Memorymakers (14 page)

“You would have died,” Jabu said. He felt better, and his breathing became more regular. “I sensed that I had to save your miserable life, and then . . . there was something else, a terrible creature that died as I watched. Old memories, I believe, from your first transplant. These new ones are strong, overpowering.”

“Yes?” Squick said.

“I didn’t have a will of my own, I had to do what I did for you, like—like the embidium had a mind of its own that directed my motions.”

One of the Corpsmen snickered.

Jabu smiled. “A mind of its own. Of course it has a mind of its own, but it wasn’t implanted in my head and wasn’t supposed to . . . I mean . . . ”

He glanced at Tung, then back at Fieldman Squick. “Time’s wasting,” Jabu said. “Where’s the Harvey girl?”

“First room,” came the response from Squick. As he pointed, he seemed to see for the first time the mangled, lifeless body of Peenchay, identifiable by the ripped yellow remains of his onesuit. “What the hell?” Squick said.

“You don’t know anything about that?” Jabu asked.

“N-nothing. The boy’s in the second room.”

Chapter 18

Freedom is a wild, uncivilized state. Like children, my people need discipline, an iron hand. Thus do they know they are loved.

—From the
Sayings of Lordmother Emily,
cloth edition

Squick’s hands tingled, and he had an imprecise image of laying them upon someone’s face—upon Jabu’s? Fieldman and Director knelt, staring at each other, recovering their breath.

No,
Squick thought, these hands had been upon his own face as he lay where Jabu knelt now, and they had not been Squick’s own hands at the time. But how could that be, these appendages that were not always his own?

A blinding light around us—white-hot. What happened?

And a fresh Gweenchild embidium touched his thoughts, with new childhood memories that were meshed with his own. He felt the excitement of newness, of freshness, and all his senses seemed heightened, perfected.

Something had been failing with the first implant, the wild boy, for Squick had not been happy. He recalled seeing the image of the wild boy shrivel and blacken, but could vestiges of the implant remain?

He tried to separate new from old and personal from implanted, but could not. A piece of information he should not have known surfaced, a name.
Thomas Harvey!
Another followed, Emily Harvey, fainter than the first. Such details were supposed to be gone, Squick reminded himself, washed away to prevent conflicts with other recollections, other experiences.

I have the embidium of Thomas Harvey. Tom-Tom!

Squick pressed for other details but detected no names or dates or addresses. Just faces, ghostlike faces and smiles, and a vague sensation of happiness, of contentment. No need to explore that realm, to pick at it. The sensations were perfect as they were and should be left alone.

He felt a new contentment, an awakening serenity, and sighed. He gazed around upon the others present, and his thoughts fled. When he looked upon the faces that went with the voices, the voices became visual—blinding, throbbing spotlights.

He stared into the lights that should have been faces, and each light became a frosty white fingertip, with a million eyes upon each fingertip, like subatomics on the head of a pin. Each finger saw all . . . the eyes of each were the eyes of all, and from them flowed the icy Nebulons of a collective organism.

Squick’s hands tingled again, and an infinite queue of Gweenchildren marched before him, with their skulls peeled away, brains exposed. He wanted to reach out to them, to all of them, begging them for forgiveness. But they marched on as if he didn’t exist, as if he had never existed, and he knew his efforts would be futile. No matter what he did, it would be utter futility.

Despite all, despite his immense and eternal sadness, Squick felt instilled with a fresh and vibrant sense of urgency, fused with optimism. There could be different ways from past ways, but what might they be? Who might suggest, and who might lead?

His head felt heavier but better, with more desirable elements on the surface for his use, and the darker, past ways inundated, buried beneath a hot lava flow of New, of Different.

Hello, Emily Harvey,
he thought.
I
am your brother now.

“They aren’t here,” a voice said. “The children are gone!”

Squick saw the speaker, a stocky man in a blue Inventing Corps uniform, a short distance down the corridor from the sensor. The second door was open, and the man looked very agitated. A nearer door was open, too, the first from the sensor.

“Gone?” Squick felt the word vibrate across his lips. He cleared his throat. “But they . . . the girl . . .”

Squick recalled that she had gone limp as he tried to attack her, and he remembered his subsequent flight from the room in terror. He’d left the door open, then gone into the seizure and the shittah death dance beneath the sensor. For a long time he had stared into the sensor eye.

“Search the building,” Squick said. “They can’t be far away.”

The image of the dead sensor flashed in his mind just as one of the Corpsmen said, “The stealth-lock down here is out of whack.”

Tied in with the sensor!
Squick thought.
They’ve escaped!

“The s-sensor n-needed adjustment,” Squick stammered, “and with the press of events I delayed it. I didn’t think—I mean, security was functioning, except for the fire and burglar alarms in the Gween areas, the property management offices. What have they done to Peenchay? How could they—mere children—do this?”

Squick recalled the terrible transgressions of Peenchay, and of his own, and he was deeply ashamed.

Director Jabu ordered a search of the building, and Tung issued specific assignments to the Corpsmen. All of the Corpsmen left, including Tung.

“This wasn’t entirely your fault,” Jabu said in a tone so kindly and without intensity that it surprised Squick. Flat words, soft words. “There are other forces at work here. Forces we may never understand.”

“I was beginning to realize that,” Squick said. “It was overwhelming me. I couldn’t cope. No one could.”

He caught the Director’s disapproving gaze, and Squick added quickly, “Other than yourself, of course, My Lord.”

“Don’t patronize me, Malcolm.”

“Sorry.” Squick lowered his gaze.
Malcolm? He’s never used my first name before.

“And don’t grovel. I’ve always thought you were special, Malcolm, beyond your extraordinary Nebulon counts and excellent record of filling orders. Your rebellious strain—”

“I’m sorry, uh, I thought I was—”

“Quiet, man! Your rebelliousness is an asset, a requisite for leadership. Without it you’re no more than a follower, but it must be structured, controlled. Curiously, it takes a rebellious nature, almost iconoclastic at times, to fit into the top of our establishment. It has always been this way, a paradox it seems sometimes, but this is one of the facets all Directors have looked for in choosing successors.”

“And that is why you saved me?”

“It’s not in the bag, man!” Jabu smiled, just a little.

The two men rose to their feet simultaneously, holding gazes with each other. To Squick, the Director seemed less massive than before, more approachable, more human.

Squick wet his lips, resisting the urge to ask questions. Could it be? From the edge of death to this? He heard voices on upper levels, with doors opening and closing.

“There are several candidates I am considering,” Jabu said, “and among them, you. In many ways I like you best. You were ill. . . those near infractions with children, I am aware of them. Even worse, you looked the other way while Peenchay ripped donor children apart. I saw your soul in the midst of the blinding white light no one could look upon. I wanted to disbelieve what I saw, and I experienced your worries, your attempts to be good, to follow Lordmother’s Way properly . . . Oh, Malcolm, how my heart goes out to you! That implant, that insane wild boy. I’m so sorry that something went wrong. I blame myself for the choice of that implant, though I don’t know what I could have done differently. Systems are not infallible, and neither are people.”

“That’s okay. I don’t hold you responsible.”

“Part of it has to do with the ancient weakness of our people, the weakness Inferiors are least able to control.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Gweenmeat. You know what I mean only too well, and the tendency touches us all. It contributed to your problem, and the defective embidium only made matters worse. You were unlucky. But rest assured, I believe you are cured.”

“Entirely?”

“I sense that you are. As a result of the newest implant, of the journey we took in the blinding light of death and life. But only you can answer that question with certainty. In time the answer will be known.”

“If I am cured, what a joy! I had so hoped, oh, how I had hoped! But My Lord, what might I become Director of? The Nebulons are gone, and all is . . . I don’t mean to be pessimistic. I’m just trying to be realistic. Won’t our race die now, since we can no longer make the embidium extractions needed for Ch’Var mental health? What is left, My Lord?”

“There is always something left,” Jabu’s gaze became penetrating, and he added, “Are you afraid you might be the last Director?”

“No, it isn’t that.”

Jabu told Squick of the researches of the Inventing Corps into artificial Nebulons and embidiums, of having to force Tung away from that process, and of her comments that her creative focus might be irretrievable.

Tung returned with her men while Jabu was talking about her, and after a moment’s pause she reported that the children were nowhere on the premises.

Jabu led the group through the disabled stealth-lock, and they became seven flying embers.

Chapter 19

A death clock ticks in the human body and in every race of man. One day our race will end, and a new one shall rise.

—Words of Mother Ch’Var

As soon as Emily had gone to her room, Victoria walked swiftly toward Mrs. Belfer’s back porch room. Angrily, Victoria slammed the door open against an inside wall, and flecks of plaster scattered on the carpet.

The room was messier than usual, with newspapers, food wrappers, magazines and romance novels strewn about. The odors of alcohol and cheap perfume mixed in the air. Victoria wrinkled her nose.

Mrs. Belfer sat up on her bed of lace pillows and demanded in a drunken slur, “What you doin’? How about knockin’, the finisher school way?” She raised one pudgy fist, and with a slightly bent wrist made three delicate little taps against the air before slumping back on one elbow. She stared insolently at her visitor.

Victoria glanced around, saw a pile of empty wine and brandy bottles in the sink, with dirty dishes piled around. “I don’t have to knock in my own house. I do as I damn well please here. Get out of that bed.”

“Make me.”

With hardly a missed beat, Victoria clenched her teeth and dove into combat, pulling away Mrs. Belfer’s red wig. Victoria’s other hand seized a handful of the thin, dark hair that sprouted in uneven patches from the housekeeper’s pink scalp. She pulled Mrs. Belfer to a standing position, in terrified attention.

“Aw right, aw right,” Mrs. Belfer slurred. “You don’t hafta get nasty.”

“Everything’s falling apart and it’s your fault!” Victoria roared. “If you’d watched the children as you were supposed to, none of this would have happened. They wouldn’t have run away and caused me all this.” She shook Mrs. Belfer and then released her.

“We’ve been through this,” the slovenly woman answered in a sullen tone. She stepped backward, retrieved a bottle of white wine from the floor by her bed and edged toward the open door.

But Victoria grabbed her arm and shrilled: “Don’t leave until I’m finished with you! Patrick says I’m never to say anything against his brat Emily ever again.”

“That doesn’t sound like the doc, callin’ his kid a brat.”

“You stupid old woman, of course he didn’t call her that. Don’t play with me! Mon Dieu, when I think of all the oddball statements that girl’s made, and he keeps on defending her.”

Mrs. Belfer tipped up the wine bottle and took a generous swig. Well, I don’t see any reason to get so upset. Man’s got a right to say what he wants where his own kids are concerned.”

“Who cares what you think? You’re nothing, a broken-down loser. Patrick says he’s going to divorce me if I don’t straighten out. That sonofabitch is threatening to divorce me because of you!”

Mrs. Belfer took another drink of wine.

“Did you hear what I said, the way he talked to me? What are you going to do to fix the mess you’ve caused? Talk to Emily for me, get her to admit her lies.” Victoria felt her lips compress into a tight, smug smile. “Yes, that would solve it. The girl listens to you. I’ll even slip some extra cash into the deal for you and the girl.”

Mrs. Belfer shook her head. “Oh, I could never do that. She’s a good girl, won’t turn out like you.”

“Aren’t you forgetting your place in this little arrangement, that your position depends upon me?”

Another swig of wine. “I don’t care ‘bout none o’ that.”

“You’ll be unemployed, out on the street.”

“So what?”

Victoria pushed her face close to Mrs. Belfer’s, despite the odor. “We’ll work something out,” Victoria purred, “so you can continue to buy your bottles of booze. Quid pro quo: you help me, I help you.”

“You think I’m just a lush you can push around, don’t you? Well, maybe I got a surprise for you.” Mrs. Belfer licked her lips.

Victoria wrinkled her nose and thrust the housekeeper away from her. “You smell like a skid row bum.”

Mrs. Belfer lifted her wig from the floor and set it backward upon her head. The wig slid askew and gave her a clownish appearance, but she pulled herself erect and glared at Victoria.

“I like those kids,” Mrs. Belfer said, “and I like the doc. You’re no good for them, and I’ll tell about the girl you let drown at your college party. I’ll show the videotape I have, and I got lotsa copies made of it, spread ‘round town in safe places. Society page headlines, I can see ‘em real clear.”

Victoria felt her face flush. With shaking hands she removed her long scarf and stretched it tautly between her hands.

Mrs. Belfer’s eyelids narrowed, and she hefted the bottle to one side, like a weapon.

A black rage consumed Victoria, and she moved toward the housekeeper, rolling the scarf into a tight rope as she approached.

In her bedroom upstairs, Emily slipped into a clean sweater and skirt and combed her damp hair. In the mirror of her dressing table, she saw herself, slight-figured with straight brown hair . . . and beside that, on the mirrorless stucco wall another version of herself appeared—as an adult with fuller features.

When she moved, the girl and woman reflections moved with her in synchronization, and when she smiled the same teeth showed in both reflected smiles, without perceptible change from teen to adult.

She leaned close to the adult reflection, saw a long scar behind one eyebrow that she didn’t have now, a scar that didn’t appear on the teen reflection, and this gave her pause for thought.

I’m going to be injured.

Nonetheless she wanted to grow into that woman in her future, into that kindly countenance that gazed back upon her with the expression of mother to child. Emily didn’t want to be a teenager any longer, not in this house with Victoria.

Nonna had told her that the teens were difficult years anyway, from physical and chemical changes in the body. But Nonna put an upbeat tone to it, adding that breezes still blew and birds sang and flowers grew and girls turned into young women despite the pain.

Emily had a sudden desire to call her grandparents and tell them she and Thomas were back. They must have worried terribly at their disappearance, as much as Emily’s father. She wanted to go straight to their house and sit close by Nonna and talk to her about the Chalk Man and Squick and the power she had and the terrible occurrences in Squick’s building. Nonna would listen to her, wouldn’t say she was crazy.

The wall and mirror images faded before her, and unbidden Ch’Var memories spilled forth, a dark cloud of indecipherable alien information that drifted over her, touching her and receding, touching and receding.

Each touch was heavier than the one previous, and she cried out words in an alien tongue that were not quite clear to her in meaning.

Then a voice asked, “What’s the matter?” and she saw Thomas in the doorway, face flushed from his bath, his bare feet poking out beneath his robe.

“Nothing.”

He sat on the cedar chest at the end of her bed, crossed his arms and frowned thoughtfully. “It’s about all the stuff that happened to us, isn’t it? Like you activating the Chalk Man and that deranged, strange guy, Peenchay, that you killed.”

“That
I
killed?”

“Sure. You created the blackboard monster. Look, Sis, don’t get riled at me. I don’t wanna mess with you.”

She scowled, but when she saw the bemused expression on his face and the twinkle in his eyes she couldn’t suppress a smile and a little laugh. “It all happened, didn’t it?” she said. “We didn’t imagine it. Thomas, I’m frightened of the power. I don’t know how to control it. What if I hurt someone accidentally, like you or Dad?”

Thomas considered this for a moment, his head tilted back in a thoughtful pose. Presently he replied, “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. I see it this way. We were in the middle of a war, and Peenchay would have killed us if we didn’t get him first.”

“I didn’t want to kill anyone,” she said, her voice faltering, “not even that monster. I’m different from other kids, Thomas. I’d only suspected it before, but the extent is becoming clearer. I’ve got things rolling around in my head I don’t understand, frightening things about Ch’Vars and Gweens and Nebulons, and . . . I just saw a flash . . . billions of faces, zillions of them at once. Squick did something to my mind with his filthy Nebulons, I’m not sure what.”

“I don’t think we’ll find any of this in Dad’s medical books. I don’t think it’s hormones or . . .”He paused, and his eyes opened wide. “What about poltergeists, those noisy ghosts that make furniture fly and stuff? Could you be tied in with them?”

Emily laughed. “It’s a better explanation than any I have, but the Chalk Man wasn’t that noisy—except when he was chewing . . . eeuuu! It doesn’t seem real. Do you know I can’t even call you Tom-Tom anymore because of Squick calling you that? That evil man has taken something away from us, something that was precious and we’ll never have again.”

“I’ll get rid of the t-shirt.”

Emily nodded. “We’re growing up in a hurry, I guess. Hey, you’d better finish dressing before Victoria starts yelling about something. She hasn’t changed.”

“I wish she had,” Thomas said. He traipsed across the hall to his room.

A few minutes later, satisfied she’d done the best she could with her appearance, Emily started down the stairs. A scream from below hurried her on her way. She wasn’t sure, but the voice sounded something like Mrs. Belfer’s, a loud, frightened cry that subsided quickly.

Emily raced through the house, past the kitchen to the housekeeper’s quarters. Inside the back porch room, Victoria stood with outstretched arms, dancing a peculiar ballet with Mrs. Belfer. The housekeeper’s red wig dangled from one side of her head, and she looked limp, a drunken rag doll. Mrs. Belfer’s feet were dragging on the ground, and Emily noticed a scarf around her neck, with one of Victoria’s long arms around the woman’s neck, long fingers tight on the scarf.

“My God, you’re killing her!” Emily shouted, and she pummeled her stepmother with her fists. “Let go of her, you witch, let her go!”

The scarf loosened to a large loop and Mrs. Belfer’s head slid through. She slumped to the floor. Scarf still held in her outstretched hands, Victoria turned her attention to Emily. The fabric made crisp sounds as the woman stretched and released it—snap, snap, snap.

Emily hesitated. Should she call forth the Chalk Man? It would be so easy to eliminate Victoria from her life forever. Concentrating, Emily saw her protector’s dim outline begin to sketch itself beside Victoria.

But Emily’s father loved this woman, and the girl wasn’t sure she could destroy someone he loved. Besides, Emily knew that she wanted this woman dead and out of her life forever, and the feelings were deep, a loathing so intense that it made the act terribly wrong. The Chalk Man’s image began to fade.

“Dance with me,” whispered Victoria, and she looped the scarf around Emily’s neck.

Emily struggled in her grasp, felt the scarf bite into her neck, twisting against her skin until it threatened to cut off air. Victoria’s eyes blazed with feral lavender light.

“Don’t do this,” Emily said. But she slid toward unconsciousness with the eyes of the woman luminous above her, a pair of unrelenting lavender suns. Emily couldn’t believe her stepmother would kill her, not this debutante trained in the most exclusive finishing schools, this social butterfly who spoke civilized French and had the finest table manners.

They didn’t strangle people in finishing school.

Emily slipped farther into unconsciousness, and she felt too weak to call for her Chalk Man. She sensed another presence nearby—in Victoria’s blazing eyes?

Something in the eyes shocked Emily to awareness. They were red now, not lavender, and light bounced in the air in front of her eyes, like embers from a fire. The pressure on Emily’s neck ceased, and the light expanded until it covered Victoria’s face, concealing it. As quickly as it had expanded it contracted and became a dot of color, a single ember, burning brightly on the end of Victoria’s nose.

Then the ember vanished, leaving only Victoria’s startled face. She stared at Emily with eyes no longer filled by alien light, eyes that were lavender but without vitality. The scarf slipped from her hands and her arms dropped limply at her sides.

Slowly, Emily backed away, and her stepmother stood in one place as though stunned. Her perfect mouth opened and a babble of sound came forth in French and English, senseless ravings, without emotion.

Emily retrieved the scarf from the floor and tied Victoria’s hands tightly behind her back. Victoria did not resist, hardly twitched a muscle.

Mrs. Belfer stirred and groaned, and Emily crouched beside her.

“What the hell . . . ” Mrs. Belfer said in a raspy voice. She rubbed a red mark that ringed her neck. “She tried to kill me.”

With Emily’s assistance the housekeeper sat up and stared angrily at Victoria. “What happened to her? She was all over me, I went under, and now she looks like a zombie.”

“I don’t know,” Emily answered. “She acted like all her energy drained away, and I tied her up.”

Mrs. Belfer forged all of her drunken facial wrinkles into a smile, and she gazed at Victoria. “How nice. Victoria, oh Victoria, did this little kid whip you? Tsk, tsk, look at you now.”

“Don’t provoke her,” Emily said. “She went into some kind of trance, and if she comes out of it she could get free.”

“Why does she keep standing there like that?”

Emily shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I’m gonna call your dad and get him home right away.”

“I called and left a message,” Emily said. “He’s in surgery. I’m sure he’ll be home as soon as he can.”

“Well, when he shows up I got lots to tell him. This lady ain’t what she’s been puttin’ on to be. Your dad had better watch out for you kids, and for himself. I don’t blame you for runnin’ away, but you gotta know there’s terrible things happenin’ out there in the world. Right now there’s kids droppin’ like flies with some god-awful disease that puts them into comas. You don’t want that to happen.” She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.

For a brief moment Emily saw the woman that Mrs. Belfer probably had been many years earlier, and felt a deep pity for her.