Levels: The Host (11 page)

“I’m him,” Watly said, a
bit startled.

“You’re the night host?” the man asked. He hadn’t yet looked at Watly directly. His eyes were focused distractedly over Watly’
s shoulder.

“That’s me,
I guess.”

The man turned and started down the hall. He was halfway down before Watly realized he was expected to follow the guy. Watly had to trot to
catch up.

“Sorry about the front door, Caiper. They closed up early today. Good you figured out how to
get in.”

“I’m a little confused
....
” Watly said. He was having trouble keeping up with the other man. “Is the building closed for the day? What’s the story with
night hosting?”

The tall man stopped abruptly and faced Watly. He seemed suddenly furious. Dangerous. “The world does not revolve around you, Mr. Night Host. Some people have regular hours. Most of the workers go home at five. We only keep a skeleton crew here after that. Any
other problems?”

“Take it easy. Take it easy. I was just curious.” Watly wondered if there
was
a right side of the bed for this guy to get
up on.

He kept his mouth shut as they went to the fifth floor. Watly’s tall companion was taking the exit route to fifth, so, since they were entering and not leaving, all the arrows faced them as they walked. Yellow, red, and blue arrows pointed backward. It was strangely ominous. It seemed to Watly like a big sign saying,
go back, watly caiper!
go away!

Nearly comical. Nearly.

The tall blond man was slowing and Watly could now keep up easily. He headed toward the same hosting room Watly was used to. Watly followed, relieved they hadn’t changed rooms on him. Relieved it was Dr. Tollnismer’s
room again.

When the man folded the hosting room’s door open, Watly could see there was no one inside. Just the chair, the metallic dinosaur, and the other accoutrements of hosting. No person. No Alysess. No white smile. No smart eyes.
No poovus.

“Where’s Alys—Where’s Dr. Tollnismer?” Watly asked. He was still standing in the doorway, not sure he should enter. The blond man was already at the white counter, fiddling with a cable. He glared up
at Watly.

“What?”
he snapped. He was daring Watly to repeat the question. Daring him to admit to even having
had
a question.
Oh nothing, Mr. Nasty Paleface, I said nothing at all
....
That was the
proper response.

Watly took the dare instead. “My, uh, usual doctor, Dr. Tollnismer.
..
she’s not
here yet?”

The man sneered. He must have been roughly Watly’s age but there was something jaded and dead around his eyes. And that pale, almost cadaverous skin
....
“I’m your doctor today, Mr. Night Host. Tollnismer doesn’t
work nights.”

Watly felt his stomach grab up on him.
No Alysess? It’s okay, Caiper. No big deal. You’ll catch her next time. Better to concentrate on the hosting anyway. She’d be a distraction. You’re getting obsessed about a
beautiful stranger.

Watly stayed in the doorway. After a while he forced himself into the room and sat in the recliner. He felt a twinge in his leg where the bruise was, so he shifted sideways. Damn, but that Ragman guy had
kicked hard.

“Finally decided to join us, huh?” the blond man said, and crossed over to fold the door shut. “Let’s get this thing over with.” What was all that nastiness covering? Fear? Was the creepo
afraid
of something? He pulled a hosting-cuff off the wall and brought it over to Watly. Everything seemed to be happening very fast.
The
cuff already?

“Uh.
..
”Watly watched the top of the blond’s head as the man secured the cuff on him. “Uh.
..
aren’t you going to read the Hosting Rights and
Regulations thing?”

The man clamped the cuff tightly and looked up. Watly shuddered. The guy’s eyes were totally empty of humanity. Blank. “You heard it last time, mister. There something
you forgot?”

Watly swallowed hard. “Where’s my euphoric?” The doctor was pulling the hosting device from the corner already. Some of the cables
dragged behind.

“Euphorics are not necessary this time, Mr.
Night Host.”

Watly sat forward. “Wait a minute! Wait just a sec. What about my pains? Aren’t you going to ask me about pains? I have pains that
need treating.”

The man stood over Watly and with one broad hand firmly pushed him back against the chair. “This donor’s not picky, mister. You don’t need a euphoric and you don’t need a
pain check.”

“What do you mean I don’t need a pain check? I have a bruise. A bad one. I have scratches. Sore muscles. There’s discomfort.” Watly felt panic building. Something was
wrong here.

“Your donor doesn’t care, night host. You want to make trouble? You want to call it off? You can call if off
right now
if you want, but I guarantee you’ll never host again. I
guarantee
it.” The man’s eyes seemed even deader than before. They were like a doll’
s eyes.

“I just don’t understand. This isn’t like last time. How can you do it this way? You’re supposed to read the rights. You’re supposed to give me a raping euphoric. You’re supposed to deaden the pains. Am
I right?”

The man made a close approximation of a smile with his lips. It looked more like a grimace. The teeth were yellow next to the pale skin. “All depends on the donor. This donor doesn’t care about a little discomfort, Mr. Night Host. Now, are we on or not? Yes or no? You
doing this?”

Watly felt confused. This was nothing like he’d expected. No rights or regulations. No Alysess. No euphoric. No pain check. It all stank. “I just want
some assurances
....
”

“What assurances, mister?” The doctor turned and released the two cables with end plates. He pulled
them chairside.

“Is this guy some kind of pain-freak
or something?”

The man was touching the plates behind each of Watly’s ears. He returned to the main controls with that eerie stain-toothed smile spreading. “You’re safe, mister. I think you’ll live through it, if that’s what’s
worrying you.”

“What’s going
on here?”

The man turned and stared straight at Watly with a look of supreme impatience. “What do
you mean?”

“There’s something wrong here and I don’t
like it.”

“You want out, tell me
now
.” The man deftly flipped three ringlets out of their casings and connected two
loose cables.

Watly held a hand up. “Can’t you just wait a second. Doctor?”

“Yes or no,” the man said. His features had returned to their original stony coldness. “I got a job to do. I’ve got no time for coddling. Yes or no, Mr.
Night Host.”

Watly couldn’t believe the way this was turning out. He was being pushed. He wasn’t being given enough time to think. This was all wrong. “Hold on just
a second!”

The blond man gripped the final two ringlets and glared. “
Yes
or
no
! Right
now
, mister! You hosting
or not?”

Watly felt he didn’t have a choice. There was only one response. If he said no, it was over. No mothering, no nothing. This was the only way. So this doctor was a bolehole, that’s all. So the guy was a rape face. What was Watly going to do—give up all he’d worked for because some underpaid catbreath second-kisser had an attitude problem? This was his only chance to get his dream. But damned if he wasn’t going to report this guy’s behavior when it was over. This was unacceptable. It warranted a
serious complaint.

“Can we just cool down here a second?” Watly said as calmly as he could. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Just take it
easy
, already.”

The doctor glared at him and waited for a few seconds without moving. “Calm enough for you?” he said finally, his
voice sarcastic.

“Thanks loads,”
Watly said.

Now the man crossed over and pushed Watly firmly into the chair so that his skin made contact with the two plates. “Here we go. Very calm, very calm, now.” With the other hand the tall man released the final ringlets. “Calm, calm, calm,” the
bolehole muttered.

“Thanks for the reassurance. You’ve got some bedside manner,” Watly said. As his jaws began to tingle, Watly wondered if he might have just made the biggest mistake of
his life.

CHAPTER 11

W
hen Watly Caper remembered his youth, he remembered it orange. Every memory of his early days in Brooklyn seemed to take place at sunset. To Watly, those days were always a
golden hue.

Sitting on the front steps of his apartment building, playing batball with the neighborhood kids, shin-scrimming off a bus—no matter what—it was always just before dusk. Days began and ended there. In memory, Brooklyn was a perpetual warm sunset. The shadows were long and made you feel tall and grown-up. One could catch a glimpse of the sun between the buildings while walking. Off to the north was Manhattan. Manhattan: the
promised land.

Watly remembered standing on the roof of some tall Brooklyn apartment house and gazing at the Manhattan skyline. The two Empire State Buildings, the Chrysler Building, Citicorp, Alvedine, the Man-With-Hat-On, the Gavy Tower—all shone brightly and a million windows glittered like jewels as the dying light caught them. It was an incredible vision. As he stood there, Watly wondered if it could possibly be as beautiful close up as it was from
a distance.

And there were the smells—the smells of Watly’s youth. That dirty, gritty, musty smell of the neighborhood. The apartment’s spicy, homey, kitcheny smell—as if, no matter what time, a meal had just been prepared moments before. And the smell of Mom. The smell of warmth. The oily, sweaty smell as Watly’s mother returned from work. The biting smell of the detergent she used in her job as cleaner of the cleaning machines at
the factory.

And then the sponge bath with its scented soaps. The soaps smelled less like Mom than the grease and sweat and industrial detergent. The soaps gave off a soft, wispy, flowery aroma that was nowhere near as tough as the true P-pajer Caiper. She was a strong woman. It was she who had demonstrated against the prophies. It was she who had fought tooth and nail to protect the small local park and its five trees. It was she who had battled to improve keyboard school for the kids, to get more cleaning machines for the filthy streets, to find homes for the Brooklyn homeless, to get nutritious foods—sunbeans and weeders—imported to
the stores.

If there had been talk of California back then, she would have been involved. She would have been excited by it all: tracking down every lead she could find, following up on each rumor, investigating, probing. She would have
gone out there
. She would have found a way and gone out to California. She wanted to be a part of things. She wanted to change things. Her eyes were never as fiery and full of hope as when a new cause arose. She lived for it. All this California stuff would have been fuel for her soul. And it would have rubbed off on Watly. There was no way to avoid it. There was power to the woman. Strength. Wisdom.

P-pajer Caiper. Watly’
s mother.

P-pajer Caiper had cared. It was what she did best. If mothering was Watly’s passion in life, then caring was his mother’s. As a boy, Watly often wondered what it would be like to live a life without a passion. Without a dream, a driving force. It seemed there were lots out there who had none. No driving force. No bliss. No obsession. It looked like
most
people had none, in fact. How did that feel? How did it feel not to have one thing—maybe a secret thing, maybe not—that made your life worth living? How did it feel to wake up in the morning, eat, do your job if you have one, have sex if it’s available, eat some more, drink, watch CV, play some, sleep.
..
and eventually die? And that’s it. That’s all. Did it feel empty? Was there a void there? Or was it okay just to live. Was it okay for some not to be “saddled” with an all-encompassing, intoxicating, pain-in-the-ass
passionate
passion all the time. Maybe drinking or drugs or religion were enough for some. Maybe that filled the void. All that stuff had certainly been popular at different times. Or maybe
everyone
had a passion. Maybe most people just didn’t see it. They were blind to it. And only a lucky few
could see.

Watly was one of the lucky. He knew his passion from way back. And his mother was, too. P-pajer cared. She wanted to make a difference. She wanted the world to be right, to be fair. She wanted things to be good and beautiful. She wanted her kid to grow up in a place that was kind and careful and wise. And other people’s kids. And the people themselves. She fought hard for her causes—one after another. And one of her causes
was Watly.

She had always been supportive of him. From the first days—from the very beginning—she’d been right behind her son. When Watly had told her of his dream, she’d stayed with him on it—never discouraging, never cajoling him into a different direction, and never warning him not to get his
hopes up.

“If you want something, Little-Watt, you will achieve it,” she had said once. “But if, in the end, you
don’t
achieve it, then the wanting will have been enough. For the wanting is really all there is anyway.” She paused, and then spoke the familiar sentence young Watly always found cryptic and confusing: “It is not the place you’re headed that’s important, nor even the journey there; it is the road you tread
on itself.”

Then she ran her fingers through her short black hair, shook her head vigorously in a characteristic gesture that seemed to signify the clearing of mental cobwebs, and guided young Watly toward the kitchen where they prepared
dinner together.

As they rolled small balls of dough on the low plasticore counter, P-pajer
spoke again.

“There is one thing, Little-Watt, you must beware of,” she said. “You seek a noble thing, particularly in this day and age. Your purpose is pure and your ambition relatively harmless to others. This is good. However.
..
” she paused and faced her son dead-on, “there is a vanity in you. You know it. There is a belief that you are right to the point of violence. No one.
..
” Her thin muscular hands rose before Watly and the long fingers spread. Her eyes were serious.
“No one
is right to the point of violence. No one. I see it in you. You feel justified in force. You feel it is available to you as a last resort. You feel it is a viable if unpleasant alternative. I’ve watched you with your friends. I’ve seen you strike a playmate. I’ve seen you threaten when your pride is hurt. You have this in you.” Her graceful hands danced for a moment. “But this is not good. This will be your downfall if you can’t control it. Remember that, Little-Watt.”

Little Watly thought for a moment before speaking. “Isn’t anything worth
fighting for?”

His mother smiled the smile that always made things all right. A warm smile Watly wished he had seen more of. “There’s fighting and then there’s fighting. Wait till you have a child, my son,” she said. “Wait till you have your child and then answer that yourself. And I will teach you, when you’re older. I will teach you the secrets. How to fight
without fighting.”

Watly didn’t understand. Was that a yes or a no? He wasn’t sure what her point was. He still felt right. He still felt it was okay to hit back if someone hit him. Watly appreciated the little he understood of his mother’s philosophy, and in some ways he wished it could be his. But, even back then, he knew it could never truly be his. There was a thin, permanent streak down his core that would always be ready to fight back. Physically. It was part of his nature. He suspected it came not from his mother, not from his genes, and not from some early trauma. He suspected it came from his life. His short life. It came from his experiences. It came from his neighborhood. It came from his friends and acquaintances. From his days at home on the school interactive keyboard. From his one day a week at social class. From Brooklyn itself. From the gangs. From the toughness of all those golden-
orange days.

He fought his way up to adolescence. It was how he had survived. There was no way else to. Violence was the way of the streets. He hated it, but it was part of life. You had to be tough. Or at least seem tough. Bluff tough. You had to prove yourself. You had to strut and pose and—
occasionally
, only occasionally if you bluffed well enough—you had to punch. And be punched. Watly tried to avoid it whenever possible, but violence did not seem always avoidable. There was a lot of it. But there was a lot of guilt, too. Guilt about his mother.
There was fighting and there was fighting.
Watly did the wrong kind of fighting. P-pajer could fight with no hurt coming to either side. This was the right way. This was the best way. And Watly knew it. But he had never been the most obedient son. Devoted, yes. Obedient, no.

“One thing, Watly,” his mother said later. “This is all I ask—all I’ll ever insist on. Promise me you’ll stop shin-scrimming. You’ll get yourself killed, and for no good reason.” Now she sounded like a typical adult. Scolding.
Making rules.

Watly smiled. “I promise,”
he lied.

Never obedient, was Watly. The very next Sunday, after the promise—after countless promises—he was back on the orange streets with his friends: Tobb Indrel, Herrana (The Flash) Enstich, Basop Pinnegipher, and Chetty Fot. Not fighting this time. Not bluffing. Just playing. Watly was back with them—against his mother’s wishes—feeling the rhythm, basking in the danger and excitement. Shin-scrimming. Waiting for the bus. Waiting for the loop to take him. Waiting to be jerked and yanked along, bouncing down the road—maybe skinning a knee or two if the cylinders rode low.
Pulled along.

Yes, jerked and yanked and pulled along—laughing and screaming all
the way.