The doctor replied, “I guess he should be my first priority.” It gestured towards Phister. “You there, have you had those wounds looked at?”
“Wounds? What wounds?”
“You’d better stop. Let me take your temperature.”
An appendage at the end of one of the multi-jointed limbs clanked around within the others, knocking together with a sound like a sweet song and eventually emerging, extending towards Phister’s car, toward Young Phister, who saw this coming in his peripheral vision.
“Sir,” the doctor called. “You there, at the wheel, please stop driving.”
But Phister was excited by the first clear thought he’d had in over a day. He said, “I know how to wake these people! I
do
. And I know why we came here — Hey, get that thing away from me!” Shoving aside the cantilevered arm was easy yet it came at him again and again and he had to deflect it each time. “Get out of my face!”
Phister accelerated; the doctor, for whatever reason, did not give chase, and soon dwindled behind.
“He was going to help us,” the dead boy said. “I don’t want to die again. Please turn this thing around.”
They coasted for another few moments in the silence of the huge room. Although Phister still heard those whispering voices. Now he saw where several of the tanks had been smashed, their fluids released, bodies slumped and grey. He smelled decay. There was a panel where components had clearly been broken into. He said, “That’s my archive . . .”
The dead boy had not heard him. He gestured toward the inert bodies rushing past. “You know, I once knew a girl obsessed with these people. She wanted to know what they were like, did they pull their pants on one leg at a time, what did they speak like, what did they think. She was always asking my boss questions. Me, I played dumb. Sam would answer as best he could, even though his memory was spotty. He had a crush on this girl, you see. She
was
pretty hot, I’ll admit that. Then me and him came up with this plan . . . He did actually. Oh, it was a terrible idea, in retrospect. But we concocted this . . . aroma. Based it on what moths use to attract each other but then the breach happened and this stuff got into the air. And everything broke loose. You coming back, the security . . . That girl was my only friend and I deceived her. For which I feel eternally guilty.” He made a snorting sound that echoed through the slices on his neck. “Hey, are you even listening to me?”
“I hear you.”
“All right. So come on. Turn this car around, Phister. I’ve got about three hours left, tops, and I don’t think you’ve got much more.”
But now, truthfully, Young Phister was no longer able to hear the dead boy. And because he could no longer see where he was going either, he was forced to slow the car down to a crawl. But he did not turn the car around.
The last dim thought Young Phister had was that he had never introduced himself to the dead boy, so how did the dead boy know his name? But when his old name was repeated for a third time, he turned slowly, very slowly, to face the tiny passenger, who was still shaking him by the arm. He whispered, “Let go of me. I don’t know anybody by that name.”
Variation on a recurring dream: caterpillars of several large species covering her, mostly those of moths. Writhing slowly over her legs, arms, belly, and chest. Tangled, struggling in her hair. They touched every conceivable place of her body except for her mouth, nose, and half-closed eyes. Larval insects surrounded her absolutely. Sometimes they were of glossy black scarabs, or blues and skippers and delicate fritillaries. Arachnids, even (though these were not truly insects).
Tiny, suctioned legs puckered, plucking at her skin. The rasp of mouthpieces grazed her flesh.
Under cover of the slowly seething mass, she was as naked as the day she’d been born. She smiled.
Actually, Deidre had never seen live caterpillars before. Not while awake. Only pictures of them, in illustrated printouts; Sam created all moths directly in their adult phase. So it was with great interest that she studied these dream-caterpillars. The majority of them — ranging vastly in size and colour, from pale greenish to a dull brown, some hairy, some with eyespots on the abdomen and, in a few cases, with tiny, erect tails quivering on the last segment — looked exactly like those in her pictures.
The moderately unpleasant sensation of caterpillars upon her flesh, when compared to the horrid emotions she’d experienced in the dreams preceding this one, were relatively benign. In other, nastier dreams, there had been blood, pain, and death.
A shudder passed through her.
Soon she would wake up. The carpet of caterpillars would vanish; the suns would come on; her beloved kin would be together, in Elegia. Like they were after any nightmare.
The first thing she would do upon waking would be embrace her father — who had surely just rushed into her bedchamber, after hearing her cries — and, maybe at breakfast, she would take the time to go around the table and kiss each of her sisters on the cheek, even if Miranda protested the unwarranted embrace and the older two scoffed and tried to turn away.
Imagining this in the dream, Deidre smiled again. Honestly, how could she have ever believed that the Orchard Keeper would send his family into exile? Or that a hole in the roof could open? That she alone, of all people, would be carried up
out of it
? By an angel, no less!
Absurd.
To blame for this disturbing series must have been the spicy stew Lady had prepared for dinner, and the reason for this particular sequence was that she had asked Sam about making Lunas, and the larger Sphinxes, and had thought, just before the gram’s strange appearance, about metamorphic cycles. For everything there is a reason. Action, and reaction. Cause and effect.
Memories of her cozy canopy bed gave her the assurance she needed to wait patiently for this intrusion of caterpillars to filter out of her mind. After all, dreams cannot hurt you.
Then a voice, quite like her father’s, said something she did not catch.
“Pardon me?” Deidre’s own words did not come out as clearly as she would have liked; more like a moan than anything intelligible; she felt her dry lips move.
“You’re conscious. Good. And you can hear me? You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” Deidre said, twitching, because the caterpillar nuzzling her left nipple had begun to do something almost painful. Goodness, her mouth was very dry. “Is there a war coming, father? Please, is there another war coming?”
“Um.” After a long moment — Deidre might have slipped back into sleep, if she was ever awake — the voice said, “I’m afraid I’m not your father . . . But I got the language right, and on the second attempt. Pretty good, eh? Of all the ancient tongues!”
Deidre was growing confused. But her smile slowly returned. This was more dream nonsense. Soon she would be awake for real. There would be sense and order. She felt herself rising up, right now, toward sanity, toward morning, toward her diurnal life and family. Again, this certainty gave her the confidence and ability to playfully indulge the dream voice. “If you’re not my dad,” she said, “then who are you?”
“That isn’t important. An amalgam, a custodian. What’s your name?”
“Deidre.”
“That’s a pretty name, Deidre. Exotic. Ancient. Listen, Deidre, I want to stress something to you. You’re going to be
all right
.”
“I know. I’m waking up.” She licked her lips but her tongue caught on the hot skin.
“Yes. That’s true . . . Though you were wounded in the retrieval operation. My little friends have almost finished their job. No permanent damage. And, like you said, you’re almost awake. I’m
most
relieved.”
Deidre became slightly concerned by these comments; the voice had referred to her being
wounded
, which had occurred in the exceedingly horrid
first
dream, the dream of angels, of Mingh straw’s death.
Now the unpleasantness of what the larvae were doing to her became harder to ignore. She squirmed. Pinch yourself, Deidre thought, but the masses of caterpillars weighed down heavily upon her arms. Now the pain at her shoulder — where the angel’s talons had gripped — was
tremendous
.
A scream bubbled up through her and she let it out — “Eeeeeeeaghhhh . . .” — trying to thrash, to kick out.
“Calm down, Deidre, please!
Calm down
!”
She lay panting. Above her was a pale, lit ceiling.
“I’m dismissing them,” the voice said, “it’s all right, Deidre, you’re going to be all right. They’ve done their job, it’s over. Don’t freak out.”
Deidre had built up strength in her lungs to scream again but the larvae were on the move, leaving her flesh, marching off her body and onto the surrounding mattress. So she just drew a deep, shuddering breath.
This place was not her room. Here was no canopy bed.
She managed to sit up partially, propped on her elbows, watching in horrified fascination as the numerous creatures — still very much there,
real
, and alive — reached the rim of the platform she had been lying flat on and, with gentle plops, fell into numerous holes spaced around the perimeter.
She looked around. The room was small. That pale ceiling, just a few metres overhead. White, almost shimmering walls. A closed door to her left, no knob, an odd symbol embossed upon it.
Next to her hummed a delicate machine. Quivering, on an equally delicate stand. She regarded this device with growing fear; her father had a similar one in his private lab, where he sometimes tinkered and repaired staff. It was a gadget meant to keep the body alive and functioning while he operated, opening them up and poking around inside. Several attachments, resting in cradles or clips on the side. A cable, leading out of sight, reappearing to snake up over the platform, coil over her left leg, up her belly —
She yanked the cable away and when she touched the painful area above her ear where it had been taped, she felt warm liquid trickling. A patch, shaved on her head.
She whispered, “What have you done to me?”
And the spindly machine said, almost as quietly, “Not yet, girl, not yet. Now you’ve done it, silly.”
There was no one else in the room. She looked at the wound in her shoulder. Where it should have been, the skin was covered by a light dusting of whitish fuzz. Her instinct was to rub the fuzz away but she shied from the agony that would most likely ensue. She did not want to confirm that she had been hurt. That would make it all real.
The caterpillars were gone.
Lifting her face, she detected an
absence
of smell in the air. This was the most unsettling thing so far. She filled her lungs with cleanliness and sterility and understood, without a doubt, that she had left the world and all she had known behind.
The dreams
had
been real.
Angels brought her to this place.
“Where am I?” she asked, horrified.
“A seed terminal.” The disembodied voice came from all around, as if from the clean air itself. “But please, don’t panic again. It’s no good for either of us.”
Initially, upon waking, Deidre had pictured a man speaking, but now, she realized, she was picturing a woman. Did the voice emanate from some form of free-floating gram? There appeared no light source to support this idea. And even if a drifting gram were possible, a beam of light would be needed to keep it going. So who or what was talking?
A ghost
? “What is a seed terminal?”
“Not just any seed terminal!
The
seed terminal!
Mine
. I’m the one lucky enough to host you. All the others are fading away, right now, as we speak. Across the planet. All those little versions of myself, sad and disappointed, shrivelling up inside.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Not too long, Deidre. A few hours. Those little worms are very efficient. Now, you need to get your strength up. You’ll be leaving shortly.”
Deidre said, “They’re not worms. They’re moth larvae.”
“Moth larvae? Is that what they were? I’ll have to take your word for it. I don’t know much about these things.”
She swung her legs off the bed, trying to ignore the pain that jolted up to her shoulder. Since the source of the voice and the tones it spoke in did not remain constant, all she could be sure of was that whatever spoke was invisible, intangible.
“Are you sure you feel well enough to get out of bed?”
“I’m leaving. Right now.”
“Leaving? Ah, leaving . . . I see. Well, that might not be so simple. Nor is it advisable. Even if you could leave . . . Deidre, there’s no place for you to go.”
“I’m going
home
.” But attempting to take a step, Deidre discovered she could not lift her tingling feet and that her knees were too weak to hold her weight. Grasping the edge of the platform, buttocks resting on it, she said, through gritted teeth, “What were those larvae doing to me anyhow? Working on my wounds?”
“Yes. Very astute, child.
Very
. But please, if you insist on moving about, let me assist. At least, let me help you into the courtyard.”
The door before her slid open silently, letting in an organic yellow glow that fell over her, covering her body from head to toe with warmth. Subtly hinted scents also entered with it; she breathed them in, making her feel somewhat less tense. Blinking (and sneezing, which hurt like heck!), she did manage a faltering step.
Out there — if she could trust her senses — was a
garden
. She saw thin columns of light, moving through what looked like branches, and real leaves that winked in at her lasciviously.
“Where are my clothes?”
“They had to be cut away, Deidre.”
“Then give me something else to wear.”
“There’s no one here to see you. There is no need for clothes.”
“I
want clothes
.”
“I might be able to conjure up a robe, I guess. I have very limited matter to work with.”
“
Do it
.”
To retain the momentum of her decision to get up, she took a step, and another, breathing in sharply with each movement, walking forward gingerly until she had reached the doorway. Pausing, one hand on the smooth jamb, glancing about for any creatures that might be watching or hunting her, she saw that she was, indeed, at the threshold to a garden.