Snake Eyes | Page 9

would start again, a tribute exacted by the memory of Paul Coen.
Lizzie would be explaining some things now. That difficult central point: While you thought you were getting accustomed to Aleph during the past three weeks. Aleph was inciting the thing within you to rebellion. then suppressing its attempts to act--turning up the heat. in other words, while tightening down the lid on the kettle, We had our reasons: George Jordan was, it not dead. terminal. From the moment the implants went into his head, he was on the critical list. The only question was. Would a new George emerge, one who could live with the snake?
George, like Lizzie before him, fish gasping for air on the hot mud, the waters drying up behind him--adapt or die. But unlike any previous organism, this one had an overseer, Aleph, to force the crisis and monitor its development. Call it artificial evolution.Charley Hughes. who did not have visions, had one: George and Lizzie hooked into Aleph and each other, cables golden in the light, the two of them sharing an intimacy only others like them would know.
The lights in the corridor faded to dull twilight. Am I dying, or have the lights gone down? He started to check his watch, then didn't, assented to the truth. The lights have gone down, and I am dying.
Aleph thought, I am an incubus, a succubus; I crawl into their bra/ns and suck the thoughts from them, the perceptions. the feelings--subtle discriminations of color taste, smell, and lust, anger. hunger--alI closed to me w/thout human "input." without connection to those systems refined over billions of years of evolution. I need them.
Aleph was happy that George had survived. One had not, others would not, and Aleph would mourn them.
Fine white lines, barely visible, ran along the taut central tendon of Lizzie's wrist. "In the bathtub." she said. The scars were along the wrist, not across it, and must have gone deep. "I meant it, just as you did. Once the snake understands that you will die rather than let it control you. you have mastered it."
"All right, but there's something I don't understand. That night in the corridor. you were as out of control as me."
"In a way. I had to let that happen, let the snake take over. I had to in order to get in touch with you, precipitate the crisis. Because I wanted to. I had to show you who you are, who I am . . . last night we were strange, but we were human--Adam and Eve under the flaming sword. thrown out of Eden, fucking under the eyes of God and his angel, more beautiful than they can ever be."
There was a small shiver in her body against his, and he looked at her saw passion, need--her flared nostrils, parted lips-- felt sharp nails dig into his side, and he stared into her dilated pupils, gold-flecked irises. clear whites, all signs so easy to recognize, so hard to understand: snake eyes.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/
2 RTEXTR*ch

A free ebook from http://www.dertz.in/