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of a second too soon, forgetting that he was on the darkside of Janus, where icy, hurricane-force winds scoured the port. He had not been paying attention, had been looking forward to his leave instead. The Spider would have been able to save the ship — calculated the realignment co-ordinates pulsed from the control tower — but Devereaux had no hope of processing so much information in so short a time. The Pride of Bellatrix overshot the dock and exploded into the terminal building, incinerating a hundred port workers, as well as the ship's three hundred passengers, beyond any chance of resurrection...
    Devereaux alone had survived.
    His dreams are forever filled with the faces of the dead, their screams, and the unremitting stars of darkside illuminating a scene of carnage.
    ~
    Devereaux calculates that one week has passed when Daniel Carrington unties the pouch and daylight floods in. He expects Carrington to have devised for him some eternal torture: he will entomb him in concrete and pitch him into the deep Venusian sea, or bury him alive in the wilderness of the central desert.
    Carrington lifts him from the velvet pouch.
    Devereaux makes out the turgid Venusian overcast, and then the expanse of an ocean far below. They are on a chromium catwalk which follows the peak of a volcanic ridge. This is a northern tourist resort; silver domes dot the forbidding grey mountain-side.
    Carrington turns and walks along a promontory overlooking the sea. Devereaux knows, with terrible foresight, what Carrington has planned.
    Carrington holds the Spider before his eyes. Devereaux tries to struggle, realises then with mounting panic that his legs have been removed. Even his only means of psychological release, a scream, is denied him.
    "I've had a long time to think about what I should do with you," Carrington whispers. "At first I wanted to kill you."
    Devereaux cries a silent: No! He knows now that Carrington will pitch him into the sea, and that he will remain there for ever, alone with his memories and his remorse. He tries to conceive of an eternity of such torture, but his mind baulks at the enormity of the prospect.
    "And then, when you told me that you intended to kill yourself anyway, I decided that there was another way of punishing you."
    No! Devereaux yells to himself.
    Carrington is shaking his head.
    "But to do that would be as great a crime as doing what I thought I had done to you, twenty years ago." He stares off into the distance, reliving the past. "Perhaps the only way I can cure myself, Devereaux, is by saving you — and the only way I can save you is by destroying you."
    Carrington turns then and strides along the catwalk. Seconds later he is standing on a railed gallery, a fumarole brimming with molten lava to his left. To his right, the ocean surges.
    "Which way?" Carrington says. "Left, or right?"
    He smiles. "Oblivion, or eternal torment?"
    Oh, oblivion! Devereaux cries to himself.
    Carrington smiles. He is not a cruel man, despite what people think. With little ceremony, he hefts the remains of the Spider and pitches it from the gallery.
    Devereaux gives thanks to Daniel Carrington as he tumbles through the air. The seconds seem to expand to fill aeons. He experiences a surge of relief, and for the very last time the pain of guilt.
    Devereaux hits the lava, and the casing of the Spider melts in the molten stream, and then he feels nothing.
     
Copyright information
© Eric Brown 1998, 2011
"Venus Macabre" was first published in Aboriginal SF in 1998, and is reprinted in the infinity plus ebook The Angels of Life and Death by Eric Brown:
    Buy now: The Angels of Life and Death by Eric Brown $2.99 / £2.21.
     
     

A Writer's Life, by Eric Brown
    Mid-list writer Daniel Ellis becomes obsessed with the life and work of novelist Vaughan Edwards, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances in 1996. Edwards' novels, freighted with foreboding tragedy and a lyrical sense of loss, echo something in Ellis's own