Nightside the Long Sun

Half the abandoned manteion had been converted into a small theater. “The old Window’s still back there,” Chenille explained, pointing. “It’s the back of the stage, sort of, only we always keep a drop in front of it. There’s four or five drops, I think. Anyhow, we go in back of the Window to towel off and powder, and there’s a lot of hoses on the floor and hanging down back there.”

Silk was momentarily puzzled until he realized that the “hoses” were in actuality sacred cables. “I understand,” he said, “but what you describe could be dangerous. Has anyone been hurt?”

“A dell fell off the stage and broke her arm once, but she was pretty full.”

“The powers of Pas must indeed have departed from this place. And no wonder. Very well.” He put his bag and the triptych on seats. “Thank you, Chenille. You may go out now if you wish, although I would prefer that you remain to take part in the exorcism.”

“If you want me I’ll stay, Patera. All right if I grab something to eat?”

“Certainly.”

He watched her go, then shut the door to the courtyard behind her. Her mention of food had reminded him not only that he had given the cheese he had intended for his lunch to the bird, but of his fried tomatoes. No doubt Chenille would go to the pastry shop across the street. He shrugged and opened his bag, resolved to divert his mind from food.

There seemed to be a kitchen in the house, however; if Blood had not yet eaten, it was quite possible that he would invite him to lunch when the exorcism had been concluded. How long had it been since he had sat beneath the fig tree, watching Maytera Rose consume fresh rolls? Several hours, surely, but he had failed to share his breakfast with her; he was justly punished.

“I will not eat,” he muttered to himself as he unpacked the glass lamps and the little flask of oil, “until someone invites me to a meal; then and only then shall I be free of this vow. Strong Sphigx, hardship is yours! Hear me now.”

Perhaps Orchid would wish to speak to him again about the arrangements for tomorrow; judging from her appearance (and thus, as he reminded himself, very possibly unfairly) Orchid ate often and well. She might easily fancy a bowl of grapes or a platter of peach fritters …

Largely to take his mind off food, he called, “Are you here, Mucor? Can you hear me?”

There was no reply.

“I know it was you, you see. You’ve been following me, as you said you would last night. I recognized your face in Teasel’s father’s face this morning. Was it you that drank her blood? This afternoon I saw your face again, in poor Orpine’s.”

He waited but there was no whisper at his ear, no voice except his own echoing from the bare shiprock walls.

“Say something!”

A gravid silence filled the deserted manteion.

“That woman screaming in this house last night while I was outside in the floater—it was too apposite for mere chance. The devil was there because I was, and you’re that devil, Mucor. I don’t understand how you do the things you do, but I know it’s you that do them.”

He had packed the glass lamps in rags. As he unwrapped one, he caught sight of what might almost have been Mucor’s death’s-head grin. Carrying a lamp in each hand, he limped to the stage to look more closely at the painted canvas—it was presumably what Chenille had called a drop—behind it.

The scene was a crude mockery of Campion’s celebrated painting of Pas enthroned. As depicted here, Pas had two erections as well as two heads; he nursed one in each hand. Before him, worshipful humanity engaged in every perversion that Silk had ever heard of, and several that were entirely new to him. In the original painting, two of Pas’s taluses, mighty machines of a peculiarly lovely butter yellow, were still at work upon the whorl, planting a sacred goldenshower in back of Pas’s throne. Here the taluses were furnished with obscene war rams, while Pas’s blossom-freighted holy tree had been replaced by a gigantic phallus. Overhead the vast, dim faces of the spiritual Pas leered and slavered.

After carefully setting the blue lamps on the edge of the stage, Silk extracted Hyacinth’s azoth from beneath his tunic. He wanted to slash the hateful thing before him to ribbons, but to do so would certainly destroy whatever might remain of the Window behind it. He pressed the demon, and with one surgical stroke slit the top of the painted canvas from side to side. The detestable painting vanished with a thump, in a cloud of dust.

Blood came in while he was setting up his triptych in front of the blank, dark face of the Window. Votive lamps burned again before that abandoned Window now, their bright flames stabbing upward from the blue glass as straight as swords; thuribles lifted slender pale columns of sweet smoke from the four corners of the stage.

“What did you do that for?” Blood demanded.

Silk glanced up. “Do what?”

“Destroy the scenery.” Blood mounted the three steps at one side of the stage. “Don’t you know what that stuff costs?”