Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [28]
You won’t get away.
He found his second breath and chased at breakneck speed after the revenant, inches behind it—as a cloud of all-seeing eyes. All-touching eyes. All-tasting eyes.
Ah, little fairy, you’ll be my masterpiece. In three dimensions. Where is my magic brush? He plucked the hardest quill out of her torn-off wings and sharpened it. Blind drawing would be nice. He poked her eyes out.
Ah! A bare hint of contour just ahead, in flight—all planes and angles, a contraption of thin intersecting surfaces, revolving, cutting through distorted space—down, down, down through the tunnels. Touch that strange, illusive shape; before it disappears, try to trace another contour line—where it must hurt. You’ll know if it does. For, at the same time, you repeat the drawing motion with sharpened quill, without looking at the fairy—the art of blind cut. Move with it. You’ll know if it works. For if you do it right, more of the dust will catch up with the revenant, marking new contours. Carve hachure lines to capture the relief—with light and dark and all gray areas of shadow. Then cut again.
And bleed the edge.
Just like the time you sneaked into the Graduation Ward and watched from hiding, with some other boys who also, as if by command, gathered together at the same time, as your superiors cut “graduated” crèche-sisters, their minds transferred and bodies no longer needed—turning them into the screaming masterpieces of triangulated flesh.
And when you’ve marked enough, when you’re a cloud wrapped around the escaping revenant with tactile multiangled vision, squeeze it—press it hard to mark its skin over the ghostly bone; like a drawing made on the hard, rough surface of a brick—the real texture of the world beneath a thin veneer of our wishful thinking. Keep pressing, rasping over it with your dusty wind—or simply squish it like a sponge, making wet and dripping splotches over the softness of an innocent heart.
Innocence deserves a ravishment. Because all innocents are fools, dangerous fools. They allow true evil to thrive, out there in the real world—just by pretending it does not exist, or that they cannot be responsible. For no matter how you suppress it, your dark side will always show up.
At least, it’s just a game. Out there, in the real world, you’d never hurt a fly. You know this.
A game?
It’s no game.
Your masterpiece? It’s done. Your eyes are open. You see a human girl, a child. The scenery all changed. From out of the gaping mouth of a transport tube, she’s falling through the vastness of a spaceport vault. Hey, little girl, why fly without wings? You saw it once already, at the crèche for the test-tube children like yourself, waiting for your mind to finish its development to the adult state, then… ah, immortality just years around the corner! How could anyone then want to kill oneself? Unthinkable!
A beautiful blue sky, no clouds outside their skyscraper—and a girl in flight. Just outside the windows—one blink, and she is far below, gone.
O little girl, why jump without wings?
Why do you have to ask? You see it now; you are free. Your blinds are down—and the fairy? You thought you knew her inside out, drinking in her fear, her angst, her pain. But she’s impenetrable. And her heart—a mirror, you have drunk yourself. Your very own self, pretending to be innocent—another posthuman fool, with every other action killing or tormenting people, real people, and protecting those who say “jump!”
That’s why all innocence deserves a ravishment.
My little girl, I won’t let you fall. I’ ll help you out.
With an eager smile, Gilles turned his Hand of Evil on his own Dungeon Heart.
7
THIN MARTIAN AIR STREAMED AROUND THEIR BODY, HEATING up at their speed. If Nathi ever wondered what it must feel like when one’s flayed alive, he now knew it. Skin nerves screamed. But—no pain. It didn’t hurt.
Pain wasn’t in the complex mix of emotions that nearly overwhelmed him now—joy and grief, pride and exhilaration, hope mixed with apprehension. And surprise. He didn’t know what to make of the odd pull that kept contorting