White and Other Tales of Ruin (53 page)

Never once did he let failure enter his mind.

Honey would live again. Nothing else was possible.

He left her on the bench as he went to find what he needed.

Ironically for a scientist, the Baker had been something of a Luddite. His science was his own, so personal and unique to him that in Tom’s eyes it had seemed almost magical. He’d not even had a net point in the laboratory, and even fifteen years ago that must have inconvenienced him so much. Tom only hoped that the scientist’s illicit charging unit still functioned after so long. Of all the illegal units he had seen and heard of this was the only one that didn’t eventually kill its user. The others — sold on street corners and in darkened corners of clubs — worked for a time, but they fused and cauterised their users’ insides, driving them insane, psychotic or both. The irony was that it was a buzz the artificials could not give up … hence the buzzed wandering the streets, artificial equivalents of the human drug addicts. They even looked the same. But the black bags beneath a buzzed’s eyes were caused by burnt blood.

He’d need a lead to connect himself to Honey for the proxy resurrection, and one to plug her into the charging unit. The Baker had kept all his connectors in an old cupboard at the rear of the room, and they were still there now. Tom pulled out a great knot of leads, cables and wires, a tangled web home to many real spiders. He wondered whether they’d become more entangled with time, because at first glance he had no idea how he’d ever be able to part them. But they seemed twisted by design, and in a matter of minutes he’d extracted the two cables he required. He replaced the rest and closed the cupboard door. Strange how neatness was so comforting.

Tom carefully lifted Honey and carried her into the back room, the comfortable place where he and the Baker had used to sit for hours on end talking, discussing, philosophising. The Baker had never been subtle. He’d told Tom that philosophising with what was essentially a robot had been one of the greatest pleasures of his life. Tom smiled now as he thought of some of those conversations, pleased that he’d have a few hours to recollect them in full. He felt in need of some of the Baker’s wisdom.

He took one armchair and placed Honey in the other. The charging unit was built into Honey’s chair. The Baker had done that so that Tom could sit and recharge whilst still conversing. Hungry as he had been to experiment and create, it was the gleaning of knowledge that had been the old man’s greatest love. And he’d told Tom that their relationship was unique in all of history — the more they talked and argued and discussed, the more they knew. It was as if their words reacted in some weird psycho-chemical way, causing truth itself to leak into this room and find a home in their minds.

Tom plugged Honey into the charger and set it to start bleeding power in an hour’s time. Then he connected himself to Honey with the proxy cable, sat back and closed his eyes.

He accessed the net. It took several seconds to find the correct resurrection sites, and he grouped them divisionally so that they could be manipulated in order of importance. He only hoped that Honey had suffered no hidden alterations at the hands of Hot Chocolate Bob. If she had … something other than Honey may result from this.

And if that happened, Tom would destroy her and then himself.

He looked around the room, still swimming in wonderful, safe memories. There were worse places to die.

Honey twitched once as the flow of information began. Then she began to undulate slowly, steaming, a bubbling sound coming from within her pale folds. An eyeball oozed from one socket, rolled across her face and then was hauled back in by a tightening of the optic nerve.

Tom did not want to see. So he half-stood, shifted his armchair and sat back down, staring into the laboratory as he acted as a conduit for Honey’s resurrection.

He reckoned on six hours.

By that time, perhaps the gophers would have finished the pre-programmed task they were executing.

The cabinet rattled and beeped, Honey stank and bubbled, and Tom decided to close his eyes and let memories of the Baker give comfort.

Tom never truly slept. He could turn down and shut off many of his normal functions — and for him that was akin to sleep — but his dreams were sunken thoughts, consciousness on a reduced level, and here randomness crept in.

Dreams were memories as well, and sometimes memories of dreams. That’s why Tom spent six hours thinking of Honey.

Because he was certain he had dreamed of her before.

There were no defined memories in his mind, nothing definitely
her
, but the whole sense of her was there. It was something he had lived with for a long, long time, a presence in his mind living in shadows, existing in places not yet seen or known or understood. Every thought he had about her now — the way she moved her head, spoke, smiled or frowned — was familiar to Tom. Even the way she’d acted when he had first seen her yesterday, the sex, the smell of her as they’d rutted on the bed … all known.

Hidden, but known.

He wondered briefly if the Baker had been aware of her, but that was crazy. Tom would have known. And the Baker would never have been so cruel as to give him love, only for him to experience it with a sister.

No … plain crazy.

He surfaced from these sunken thoughts from time to time and found everything to be the same. The light had dimmed somewhat and Tom realised that it was night outside, but the gophers were still busying themselves, and Honey still sighed and bubbled behind him.

Maybe the familiarity was a product of the virus the Baker had programmed and injected into Tom mere days before dying. “I’m giving you love,” he’d said, “and one day I pray you may find it.”

For those long years it had always been inside him. And when he had set eyes on Honey, she was everything that love was meant to be.

“
Tom?”

Tom drifted back to the surface of his mind. Someone was calling him. Perhaps it was the Baker, because the sounds had stopped from the laboratory, and something was ready.

“
Tom … don’t say you’ve gone, not after all this.”

He stood from the chair and spun around, and there was Honey. She was curled into the chair, knees drawn up and feet tucked under her behind, as if hunkered down for an evening with a book and a bottle of wine. But she still looked … wrong. Her skin was tinged blue, her eyes dry and harsh-looking, her hair lank and greasy. She could not move, and her flesh lay in folds around her midriff, pooled on the armchair about her thighs. Her eyelids looked thick and heavy. Her breasts sagged down to her waist, nipples pointing earthward.

“
You’re alive!” Tom said. She smiled weakly and he moved to her side, reaching out to touch her forehead. It was slick and too cool.

“
I feel unfinished,” Honey said.

Tom made sure the lead still joined them to the buzz unit, closing his eyes to ensure that the net connection was still there. Then he sat on the arm of the chair and put one arm around her shoulders, drawing her to him like a doll, kissing the top of her head even though it dismayed him to do so. “But you’re awake now,” he said, “and I’ll stay here with you until you’re ready.”

“
Where are we?” she asked weakly, and he told her.

“
Stay quiet and get some rest,” Tom said, “you’ve got a way to go yet.”

“
Fuck quiet!” Her voice was low, but full of life. “We’ve got a lot of getting-to-know-each-other to do, you and I. Tell me about you. Tell me … tell me what it’s going to be like for us, and where we’re going to go. Tell me how happy we’ll be when we get there.”

So Tom sat there, holding Honey’s shadow as her resurrection was completed, and he told her the things she wanted to hear. Curiously enough, they were all the things he wanted too.

They left at midnight. Honey held onto Tom’s arm as she walked across the laboratory, looking down at her feet, concentrating hard on each and every step. The lights were stuttering now, as if losing their will when they realised that their guests were leaving, and Tom was terrified that they’d fail before he and Honey reached the door. He’d find his way out, he knew that … but right now he wouldn’t welcome the dark.

The gophers had been inactive for hours. The cabinet was quiet too, but it was a loaded silence, like a pause between breaths or the stillness after a scream. Tom kept glancing at the cabinet as they approached, and again as they passed by, wondering what was in there and whether, by the Baker’s weird machinations, it was meant for him. The scanning he’d felt upon entering may have kick-started some long dormant programme in the laboratory’s terminal, a gift for message for him. A final testimony to the Baker’s genius.

They walked on, and Tom felt the cabinet standing behind him watching them go. It was the centre of the room, the heaviest point, a black hole drawing everything to it, including his thoughts. Good sense was sucked in too.

At the exit door, Tom paused and Honey rested against the wall. “I’ve got one thing to do before we go,” he said.

“
You’re destroying the place, aren’t you,” she said.

He frowned at her. “No.”

“
Oh …” She did not elaborate, and Tom did not push her. Not now. Later he may ask her what she thought the Baker really meant to him. But for now, he had scant minutes to snoop around. Perhaps, deep down, he didn’t want to leave this place of safety and nostalgia so soon.

The cabinet had the dimensions of an upright coffin, but it was made of metal and warm to the touch. Tom ran his fingers around its edges, wondering if there was some way to open it easily, and then he thought of the gophers. They’d been darting in and out beneath the benching next to the cabinet, so he knelt and peered into the shadows.

There was a hole through which a gopher could slip inside, but that was it. Nothing more. No way for him to get in, nor to see what was there.

Unless.

He scouted the lab quickly, feeling Honey’s gaze tracking him. “Not long,” he said.

“
Don’t worry. I like watching you work.”

“
I’m not working.”

“
What’s your job if it isn’t to save me?”

Tom wondered again just how much Honey had changed during her shutdown, and then he spotted what he was after: a small mirror fixed to the wall above the wash basin in the corner. He tried to prise it from the concrete, failed, punched it instead. It shattered into the sink and he selected the largest shard. He grabbed a second piece as an afterthought — he’d need light — and then went back to the cabinet.

All done with mirrors
, the Baker had often muttered as he performed some astonishing new scientific feat. Now Tom used mirrors as well. And for the briefest, darkest, almost human moment, the black magic he had never believed in faced him down.

He could see the pale hue of new skin even before he slipped the mirror into the hole. The leg was sheened with fine hairs, and they seemed to thicken and darken as he watched.

“
What is it?” Honey asked.

Tom did not answer. He
could
not. Because he’d angled the second mirror to catch some light and bounce it up into the cabinet, giving brief illumination to what stood within, illuminating nothing …
because Tom could not understand
.

Why or how or when …
he did not understand
.

The naked man dipped its head and looked down at him.

He was looking at himself.

Paler, thinner, not quiet
all there
… but himself. There was no real expression on the face. That made it worse. The light was feeble, but Tom could see some details he’d rather not. Like the fact that the simulacrum had no real eyes, only milky white jelly balls in its sockets. Or the way its hair seemed to be forcing itself through the scalp, twisting and waving like a million baby snakes,
hushing
against the inside of the cabinet as if the splash of light had agitated it.

Tom dropped the mirror shards and scrambled back on his hands and heels, leaving bloody hand prints on the floor.

“
What is it?” Honey asked again, concern tingeing her voice.

“
It’s me,” Tom whispered very quietly. “It’s me…”

“
What?” Honey hadn’t heard, and now she was walking unsteadily across the laboratory and reaching down, swapping roles as she helped Tom stand and lean against the oak desk. “Tom … if it’s that bad we can leave and shut it in.”

Tom looked Honey in the eyes — they were full of life again now and their golden hue had returned, as mysterious and bewitching as before — and he realised that he didn’t want to tell her. And he didn’t
need
to.

That one crazy glimpse had seemed to lessen his own existence. For a second he’d felt … insignificant.

He was an artificial, after all.

“
Do you love me?” he said.

Honey frowned and looked up at the ceiling. “Well, you know, I’m a plastic bitch and I hear the word ‘love’ a lot … but then you did rescue me. And you have resurrected me. So yes, I suppose I do.”

Tom was crestfallen.