Engineman - Eric Brown [187]
She attacked him then. She came at him with painful blows and slaps, and no doubt cries and accusations. Thorn was aware only of the physical violence, the punches that struck from nowhere without warning. And he was aware, too, that he deserved the assault.
He lay on the bed, battered and exhausted. Caroline had ceased her attack. He had no way of knowing whether she was still in the room, but he sensed her continued presence. I don't know why you came here, he said. I don't know what you want from me...
He half-expected another hail of blows, and flinched in anticipation. But none came.
When he thought he was alone he dragged the bedsheets around him protectively, lay back and recalled Caroline's tears on his cheeks.
There could only be one explanation for her visit.
Thorn felt himself weaken further during the hours that followed.
He waited with mounting apprehension, his body covered in chill sweat. Visually it was four o'clock in the afternoon, but the real time was around midnight. It seemed a lot longer than the delayed eight hours before Caroline entered his line of sight.
She moved out of it quickly as she came to the side of his bed. She reached out and touched his arm, and Thorn expected to feel her now, but of course her touch had startled him eight hours ago. Then, Thorn had turned his head abruptly, and now he saw Caroline full on. She wore only a white gown and nothing beneath, and she was crying.
He watched as she undressed him, and the sight of her doing this now brought a hot flush of shame and resentment to his cheeks. The sensation of her touch had passed, but as he saw her slip from her gown and climb onto him he experienced a resurgence of the desire that had overwhelmed him eight hours earlier.
The Thorn-of-now lay still in his bed. He was making love to Caroline, but, with his memories of the physical act already eight-hours old, he felt like a voyeur in the head of his former self. He could see her, frenzied blurs of flesh and hair and tongue; he could smell her, the perfume she used and the sweat of sex that overcame it; and he could hear her small moans of pleasure, her repeated cry of his name as she approached climax.
He heard his slurred question: "Caroline... Why...?"
They had finished their loving-making and she lay in his arms. "Because I loved you, Max," she had said. "Because I still love you."
He knew what happened next. Again he experienced that overwhelming sense of revulsion, brought about by guilt. He watched helplessly as he pushed her from the bed. "Get out, Caroline!" he heard himself cry. "Get away!" He saw her expression of pain, the acceptance of rejection in her eyes, and had it been possible he would have stopped himself saying what he said next. "I don't want you, for Godsake! All I want-"
She came at him and hit him again and again.
The Thorn-of-now flinched, as if the blows he could see coming might indeed inflict pain upon him; he raised his arms as if to protect himself.
Caroline backed off and yelled at him.
He heard himself say: "I don't know why you came here...I don't know what you want from me..."
Caroline was crying. "I came because I loved you, Max. I came to say goodbye."
She lowered her gaze and murmured, more to herself than to Thorn: "Black died two days ago."
Eight hours later Thorn lay quite still.
He deteriorated rapidly over then next few days.
The knowledge of Black's death robbed him of any will he might have had to fight. In his final hours he experienced a gradual diminution of his senses. His hearing left him first - then his taste and sense of smell, though he hardly noticed their absence. Later his vision dimmed and went out, and he was aware of himself only as a small, blind intelligence afloat in an infinite ocean.
Soon even the awareness of his physical self diminished, and then the last sense of all,