Memorymakers, p.13
Memorymakers, page 13
Afterward, Squick paced back and forth, trying to gather his wits. In one corner of the basement a pile of static-free tarps in varying sizes had been piled, tarps that were intended to cover various computer, office machinery and robotic parts stored there. That was Peenchay’s responsibility: cover the items. But it looked as if the Inferior hadn’t worked in this area for months, and parts scattered about the cellar remained unprotected, exposed to dust and deterioration.
Still, Squick felt the Inferior’s presence. It smelled of him here. Rotting flesh.
A brief, vagrant thought crept across Squick’s mind, that he ought to bury the girl beneath the tarps, walk away and let the weight of the material suffocate her. If she was alive now. But what would he tell Jabu afterward, that Peenchay did it?
The robot waited nearby, a unit that resembled a squat, rolling dunce cap. A red light on its pinnacle blinked slowly.
Squick had it arrange a few mini-tarps into a temporary bed for Emily, and she was placed upon these. When the robot was gone and a pall of quiet filled the area, Squick moved to the girl. Terror overwhelmed him. He had to do something he was afraid to do. He had to discover if she lived.
“Emily,” he whispered, and then louder, “Emily!”
She didn’t respond, and he slapped her face, shook her and shouted at her. She neither stirred nor moaned, and he felt not a flicker of life in her skin.
Now he touched the carotid artery on her neck. The faintest throbbing there gave him hope, but only a little and not enough. He had failed again, this time more miserably than ever. The historical record would be unkind to him.
He fled the basement, hit the stairway at full speed and took two or three steps at a time. But the stairs seemed endless, and finally, fatigued, he stopped on a landing to recover his breath. Squick’s breath came in deep, slow gasps, his heartbeat slowed, and a vision came to him.
Something pursued him at tremendous speed, a monster as big as a planet, and he could not elude it. He remained mired in one spot, unable to go up the stairs or down. A creature rode the monster, a tall boy with bristly hair and dead eyes that stared at him with furious hatred, mindless hatred.
One avenue of escape emerged, and he took it automatically, a trigger in his mind, a bowing, a submission.
GUTA-FLUT!
The sound was unlike the way it had been described in Ch’Var lore. It was richer, fuller, more resonant, and he savored the serenity it promised.
GUTA-FLUT!
Thus shittah suicide was set in motion from within, the physical response of the Ch’Var to untenable situations, to insurmountable problems. He bowed in his mind, the ritual gesture. The delicate Ch’Var nervous system was breaking down, spinning upon itself, consuming itself.
Squick screamed aloud, though he was sure no one heard him and no one cared enough to help him. He was in the first stage of ritual shittah, consumed by a mind that eats flesh, a mind that eats mind. He heard himself sobbing and wailing, but the sounds came from an immense distance, throbbing more faintly than the pulse of Emily Harvey.
“Oh shittah, shittah, shittah . . . ”
His conscious self writhed with futile anger, and he felt his bodily systems winding down, accelerating in a direction they had always had, a direction they had been pointed toward since birth. With dull amazement he realized that he lay supine somewhere, as helpless as the girl, with a giant lavender eye high on the wall above him.
And a dim memory came to him from moments before. He had seen Peenchay grinning at him from one corner of the cellar.
Chapter 15
“Obey our rules, or an Inferior riding a demon hound will eat the thoughts in your brain.”
—From a story told to Ch’Var children
As soon as Squick disappeared from view, Emily rose quickly to her feet. She’d read about passive resistance in a grown-up psychology book from the library, a book that Victoria had taken away from her before she could finish it. “Playing dead,” the author called it, “the defense of the weak against the strong.” A trick employed by some animals and insects—one that humans could apply when necessary.
She had briefly considered kicking Squick in the groin, to free herself as she had from the boy on the boat. But she had been close to shore when that happened, a distance she could swim. Here she didn’t know the way out, she didn’t know where Thomas was, and at least one shark swam these waters: Peenchay.
Ch’Var and Gween memories bumped together uneasily inside her head, unfocused fragments that gave her elusive sensations of power . . . sensations apart from the memories . . . sensations about the future, about Emily’s particular path into the future.
It was a triggering of Otherness from seemingly unrelated bits of data, from a collection of disjointed ideas that boiled about in her head and gave her a headache. In her first burst of awareness during Squick’s attempted extraction, she had learned that Ch’Var Nebulons had been destroyed, and she had reached for further understanding. But understanding crumbled, and she’d spoken of it to the puppets and the cherubic-faced dolls. Now something more was surfacing, in response to her reaching, stretching consciousness.
She wanted to know the purpose of this terrible inheritance boiling in her mind. Was it all from the Nebulons, or had latent memories been triggered, memories that had always been there? She felt alone, too young to be without guidance. But her chronological age seemed out of sync with the hoary Otherness, with the ghostly cloud that filled her brain and seeped into personal experience, subjugating all that Emily Harvey thought she was.
Thoughts of her grandparents and her father welled up. Would she ever see them again, would she ever return to those paths? Even with the obstacle of Victoria, those paths seemed simpler to Emily, almost idyllic, and they beckoned her.
She realized she hadn’t moved from the vicinity of the bed of tarps, and thought, I’ve got to get away! Squick will return!
Hurriedly she slid through the lavender semi-darkness of the basement, stopping to peer from behind tarp piles, machinery pieces, posts and partitions. Odors assailed her, a mixture of dust and grease and something sour-sweet and unpleasant, decaying meat. She thought she heard a muffled noise and crouched beside a chair covered with faded, frayed upholstery. Her arm brushed against it, and she recoiled. Grease on her arm, the dead meat odor. She wiped the arm on a tarp.
Evil lived here, in every particle of air and surface, and that strange, eerie lavender color—stronger intensity off to her left—coming from beyond a partition wall.
She moved toward the light as if drawn to it, and a terrific surge of music pulsed through her body, a “tom-tom-torn, tom-tom-tom,” and she realized it was her own blood beating through her veins, expanding them and sending an urgent message.
Thomas!
From ahead noise drifted toward her: a soft shuffle, something being dragged across the floor. Imagination? She held her breath and listened. The noise repeated itself, and she tried to define it, to give it shape and substance. Something large dragging something heavy.
She took a few cautious steps forward. The basement was quiet, and she waited, watched. Nothing seen, and presently, nothing heard.
Squick had mentioned a sensor down here somewhere. Some kind of alarm system that wasn’t working right. Could she use that bit of information? Was it truth?
When she’d first arrived on the roof of this building, her view of surrounding structures had told her the building was many stories high. And later she overheard Squick say there were sublevels, secret levels beneath and between the areas traveled by Gweens, areas unknown to Gweens, the enemy race. When had she heard these things? Had she actually heard them or . . ,
The building seemed like a maze, a microcosm of the structures forming in her mind.
I’m somewhere beneath ground level, she thought.
Wondering about the sensor and how well it worked, Emily measured each step she took until she reached two large wooden boxes set side by side. Here she crouched and used the slit between the boxes as a window. She could see around the partition now, and at the top of a wide wall she saw a gigantic Cyclopean eye, or what appeared to be an eye, an electronic oval of lavender and white within folds of dark metal.
Rising from her crouched position, Emily saw with surprise that Squick was lying on the floor, face up. His eyes were open. She sucked in her breath and held it momentarily.
Suddenly Peenchay appeared from one side, and without seeming to notice her he stood over Squick and chuckled, an ominous sound. She wondered at the Inferior’s purpose. Had he killed Squick? That thought curdled all hope of escape. If the man could kill his master, why not his master’s prisoners? A chill invaded her.
Inferiors . . . mutant Ch’Var subtypes . . . Inferiors—she hadn’t known this name previously, hadn’t been aware of it. The word swam atop her consciousness.
Peenchay scratched his chin, ran a tongue across his lips, shifted heavily from one foot to the other. His body seemed to heave and swell inside his yellow onesuit like a huge toad, and from one pocket he removed a thin, wicked knife that he brandished over the still form of Squick. In a rambling, singsong voice, Peenchay spoke to Squick’s body.
“Think you’re smart and I’m stupid. Isn’t that right, Meeeeester Squicko! You’re fulla shitto, fulla shitto! Who’s stretched on the floor? Not me, Squickaree. Rats in the sewer will eat you up. They won’t eat me, Squickaree. Into the disposal with you!”
He lifted Squick by the arms.
Emily pushed closer to the two boxes that concealed her and accidentally dislodged something. A small box thunked down, an echo of sound.
Peenchay’s face contorted. “Who did that?” he cried. “Is that you, Mr. Director?”
When there was no answer, he called out again. “Just liftin’ Mr. Squick here to get him some help. He doesn’t look good. You want me to leave him here for you to look at?”
Again, no answer.
Peenchay lowered Squick to the floor and made a hasty retreat to one side. He disappeared through a doorway.
Good, Emily thought, this gives me extra time.
She departed in the opposite direction and found the corridor from which she’d been carried. Some instinct, some dim awareness, told her Thomas was here someplace. How she knew this was a mystery, but her blood continued to pound the message: tom-tom-torn!
Several doors lined one wall, and she opened two. They were small storage rooms without much inside. In the third room she found Thomas.
He lay asleep on the floor, curled fetally with an arm for a pillow, rumbling in the chain of somnolence that she knew so well. Reassuring sounds. A collection of toy cars lay beside him, and he clutched one tightly in his hand. He was in dreamstate, his mind in an alternate gear, but the sounds were shifting subtly, almost imperceptibly, to unpleasantness.
“Thomas,” she said, and she shook him by the shoulder. “Wake up.”
He responded with a whimper, and Emily jerked him to a seated position. He seemed groggy but unharmed.
“Wow,” said her brother. “I dreamed in weird-a-rama. Horrible stuff. I’m sure glad you woke me up. I saw Booger, and he swallowed me, and—”
“Later,” she snapped. “We have to hurry. Don’t talk, don’t argue. Let’s go.”
With considerable effort she hefted him to his feet, and he stumbled momentarily. They ran down the corridor to the stairway Squick had brought Emily down.
Emily froze in her tracks, hissed: “Listen, someone coming down the stairs!”
The children reversed direction, back along the corridor and out into the room with the lavender eye. Squick still lay on the floor, a loose sack of bones, just as Peenchay had left him.
With a suddenness that palpitated Emily’s heart, Peenchay emerged from a doorway she hadn’t noticed before. For a moment before the door snapped shut behind him, she saw an array of sparking, colored lights.
Stealth-lock? She thought, remembering Squick’s term for the chamber they’d gone through the first day here. A stealth-lock on this level too?
A squat, troll-like form, Peenchay walked in a shambling fashion, arms swinging loosely at his sides, hands curled into claws, mouth open, eyes bulging. He moved with deceptive speed, and Emily’s panic turned to cold metal in her mouth.
“A way out!” she whispered to her brother. “That doorway, a stealth-lock!”
“The way out is not the same as the way in,” Thomas said. “My dream. Panona told me.”
The children clasped hands and backed toward the corridor.
“You could do something,” Thomas whispered. “We need to go the other way, past him. And someone could be behind us. You can do things with your mind when you want to!”
Emily’s breath came in deep gulps. “I don’t know what you mean.” But she knew exactly what he meant.
Peenchay saw them now, and his movements became more jerky and rapid, and a sucking noise came from his mouth.
Thomas said he heard footsteps and machinery sounds approaching in the corridor behind them, and after a glance in that direction he said two robots were coming, one that walked and one that rolled. Emily heard the sounds, too.
She experienced a core of fear, a dagger of pain that turned to a dull, useless lump in the pit of her stomach. And when she thoroughly understood that this particular fear, this particular path of her mind, was associated with death, the utter futility of their situation angered her. This was unfair, so unfair. She and Thomas didn’t deserve to die.
“We’re not afraid of you!” Emily shouted.
“Get the Chalk Man,” Thomas pleaded.
Deep, buried within Emily, the Chalk Man stirred. She concentrated her attention on him. “We need you,” she said. “Protect us!”
And the Chalk Man was born again: a tiny, dim outline against the lavender shadows of the basement, but easily seen by Emily, just centimeters from her face.
“I see it!” Thomas exclaimed.
The Chalk Man moved toward Peenchay and began to grow into a giant, white-etched figure, bolder and with more imposing lines than ever before. He looked back at Emily and smiled, exposing oversized teeth. She urged him on in thought, and with each effort of her mind he expanded as though the breath of her thoughts gave him nourishment, until finally he filled a large section of the basement between Peenchay and the children.
Through the gaps in the Chalk Man, Emily saw Peenchay’s toad body halt. He stared with dumb amazement at the apparition before him.
“Leave them alone!” the Chalk Man warned in a blackboard screech of sound.
Peenchay shook his jewels violently, and he rushed forward, beefy arms flailing.
The Chalk Man whirled around behind Peenchay, and before the Inferior could react, the Chalk Man’s mouth opened wide and he bent low toward the Inferior. With one gulp he swallowed Peenchay. The victim thrashed finitely inside the void of the Chalk Man’s stomach, struggled, scrabbled, scratched. Something bubbled and a great hunk of Peenchay dissolved. One moment he was a writhing toad, the next a lifeless blob. The blob bubbled back up into the Chalk Man’s mouth. The Chalk Man chomped noisily for a while, then spat out what was left of Peenchay: a flabby, aimless and legless piece of flesh with part of a head.
“You did it, Emily!” Thomas exclaimed, hugging her. “You really did it! I told you you could!”
Emily pulled free of her brother and grabbed him by the hand. “The stealth-lock,” she said. “Let’s go.”
As they ran close to the sensor, it flared to life and became a bright lavender eye, flooding the area in light. It gave off a screeching, whining yelp.
The Chalk Man darted toward the eye on the wall, and the chalky arms and body turned from white to red, forming a line of fire that reached out to embrace the sensor, snuffing its life. The sensor emitted a protesting crackle and a sickly flash of color, then switched off.
The Chalk Man doffed his cap, bowed and walked into the dead eye, where he faded from view.
Safe on the street, Thomas complimented Emily. “Colossal magic, Sis! Can you get us home, too?”
Emily smiled softly. “No, but we can catch a taxi. I’ve got some money, and if it isn’t enough, Mrs. Belfer can pay the difference.”
“If she’s sober.”
They found a taxi-signaling booth, and within moments a robot-operated car came for them.
Chapter 16
Homaal . . . its existence is my life. Its fire my heart, its ice my brain.
—Remarks of Jabu
The ember that was Jabu Smith sped through matter and antimatter, along an infinitely circuitous filament of fire. It sought the icy void within the flaming ball of creation, a place known in the hearts of all Ch’Vars—Homaal.
Only Directors and their invited guests actually traveled to this place, for only Directors learned the secret of ember travel, a mystical experience induced by certain drugs. None of this was an Inventing Corps gimmick—it preceded all of that—and by definition the place and the means of getting there would exist subsequent to invention as well, subsequent to the struggles of men.
It would exist into the infinity of moments.
Although Jabu traveled to and from Homaal and spent most of his time there, he did not know exactly where it was. But this did not bother him in the least, for in the vast scale of cosmology he knew not a single person, Ch’Var or Gween, who could say for certain where the Earth itself was.
One thing was like another, just as one thought resembled the one before it and the one that would follow. The icy void of Homaal within the flaming ball—frigid Nebulons flowing within the warmth of human bodies—these phenomena were along the knife edge of reality, where the juxtaposition of hot and cold, of life and death, of fear and bravery, of love and hatred, were commonplace.
He felt these opposites each time he journeyed to Homaal, and each time he left. He felt them now.
The great, flaming ball surrounding Homaal must have been the source of the ember that now constituted Jabu, he theorized. It had been a long-standing theory among Ch’Var scholars and philosophers that this ball of fire, if it existed, occupied the center of the Earth, for that seemed to be the closest known place that would qualify. But it might have been instead in the midst of Earth’s sun or within any other sun or planet in the universe. Or it might have been in some other place, an unknown place of sight and thought. The drugs did not reveal such things to him.
