Prayers to Broken Stones by Dan Simmons
The doctor glanced up as he scraped at his pipe bowl. His mouth was slightly open, showing white teeth, healthy gums, and a hint of tongue slightly curled in concentration. From beneath that tongue came first the fleshy antennae and then the green-gray body of a tumor slug, this one no more than a few centimeters long. It moved higher along the psychiatrist’s jaw, sliding in and out of the muscles and skin of the man’s cheek as effortlessly as a maggot moving in a compost heap. Deeper in the shadows of the doctor’s mouth, something larger stirred.
“It can’t hurt to talk about it,” said the doctor. “After all, that’s what I’m here for.”
Louis nodded, pocketed his mirror, and walked straight to the door without looking back.
Louis found that it was easy to buy mirrors cheaply. They were available, framed and unframed, at used furniture outlets, junkshops, discount antique dealers, hardware stores, glass shops and even in people’s stacks of junk sitting on the curb awaiting pickup. It took Louis less than a week to fill his small apartment with mirrors.
His bedroom was the best protected. Besides the twenty-three mirrors of various sizes on the walls, the ceiling had been completely covered with mirrors. He had put them up himself, pressing them firmly into the glue, feeling slightly more secure with each reflective square he set in place.
Louis was lying on his bed on a Saturday afternoon in May, staring at the reflections of himself, thinking about a conversation he had just had with his sister Lee, when Debbie called. She wanted to come over. He suggested that they meet on the Pearl Street Mall instead.
There were three passengers and two of them on the bus. One had been in the rear seat when Louis boarded, another came through the closed doors when the bus stopped for a red light. The first time he had seen one of the cancer vampires pass through a solid object, Louis had been faintly relieved, as if something so insubstantial could not be a serious threat. He no longer felt that way. They did not float through walls in the delicate, effortless glide of a ghost; Louis watched while the hairless head and sharp shoulders of this thing struggled to penetrate the closed doors of the bus, wiggling like someone passing through a thick sheet of cellophane. Or like some vicious newborn predator chewing its way through its own amniotic sac.
Louis pulled down another of the small mirrors attached by wires to the brim of his Panama hat and watched while the second cancer vampire joined the first and the two closed on the old lady sitting with her shopping bags two rows behind him. She sat stiffly upright, hands on her lap, staring straight ahead, not even blinking, as one of the cancer vampires raised its ridged funnel of a mouth to her throat, the motion as intimate and gentle as a lover’s opening kiss. For the first time Louis noticed that the rim of the thing’s proboscis was lined with a circle of blue cartilage which looked as sharp as razor blades. He caught a glimpse of gray-green flowing into the folds of the old lady’s neck. The second cancer vampire lowered its ponderous head to her belly like a tired child preparing to rest on its mother’s lap.
Louis stood, pulled the cord, and got off five blocks before his stop.
Few places in America, Louis thought, showed off health and wealth better than the three outdoor blocks of Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. A pine-scented breeze blew down from the foothills less than a quarter of a mile to the west as shoppers browsed, tourists strolled, and the locals lounged. The average person in sight was under thirty-five, tanned and fit, and wealthy enough to dress in the most casual pre-washed, pre-faded, pre-wrinkled clothes. Young men dressed only in brief trunks and sweat jogged down the mall, occasionally glancing down at their watches or their own bodies. The young women in sight were almost unanimously thin and braless, laughing with beautifully capped teeth, sitting on grassy knolls or benches with their legs spread manfully in poses out of Vogue. Healthy looking teenagers with spikes of hair dyed unhealthy colors licked at their two-dollar Dove bars and three-dollar Häagen-Dazs cones. The spring sunlight on the brick walkways and flower beds promised an endless summer.
“Look,” said Louis as he and Debbie sat near Freddy’s hot dog stand and watched the crowds flow past, “my view of things right now is just too goddamn ugly to accept. Maybe everybody could see this shit if they wanted to, but they just refuse to.” He lowered two of his mirrors and swiveled. He had tried mirrored sunglasses but that had not worked; only the full mirror-reversal allowed him to see. There were six mirrors clipped to his hat, more in his pockets.
“Oh, Louis,” said Debbie. “I just don’t understand …”
“I’m serious,” snapped Louis. “We’re like the people who lived in the villages of Dachau or Auschwitz. We see the fences, watch the trainloads of loaded cattle cars go by everyday, smell the smoke of the ovens … and pretend it isn’t happening. We let these things take everybody, as long as it isn’t us. There! See that heavyset man near the bookstore?”
“Yes?” Debbie was near tears.
“Wait,” said Louis. He brought out his larger pocket mirror and turned at an angle. The man was wearing tan slacks and a loose Hawaiian shirt that did not hide his fat. He sipped at a drink in a red styrofoam cup and stood reading a folded copy of the Boulder Daily Camera. Four child-sized blurs clustered around him. One closed long fingers around the man’s throat and pulled himself up across the man’s arm and belly.
“Wait,” repeated Louis and moved away from Debbie, scuttling sideways to keep the group framed in the mirror. The three cancer vampires did not look up as Louis came within arm’s length; the fourth slid its long cone of a mouth toward the man’s face.
“Wait!” screamed Louis and struck out, head averted, seeing his fist pass through the pale back of the clinging thing. There was the faintest of gelatinous givings and a chill numbed the bones of his fist and arm. Louis stared at his mirror.
All four of the cancer vampires’ heads snapped around, blind yellow eyes fixed on Louis. He sobbed and struck again, feeling his fist pass through the thing with no effect and bounce weakly off the fat man’s chest. Two of the white blurs swiveled slowly toward Louis.
“Hey, goddammit!” shouted the fat man and struck at Louis’s arm.
The mirror flew out of Louis’s left hand and shattered on the brick pavement. “Oh, Jesus,” whispered Louis, backing away. “Oh Jesus.” He turned and ran, snapping down a mirror on his hat as he did so, seeing nothing but the dancing, vibrating frame. He grabbed Debbie by the wrist and tugged her to her feet. “Run!”
They ran.
Louis awoke sometime after two A.M., feeling disoriented and drugged. He felt for Debbie, remembered that he had gone back to his own apartment after they had made love. He lay in the dark, wondering what had awakened him.
His nightlight had burned out.
Louis felt a flush of cold fear, cursed, and rolled over to turn on the table lamp next to his bed. He blinked in the sudden glare, seeing blurred reflections of himself blink back from the ceiling, walls, and door.
Other things also moved in the room.
A pale face with yellow eyes pushed its way through the door and mirror. Fingers followed, finding a hold on the doorframe, pulling the body through like a climber mastering an overhang. Another face rose to the right of Louis’s bed with the violent suddenness of someone stepping out of one’s closet in the middle of the night, extracted its arm, and reached for the blanket bunched at the foot of Louis’s bed.
“Ah,” panted Louis and rolled off the bed. Except for the closet there was only the single door, closed and locked. He glanced up at the ceiling mirrors in time to see the first white shape release itself from the wood and glass and stand between the door and him. As he stared upward at his own reflection, at himself dressed in pajamas and lying on his back on the tan carpet, he watched wide-eyed as something white rippled and rose through the carpet not three feet from where he lay: a broad curve of dead grub flesh followed by a second white oval, the back and head of the thing floating up through the floor like a swimmer rising to his knees in three feet of water.
Louis rolled sideways and back, scrambled to his feet, used a heavy chair by his bed to smash the window glass and threw the chair behind him. The rope ladder tied to the base of his bed had been left behind by a paranoid ex-roommate of Louis’s who had refused to live on a third floor without a fire escape.
Louis looked up, saw white hands converging, threw the knotted rope out the window and followed it, bruising knuckles and knees against the brick wall as he clambered down.
He looked up repeatedly but there were no mirrors in the cold spring darkness and he had no idea if anything was following.
They used Debbie’s car to leave, driving west up the canyon into the mountains. Louis was wearing an old pair of jeans, green sweatshirt, and paint-spattered sneakers he had left at Debbie’s after helping to paint her new apartment in January. She owned only a single portable mirror—an eighteen by twenty-four inch glass set into an antique frame above the fireplace—and Louis had ripped it off the wall and brought it along, checking every inch of the car before allowing her to enter it.
“Where are we going?” she asked as they turned south out of Nederland on the Peak to Peak Highway. The Continental Divide glowed in weak moonlight to their right. Their headlights picked out black walls of pine and stretches of snow as the narrow road wound up and around.
“Lee’s cabin,” said Louis. “West on the old Rollins Pass road.”
“I know the cabin,” said Debbie. “Will Lee be there?”
“She’s still in Des Moines,” he said. He blinked rapidly. “She called just before you did this afternoon. She found a … lump. She saw a doctor there but is going to fly back to get the biopsy.”
“Louis, I …” began Debbie.
“Turn here,” said Louis.
They drove the last two miles in silence.
The cabin had a small generator to power lights and the refrigerator but Louis preferred not to spend time filling it and priming it in the darkness out back. He asked Debbie to stay in the car while he took the mirror inside, lit two of the large candles Lee kept on the mantel, and walked through the three small rooms of the cabin with the mirror reflecting the flickering candle flame and his own pale face and staring eyes. By the time he waved Debbie inside, he had a fire going in the fireplace and the sleeper sofa in the main room was pulled out.
In the dancing light from the fireplace and candles, Debbie’s hair looked impossibly red. Her eyes were tired.
“It’s only a few hours until morning,” said Louis. “I’ll go into Nederland when we wake up and get some supplies.”
Debbie touched his arm. “Louis, can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Wait, wait,” he said, staring into the dark corners. “There’s one more thing. Undress.
“Louis …”
“Undress!” Louis was already tugging off his shirt and pants. When they were both out of their clothes, Louis propped the mirror on a chair and had them stand in front of it, turning slowly. Finally satisfied, he dropped to his knees and looked up at Debbie. She stood very still, the firelight rising and falling on her white breasts and the soft V of red pubic hair. The freckles on her shoulders and upper chest seemed to glow.
“Oh, God,” said Louis and buried his face in his hands. “God, Deb, you must think I’m absolutely crazy.”
She crouched next to him and ran her fingers down his back. “I don’t know what’s going on, Louis,” she whispered, “but I know that I love you.”
“I’ll tell you …” began Louis, feeling the terrible pressure in his chest threaten to expand into sobs.
“In the morning,” whispered Debbie and kissed him softly.
They made love slowly, seriously, time and their senses slowed and oddly amplified by the late hour, strange place, and fading sense of danger. Just when both of them felt the urgency quickening, Louis whispered, “Wait a second,” and lay on one side, running his hand and then his mouth under the folds of her breasts, up, licking the nipples back into hardness, then kissing the curve of her belly and opening her thighs with his hand, sliding his face and body lower.
Louis closed his eyes and imagined a kitten lapping milk. He tasted the salt sweetness of the sea while Debbie softened and opened herself further to him. His palms stroked the tensed smoothness of her inner thighs while her breathing came more quickly, punctuated by soft, sharp gasps of pleasure.
There was a sudden hissing behind them. The light flared and wavered.
Louis turned, sliding off the foot of the bed onto one knee, aware of the pounding of his heart and the extra vulnerability his nakedness and excitement forced on him. He looked and gasped a laugh.
“What?” whispered Debbie, not moving.
“It’s just the candle I set on the floor,” he whispered back. “It’s drowning in its own melted wax. I’ll blow it out.”
He leaned over and did so, pausing as he moved back to the foot of the bed to take in a single, voyeuristic glance in the mirror propped on the chair.
Firelight played across the two lovers framed there, Louis’s flushed face and Debbie’s white thighs, both glistening slightly from perspiration and the moisture of their lovemaking. Seen from this angle the dancing light illuminated the copper tangle of her pubic hair and roseate ovals of moist labia with a soft clarity too purely sensuous to be pornographic. Louis felt the tides of love and sexual excitement swell in him.
He caught the movement in the mirror out of the corner of his eye a second before he would have lowered his head again. A glimmer of slick gray-green between pale pink lips. No more than a few centimeters long. Undeterred by the dim light, the twin polyps of antennae emerged slowly, twisting and turning slightly as if to taste the air.
“I didn’t know you had an interest in oncology,” said Dr. Phil Collins. He grinned at Louis across his cluttered desk. “I thought you rarely came out of the physics lab up at the University.”
Louis stared at his old classmate. He was much too tired for banter. He had not slept for 52 hours and his eyes felt like they were lined with sand and broken glass. “I need to see the radiation treatment part of chemotherapy,” he said.
Collins tapped manicured nails against the edge of his desk. “Louis, we can’t just give guided tours of our therapy sessions every time someone gets an interest in the process.”
Louis forced his voice to stay even. “Look, Phil, my mother died of cancer a few weeks ago. My sister just underwent a biopsy that showed malignancy. My fiancée checked into Boulder Community a few hours ago with a case of cervical cancer that they’re pretty sure also involves her uterus. Now will you let me watch the procedure or not?”
“Jesus,” said Collins. He glanced at his watch. “Come on, Louis, you can make the rounds with me. Mr. Taylor is scheduled to receive his treatment in about twenty minutes.”
The man was forty-seven but looked thirty years older. His eyes were sunken and bruised. His skin had a yellowish cast under the fluorescent lights. His hair had fallen out and Louis could make out small pools of blood under the skin.
They stood behind a lead-lined shield and watched through thick ports. “The medication is a very important part of it,” said Collins. “It both augments and complements the radiation treatment.”
“And the radiation kills the cancer?” asked Louis.
“Sometimes,” said Collins. “Unfortunately it kills healthy cells as well as the ones which have run amok.”
Louis nodded and raised his hand mirror. When the device was activated he made a small, involuntary sound. A brilliant burst of violet light filled the room, centering on the tip of the X-ray machine. Louis realized that the glow was similar to that of the bug-zapper devices he had seen in yards at night, the light sliding beyond visible frequencies in a maddening way. But this was a thousand times brighter.
The tumor slugs came out. They
Those that reached the source of the X-rays fell dead to the floor. The others retreated into the darkness of flesh when the X-ray light died.
“… hope that helps give you some idea of the therapy involved,” Collins was saying. “It’s a frustrating field because we’re not quite sure of why everything works the way it does, but we’re making strides all of the time.”
Louis blinked. Mr. Taylor was gone. The violet glow of the X-rays was gone. “Yes,” he said. “I think that helps a lot.”
Two nights later, Louis sat next to his sleeping sister in the semi-darkness of her hospital room. The other bed was empty. Louis had sneaked in during the middle of the night and the only sound was the hiss of the ventilation system and the occasional squeak of a rubber-soled shoe in the corridor. Louis reached out a gloved hand and touched Lee’s wrist just below the green hospital identity bracelet. “I thought it’d be easy, kiddo,” he whispered. “Remember the movies we watched when we were little? James Arness in The Thing? Figure out what kills it and rig it up.” Louis felt the nausea sweep over him again and he lowered his head, breathing in harsh gulps. A minute later he straightened again, moving to wipe the cold sweat off his brow but frowning when the leather of the thick glove contacted his skin. He held Lee’s wrist again. “Life ain’t so easy, kiddo. I worked nights in Mac’s high energy lab at the University. It was easy to irradiate things with that X-ray laser toy Mac cobbled together to show the sophomores the effects of ionizing radiation.”
Lee stirred, moaned slightly in her sleep. Somewhere a soft chime sounded three times and was silenced. Louis heard two of the floor nurses chatting softly as they walked to the staff lounge for their two A.M. break. Louis left his gloved hand just next to her wrist, not quite touching.