Eric Brown - Venus Macabre

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Venus Macabre

By Eric Brown.

Devereaux chose Venus as the venue for his last performance for two main reasons: the stars cannot

be seen from the surface of the planet, and Venus is where he first died.

His performance parties are the event of the social calender on whichever world he visits. The

rich and famous are gathered tonight on the cantilevered patio of Manse Venusia, deep within the

jungle of the southern continent: film stars and their young escorts, ambassadors and ministers of

state, artists and big-name critics.

They are all here, come to witness Jean-Philipe Devereaux perform what Le Figaro once described,

before the Imams invoked the sharia on Earth and censored the reporting of such decadence, as 'an

event of diabolical majesty!'

Devereaux wears a white silk suit, Italian cut, long-lapelled. He moves from group to group with

ease and grace. He converses knowledgeably with politicians and film stars, scientists and karque-

hunters alike. His reputation as a polymath precedes him; intellectuals queue to fox him, in vain,

with the latest conundrums of the age. He seems to have an intimate understanding of every

vocation, philosophy and theory under the three hundred-and-counting suns of the Expansion.

Many guests, hoping that they might fathom the mystery of the man, find after a few minute's

conversation that he is an enigma too deep to plumb. A paradox, also. He talks about everything,

everything, but his art. The implication is that his art speaks for itself. Guests speculate that

his pre-show ritual of socialisation - a bestowing upon them of his brilliance - is a ploy to

point up the disparity between the urbanity of the man and the barbarity of his act, thereby

commenting on the dichotomy inherent in the human condition. At least, this is the theory of those

who have never before witnessed his performances. The guests who have followed his act from planet

to planet around the Expansion know not to make such naive assumptions: his art is more

complicated than that, they say, or alternatively more simple. One guest alone, beneath the

arching crystal dome, speculates that his creations are nothing more than a catharsis, a blowing-

out of the intense psychological pressures within his tortured psyche.

"By the way," Devereaux quips, almost as an afterthought, to each clique, "this will be my very

last public performance."

He registers their surprise, their shock, and then the dawning realisation that they will witness

tonight that pinnacle of performance arts, the ultimate act.

Devereaux moves from the marbled patio, up three steps to the bar. As he pours himself a cognac,

he disengages from his Augmentation - that part of him he calls the Spider, which he employs in

conversation with his guests - and descends to the biological. The descent is a merciful relief.

He leaves behind the constant white noise of guilt which fills the Spider with despair. As he

settles himself into his biological sensorium, he can tolerate the remorse: it simmers in his

subconscious, emerging only occasionally in berserker fits of rage and self-loathing. He downs the

cognac in one.

Devereaux turns to the guests gathered below and experiences a wave of hatred and disgust. He

despises their ignorance. More, he despises their lack of understanding, their easy acceptance

that what he lays before them is the epitome of fine art. He tells himself that he should not

submit to such anger. Their very presence, at one thousand units a head, more than subsidises the

cost of his therapy.

Across the crowded patio he catches sight of a familiar figure, and wonders if he is the

exception. He did not invite Daniel Carrington; he came as the friend of a guest. Carrington

stands in conversation with a Terraform scientist. He is tall and dark-haired. The perfection of

his face is marred by a deep scar which runs down his forehead, between his eyes, over the bridge

of his nose and across his left cheek. He was attacked six months ago by an irate subscriber to

Venus-Satellite Vid-Vision, on which he hosts the most watched, though at the same time most

hated, prime-time show. Carrington films suicides in the act of taking their lives. He employs an

empath to locate potential subjects, and a swoop-team of camera-people and engineers. He films the

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death and follows it up with an in-depth psychological profile of the individual's life and their

reasons for ending it. Wherever he is in the Expansion, Devereaux makes a point of watching the

show. There is no doubting Carrington's sincerity, his humanitarianism, and yet although the

programme is watched by everyone, he is universally reviled: it is as if his viewers, needing to

transfer their guilt at their voyeurism, find in Daniel Carrington an obvious scapegoat... When he

was attacked last year, he chose not to have the evidence of his mutilation repaired. He wears his

wounds as the ultimate exhibition of defiant iconography.

Devereaux thinks that Carrington might be the only person in all the Expansion capable of

understanding him.

He lays his glass aside and claps his hands.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you please. I beg your indulgence."

Faces stare up at him.

He begins by telling them the story of the benign dictator of Delta Pavonis III, who loved his

people and whose people loved him; a man of wisdom, wit and charm, who was assassinated long

before resurrection techniques became the plaything of the ultra-rich.

"Tonight you will witness the tragedy of his demise."

He leads them from the dome and out onto the deck of the split-level garden, into the balmy sub-

tropical night. On the lower deck is a stage, and before it the holographic projection of a crowd.

The guests look down on a scene long gone, something quaint and maybe even poignant in the odd

architecture of the stage, the costumes and coiffures of the colonists.

Devereaux descends to the lower deck, walks among the spectral crowd. They respond, cheer him.

Something has happened to his appearance. He no longer resembles Jean-Philipe Devereaux.

Projectors have transformed him into the double of the dictator. He mounts the stage and begins a

speech - addressing not the crowd with a litany of policies and promises, but speaking to his

guests. He recounts the life of the dictator, his theories and ideals.

The social elite of Venus watch, entranced.

Devereaux gestures.

Seconds before he is flayed alive in the laser crossfire, he sees Daniel Carrington staring down

at him in appalled fascination. Then all is light as a dozen laser bolts find their target.

Purely as visual effect, his demise is beautiful to behold. His body is struck by the first laser;

it drills his chest, turning him sideways. The second strikes laterally into his ribcage,

compensating the turn and giving his already dying body the twitching vitality of a marionette.

Then a dozen other bolts slam into him, taking the meat from his bones in a spectacular ejection

of flesh and blood. For a fraction of a second, though it seems longer to the spectators, his

skull remains suspended in mid-air - grotesquely connected to his spinal cord - before it falls

and rolls away.

Then darkness, silence.

After an initial pause, a period during which they are too shocked and stricken to move, the

guests return inside. They are quiet, speaking barely in whispers as they try to evaluate the

merit of the performance as a work of art.

On the darkened deck below, the hired surgeons and their minions are conscientiously gathering

together Devereaux's remains. Hovering vacuums inhale his atomised body fluids; robot-drones

collect the shards of bone and flaps of flesh. His skull has come to rest in one corner, grinning

inanely.

From the circular orbit of the left eye socket, a silver ovoid the size of a swan's egg slowly

emerges. A polished dome shows first, then pauses. Next, a long, jointed leg pulls itself free of

the constriction, then another and another, until all eight are extricated. The Spider stands,

straddling the ivory, grinning skull. Devereaux, with a three hundred and sixty degree view of the

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surrounding deck and the salvage work going on there, tests the Spider's spindly limbs one by one.

When he has mastery of their movement, he hurries off towards the dome. The legs lift high and

fast with an impression of mincing fastidiousness as he skitters through the bloody remains.

Locked within the digitised sensorium of the Spider, Devereaux is a prisoner of the guilt that

suffuses the analogue of his mind. At least, when he inhabits his physical self, the guilt shunts

itself off into the storage of his subconscious for long periods. The memory of his sins, his

remorse and regret, have no refuge in the Spider: they are all up front, demanding attention. He

cries out in silence for the refuge of his biological brain. He does not know how he will tolerate

the next seven days, while the surgeons rebuild his body.

He scuttles up a ramp, through the garden and into the dome where the guests are gathered. A dozen

of his spider-like toys scurry hither and yon, affording him the perfect cover.

He finds Carrington and climbs onto the back of an empty chair. He stands and watches, his body

pulsing on the sprung suspension of his silver limbs.

"Perhaps," Carrington is saying, "rather than viewing his art from the standpoint of trying to

work out what he means, what we should be asking ourselves is why? Why does he employ this macabre

art form in the first place?"

There is silence around the table.

"Maybe," Carrington goes on, "the answer lies not so much in Devereaux's attempting to come to

terms with the outside world, but with the monster that inhabits the darkness of his inner self."

Carrington turns his head and looks at the Spider, but his eyes do not dwell long enough for

Devereaux to be sure if he knows for certain.

"I've heard it said that our host was once a starship pilot."

The Spider climbs down from the chair and skitters across the marble floor towards the darkness of

the manse.

For Devereaux, the seven days he is captive in the Spider seem like as many years. Never has he

known the time to pass so slowly. While he exists within the Spider he cannot sleep, nor shut down

the process of intellection. The unbearable recollections from all those years ago howl without

cessation in his awareness.

On the eighth day he is restored to his biological self. It is like coming home, returning to a

familiar, comfortable domicile. He hurries to the lounge and checks his video and fax for calls.

There is a communique from Daniel Carrington. Will Devereaux care to meet him in Port City, to

discuss a business proposal?

That evening, Devereaux sits in a leather armchair overlooking the jungle. He is aware of the

degeneration of his body. He is exhausted. His bones ache. He is beset by irregular muscular

spasms, hot and cold flushes and bouts nausea. This is to be expected. How many times has this

body died, and been put back together again? Fifteen, twenty? Devereaux gives thanks that soon it

will all be over. He looks ahead to his rendezvous with Carrington, the confession he will make to

someone he feels sure will understand his guilt.

Devereaux hires a chauffeured air-car to transport him the five hundred kilometres to Port City.

The metropolis has changed since his first visit to Venus, twenty years ago. Then it was little

more than the beachhead settlement of an infant colony, struggling for autonomy from Earth. Now it

is a thriving community the size of Tokyo or Rio, grown rich from the mining of the planet's many

natural resources.

The air-car descends and speeds through the twilight streets to the headquarters of VenuSat, the

station with which Carrington has his show.

He takes an elevator to the penthouse suite. A servant shows him along a corridor and into a

large, glass-enclosed room, more like a greenhouse than a lounge, filled with a riot of brilliant

blooms and vines. A white grand piano occupies an area of carpeted floor before a view of the

illuminated city. Black and white photographs stare at him from every wall. He recognises them as

the late subjects of Carrington's shows.

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Eric Brown - Venus Macabre

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