Wild Thing (8 page)

Sara looked at him sharply, scanning his face, but from her puzzled expression he could see she had read nothing further there.

Her expression cleared.  'When can I get access?  I wanna play a game
now
.'

'Don't say “wanna”.  “Want to”,' he enunciated.  'But there will be no netgames for you, Sara.  Would you like me to read you a story, instead?'

She frowned, pursing her lips as she considered his offer.  'Okay.'

'Which one would you like?'

'This one,' she said.  '“Where the Wild Things Are”.'

How appropriate
, he thought.

'Would you like to sit up here with me, Uncle?  I could lean back against you to see the pictures better.'

He considered the idea, uncomfortably.  But it would help bind her affections to him.  He himself would not so easily form an emotional attachment, of course.

'Very well.  But if you fall asleep, I will put you to bed and you are not to grumble if that wakes you up.'

She beamed, bouncing on the bed.  'Okay!'

As he read, she gave a running commentary, so he hardly needed the mindmeld he had cast, after she settled into his lap: 'I'm not
that
naughty,' and 'Can
I
get a wolf suit?' and 'I'd eat
him
up!'  By the time young Max had arrived on the island of monsters, though, her eyes, against her will, were drooping down.

He riffled through her memories, pushing aside a moment of guilt at the invasion.  Annoyingly, a link to her freshest memories, the orphanage set, had re-formed.  Surprisingly, although those memories were strongest, they were only loosely bonded to her own self-image.  As he lifted her up and slid her beneath her blanket, she grumbled gently, but a nudge of her thoughts was sufficient to settle her down again as he took his seat by the bed once more.

Shifting his 'viewpoint' in her memory complex, he saw where a few cuts would break the linkages to most of her last four years.  Delicately, he pinched off those links and watched the structure shift and settle, now disconnected.  The new linkages would stabilize over time.

With those pushed aside, the deeper and stronger linkages became more apparent.  But it would be inadvisable to work on them again, without the patient conscious: the risk of accidental alterations was too high.  He limited himself to tagging some bundles of connections, and choking the access down a little to the more obvious sets.  There was no rush.  Besides, it would be better to proceed in small steps so he could check each change.  Especially as he noted her energy levels dropping with each of his new corrections.

Deciding he had done enough for her second night, he gently withdrew his magical probes, ended the spell, and turned off the light as he left her room.

In his office once more, he leaned back in his chair and let his gaze wander over his physical bookshelves.  A mere fraction of his digital library, but sometimes, physicality mattered.

Volumes on metaphysics, theology, philosophy, psychology, magic – his own bound research papers – physiology, and neurochemistry.  All related to his driving interest: isolating the magical makeup of Man.

His eyes unfocused as he considered his new problem.  Sara.

Word about his “disturbed” ward had already filtered through the thin ranks of the largely-automated Institute.  Hopefully, his more delicate adjustments tonight would prevent her asking again why
she
was here, or why he had adopted her.  For a moment, he recalled that first occasion and her desperate longing.

His mind shied away from the remembered up-welling of warmth and hunger that had flooded out. Even the memory alone threatened to undermine his resolve.  He would need to watch himself.  For an instant he considered making defensive adjustments
to his own emotional state, before recoiling in horror at the enormous potential for disaster.  That route would be not a
slippery
slope, but frictionless.

He put the unnerving idea aside with a shudder.   He returned to the subject of his ward and her hunger for love….

Certainly that
neediness
would help reinforce his own work.  And given what he'd seen of her nature, if she showed no further curiosity about her adoption it would only be the result of his latest alterations to her memories.  Some of the initial “adjustments” he had made under the very nose of the nun in her office had not lasted that first day.  Although clearly, from her severe response to them on that occasion, and each time since, he needed to proceed much more cautiously.  Even tonight, she had once again tired rapidly.

So.  She was now his to mold as he saw fit, to create a key to probe the nature of magic, and to test his own theories.

The question was, into
what
should he mold her?

He remembered her hunting of his imaginary creature on the first day: how very gracefully she had moved as she stalked across the lawn, the way she had so quickly noticed the unnatural movements around her; how thoroughly she had
interpreted
those movements.  An idea slowly crystallized.  Perhaps not a warrior, but… a Huntress?

Bonsai
, he thought.  So many creative processes cannot be hurried without thereby destroying the creation.  Instead, just a little pressure, often.  Constant, gentle shaping.

He frowned.  He had planned to investigate up to six Archetypes; testing his theory by unlocking the potential within each subject, forcing each to Unfold.  Yet now it seemed the process would take far longer than he had imagined.  He ran one hand through his hair – once thick and dark, now starting to gray.  The frown deepened.  This would likely take years.

Should he go directly for the grand experiment and create a new Archetype?  If he did, he should pick something compatible with her personality.  The closer the match, the less pressure needed, and the less chance of breaking her.  The less chance of pruning off an unwanted aspect of her psyche that might prove to be a critical amputation.

Equally significantly, it might be wise to draw on those parts of the collective unconscious tied to Native American culture.

His mind drifted.  Odd that her ethnic background had not been recorded in her files, that he had only learned of it by scanning the Mother Superior's mind.  He considered what little he knew of Native American mythology, and the “Sky Corn Community.”  He had discovered they were more a hippie commune who'd adopted Native American culture than a genuine tribe; they made money from a general expertise in zero-gravity technologies.  He had found no information about the girl's parents, however.

In the end, he decided to trust his own insights.  Sara seemed wild, energetic, willful.  He pictured films he had seen of primitive peoples, placed her into the scenes he imagined.

Yes
, he decided. 
Yes, a Huntress.
 

Chapter 6 
 

Sara woke quite early the next morning, puzzled about where she was.  Why was it so quiet?  Where were the other… the thought slipped away as she recognized her new room – which she had all to herself!

In
her
bathroom, she eyed the secret trap door high up in the ceiling.  She cleaned her teeth, wondering if the desk from her other room would fit through the door?  Or maybe she could stack the chairs on top of each other…

A little later, three chairs sticky-taped together and her flashlight wedged into her jeans, she wriggled through the opening.  It was so tight she wondered if it'd been designed for an arthrobot.  Tugging her torch free, she shone it round, disappointed it didn't reveal the cavernous space she'd imagined.  She put the flashlight down, hesitating at the hollow sound it made, and rapped the dusty ceiling.  It sounded awfully thin.  Carefully, then, she pulled herself fully up into the dark space and tested the 'floor'.

It bent, with a cracking noise.

Biting her lip, she sat up, her head brushing yet another ceiling.  She picked her light back up and shone it around, flashing on wooden beams that criss-crossed the floor into the distance.  At least the beams looked very strong.

She crawled deeper in, exploring, careful to keep her weight on the solid timbers.  Her hands got very dirty very quickly.

It was
so
dusty up here.  She should have… have… have…

She wriggled and scrinched her upper lip, but no matter how she tried she couldn't hold back the sneeze.  Despite pinching her nose shut she exploded.

Crack.

Oh, no!  Dismayed, she pulled her foot back from where she'd accidentally shoved it straight through the ceiling, then froze, cringing as she waited for someone below to shout up at her.

After a while, though, when nothing happened, she looked down through the hole she'd made into the room underneath her.  Most of the pieces of ceiling tile, she was able to fold back into place from up here; but on the floor directly beneath her lay one large and irregular section of plastic.  The space below her seemed to be just an empty, dusty office – though not as dusty as the space around her.

She chewed her lip.  Sooner or later, someone would go in there, find the broken piece, look up, and realise she had a secret way of moving around inside the building.  And stop her.

She sighed.  She was sure Miss X, in
The eXtro Agency,
didn't have these kinds of problems.  Now she'd have to crawl all the way back, find out which office it was – maybe even break in – then get the broken piece, clean up around it, then climb back up here and glue it back into place.

Her shoulders rose and fell in a heavy sigh.  Sometimes, exploring could be a lot of work.  Turning around, very carefully, she made her way back to the opening.  Her chair-tower swayed excitingly as she climbed down, but she'd done such a good job of taping it together that it hardly came apart at all.

Later, eyeing the partly-mended hole with satisfaction by torchlight, she considered how her painting and craft stuff was really coming in handy.  Maybe there was other stuff she could get her new Uncle to get her, too?  That way, she could gradually make up her own spy kit.  She'd need mirrors, and glue, and paperclips for picking locks, and matches, and…

She continued happily drawing up her mental list of what she'd need as she crawled painstakingly back the way she'd come.

Her shin was stinging, too.  She must've cut it when her foot went through the roof.  She should probably get some anti septic cream – ’coz septics were bad.  She could add it to her spy kit.  And band-aids, too: then she could do her own first aid.

She sneezed again, just as violently, as she hummed her way back.

And maybe get some face-masks, too.  She could tell Uncle she wanted them so she could play doctor, or something.

In the end, it took her three weeks to get into the dusty office.  It was
much
harder to pick a lock than in the movies, no matter how many vids she watched on the net that claimed to show how to do it.  She finally gave up and found some rope, and went in through the ceiling instead.

But she kept practicing on the old padlock she'd found, refusing to give up her dream of lock-picking entirely.

Chapter 7 

Almost every day, Sara went out hunting alone, alert to every sound.  On gloomy days, sometimes, she sensed it; very occasionally, fired an arrow at it.  Once, deep in the woods, she'd felt it sneaking up behind her and spun and fired, driving it away.

With a shiver, she remembered the best time: she'd been hearing something with heavy quiet footsteps moving in the forest, somehow always moving away from her no matter how silently she crept toward it.  And finally, when it attacked – invisibly grabbing and twisting her, pushing against her mind, trying to force a way in….  In the end, she'd lashed out at it somehow and felt a contact, then a sort of shocked stillness and sensed it retreat.  That had been juicy.

When she'd told her uncle about it, though, he'd gotten the strangest look on his face.  Like she'd scared him; or like he'd been scared
for
her.  He did that nervous finger-dance he sometimes did, and asked her to tell him more, and for a while he'd seemed to get even more worried.

'I must congratulate you on your active, ah,
investigation
.  But keep in mind that there must be simple nature spirits within the Institute's grounds.  Don't confuse them with
It
.'

He'd actually looked quite pleased with her, though; and she had to admit, just to herself, that she hadn't thought about nature spirits.  In the end, even though she knew he was wrong, she just nodded like she agreed.  After all, she didn't want him to worry about her.  Maybe even try to stop her Hunting.

But normally there was nothing, and she simply roamed, breathing in the earthy woods smell as she stole through warm sun-dappled groves, placing her feet ever so carefully so as to make no sound, nor break any fronds from the delicate bracken to reveal where she'd passed.

On days when Faith was busy, she liked to climb the dark rocky hills to the west.  Cooled by the wind's chill, it was nice to look down over the Institute from the very edge of its grounds.  Or sometimes, down in the Forest, she'd sit with her back pressed up against the tall, mossy wall.  She liked the stone wall.  For some reason, it felt friendly.  It was easy to imagine it was cupping her, holding her safe.  Best was when Faith was there with her, though, so she could snuggle up beside her.

It was fun to build dams in the stream that led to the small lake, too.  It was hard to wait while the water level slowly grew to bursting point.  Sometimes, though, she'd pile on extra earth just to prolong the build-up, to create a bigger climax.  Other times she couldn't wait, and she'd poke a small hole, watching in fascination as the whole structure tore itself apart.

She wished she had another girl, or even a boy, to play with though.  Faith couldn't build dams or climb trees.  Luckily, she'd mentioned that to her uncle: and after he'd pointed out how she didn't really need anyone else; how Faith was more than enough companionship; and how a Huntress didn't need other people, she'd felt much better.  Most of the time.