Stainless steel buildings reflected the traffic whirling around me as I walked in the street. The city hadn't bothered to rebuild the sidewalks after the big quake. Why would they? No one but me walked outside any more. I clutched the crucifix under my jacket and prayed, Let this be the end of my search. 

I followed familiar streets to the carport of Tony's apartment building. A camera catalogued my appearance before it allowed me to enter.

The lobby echoed with the sound of the rusty fountain. The elevator operator's face twitched into a smile when she recognized me. When I asked for Tony's penthouse, she took me up in silence.

His door was still coded to my hand. I'd dropped out, vanished, and of course Tony had forgotten to erase the computer. Some days Tony forgot where he lived.

When I pushed the door open, I heard him in the bedroom with someone loud and worshipful. At least he still had groupies. I sat on the scarred black leather sofa. As ever, the penthouse stank of bongwater and spoiled food. Moldy glasses littered every flat surface. Sweet God, I had called this place home for two years. Had I been so painfully young?

Before long, Tony wandered out of the bedroom to stick his head into the refrigerator. Then he whirled to stare at me. "God damn. Chris?"

Out on the street, I might not have recognized him. His cheeks were so sunken that it looked as if he'd had his back teeth removed. He was still hooked, that much was certain.

"I need your help," I said. "I need to meet Ysanne."

"Jesus, Christy, where've you been?" Tony rounded the kitchen counter and advanced on me. "I can't believe you just walked back in here." 

I stood, wishing that the coffee table hadn't pinned my legs so close to the sofa. Tony flung his arms out and hugged me, crushing me against his hollow ribs. "How've you been?" he demanded, leering. "You're looking great -- not a kid any more."

"Tony, do you know anything about Ysanne?" I pushed against his clammy chest and wished he had thrown on a robe.

He curled under questioning, as always. "She's doing a sold-out show at the Capitol tonight."

"Know anyone holding tickets?"

"No." He rubbed his arms. "She's alienated the business. But there's a club in the basement of the San Pedro where her people hang."

I flexed my shoulders inside my jacket; I was stiff with nerves. I had dreaded this meeting with Tony. Pathetic Tony, ex-sex rock god. "Thanks."

"Hey, you aren't leavin', are you?" He grabbed my arm. "I just got a crate in from Zululand..."

"I'm less interested than ever, Tony."

"At least, stay and talk. I haven't seen you in years! Where ya been? Who ya been doin'? You can't come sneakin' in here, demand answers about some religious freak, and disappear again. What makes you think I'd let you pull that crap?"

His sharpened nails clawed across my leather sleeve as I pulled away. I navigated the scattered refuse to the door. "One more hit and you won't remember I was here, Tony. Just like the last time."

"You're not worth rememberin', Christy. Just a groupie!" he shrieked. "Slut!"

I walked away. But this time he remembered to reset the computer. When I stepped onto the elevator, I heard glass shatter as his fist went through the screen.

*

Ysanne's album was playing when I opened the door to the packed basement club. I joined the cluster of young people at the bar. They stared at my coat, the battered leather worn tan. It had been years since there had been enough cows to produce leather. Drifting out of my way, the kids watched me order a synthbeer.

A girl with bleached hair and a large black pillbox hat leaned against the chrome bar. Her shoulder pressed against mine. "Buy me a drink?"

I laid a couple bills on the bar and signaled the bartender to come back. It rolled over, squeaking on elderly treads, and the girl ordered. Wheezing, the bartender spewed alcohol into a glass.

"Aren't you a little old for this kind of place?" The girl's voice was consciously breathy.

"I'm looking for a ticket to Ysanne's concert tonight."

Without another word, she picked up her glass and joined a nearby table. One of the boys there smiled, watching me watch her. Not the cunning, appraising smiled that preluded a pick-up, but that would come with practice. He was a child. My insides shredded. After listening to her with half his attention, he came over and stood too close. "Bindi says you don't have a ticket to see Ysanne tonight."

"I also don't have much in the way of money."

"Who does?"

"What would your extra ticket cost?"

"Nothing you couldn't part with." He toyed with a painted fan that hung on a red silk cord from his belt. "Come home?"

I left the untouched beer on the bar and followed him.

*

His room was papered in silver foil, reflective enough to throw back smudges of movement, but not faces, not details. As he paced, an army of ghosts paced with him. The sensation recalled everything I disliked about the city.

He called himself Aden. He said he was a model and showed me a chip collection of the commercials he'd done. While I watched it, he pulled a sealed plastic box from under the sofa and set it on the green glass table. Inside were syringes in sterile wrappings, a white porcelain crucible, a steel-tank lighter. Aden twisted open a pill capsule, spilling its azure and emerald fillings into the crucible.

I broke open the heavy plastic around a syringe and fitted in a needle. Aden looked pleased when I handed it to him.

"As a kid," I said, "I had to shoot heroin into my boyfriend when he was too messed up to do it himself. He said I gave painless shots."

The videochip muttered about men's colognes and shiny sports cars and flavors of Ever-Clear. Aden sighed as the needle slipped under his skin. His face spasmed, ecstatic, orgasmic. I wondered if he enjoyed anything else as much.

His eyes, hazy green under black lashes, refocused on me. "Shall I mix yours light?"

"None for me, thanks." I slipped my boots off. "Could I use your shower?"

He directed me to the bath, which was tiled in reflective black. I turned the water on very hot. While my back was turned, Aden peeled into a body sheath. He wrestled me to the floor and fought the jeans off of me. He held his hand over my mouth as he climbed over my body. He wanted me to stay quiet. I closed my eyes and pretended he was Ysanne.

*

After he left me, I took a long hot shower. When I pushed the black curtain back, my reflection spilled out, rippling over the tiles. Aden had turned on the fans.

Back out in front of the videoscreen, he was wrapped in a canary yellow robe, watching a video of Ysanne. I pulled a purple T-shirt out of my backpack and over my head.

"I could lend you something to wear to the concert," Aden offered.

"This'll be fine." I stepped into my last pair of clean jeans.

When I had dressed, he suggested, "Come watch this."

I sat next to him, but he didn't touch me. I appreciated it. Aden said Ysanne had seen him in some awful porn flick. Her people had contacted him to appear in her video. It concerned a spacemen who had concluded, from watching television, that the most influential people in America were young blond women. So the spaceman built such a body and locked himself inside.

"Who did you play?" I asked as Aden rewound the tape.

"Ysanne as the alien. Before she came to earth."

He disappeared into the bathroom, leaving his drug paraphernalia out. I concentrated on the videoscreen. After Ysanne's video played through, I watched it again. An hour passed. I watched Ysanne over and over, marveling at her delicate face, at the icy transparency of her skin. Her hair was the triumphal yellow of sunset past heavy clouds. The longer I looked at her, the more my conviction grew. She was the one I'd been awaiting. I wondered why God didn't confirm it.

Aden returned, dressed in a skin-tight mesh bodysuit over parrot blue tights. I looked up into his face and wondered how old he was: sixteen? Impossible to tell behind the mask of makeup he wore. A royal blue polish had hardened on his eyelashes so that blinking was a slow, painful process. The dust that coated his skin reminded me of the white rice powder the Kabuki dancers used in ancient Japan. "How do I look?" he asked eagerly.

"Like a china doll."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It was meant to be."

Smiling, Aden handed me a slip of plastic. "This is your ticket." I understood it was a reward for telling him what he wanted to hear.

He summoned his limo via the terminal by the door and drew on a cape of black feathers. He'd worn it in Ysanne's video.

Aden touched my shoulder as I pulled on my leather coat. "Why don't you leave your backpack here, so you won't have to worry about it during the show? I mean, unless you have a place to stay tonight?"

"Thank you."

"Come and go as you like," Aden invited. His green eyes were downcast as he held my palm against the screen for the computer to memorize. "I don't have anything worth stealing, but the video system. If you need money that bad..."

"I don't," I said. I hate it when the arrangements get cozy.

*

The gilt-bordered mirrors of the lobby highlighted Aden, but my reflection was less flattering. His short black hair was shellacked against his skull, while mine, auburn, was as tangled as Medusa's. I pushed it over my shoulders, shivering. Aden looked very masculine in those blue tights. None of that was padding.

The limo waited in front of the building. I strolled after Aden in the twilight, waiting to savor the coolness of the air on my face. The breeze reeked of raw sewage and auto exhaust. My eyes burned.

Aden arranged the feathers of his cape around him as the limo glided away from the curb. He slid a chip into the player and Ysanne's voice gathered on the air, almost palpable. She sang that the world was doomed.

"Do you believe in that?" I asked. "The apocalypse?"

Aden didn't know the word.

"Ysanne's prophecy about the end of the world," I supplied.

He closed his eyes. "Ysanne believes it. She's building a spaceship to take us to heaven."

Frowning, I stared at the blackened window. A spaceship? Perhaps I had misjudged Ysanne. It seemed childish to think that the will of God could be escaped. Unless it was God's will that some fled. I hadn't considered that before. He'd allowed Noah to build the ark. Maybe things weren't as hopeless as I'd thought.

*

We arrived fashionably late. Kids already packed the auditorium. They smelled of formaldehyde, sweat, and cigarettes. Aden immediately saw someone he knew, so I drifted away, trusting we would find each other after the show. I wedged between two doll boys and pushed my back against the wall. The scene took me back. I envied Aden his drugged haze as the waiting began.

A musical phrase trickled from speakers on either end of the hall. Conversation faltered. Suddenly, silence pounded inside my skull until my teeth clenched against her name. I half-expected those around me to fall to the floor and begin speaking in tongues.

At the last moment of sanity, Ysanne walked on-stage, her cape reflecting a silver-green nimbus around her. She paused at the stage's edge to survey her congregation, then began to sing.

I'd had religious experiences before. Occasionally I wished to become inured to the voice of God when it spoke of the inevitability of human suffering, of our unavoidable deaths.

Ysanne sang of death: the Earth's, humanity's. No chance, without her. Trust her completely or abandon hope. I slid down to the floor, unable to stand.

I did not see her leave the stage at the show's end. First the auditorium felt achingly empty, then the lights came up on the silent house.

Aden helped me to my feet. Tear tracks marred the perfection of his makeup. A muscular man stood behind him, arms crossed and eyes wary. "One of Ysanne's bodyguards," Aden explained. "He said she wants me at her party tonight. You'll come, won't you?"

I clutched his shoulders and tried to locate my vanished equilibrium. Finally, I nodded. When God summons me, I am unable to resist.

*

Aden pushed past me into Ysanne's penthouse, propelling me into the party. The collective gaze flashed over me icily. I should have guessed I would be wildly out of place.

Aden put a glass into my hand. It contained a shimmering silver liquid that smelled of licorice and something bitter, like wormwood. His hands were shaking.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Ysanne has this effect on me." A shudder danced through him, rattling his bracelets. His smile was dreamy. "I need a poke."

Praying he knew his limits, I kept silent. I liked something about this boy, perhaps his vulnerability. When I looked up from my drink, he had wandered away.

I found a place from which to watch the party. Glowing with innocence, young people clustered around Ysanne. She burned with the compelling halo that I had seen surrounding God. I ached inside, straining to hear the voice. No directive came.

"Have we met?" a woman asked.

Startled out of my meditation, I looked up into Ysanne's eyes. Her lovely face was geometrically perfect, eyebrows, cheekbones, jawline. I couldn't remember anything I had meant to say. "I'm here with Aden."

She smiled, scrutinizing my T-shirt and jeans. Then she pushed back the white curtains beside me to expose glass doors. "Shall we talk on the balcony?"

Her words held something of a challenge. I followed her out. The night wind had cleared some of the pollution. I sucked in a deep breath and felt the claustrophobia fade. I remembered what I had to say. "God has spoken to me too."

Her lovely, arctic eyes turned to me. "Has He said anything about me?"

Sadness swirled inside of me. "Not in a while."

She looked off over the city. Its lights twinkled in the murk. "Were you disappointed by my concert?"

"No." I longed to touch her as much as I feared to. "Are you the Messiah I've been waiting for?"

Ysanne was quiet a long time. My hopes withered painfully. At last she said, "I did not come to Earth to be worshipped."

She turned my face toward her. Her lips were sweet on mine before she returned to her party. I clutched the plasteel railing for support. The voltage of that kiss made me twitch and twitch again. Aden's drink dropped from my hand and vanished into the distance above the street.

When reality steadied, I let myself back into the apartment. Aden cornered me, his nose wrinkled at the smell that had come inside on my clothing. "How can you breathe out there?"

Without waiting for an answer, he pushed a heavy plastic card into my hand. "That's my limo key. The car's waiting downstairs for you. Just tell it to take you home."

I searched the boy's face. Behind the enamel was a blinding ecstasy that knifed me. "You're staying with Ysanne tonight?"

"She asked me to." His pupils had almost vanished. I wondered what he saw, focused so far inside. Then he touched my face and said, "Please stay at my apartment."

I made the same promise I made to all of them. "For a while."

That satisfied him. He didn't tell me he loved me, but I knew. I wished that was only his addiction speaking.

*

The limo door opened when I inserted the key. Sighing, I slumped into the black upholstery and tried to think of the last one I stayed with. Her name was ... Joy.

My body demanded attention. I hadn't eaten since I'd first seen Ysanne on the video. I hadn't slept in a bed since I left Joy's, that same night. I wanted Aden. I wanted Ysanne.

The car announced our destination and opened the door. As I stepped out, I ordered it back to its garage. The limo purred in answer and pulled away from the building.

The lobby, elevator, and upstairs hall were deserted. Filtered air whistled around me, too warm for my coat, more the correct temperature for Aden's mesh bodysuit. I wondered what the other apartments' inhabitants -- if there were any -- wore.

I placed my hand on Aden's compscreen. The door hummed open and lights flickered on. Without Aden's presence, the place resembled an abandoned hall of mirrors. I set the machine to play Ysanne's video while I scrounged for dinner. It should have occurred to me that a junkie model wouldn't keep much food. The refrigerator held several cans of diet soda and a pan of something gone furry. In the meat drawer I discovered a couple slices of crusty processed cheese. I broke off the hardest edges, stuffed the rest of the cheese into my mouth, and washed it down with a handful of tapwater.

I sank onto the sofa and put my feet up on the coffee table. Aden's used syringe lay beside my leg. Its tiny eye bit my fingertip. I touched the dot of blood to my tongue and found it bitter with the drug.

The videochip halted. Instead of playing the video again, I stumbled off to the bedroom. I had a lot to think over.

I kicked off my boots and left them jumbled with my jeans on the floor. My eyes were bleary with exhaustion. I crawled into the disheveled bed. The sheets smelled of spicy cologne, boyish sweat, and the licorice-wormwood alcohol. I curled around the pillow, both saddened and relieved to be alone. It had been a long time since I'd been immersed in the madness of the city. Smelling Aden, I clutched the pillow and rocked myself to sleep.

*

Something chirped insistently in the dark room. An alarm, I guessed, struggling to disentangle my legs from the sheets. The clock read 5:14 p.m. By the time I realized the sound came from the phone, it quit ringing.

I collapsed back onto the mattress, adrenaline singing through me. Where was Aden?

When I got up to look, his syringe shimmered on the coffee table. I couldn't imagine the Aden I'd observed yesterday separated from his drugs for long. I retrieved my backpack from the doorway and wadded my dirty clothes around a fresh hypodermic and the bottle of pills. He had to still be at Ysanne's. From the terminal, I summoned Aden's limo.

Through the brownish daylight I saw that the concrete facade of Ysanne's apartment building crawled with meticulously sculptured ivy. At first I marveled at the work, then decided it must have been poured that way. No stonemason would work outside these days.

The limo pulled into the enclosed breezeway. Without Aden to escort me, I shook with nerves. What if the security people wouldn't let me in?

"I'm here to see Ysanne," I told the doorman as I peeled a bill off the wad I'd found in Aden's drug case. The amber-toothed man stared into my face. The money disappeared into his red jacket.

I brushed past him and he tugged a pistol from his waistband. "Ysanne isn't seeing visitors today."

He marched me into an office, pushed me into a folding chair, and pointed his gun at me while the manager punched up Ysanne's apartment on the phone. No one answered. It rang and rang.

As I began to panic, one of Ysanne's bodyguards filled the phone screen. The doorman nudged me forward with the gun barrel. Words spilled out of me: "I came to Ysanne's party last night with Aden. He never came home. He forgot to take his medicine with him. Is he okay?"

"Wait there," the bodyguard answered. "We've been trying to reach you. I'll come down."

*

He was ugly in the way of muscular men. His heavy face seemed molded of half-congealed chicken gravy, but his brown eyes glittered with appraisal. I hoped he didn't like what he saw.

He escorted me, my skin crawling, to Ysanne's door. Instead of grabbing me, he reached past my shoulder to put his hand over the lockscreen, then followed me into the penthouse.

Red sunlight flooded through the picture window. Ysanne stood silhouetted against the glass. "Who's that?" she asked without turning.

"That friend of Aden's."

The smell of spilled liquor made my stomach clench. Bottles littered the floor, especially around the window. At this moment, Ysanne seemed only a woman. It looked as if Aden had hurt her. I wondered if I shouldn't have come. "I worried when I woke up alone."

"Aden is dead."

The cold tone of her voice rocked me. "How?"

"O.D., they said." Ysanne took a long hard drink from the bottle in her hand. "I woke up beside his corpse this afternoon." She pitched the bottle at the nearest wall. It hit with a thump, spattering quicksilver droplets. Ysanne scooped another bottle off the floor and threw it after the first. Then she threw a third.

"Stop."

She stared at me. I felt her iced blue stare through the dusk. Ysanne bent to pick up another bottle.

I crossed the room to her. "Stop, dammit. Stop. You don't need to prove to me you loved him."

"Is that what I'm doing?"

"You weren't throwing bottles before you had an audience."

The bottle dropped from her hand. "Fine," she said and waved the bodyguard away.

Ysanne slopped some silver liqueur into a glass. "Who are you?" she demanded. "You were all Aden talked about last night. He didn't even know your name."

She stumbled and I barely caught her. She kissed me, missing my mouth, and sloshed her drink against me. It burned through my T-shirt.

"What is that stuff?"

"I brought it from home."

She offered me what was left in the glass, but I shook my head.

I guided her over to one of the low white sofas. The silence pressed against me, smothering. "Who are you, Ysanne?"

She sucked the gray syrup from her glass. "My people believed they were Chosen by the Lord of Creation. But the Master destroyed our world, weeding out the disbelievers with plagues, then with famine. In our quest for a new home, we discovered your planet and recognized the same patterns which destroyed ours. My companions continued their search, but I volunteered to rescue those I could. I'm failing." She stared at me with those large, frozen eyes. "Because there's so little time left, humans believe they have license to do whatever they can before they die."

We both thought of Aden.

I broke the silence once more. "Did God tell you when the end would come?"

She made a strangled noise that I realized was laughter. "Look around. This is the end. You're the first human I've met who voluntarily breathes the outside air. Yet the others refuse to give up their automobiles. They're unable to build aboveground any longer. They're unable to farm. Soon they'll be unable to leave their homes. How long after that will civilization survive?"

So I'd been right. The end was at hand, but Ysanne offered deliverance. My quest was over. What should I do now that I'd found the Messiah? How could I serve her? 

The bottle slipped from her hand. I dodged forward to right it before much of the liquor splashed out.

When I lifted her, she didn't rouse enough to put her arms around my neck. Her long limbs dangled, snagging the furniture. Luckily for me, she was as light as a child.

The domed gray ceiling of her bedroom echoed my footsteps. A single tube of blue neon hung suspended above the enormous bed. Like the rest of the apartment, the room reeked of wormwood and licorice.

Beneath the voluminous robe, Ysanne's flawless skin was paper-white. She seemed as perfect as a crystal bell, so fragile that she might ring if flicked with a fingertip. As I tucked the black sheets around her, I wondered at her marvelous symmetry. I took it as proof she had truly manufactured this body.

I slipped off my boots and climbed into bed. Ysanne burned warmly in my arms, her halo shining past my eyelids.

If it be your will, I prayed, show me how to serve her. Let us save what we can of my people.

I was nearly asleep when God spoke. You've done so well until now, Beloved, the voice said. Why choose to fail me now? They have all forsaken me, every one. There shall be no escape from the will of God.

When I came back to myself, my tongue was bleeding. I debated ignoring those hard words, even as I retrieved my backpack from the other room. I cooked up the drug as I'd watched Aden do, carefully doubling the dosage. The needle glided under Ysanne's alabaster skin. She made a soft sound as the rush hit her. My love for her ached inside me. Her lips tasted of licorice.

After the convulsions, it was over. I wiped my fingerprints from the syringe and the crucible and clenched Ysanne's warm hand around them. My first impulse was to run, but the bodyguard would remember me and the apartment computer would have my image on file. I stripped down to my T-shirt, then snuggled against Ysanne's body, fighting down the lump in my throat. I wished Joy were alive, so there might be someone I could go home to. After the inquest cleared me of Ysanne's death, I'd have to trawl the bars again. Someone would take me home and keep me until God called me again. Someone always did. That was the only benefit I found in being Beloved.

My tongue throbbed where I had bitten it.

***

This story was originally published in Not One of Us #25. It was reprinted in the Ashes & Rust chapbook.