Subterranean Gallery Read online

  HE HEARD THE THRUMP OF AN APPROACHING DRAGONCUB

  For several minutes Rheinhardt couldn’t see it—there was only the regular thrumping sound, approaching from the north. Then he saw the shifting glitter of silver, the wash of twisting blue sky in its wake. The dragoncub came in fast and low, its dark, translucent shell shimmering. Within seconds it was over the group of chained vehicles; it expelled a burst of flashing missiles, then shot off as the cars and vans exploded.

  Metal and glass shattered, erupted up and inward, engulfed temporarily in flames, then showered to the ground in a small area within the ruins of the vehicles. None of the debris scattered far enough to strike any of the spectators or cops.

  The flames died almost immediately, leaving a smoking, charred mass of twisted, broken metal, shattered glass, melted rubber, fused plastic, and crumbled tile and concrete.

  Rheinhardt stared at the rubble, strongly reminded of the sculpture he was building. Remember this, he told himself, lock in the image so you can use it.

  Tor Books by Richard Paul Russo

  INNER ECLIPSE

  SUBTERRANEAN GALLERY

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  SUBTERRANEAN GALLERY

  Copyright © 1989 by Richard Paul Russo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  The words from the song “Cities in Dust” have been reproduced by kind permission of Dreamhouse/Chappell Music Ltd., written and recorded by Siouxsie and the Banshees © 1985.

  A TOR Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  49 West 24 Street

  New York, NY 10010

  Cover art by Don Brautigan

  ISBN: 0-812-55259-8 Can. ISBN: 0-812-55258-X

  First edition: July 1989

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This one, too, is for Sally

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to express special thanks to Pat Murphy, who read the manuscript and made many invaluable suggestions. I’d also like to thank Karen Joy Fowler, for her comments on the earliest version of this book, and, more importantly, for her friendship and support through some of the hard times. And finally I’d like to thank Wayne Wightman, who didn’t read any of the manuscript at any stage, but whose friendship made it a lot easier for me to write this book.

  Contents

  PART ONE - DEPARTURE

  Initial Departure

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  The Winter Gantry

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Initial Descent

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  PART TWO - RETURN

  Clinical X-Rays

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  The Subterranean Gallery

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Descent/Ascent:

  Artificial Gravity

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Epilogue

  PART ONE

  DEPARTURE

  Initial Departure

  One

  Rheinhardt twisted violently in the bed, made a loud, inhaling cry; head and shoulders rose abruptly as he pulled himself out of the nightmare, an arm flailing at the darkness. His hand struck someone’s face, and he cried out again, twisted out of the bed and onto his feet.

  He ran into the wall, pounded at it with his fists, swearing, then pushed away and dropped to the floor, rolled up against the bed. He grabbed the bed frame, began shaking it. “Fuckin’ son of a bitch…god damn fucking…” He rolled away from the bed, pounded several more times on the wall, trying to drive the images from his head, then was still.

  “Rheinhardt, it’s me, Terry. It’s all right, we’re in my apartment, my bedroom.” He didn’t answer her, his face pressed against the cool metal angle iron of the frame. He knew where he was. “Rheinhardt?”

  He was breathing heavily, trying to get air, slow down his heart, and he didn’t move.

  “Rheinhardt?”

  Rheinhardt put a hand on the bed, slowly rose to his feet, nodding. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I’m…” He turned and staggered out of the room, across the hall and into the bathroom.

  Leaving the light off, Rheinhardt dropped to his knees in front of the toilet, raised lid and seat, and vomited into the bowl. His stomach cramped tightly on him, and the retching kept on for several minutes as he pounded slowly on the linoleum floor with his fist. Sweat broke out across his body.

  The vomiting gradually eased, then ceased. When he thought it might be finally over, he flushed the toilet and sat back on his haunches for a moment. The floor creaked as he got to his feet and went to the sink. He turned on the cold water, cupped his hands under it, and rinsed his mouth several times. The bad taste gone, he splashed water onto his face, over and over.

  Rheinhardt was tall and thin, his dark hair short and stiff except for a narrow, foot-long tail at the back of his neck that had been bleached white. Twenty years out-of-date, Terry had said once, fondling the white tail. I’m not interested in fashion, he’d told her. It’s what I want. He took hold of the tail now, held tightly onto it until he felt somewhat steady.

  Rheinhardt turned off the water, then walked slowly back across the hall and into Terry’s bedroom. He could see her dim form, sitting up on the bed, looking at him. She probably didn’t know what to say or do; the nightmares were too infrequent for her, or him, to get used to them.

  “I hit you?”

  She nodded.

  “Sorry.”

  “You okay?” she asked.

  He stood at the foot of the bed, still breathing heavily, looking out the window. He brushed at the water still dripping from his face. “I guess,” he said. “Not really.” He shrugged. “No, I’m okay.” He breathed very deeply. “Fuck.”

  “Come on back to bed, Rheinhardt. Get some sleep.”

  Rheinhardt turned to look at her. “You can’t be serious.”

  “What are you going to do, stay awake the rest of the night?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “That bad.”

  “That bad.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “No.” He went to the chair, fumbled through his clothes for his cigarettes, lit one. After taking a couple of hits, he began dressing. When he was done, he went to the bedroom door, stopped and looked back at her. “I’m going out,” he said.

  “It’s three-thirty,” she said. “Bad time of night to be on the streets.” When he didn’t say anything in response, she asked, “Will you be back?”

  “I don’t know.” He turned away and left.

  The cold, damp air outside felt soothing. Rheinhardt started up the hill, the street deserted, the streetlights pale, casting misting cones of silver through the fog.

  A dog barked on his right, startling him for a moment, and he picked up his pace. He tried not to think at all about the nightmares,
but the hot white flames kept exploding in his mind, like strobe flashes in the night.

  A chopping sound cut the quiet air, approaching, and Rheinhardt dashed toward the nearest building, crashed into it, pressing his body flat against the cold brick. Sweat popped out on his forehead, under his arms, and his heartbeat stepped up, pounded painfully against his ribs. Jesus Christ, he thought, I don’t need this kind of shit. He knew there was no danger from the helicopter overhead, invisible in the fog, his mind knew that; but his body had reacted as if…Christ, as if the dream was coming true.

  The chopping sound faded in the distance and he pushed away from the wall, forced himself forward again, walking quickly up the hill. Too much energy, the adrenaline was racing through him, he couldn’t stop it. His pulse was still too strong and rapid, the sweat continued to pour from him. He kept walking.

  Rheinhardt didn’t know where he was going, and he didn’t care; he just had to keep moving. The street leveled off for a few blocks, but the sidewalk grew darker as thick trees blocked the light from the street-lamps. He passed in and out of dark, heavy shadows, outlines irregular with the shape of leaves, shifting slightly with the occasional gentle breeze.

  A cat ran across the sidewalk, yowled as it leaped onto a windowsill, and he jerked back, another shot of adrenaline slamming into his heart. When headlights appeared from behind him a moment later, followed by the rumble of an engine, Rheinhardt instinctively broke into a run.

  He tried to stop himself, but his legs and arms were running on instinct, would not obey his commands. It was as if his mind and body had become separated, with only a fragile, passive link remaining between them. All he could do was watch himself react and run.

  He ran up a porch and into shadows as the car passed, then a few moments later began running again, down the porch steps and across the street, watching the red taillights grow smaller. At the next corner he turned, still jogging, headed uphill once more.

  At the top of the hill, his breath ragged and fast, he paused for a minute, looking in all directions, then started jogging down the street to his right, which sloped gently downhill for a block before leveling out.

  The chopping of a helicopter sounded once more, and Rheinhardt lost all control. He shifted to a full-out run, hardly seeing where he was going. Dogs barked all around him, it seemed, and the city night seemed to grow louder with crashing sounds, windows being slammed shut, cars roaring, wheels squealing. His vision flared on him, the white flash bursting behind his eyes the way it had on night patrols from the uppers they gave him, and new lines of silver clarity appeared around everything.

  He came around a corner, crashed into a man walking along the sidewalk, almost fell, dashed across the street as the man yelled something after him. Headlights came at him from two cars, he reversed directions, cut to the side, plunged through bushes and over a low fence into a small yard of cement and thick, dark trees. He stumbled over a garbage can, knocked down a bicycle, and a small dog emerged from the side of the house, yelping furiously. Rheinhardt kicked at it without making contact, stumbled toward another section of fence, scrambled over it into a narrow alley between two buildings. Weaving back and forth, he emerged back onto the street, and kept on running.

  Rheinhardt lost all sense of where he was, or where he was headed. He ran down one street after another, his body reacting to traffic, animals, people, unidentifiable sounds. Several times he ran into parked cars he didn’t see; he pushed through bushes with branches scraping his arms; he tripped over cracks in the sidewalks or tree roots or sprinklers. He ran.

  The streets and buildings changed, grew darker and even more deserted. Houses and apartments gave way to silent machine shops, warehouses, grilled-over bars and stores. Finally, slowing down to a half jog, incredibly tired, Rheinhardt realized he was only a few blocks from the Warehouse. The night seemed to have calmed, quieted, tension in the air dissipated. The sparkling in his vision faded. Rheinhardt managed to slow down to a walk, made it to the cyclone fencing without breaking into another run.

  Rheinhardt stood outside the fence for several minutes, his breath and pulse still rapid. His vision blurred with each beat of his heart, his lungs scraped with pain at each breath. He felt sick to his stomach, thought he might start retching again.

  The Warehouse buildings were dark, but they weren’t empty. Close to a hundred and fifty people were inside, “fellow” artists. Shit, most of them were hacks or frauds. His own studio was inside the building, high in the rafters, but he couldn’t go there yet—it was still too dark, he didn’t dare go to sleep. He had to do something else. Anything else.

  When his breathing had eased, he unlocked the gate with his magnetic key card and code, went through, and crossed the lot of cracked and potholed pavement. He circled the main building to the steel ladder built into the back wall, leading up to the roof thirty feet above. He started up.

  He was out of breath again by the time he pulled up onto the roof, but it didn’t matter; there was still too much energy inside him. He walked across the tar and gravel surface to Kate’s lean-to and all her scrap metal and welding equipment. It had been years since he’d done any welding, but he couldn’t even think about going inside and working with the clay. He wasn’t trying to create anything worth a damn anyway. He just needed something to do.

  Rheinhardt donned the protective gear, hauled out the welding equipment and the crates of metal. He positioned the goggles over his eyes, fired up the torch, stared at the cool blue-white flame. Then he started melting filler rods and welding metal to metal with hardly a thought, aware only enough to perform the necessary movements. He worked steadily, without pause.

  At dawn, as the sun began to rise, the fog gone and the sky clear, Rheinhardt cut the flame. He removed the goggles, put all the welding equipment away, then looked at what he had done. On the workbench was a shapeless mass of bent and twisted metal, nothing more than a pile of junk. Good. That’s all he wanted.

  He could hardly move, could barely stay on his feet. All his muscles trembled with exhaustion. Still wearing gloves and work apron, Rheinhardt walked out along the roof toward the far edge, where the sun was beginning to shine. He lay down on the gravel in a narrow strip of light and warmth, body pressed against the ridge. Then he closed his eyes, and slept.

  Two

  Inside Cafe Olivia it was warm. It was a tiny place just off Lombard, half a block from the Presidio, with five tables and no counter. The tip of one of the Golden Gate Bridge towers was just barely visible through the window. Rheinhardt, the only customer, sat at the window table eating breakfast, reading the newspaper and feeling depressed.

  Africa had regained prominence in the news the last few weeks, with U.S. troops now in Namibia and in the Sahara—in Chad, he thought, Ethiopia, and the Sudan. It never seemed to change much, it only moved from one country to another, and sometimes back again. Rheinhardt seriously doubted whether anyone knew exactly what the hell was going on anymore, or what the reasons were.

  Namibia was in the headlines today, and Rheinhardt skimmed the stories—riots in a township outside Windhoek, quelled by government forces aided by U.S. troops; an American diplomatic aide and his wife and children burned to death in their car at a roadblock. He read most of an article on the Congressional debate over increasing military aid to the right-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua in the face of reports of severe human rights abuses (we put them there, we’ll keep them there, he thought). There was another bad toxic spill on a highway in the East Bay, nearly a hundred people hospitalized with skin and eye burns and irritations, half a dozen in critical condition. The city’s board of supervisors was debating another raise of Muni fares, only six months after the last increase. Rheinhardt folded over the front page, lit a cigarette, and started through the inside pages. He was halfway through the front section when the bell above the front door jingled.

  Stoke stepped into the cafe, grinning—thin and gangly, he wore a tight, dark green nylon jumpsuit and heavy-sol
ed, red leather boots. He waved at Martin in the back. “Heya, Martin. I’ll have a cup of coffee.” He sat across from Rheinhardt, gestured at the newspaper. “You just won’t quit, will you? Look at your hands.”

  Rheinhardt glanced at his hands, saw them trembling slightly. At the same time he became more acutely aware of the anger and frustration swirling around inside him. Nothing new, really. He closed the newspaper, carefully folded it, and put it on the floor beside him.

  “We both know the world is fucked up,” Stoke went on. “Why do you have to keep reminding yourself every day, read the god damn newspaper? That, and what’s that weekly one you get?”

  “The Nation.”

  “Right. Every fucking day, Rheinhardt. Why? You aren’t going to change anything, so what’s the point, getting worked up all the time?”

  Rheinhardt didn’t answer. He took a final hit on his cigarette, then crushed it out.

  Martin, the big, bearded man who ran the cafe, came by the table with coffee for Stoke, took Rheinhardt’s plate, then retreated without a word to the back of the cafe where he sat with a mug of tea, reading. Something by Kafka, was all Rheinhardt could make out.

  “Hey,” Stoke said. Grinning again. “You know what we should call you? The Watcher. Sure, the way you keep up with things all the time, the news and stuff, and the way you’re always looking at people, watching them. Even at parties, you don’t talk or do much, just hang out and watch. I’ve seen you, Rheinhardt. Sure, we should start calling you the Watcher.”

  “It’s what they called me down in the ’mericas,” Rheinhardt said.

  “Really?”

  Rheinhardt nodded. “Same reason, I guess. I didn’t say much, kept my eyes open all the time, looking everywhere, watching everything. If I was going to get killed, I wanted to see it coming. No search and destroy, just fucking search and search. So they started calling me the Watcher. It’s from some old comic book character, Catanzaro said.” Rheinhardt shrugged.

  “Who was Catanzaro?”