24.

Joshua did not realize he'd been awake till he'd been awake some minutes. Or was it the opposite?--he swear he'd been awake for a long time, but somehow he hadn't heard the dripping of the water pipes till just this moment; and he knew they perpetually dripped. The white stranger, the one with long hair bald at the top, no shirt to cover his skin that looked gray in this dim blue moonlight--he was sleeping, flat on his back, an arm thrown over his closed eyes. His breath was relaxed, slow, and unconscious.

Joshua went to the bars of the cell they were in. He wondered how long he would be here. He knew that they--whoever kept him here, whoever ran this show--they did not even know he was down here. It wasn't some prison--it was some basement in a prison, some little cubbyhole they'd forgotten existed. There were no other cells, just water pipes dripping, slowly steaming, moaning with water pressure on and off, all of it coated in purple dusky light.

"Hey!" he called. "Hey--there's someone in the cell here! There's someone down here! Hey! Anybody? Hey!"

"They'll rape you if you keep that up," said the stranger.

"What's your name?" said Joshua.

"Michael," said the stranger.

"Is that true--what you just said?"

Michael went on speaking, though he hadn't moved his forearm from his eyes, nor changed his position in the slightest.

"I've been raped many times," said Michael. "Rapists--they show precisely what is wrong with this world. The greater your pain the keener their pleasure. They cannot get pleasure but that someone else receives agony. They cannot--they cannot find enjoyment but through someone's misery. If we humans didn't have this, this tendency--there would be nothing anguishing in all the world. But we cannot find delight--at least some of us--unless it is torture for someone else. What is more delightful than sex, or more agonizing than being raped?"

Joshua sat motionless. He did not want to trip the wire this stranger was for him. Hadn't he tried to kill him? Hadn't he had a knife and . . . but no, Joshua had killed him then. He must have been dreaming.

Michael sat up and faced him. "What kind of person is kind to enemies and friends alike?" he said. "What kind of man is a friend of all men? He's worthless as a food critic who delights equally in every spoon of slop that is handed him. He cannot be sincere--and if he is, well, that means he's even more worthless than otherwise."

"Did you . . . did you try to kill me?" asked Joshua.

Michael did not answer him but said, "I want kindness from a man who is choosy, a man who isn't kind to me just because I breathe. I want kindness from a man who would kill those who offended him and is kind to those he values--whom he genuinely likes and loves. And that is the only true love--not handed to all like a hooker's cunt, but reserved for those who deserve it, who inspire it from their character."

"Where are we?" said Joshua.

"You're in the Dreamtime," said Michael. "I'm . . . I'm right at home."

He lay back down and cleared his throat with a little cough, then placed his forearm back over his eyes.

Joshua gazed back across the copper piping, at the ghostly steam coming from them in places, listened to the intolerable dripping of the water.