The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison Read Free Book Online

Novels of rage, futile exposed addressed to lawyers, relatives, and life; vomit and other things in corners; a cold steel door with rivets and only memories of paint through being kicked so often in silly resistance.
    Truck was strapped on a bench, vertiginous from the anesthetic, already bleak and bored, wondering if the General had caught up with him at last. From beyond the door came a continual scrape of footsteps, a whole army of offenders filing past. Faint voices, the odd shout, some smashed loser who had or hadn't come down: the King's guests, paying their forfeits without the fun of the party. It was way past dawn.
    He lay there for some time, silently fighting the crab lice in the restraining jacket and staring at the ceiling. People came to the door, changed their minds and went away again.
    Angel and The Rat and Fast Harry passed on their advice in disconnected misspelled prose, but he'd read it all before. When the door scraped open, he was half asleep. Imagine his surprise, to find Doctor Grishkin, the flabby priest, bending solicitously over him.
    Cooped up in Ruth's apartment with time to consider that meeting on Bread Street, he had begun to feel a metaphysical uneasiness, even alarm, whenever he thought of Grishkin. He would have been hard put to explain why. Nevertheless, it was amplified unreasonably by the actual apparition or avatar of the man. Endeavoring to dispel some of it, he stared up into the round, lunar face where he could almost see himself reflected in a faint cheesy film of perspiration and muttered:
    'I thought I told you to sod off?'
    It was hardly a body blow (One of these days, Truck, he told himself sadly, somebody is going to discover the real you under all this foulmouthed repartee — a foulmouthed teddy bear); and a mistake even to imply he might be continuing their previous exchange. The doctor had reversed his cloak, but not his stance. Black, with a thin gold stripe. Very fetching.
    'Captain, it is a little more complex than that. If you could bring yourself — If you could co-operate — '
    His little eyes gleamed extravagantly. Things, amorphous and juicy, shifted to and fro behind his windows like the slow stirrings of some core, some hub — something real, at any rate — which existed quite apart from his benign and greasy faith: inexplicable urgencies of the psyche mimicked in the motion of the gut, demands that perhaps only Grishkin could fully comprehend and Truck completely fulfill. Faced with such ambition — such enigma and compulsion — Truck's bravado slipped a little.
    'Don't tell me you're a copper. I wouldn't have believed they had it in them.'
    Crucified by someone else's crabs (he hadn't yet accepted that they were now his although they evidently had — the eternal misunderstanding), wrapped up, in sweaty rubber and flat on his back besides, he wasn't at his freshest; it was a stupid thing to say. But the good doctor merely smiled. He was no copper and both of them knew it. Truck hunched one shoulder.
    'That was a stupid thing to say. Why are you here, then?'
    Any port in a storm.
    Grishkin beamed. He waddled very rapidly round the room once, touching the walls here, tapping them there.
    'Captain,' he said as he went, 'you've been detained before. You aren't a fool. For an offence such as this, for a narcotics offence' — he spread his arms, the palms of his hands upwards; he stared up at the conjunction of wall and ceiling — 'no one could reasonably expect a lawyer. But the twenty-fourth century admits — indeed, insists upon — your right to religious representation. Why else should I be here?' He nodded several times to himself, murmuring 'Just so, just so,' as if he were thinking of something else altogether.
    'How you got in here I don't much care; get to the point, Grishkin.'
    The Opener thrust his face close to Track's. He seemed to have had late nights recently; there were pouches of slack, slightly discolored skin beneath his eyes. He licked his