Made Men (5 page)

As
his understanding of the organ mounted, the anguish began to return.

There was time to explain. Before he was
bombarded again
.

“They
are, parts of each of them, you.
Both of you.
Parts of
the human specimens are
me
.”

The
twins nodded, understanding.

Pulling
another jar from a shelf, the delicate boy thought of the next brain.

Would it, too, give him relief?

He
worked the animal open until
his feral companions
pulled the table from the small room—a sound that made him sit and curl
into a ball. They stacked things on top of the table to reach the cold
lightbulb. One climbed to remove it, then, sure-footed, he sprang from the
stack like a goat. Then, finding that the legs of the table were just threaded
pipes, they cleared the surface and unscrewed one leg. They had a language he
didn’t understand, sophisticated clicks, and yet others his ears were incapable
of registering.

Something had been decided. They’d made
a plan.

Together,
they sat on the nearest cot, eerily motionless, to watch him work on the next
specimen.

He’d let them work out the details of
their escape. He wasn’t built for combat … they were.

A
key scratched at the
lock, but the bulb did not pop and hum to life. They were not surprised.

They’d removed it nearly a week ago
.

Ryker
swung himself fluidly from his cot, padded around the new obstacles and flicked
the switch on the microscope. He was back in bed before the door swung fully
open. Initially, they had left the instrument on, but the device had become
much too hot; it had begun to smoke.

The
physician paused, confused. “Damn light.”

A
nervous quiet emanated from the large human being. His eyes focused on the
light from the microscope in the rear of the room. The beam shone along the
floor.

He’d noticed ... things were not in
their expected order.

An
acrid fear-fog swirled, Ryker saw, around the misanthrope. His physical
movements slowed, perhaps to think. He shut the door absently, glancing for a
moment at the doorknob as though he considered flight, and then shook the
proper instinct off like a wet cur, turning to fiddle with the key, locking
them all in. Ryker smelled the man’s doubt; a sour scent boiling up through the
fleshy reeds that allowed the man’s speech. His armpits were drenched and his
face bloomed red. The hairs above each human ear had clumped together like
musky, dew-soaked worms.

Rickard
joined him. Backs straight, they walked—wearing the clothing he had
left—into the dim wedge of light. They stood as though awaiting
instructions. Illuminated from below, their unusual facial prominences became
apparent: the tips of their noses seemed to twitch, their lips overly thin,
each cheekbone appeared mobile—an equal mix of bone and meat with
additional insertion sites for the gristly muscles that would let them bite
through things; the hollows circling their deep-set eyes did not store the fat
of five-year-old human boys, rather, their shining tapetum lucidum appeared
framed by ringed, black scales.

“Why
is that door open?”

“It
was not locked,” Ryker answered. “You knew that. We hope to have made you
proud. Your meaning was clear on your last visit. The test was for us all: not
just for The One Who Is Different. Please … come see what we’ve made you. The
gifts in the small room—they were more than we deserved.”

Quaking,
the misguided German dropped the things he carried. Ankles weak, he marched high-kneed
and anus puckered, relying wholly on his gross motor movements to deliver him
to the room in the rear. Just inside the door, he leaned back on his heels. The
cabinet was open—the shelves bare. The most complicated dissection he had
likely ever seen
laid
out at his feet.

They
eased the door shyly shut behind the man. There was no need to rush. He was
sluggish, stricken. Ryker slipped the pipe that was once the hollow leg of a
table over the lever of the handle on the outside of the door. He was nearly as
strong as their captive, without the help of physics, and held the tool calmly.
The three-foot lever guaranteed that the Nazi could not turn the handle inside.
Rickard pushed one of the steel-framed cots with a heavy domed headboard
against the door. Their starving, pale companion moaned, his eyes tight, at the
grating buzz the friction caused. Adjusting the headboard sideways, Ryker’s
twin inched the ruthless metal beneath the lever. Inside, the loyalist had
become bellicose, yet his raging jerks on the inner helve were futile. The
lever communicated both the man’s desperation and the steel’s unforgiving
nature.

Once
more a creator, the man in the small room made a new word for them each moment.

Ryker
shimmied the pipe off of the door handle after a few hundred heartbeats. They
adjusted the cot to assure that the headboard remained under the door’s handle,
not allowing the handle to be turned, and then sat on the bed to weight it.
Just the slightest thread of light glinted beneath the door. Five sink-drips
later, the increasingly tired curses morphed to petitions for treatises. It
seemed their creator could not divine another way out. Rickard dismounted the
platform to roll the chair—which they had stashed near the sink—to
the bunk-turned-rampart. Ryker helped him hoist it. Rickard climbed. Bracing
fingertips on the concrete ceiling, he screwed the yellow light bulb home then
leapt down with a
plop
to assist
Ryker repair the three-legged table.

T
he hungry boy
pondered his jars as the twins divided up the edibles their captor—now
detainee—had indelicately discarded. The dissections would be easier in
the nauseating, xanthous light. He watched his share of food amass. They had
always known he required more than they took for themselves. Three times, when
their hostage had gone too long in returning, they had noted his waning health.
Each time they gave him oil from their wrists. It was a light fluid, but
calorie-rich. It sustained him and provided heat—the fat he needed to
survive. They brought him scrapings, salt crystals that he suspected they
excreted from their nostrils to keep his sodium levels viable. He turned to
tease a bit of loose bone from the skull of the diminutive crocodile he had
started to probe—to study—in the dark. He took one of the
physician’s journals from the foot of his cot, read an entry, then selected a
textbook and flipped quickly to a page referenced in the Nazi’s diary. The
books, the jars, each of the items except for the parted-out human infant
pinned and spread on the floor, now the German’s only company—all but she
and the microscope—were his. There was no hurry.

Thirty-one jars left
.
Thirty-one brains.

Within
his fleeting euphoria, the fact that those many brains awaited his
touch,
rested a sense of calm.

Something good to
focus on.

Each
specimen in a jar had a different shape, contrasting structures, each body
a distinctive
scaffolding: a different way to hold and
protect and cart about each brain. Sinew, bone, gills and lungs—scales or
hide—the brains were the only parts that mattered. They were both the
capstone and the crux of each organism.

The
ousted mortal in the adjoining room roared something unintelligible. He
lamented, worn teeth gnashing yet impotent, upon on his sickly lips and
spittle.

If he weren’t more careful, they’d open
the door and eat him … the others. They didn’t yet realize the things they were
capable of.

But
they had moved on. Ripping the brown grocery bag into pieces to add to the
meager mulch that would be their meal, the twins were unmoved by the outburst.
The noises were nothing. They were right to ignore the muffled admonishments.
To punish the man was not important. The only things that were important were
the brains.

Thirty-one of them.

Each
in a jar of glass, cupped by bone—but with the twist of each lid, within
his reach.

R
yker admired the
piles of food. In total there were six sausages wrapped in foil, one apple, a
small loaf of bread, and a tin container of still-warm gravy with a screw-on
lid. He let a square of brown paper soften on his tongue. A pocket of white
paper appeared less edible. Part of it was glued back upon itself, the chevron
enclosing its contents from view. A small picture was pasted to one corner.
Some writing hung in loops on the side opposite the angled lengths of glue. It
appeared that there were two distinct blocks of information: some of it
numbers, others probably names. The top left name was Wolfgang Bähr. The bottom
name, nearly in the middle of the rectangle, was Josef Mengele.

Rickard
sat on the pallet beside him. It was nice to have the amber fizzle on as long
as they wanted, but it would be nicer still if it was the white bulb that had
put out heat. Rickard tore a small chunk from the loaf to dip into the tin of
gravy and chewed, passing the loaf to his brother. When their allotted portions
were gone, they screwed the lid back onto the container and placed it carefully
to the side of the rations for The One Who Was Different. They eyed the apple
but left it. If punctured, it would quickly brown and turn to something the
warm boy could not eat. They unwrapped the sausage they had silently agreed to
share and took turns licking the grease from the meat but left it for later.
Again, they took turns at the sink, sucking water from the costive faucet.
Sated, Rickard read aloud from the storybook. Time passed. Three stories in,
Ryker glanced over as The One Who Was Different teased a section of skin from a
creature that appeared to be a large-winged fox. The delicate boy had already
peeled back tissues, precisely placing pins to expose the animals lungs, heart,
and spleen; diaphragm—cut away, liver, kidneys, bladder—intestines
small and large. The bones appeared grossly hollow.

So it may more easily fly?

He
hovered nearer, curious. The creature’s eyes appeared larger than its brain,
which the ashen boy exposed last. The skullcap appeared as delicate as an
eggshell. The child’s hands moved with confidence to peel back tissues so thin
they were hard for Ryker to appreciate.

One covering, a
second, a third
.

The
boy relaxed when the gray organ was fully exposed, as though his pain was gone.
As though he were drugged. No less than five anatomical texts were open on
their companion’s cot. A brain graced each glossy photograph and illustration.
The One Who Was Different seemed in a state of bliss. It felt wrong to stare,
so Ryker picked one of the open textbooks and padded back to his brother with
it.

Rickard
had found a new story. A man had made wings similar to those of the huge fruit
bat on the floor. They failed—however—to carry him to the gods, as
was the protagonist’s goal.

It was a story of hubris
.

Rickard
passed him the book at the story’s end so Ryker could see the illustrations. In
turn, he passed his brother the textbook. Ryker glanced at the door to the
smallest room. He considered reading the story again—louder—for
their caged bipedal omnivore but decided not to. He—the man sobbing in
the dark because the bulb of the microscope had recently burned out—was a
nuisance. Nothing but. He was like a beetle, but less useful. Ryker passed the
storybook back to Rickard and stood to suck a draught of water from the faucet.
He unwrapped a sausage.

Just to see it.

Rickard
made a low, oscillating warning tone. He held the packet to his nose and
flicked his lids.

I will only smell it. Watch.

Ryker
rewrapped the foil around the meat and lay back on the cot. His eyes became
thoughtful slits. Their ward—neither a locksmith nor a god—trapped
in the small room ate, but had nothing in the small room to eat. He drank, but
nothing existed in the small room to hydrate him.

He was their specimen
.

Soon
enough he would starve and desiccate.

In his pocket sat the key to the outside
world.

T
hey had read everything
in the room several times.

The
faucet dripped. Though the faulty plumbing would continue to drip for eight
years, when the mildewed cell was finally reduced to rubble by the carom of an
immense pendulous ball and subsequent bulldozers, the drop of water falling
into the orange-brown divot in the tired sink was the last plop of any
importance. The journals and textbooks had been enlightening. So many things
existed in the world.

Some of them abstract—the products
of human society
.

Time,
for example: seconds, minutes, hours, days
;
weeks,
months, years. Now Ryker was aware of decades—nearly two of them had
passed since the Second World War. Mostly, inanimate things wore out slower
than humans did; an aged person could exceed a century.

It was not unheard of.

Ryker
wondered how long he would live, if he could avoid being shoved into a jar full
of formaldehyde.

The
quiet man locked in the adjoining, smaller room had only visited them weekly
according to his journals; this was his longest visit thus far. He had been
silent for a long time.

At least a week.

His
panting and yelling had occurred regularly at
first,
likely drying him out quicker than if he had been able to stay calm. The One
Who Was Different had finished the mealy apple—the last of his
food—days ago.

Perhaps three days.

Thinner
than ever, the human boy seemed to deposit all of his growth in length.

If he stood more often,
it would be called height.

His
trips to the sink had become less frequent.

Soon, if they didn’t act, they’d need to
feed him from their wrists and force him to take the salty grit they excreted
to keep him hydrated.

Freshly
bathed, the twins sat, unmoving, in the dark. The pale boy’s brain craved
constant dark, but his body required sunlight.

Certainly, he was deficient in vitamin D
.
They all were.

Establishing
a routine, the twins occupied themselves. Every 1,500 drips, they squatted in
the gray-toned world near their relatives, examining the details of each
cognate, then bathed. Then, climbing to screw in the bulb, they re-read the
journals and textbooks. They identified likenesses to themselves in the bones
and soft flesh from the jars, and also dissimilarities. Each joint that may
have formed
a roundness
in an animal was now flat and
canvas-like. Initially, the preservative called formaldehyde had overwhelmed
the room.

Recognizing
the smell as noxious, the twins adapted, but soon The One Who Was Different
appeared debilitated, poisoned by the pernicious fumes. Leaking from his mouth,
eyes, and bowels, he curled up and moaned and took shallow breaths. Rickard had
started to return the corpses to their jars to mitigate the outgassing, but the
bony prodigy wouldn’t allow it. Painstakingly, they had compromised. Washing
each part in the sink had taken—Ryker guessed—three days. By
handling the tissues like pieces of puzzles, they had learned even more about
their brethren. Each was a friable work—slowly rotting art. According to
the books, all of them had started as a cell, dividing and growing until
euthanized. Their time spent in jars was simply an intermission—a
chemical purgatory as their cells returned to the earth. At the hand of The One
Who Was Different, each had enjoyed a distinguished reanimation.
Although, the three of them, the twins and the undernourished Aryan
child, had provided the movements—not life.
Now each soggy little
dead machine lay parted out, scrubbed, placed to dry on their laundered skin
just so.

Until
today, The One Who Was Different had arisen to probe the brains when it was
time to light the room, but the benefits had diminished; his obsessive
inspections had tapered, and now without the heat of food calories, he stayed
in his bed at all times.

Ryker
climbed their makeshift scaffolding and screwed the yellowed bulb into the
rusted threads in the fixture. The effect on their emaciated colleague was
drastic: his body curled and rocked—bombarded as though by a solar
flare—and he pulled all three wool layers around his face. Although the
cold made the twins slower, it was not uncomfortable. Their companion, however,
lost calories whenever he shivered, which was most of the time, and they’d
tried to mitigate his loss of heat by adding their own bedding to his.

He needed food as often as their creator
needed food, or possibly even more often.

Initially,
the last piles of food had seemed a bounty.

It was time to move the bed and open the
door.

With
the key from their dead not-god’s pocket, they would access everything and
everywhere else, and find heat-providing food for their ward.
Continuing to rock,
The One Who Was
Different suffered a greater than normal turmoil. It worsened as they pushed
the cot from the door with a loud grating sound.

The
not-quite-boys
moved the cot and turned the handle and
stepped inside. The tapping of thousands of tiny keratinous feet filled the
room. Each insect scurried to squeeze back through the small hole in the wall,
yet the portal would only accommodate one beetle-like body at a time. Ryker
leapt to block their exit with his thumb and the toast-colored bodies dodged this
way and that, vulnerable in their collective indecision. The twins took turns,
stuffing their cheeks like arboreal monkeys. Some of the insects took flight
and were caught midair;
those in molt
sought safe
harbor around the edges of the tumefied corpse. Their
no-longer-captor
was bloated in places and hollow in others. His tongue was thin and black.
There was movement beneath the ashen skin around his eyes, but it was not life.

It was more cockroaches.

Ryker
pulled the ring of keys from their not-god’s pocket. Systematically, they
explored the rest of the man. A stack of neatly folded colorful paper was
clamped flat with a metal clip. Rickard held up what must be a writing utensil.

The rest was carrion
.

They
took the keys and the money and the pen and stepped outside, their mouths full
of insect-mulch: wings and legs, heads and abdomens and antennae.

“There
are insects … should we get you some?”

The
One Who Was Different remained curled—a cachectic fetus. He did not, or couldn’t
answer. Breaths shallow, he wormed a leg to one side. Ryker, wondering if the
movement was voluntary, locked eyes with Rickard, who had identified the
correct key, then padded toward the door. Rickard turned the tool in the lock
of the door that obscured everything and everywhere else. Ryker trailed him
down a hallway. They turned left, then right, pausing at each corner for two
heartbeats—perhaps eight seconds—to listen, four ears rotating.
Reaching metal stairs, they paused once more, in admiration. They were a
brilliant adaptation to deal with elevations.

The tunnel felt colder
.

Ryker’s
eyes and ears felt more sluggish, like bearings in super-cooled grease. Heat
seeped in from the top of the stairs. Climbing, his brother placed his palm on
the warm panel separating them from horses and people, beds and surgeons and
cars, mailboxes, trees, the Moon and oceans—and from someone named Josef
Mengele.

G
lowing by the light
filtering through cracks, Rickard saw the white string dangling brightly from a
fixture, wondered at its purpose, and pulled it. A small light clicked on.
After a study of the panel, he slid it sideways. The lights outside bloomed to
a slash the width of Wolfgang’s finger. They pressed their faces to the crack
and peered out.

Voices.

The
heat beyond the panel felt delicious.

They were behind … bookshelves?

As
his brother inched the panel open a bit more, his face began to warm. Rickard
worked his cold jaws wide. Orienting his open mouth toward the glow in the room
beyond, the aberrant designed for combat and espionage exposed the rich
capillary beds beneath his muscular tongue to the heat. Fleetingly, he thought
about Icarus. A thought came to him he couldn’t communicate with clicks.

“Why
did the man seek the gods if he could fly to the heavens? If I could leap high
enough, I would gulp down the sun.” Rickard nodded agreeably, easing the panel
farther to one side.

Past
the tops of books, a pair of large shoes and a pair of tiny shoes passed by,
the legs above wrapped in pants. Another bookshelf was opposite them.
Past that, another.
Rows like tunnels to walk in, the walls
made of books.

It was hard to estimate how many rows.

Rickard
risked some glottal clicks to judge how large the expanse beyond the panel
really was. Ryker, too, listened, then swiveled his ears flat against his skull
in astonishment.

The world was huge.

The
not-quite-boys
waited. Some of the light came from hot
bulbs, but there was other light too. Rickard couldn’t see the second source
from their vantage point. The other wavelengths of light felt remarkable.
Slowly, they pulled books into the clammy tunnel, stacking them along the edges
of the rickety stairs to create a hollow just big enough for one of their
heads. As always, they took turns inching out, their faces even with the dusty
bindings—to smell, hear, and taste the new environment.
They whispered or clicked or hummed their
findings to each other upon trading places. It continued for hours.

Fewer
feet passed. The tenor of the voices in the space had changed. The light from
electricity was extinguished and the other—preferred light—grew
pale. A low buzz remained, but the twins knew the remaining, even electricity
did not come from people. They moved yet more books and eased themselves to standing
in the aisle—a more dignified birth than their first had been. Now warm,
their ears covered in fine, soft hair pointing this way, then that. They
listened for reasons to dart back inside the tunnel.

Finding
none, they took tentative steps into the new world.