Blood Engines(67)
Marla looked at Bethany.
“That chest was locked,” Bethany said, scowling.
“Rondeau picks locks,” Marla said. “It’s like a nervous habit. He’s also curious, intrusive, and has no concept of personal privacy. Those are some of the qualities I value in him. Explain yourself.”
“Don’t command me on my own train,” Bethany said, rising to her feet. “But, since we were getting along so beautifully, I will explain, in the interests of continued friendliness. If you’d opened the other locked ice chests, you would have found other things—livers, kidneys, lots of things, each in its own place.”
“What, are you an anatomist?” Marla said. “Or do you have a stake in the organ trade?”
“Both good explanations,” Bethany said. “But, no, neither. I’m a cannibal.”
“Jesus,” B said.
“Jesus advocated a limited sort of cannibalism,” Bethany said. “But he’s not the subject under discussion right now.”
“A cannibal,” Marla said neutrally.
“Do you disapprove?” Bethany said.
“That depends. Don’t get me wrong, people-eating isn’t something I’ve ever been interested in personally, but I’m aware that it’s, ah, a complex subject. There can be power in it, I know.” In the sorcerous world, the pro-cannibal/anti-cannibal debate was as ferocious as the arguments about abortion in the ordinary world. Marla just tried to stay out of it, though she found cannibalism disgusting, on a visceral level, much as she’d been disgusted by Finch’s predilection for ghost-fucking.
“You can get diseases from eating people,” Rondeau said. He hadn’t put away his knife. Marla hadn’t told him to.
“You can get diseases from eating nearly anything,” Bethany said. “I don’t eat brains or spinal tissue, so I’m safe from nasty things like Creutzfeld-Jacob.”
“Where do you get the meat?” Marla said.
“Ah. This is what your approval depends on, yes?”
“I frown on murdering people and eating their parts, yeah,” Marla said. “It’s a subject I’m extra-sensitive about lately, since Mutex wants a return to the bad old days of theocrats getting fat off the meat of unwilling sacrifices. So, what, do you have people in morgues and hospitals, harvesting for you?”
“No, I do the butchering myself,” Bethany said, sitting back down. “With the help of a couple of apprentices.”
“Shit,” Marla said. “I’m as morally flexible as the next guy, but there are some things I have trouble bending my judgment around. You kill ordinaries? People from your own city? For food?”
“Yes,” Bethany said. “But before you try—and I stress the word ‘try’—to execute me for crimes against humanity, let me assure you that I only eat the willing. I have no shortage of volunteers. Sometimes they even stay alive while I amputate a limb or two, and dine with me on their own flesh.”
“You expect us to believe that?” B said. The whole situation clearly outraged him.
“There’s no reason you shouldn’t,” Bethany said.
Marla nodded to Rondeau, and he flipped his knife closed. “It’s true,” Rondeau told B. “There are people who want to be eaten. With all the billions of people on this planet, there’s no shortage of people who are into weird shit. And Bethany probably offers incentives to the suicidal and the terminally ill—pleasure in their last moments, shit like that.”
“Occasionally, yes,” Bethany said. “More so in the old days. Now it’s mostly people who just want to be prey. It’s a kink for some people, a fetish, though an almost invariably terminal one. They come from all over the world. I pay their travel expenses. The Internet has helped immensely. There are whole online communities, anthropophage newsgroups and mailing lists, everything. It’s made my life a lot simpler.”
“I’m pretty grossed-out right now,” Rondeau said. “I’m going to go away and think about unicorns and fluffy bunnies and other noncannibalistic things for a while.”
“Go with him, B,” Marla said.
“I’m still confused,” B said. “Is she one of the good guys?”
“Oh, B,” Marla said. “We’re so far past questions of good and bad that I can’t begin to answer that. But if we can define ‘good’ as ‘willing to stop Mutex from bringing primordial monsters to life and instituting a theocracy based on ritual human sacrifice,’ then, yeah, Bethany counts as a good guy.”