me confess."

"No!"

Carrington steps forward, slips a small laser from his jacket.

"That..." the Spider says "...is hardly powerful enough."

"For the past five years I've dreamed of this moment."

"Please, my confession!"

"I dreamed of putting you to death, Devereaux — but that would be too good for you."

Devereaux screams a hideous, "No!"

Carrington lifts the laser and, with an expression of revulsion, fires and separates Devereaux's head from his shoulders. He grasps the a hank of hair and lifts the head. Dimly, thorough failing eyes, Devereaux makes out on Carrington's features an expression of supreme satisfaction. "That would be far, far too good for you."

~

Time passes...

Devereaux has known seven days as a prisoner in his Spider — in one case ten days — but always these periods were made tolerable by the knowledge that soon he would be returned to his body. Now there is no such knowledge. Upon killing him, Carrington bisected his head and fished out the Spider, bound his limbs and imprisoned him within a black velvet pouch, so that he did not have even the compensation of vision with which to distract his attention from the inevitable... He had only his memories, which returned him again and again to the darkside of Janus.

At spiraldown, his co-pilot had withdrawn from the net, left Devereaux — or Minot, as he was then — to oversee the simple docking procedure. Devereaux had disengaged from his Spider a fraction of a second too soon, forgetting that he was on the darkside of Janus, where icy, hurricane-force winds scoured the port. He had not been paying attention, had been looking forward to his leave instead. The Spider would have been able to save the ship — calculated the realignment co-ordinates pulsed from the control tower — but Devereaux had no hope of processing so much information in so short a time. The
Pride of Bellatrix
overshot the dock and exploded into the terminal building, incinerating a hundred port workers, as well as the ship's three hundred passengers, beyond any chance of resurrection...

Devereaux alone had survived.

His dreams are forever filled with the faces of the dead, their screams, and the unremitting stars of darkside illuminating a scene of carnage.

~

Devereaux calculates that one week has passed when Daniel Carrington unties the pouch and daylight floods in. He expects Carrington to have devised for him some eternal torture: he will entomb him in concrete and pitch him into the deep Venusian sea, or bury him alive in the wilderness of the central desert.

Carrington lifts him from the velvet pouch.

Devereaux makes out the turgid Venusian overcast, and then the expanse of an ocean far below. They are on a chromium catwalk which follows the peak of a volcanic ridge. This is a northern tourist resort; silver domes dot the forbidding grey mountain-side.

Carrington turns and walks along a promontory overlooking the sea. Devereaux knows, with terrible foresight, what Carrington has planned.

Carrington holds the Spider before his eyes. Devereaux tries to struggle, realises then with mounting panic that his legs have been removed. Even his only means of psychological release, a scream, is denied him.

"I've had a long time to think about what I should do with you," Carrington whispers. "At first I wanted to kill you."

Devereaux cries a silent: No! He knows now that Carrington will pitch him into the sea, and that he will remain there for ever, alone with his memories and his remorse. He tries to conceive of an eternity of such torture, but his mind baulks at the enormity of the prospect.

"And then, when you told me that you intended to kill yourself anyway, I decided that there was another way of punishing you."

No! Devereaux yells to himself.

Carrington is shaking his head.

"But to do that would be as great a crime as doing what I thought I had done to you, twenty years ago." He stares off into the distance, reliving the past. "Perhaps the only way I can cure myself, Devereaux, is by saving you — and the only way I can save you is by destroying you."

Carrington turns then and strides along the catwalk. Seconds later he is standing on a railed gallery, a fumarole brimming with molten lava to his left. To his right, the ocean surges.

"Which way?" Carrington says. "Left, or right?"

He smiles. "Oblivion, or eternal torment?"

Oh, oblivion! Devereaux cries to himself.

Carrington smiles. He is not a cruel man, despite what people think. With little ceremony, he hefts the remains of the Spider and pitches it from the gallery.

Devereaux gives thanks to Daniel Carrington as he tumbles through the air. The seconds seem to expand to fill aeons. He experiences a surge of relief, and for the very last time the pain of guilt.

Devereaux hits the lava, and the casing of the Spider melts in the molten stream, and then he feels nothing.

Copyright information
© Eric Brown 1998, 2011
"Venus Macabre" was first published in
Aboriginal SF
in 1998, and is reprinted in the infinity plus ebook
The Angels of Life and Death
by Eric Brown:

Buy now:
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Mid-list writer Daniel Ellis becomes obsessed with the life and work of novelist Vaughan Edwards, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances in 1996. Edwards' novels, freighted with foreboding tragedy and a lyrical sense of loss, echo something in Ellis's own life. His investigations lead Ellis ever deeper into the enigma that lies at the heart of Vaughan Edwards' country house, Edgecoombe Hall, and the horror that dwells there. In a departure from his science fiction roots, Eric Brown has written a haunting novella that explores the essence of creativity, the secret of love, and the tragedy that lies at the heart of human existence.

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A Writer's Life by Eric Brown
$2.99 / £2.23.

"British writing with a deft, understated touch: wonderful" —
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"Eric Brown has an enviable talent for writing stories which are the essence of modern science fiction and yet show a passionate concern for the human predicament and human values" —
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