Free The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison

waves. 'He's misjudged it. Down here — ' He nudged Truck excitedly. 'It couldn't be stopped from outside. But down here the system's closed. Look at those faces! Truck, they're bored !'
    The breakdown was quick and cruel. Aimless patterns developed as the guests blundered about the cistern to the invisible rhythms of their ennui; the heat poured down unceasingly, settled in the hollows of their collarbones; their party clothes became adhesive, rumpled.

    Silence, but for the shuffle of feet. Some of them lay down, the rest carefully trod on them, eyes fixed elsewhere. In the face of the overwhelming quiet, they condensed like a spiral Galaxy, tracking in to the center of the room.
    'The port exit, if you want to go,' said Tiny. 'Over there.' And they set out to push their way through the congealing clot of flesh. Someone gripped Truck's shoulders: Horst-Sylvia, the biological sculptress, with her heaving coloratura bosom; yellow, motionless eyes stared into his own in passive, mute interrogation. Her jewels glittered. He dragged himself away.
    'I . . . ' said a voice near him, in the nightmare tones of the partially deaf, 'I . . . eye . . . aye . . . ' A dreadful, stammering pause. 'I know . . . what you mean. Hermann . . . Hermann Goring . . . so . . . such a . . . '
    The King's guests were desperately trying to reassure — reactivate — themselves: but it could never be the same again. They had allowed it to run down, they were separate, isolate.
    The damage was done.
    The walls of the cistern lurched through a haze of heat. Despite his sleep, he felt exhausted.
    He was punched in the small of the back, but when he swung bloodthirstily around, no one met his eyes. He could hear himself breathing. He ground his knuckles into his eyes, fighting the drowsy hysteria emanating from the guests, who had begun to shove one another about silently like animals in a pen. When he took his hands away again, the floodlights stabbed him unerringly in that one sore spot on his retina.
    He blinked. The exit was plain. But beside it, like a black beacon, had appeared a tall figure in a soft-brimmed hat. A pale hand beckoned. He thought he was hallucinating. It stood by his escape route like Death at the feast. He tried to laugh, made a dry, choking sound. It was Sinclair-Pater's courier, the anarchist in the black cloak.
    'They all want me, Tiny,' he whispered. A boot scraped down his shin, ground into the small bones of his foot. He fell over. The guests began to mumble; faces hung above him like decaying moons. Tiny dragged him upright. They were ten paces from the bolthole when, flanked by two massive Denebians, Chalice Veronica, aware that the party was terminal, blocked their way.
    His face was gray and awful, the corners of the lips stretched high and wide, yellow teeth and red gums peeled, the brutal revelation of the skull beneath. He chuckled, and saliva trickled down his chin.
    'You're too much of an attraction to leave, Captain,' he said. 'They all want you, but I seem to have cornered the market. So why not enjoy yourself?' He raised his track-marked arms, swept the cistern with a gesture. 'All life is here! Art, sophistry, crime — '

    'You told me that before,' said Truck weakly, 'and all they talk about is this bloody Hermann Something-or-other.'
    The King's Denebians advanced in a quick, deadly crouch, but the man in the black cloak was quicker. From nowhere, he placed himself between them and the anxious Truck. His bright blue eyes glittered with laughter; his long white hands flickered hypnotically: and a perfect, long-stemmed green carnation lay along his palm, beads of moisture sparkling in the minute folds of its petals.
    'Captain Truck wants to leave the party, Veronica,' he said, and his voice was cold and lively, like air from outside. He watched the King closely. 'Why be impolite?' The flower vanished; the white hand, amused, danced in the air, then plucked it from behind Veronica's ear. 'You know, I think