During its throes, Lydia changed the UV bulb in the portable spotter. The sister remained where she'd stood, her bright white face having lost some its perverted gleam.

-You shouldn't have done that, she said.

"Your mom wears boxer shorts," Lydia replied. How she knew beforehand that it would work was a mystery. The sister bared her teeth. -I'm going to eat you now, she promised.

"Eat this instead." When Lydia turned on the spotter, the sister went rigid and shrieked. It was an annoying sound, like a coronet played by a drunk. A sizzling could be heard, like meat frying-the sister's face turned black, then her arms, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and abdomen. The spotter's invisible light was literally cooking the sister's flesh, drawing rents to expose bone. The spheric eyes ruptured; she staggered in a circle while Lydia followed, cooking her back and b.u.t.tocks. Then the sister flopped to the floor, vomited up some milky organs, and died.

The smoking pile sizzled. That was the end of her, but there was still the holotype. It lay cringing, the once proudly erect p.e.n.i.s now shriveled. Fingerless hands clutched vainly at the loss between its sinuous legs.

"Hey, buster," Lydia said.

The face, like a plop of raw meat, glanced up. Blood-red eyes fixed wide on her, this arrogant woman victor.

She put four shots from the Trooper into its convoluted head. The skull cracked, blowing hanks of brains and pale yellow blood in a fan across the black carbonized wall.

Lydia reloaded and got back her breath. No sense in wasting time. Thought, she thought. She plugged her key into the extromitter and thought about Wade.

The scalpel flashed, lowering. All Wade could see were the two sisters' intent faces and point filled grins. He felt the scalpel tip touch his temple...

Then the first sister's eyes...exploded.

Suddenly he was released. Shrieks spun like mad banners about his head. Besser was b.u.mmeling forward, shouting "Noooo!" His shout was answered by a very loud bang!

Wade sat up. At the rear of the warren, he saw the two sisters...cooking. Their pet.i.te bodies blackened. Their faces bubbling. Soon their shrieks sputtered out, as their crisped mouths erped up white slop. They congealed in the corner, a blackened, smoking ma.s.s.

"Are you gonna sit there all day?" Lydia inquired.

"Lydia!" Wade shouted, and jumped off the table. She smirked as he giddily planted kisses all over her face.

"Save it for later. We've got to get out of here."

Besser, curled on the floor, wheezed out blubbers. Pain bloated his face like a balloon. Lydia had blown his kneecap off.

"What about him?" Wade asked.

"f.u.c.k him," Lydia answered. She c.o.c.ked the Trooper and pointed it at Besser's head.

"Yes!" Besser begged. "Please!"

Lydia looked baffled. "You want me to kill you?"

"For G.o.d's sake, yes! Don't leave me for the Supremate!"

Wade remembered the hash room, Besser's inheritance, no doubt, for failure. "Leave the fat f.u.c.ker," he said.

"Noooooo!" Besser wailed. "Pleeeeeeease, nooooooo!"

Lydia reholstered the Trooper. She and Wade left the warren as Besser's pleas faded behind them.

She led him toward the next extromitter, explaining how she'd killed the sisters with the ultraviolet spotter. It wasn't sunlight that killed them, it was the UV rays of the sun's spectrum. Wade was impressed by her ingenuity, and also her faith. She'd come into this horrid place for him.

Then suddenly, she stopped. "Wade, before we go on, there's something I have to tell you."

"What's that. babe?"

"I love you."

"Uh." Wade hemmed. "Yeah."

Lydia looked the way a girl always looks when she's p.i.s.sed. "Well?" she said, hands on hips.

"Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to say you love me too?"

Jesus, Wade thought. Sure, he loved her, but he couldn't tell her that. It wasn't his style, not this soon. When a guy said that, he'd lose the upper hand. Instead, he said, "Ditto."

Now she really looked p.i.s.sed. "I knew it. No b.a.l.l.s."

"Hey!"

"I almost got b.u.g.g.e.red by a monster for you. The least you-"

"I seem to recall doing a little rescuing today myself."

"That's not what we're talking about-"

"And this is not the time or place for a romantic spat," he added. "We're in a f.u.c.king s.p.a.ceship."

"Just shut up and come on," she said, disgusted.

Wade dredged up some nifty terms from his Sociology 202 cla.s.s. "We can isolate and identify the spatial parameters of our relationship later."

"Isolate and identify this," she said, and gave him the finger. "Besides, there might not even be a later."

"What are you talking about? We're home free."

Lydia laughed. "Don't you know how the extromitters work?"

"Yeah, you stick the key in the hole and we're out of here."

"Not quite. They're programmed by thought, level to level. But the only way we can leave is through the main point access."

"So? Let's go there and split."

"Wade, every warren and hall, every extromitter, every everything in this place has a sensor in it. Eyes and ears. The Supremate knows where we are and what we're trying to do."

Wade's enthusiasm plummeted.

"And you can bet your Corvette," she went on, "right now the Supremate is ordering every sister in the place to the main point access, to keep us from leaving."

"Besser said most of the sisters were terminated."

"Most, or all?"

Wade gulped. "Most," he remembered. This was getting too complicated, like the trig and literature courses he'd gotten untold D's in. He didn't want to be confused with facts-he wanted out. "So the sisters are waiting for us at the exit?"

"Yes," Lydia clarified.

"Use the spotter."

"The spotter's battery powered, and it's already getting low."

Fanf.u.c.kingtastic, he thought as she plugged her key into the next extromission dot and pulled him through.

Wade didn't care to have the molecular ma.s.s of his body turned inside out as a means of transportation. Elevators were more to his liking, or ladders, stairs, dumbwaiters-anything. They extromitted down several levels until they made it to what Wade presumed was the bottom of the labyrinth. At the end of the warren, the sign glowed like a mirage: POINTACCESSMAIN#1.

But the main was empty. No sisters stood in wait.

"This can't be right," Lydia murmured.

"Stick the key in the hole!" Wade shouted.

She did so, almost fatally. She couldn't believe it was going to be this easy. Nevertheless, this final extromission left them standing dumbfounded by the wall of the student shop.

"You did it!" Wade celebrated.

They ran their a.s.ses off, to the door, to the parking lot, to the waiting Vette. The twin turbos roared. The Vette's plushness embraced them, and in a moment they were smoking out of the lot, through the turn, away, away...

Wade's mind, as he drove, fielded countless abstractions. He thought of birds flying lazily across the heavens. He thought of cathedral ceilings, long open pastures, endless seas. Never again would he take the becalmed night or the beauty of the world for granted. Indeed, the air smelled of freedom- -and maybe even absolution.

CHAPTER 37.

Jervis, as with everything now, took the radio to have a special meaning, symbols like shadows of his new, mysterious life. The campus station played "Head Cut," by the Banshees, "The Cutter," by Echo and the Bunnymen, and "Delicate Cutters," by Throwing Muses. "Lots of cutters tonight, folks," the D.J. said. Jervis agreed. Lots of cutters. He looked fondly at the wrapped bouquet of roses. For you, Sarah. With love, from the Cutter.

He dressed with care-to kill, you might say. He put on the same jeans he'd worn when they first met, the same shoes, the same belt. He plugged his bullet holes with tissue and put on the black shirt she'd given him their first Christmas together. This was symbology. This was the past coming to the future. For such an important event, he had to look just right. He had to look perfect.

The last song on the radio was by Bauhaus: "Exquisite Corpse." Jervis combed his hair a final time. He slicked it back off his brow, not with Vitalis, but with Wilhelm's blood.

He lit a Carlton, grabbed the bouquet, and left. He walked cheerily out into the night. Across the quadrangle, Sarah's window was lit. No doubt she was waiting for Wilhelm, and that thought made Jervis smile. Wilhelm won't be coming over tonight, Sarah. He's a little bogged down right now. The bouquet felt heavy, its wrapping moist. When he knocked on room 202, the door opened at once. Sarah squealed, "w.i.l.l.y! You're so late! I was worried!"

"You better be worried," Jervis said.

A gasp froze in Sarah's chest. She stared. She wore canary-yellow pants, canary yellow shoes, and a Ram's Head Tavern T shirt.

Uninvited, Jervis stepped in. He closed the door.

"Jervis, I..." she started. Then her eyes narrowed. "You look...terrible."

"But I feel great," he said. "How are you, Sarah?"

She was shivering already, on the verge of making those canary yellow pants a bit more yellow. After a long, gauging pause, she answered, "I I'm fine."

"That's good. Aren't you going to ask me how I am?"

This query seemed to puzzle her. She did not blink at all. "All right Jervis. How are you?"

"How am I!" he exploded. "I'll tell you how I am! I'm f.u.c.kin' dead!"

He marched a mad circle about her, while she didn't move at all. His footfalls made the entire room vibrate, probably the entire building too. Frid, the cat, fled to the top of the refrigerator, while Sarah remained stock still. When Jervis pulled the Webley revolver out of his belt, a wet spot did indeed appear on the front of Sarah's canary yellow pants. It was a big spot.

"Oh, I'm not going to shoot you," he apologized. He set the gun down. "I came here...to give you this."

He gave her the bouquet. She took it, surprisingly, with no reluctance. "They're lovely, Jervis. Thank you," she said. She was faking it, of course, because she was scared. She sniffed the roses, paused. She looked into the bouquet.

Then she screamed.

Jervis laughed like a t.i.tan. The bouquet hit the floor and spilled open. Amid the beautiful fresh cut roses, there it lay, once grand, but now shriveled, parodic.

"What did-!" she hitched. "What did-what did-"

"Guess," Jervis offered, "and I'll even give you a hint. It ain't a ballpark frank in there."

"What did you do?" she shrieked.

"I cut off his d.i.c.k," Jervis said.

She screamed very unbecomingly and without abatement. Now she was stepping back, and Jervis was stepping forward.

"But that's nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you."

Frid watched placidly from its high perch. Like all cats, it seemed to care only for itself. Sarah continued to scream, throwing things as she backtracked in a circle. People are always throwing things at me, Jervis observed.

A Brother typewriter bounced off his head. A stereo receiver hit him in the face. Jervis shrugged it all off, maintaining a measured smile. Life had bestowed only weakness on him. Death, though, gave him power, physical and spiritual. He was the Seer, the Knower, the Destroyer.

"Enough," he said. "You're the last loose end of my old life. It's time for me to tie it up."

He threw her to the floor and straddled her. How should he do it? Break her neck? Crush her throat? No, he thought. Be creative. He must execute this last symbol with diversity, with style. His brain seemed to tick as he deliberated.