Memorymakers, p.3
Memorymakers, page 3
From the pocket of his gray and black tweed jacket Squick removed an ornate wooden pipe carved in the shape of a Ch’Var hound, the long extinct weasellike breed kept by his ancestors. Without lighting the pipe, he chewed nervously on the mouthpiece and surveyed the area.
It was a tiny park surrounded almost entirely by bushy trees and scrubs of laurel that cast broad morning shadows. There were warehouses on three sides and a row of small homes on the other, set in such a way that the play area was not readily visible from any home.
The child was alone.
Squick gunned the engine and roared over the curb onto the grassy area of the park, toward the play equipment. A uramesh alloy shield snapped into place over the front bumper, and this low-slung, armored shield flattened a set of monkey bars as the van shot across the top of them. Then a rubber gripper on the end of a mechanical arm snatched the startled little girl from the bottom of the slide.
Several blocks away in a deserted industrial area, Squick touched a dashboard button, altering the color and license plate number of the van. Called a “chameleo-van” by the Inventing Corps, the vehicle was highly adaptable, and now it became maroon with a black top and luggage carrier. Another button provided the girl with a chocolate ice cream cone to keep her quiet.
He parked on a side street, spun around on his bucket seat and began interrogating her with ancient Ch’Var questions, using the hypnotic voice that had to be answered truthfully. These were the identical “Seven Sacred Questions” his people had asked Gweenchildren for thousands of years.
She was rather sweet, Squick thought, a happy young thing who seemed almost unafraid as she sat on the backseat licking ice cream.
He reached for her and stroked her hair. She smiled, and he withdrew his hand quickly, perhaps too quickly. As if overcompensating for this small physical connection and any possible meaning it might have.
Take the embidium, no more. The code of Ch’Var honor was strict.
I was only trying to show this child a last moment of kindness, he thought. And not just to maintain the quality of her embidium. He paused. Am I kidding myself about this? Do I really feel tenderness? Lordmother, I sound like a hunter trying to avoid frightening the prey for fear of tainting the meat with adrenaline.
He was a man on the edge of a precipice, with darkness below, and once again the terrible fear of what he might do, of what he might become, arose in his mind. And he was ashamed. Why did he have such nagging thoughts? Were they normal?
Gain control or commit shittah, Squick thought.
Shittah, though brought on by mental breakdown, aided Ch’Vars in problem times, facilitating a quick and painless end through the shittah death dance, culminating in a cessation of all bodily functions.
“Shittah is, in all things and all times, a comfort and a passage to the unknown.”
In good times it was comforting to know that it was there to fall back upon as needed, a nest egg of mental strength. It comforted a Ch’Var in life, it comforted him in death. It transcended. It was the beauty within a broken thing.
As the captured girl spoke, Squick activated a hand-held transmitter, sending her answers to the Homaal data bank. When the ancient questions were complete, a tiny screen on the transmitter lit up, green letters on black: “Extract embidium. Fits 17 orders.”
In the ancient way of his people, Squick gazed deeply into the girl’s eyes, into the soft, easily penetrated surfaces there. And he spoke to her of wondrous things and wondrous people and wondrous places, so that her face filled with rapture. He told her an enchanting, magical tale, and immersed her so completely in the vision he painted before her eyes that she seemed to leave this place and this body.
The happiness Squick saw at times such as this made the rest of his task easier. She was no longer a child in a van on a dirty, deserted city street. She was a princess in an enchanted land, where nothing could harm her.
The girl’s eyelids grew heavy, and a familiar sensation came over Squick—a yearning that suffused him with all the strength and purpose of his Ch’Var race. He was every one of his kind who had ever lived, fighting for survival in a torrential, soulless current of life. He shuddered.
With his fingertip he touched the tear ducts of his own eyes and felt an icy wetness that numbed his finger and fogged his vision. His fingertip sought an eyelid of the girl, and in a vision he saw her in the faraway magical land he had created for her. For the briefest of moments she smiled so sweetly, so innocently, in the way only a Gweenchild could do. Then she was immersed in a freezing storm of ice crystals that sealed her happiness and would not permit anything to taint it.
His vision cleared, and once again he was gazing upon a little girl in a van. She shuddered as Nebulons slid from Squick’s fingertip into her eye. The viruses coursed the intricate, labyrinthine passageways to her brain, where they sought her memory core and vacuumed it away.
Squick withdrew his finger, then held a glass container beneath her eyes. And from her orbs flowed the bright purple and yellow liquid of her embidium, containing all of her childhood memories. It was a swirling, pungent-smelling mixture of these colors, with each hue retaining its integrity. The mixture was luminous, as if a light burned from each molecule, and it ran in such abundance that quickly it overflowed the container.
The girl’s face lost vitality, and she slumped, but without falling from her seat. Carefully, to avoid contaminating the extraction, Squick sealed the container and packaged it for shipment to Director Jabu. Then he cleaned up the overflow and wiped the girl’s face and eyes clean with a white, chemically treated cloth.
Moments later, the van’s robot arm dumped a limp, nearly lifeless form in the grass and weeds of a vacant lot.
As he backed his van away, Squick caught a brief glimpse of the child’s silent body in his rearview mirror. “It’s a lousy world,” he muttered and suppressed speculation about the child’s future. Nevertheless, he drove off feeling less than satisfied with this particular extraction.
Twenty-three minutes later, he pulled his vehicle into the parking garage of the condominium complex he called home and saw another condo owner, a Gween he had talked to a few times. He waved at the man and forced his mouth upward into a smile while his thoughts took a downward direction. The guy’s a jerk, but it’s a good idea to keep on his good side. After all, he did give me that tip on the stock market. You never know when you need a favor from someone. It’s the way life is—a series of favors given, favors taken. The objective is to get more than you give.
“Going to the pool party tonight?” the man shouted. “It’s a bring-your-own-bottle thing. Lots of goodies gonna be there, food and you-know-what.”
“Maybe I will,” answered Squick, though he entertained doubts about fraternizing too closely with Gweens, particularly this one. Since childhood Squick had made many Gween friends, but on his own terms. That had been particularly easy to do in his former residence, a duplex shared with an elderly lady. Now he lived in a complex that overflowed with amenities and Gweens. Gweens who wanted him to swim in the pool, dance in the dance room, exercise in the health room, play cards or billiards in the entertainment room. He’d only lived here a few weeks and so far had managed to maintain his privacy. Obviously that wouldn’t last forever. Sooner or later he was going to have to socialize with the other tenants. Tonight was probably as good a time as ever. He groaned and punched the button for the elevator that would take him to his floor.
A pretty Gweenwoman stood inside, one who lived in his section of the complex. He’d noticed her long legs the day he’d moved in. Now he paid closer attention to the rest of her anatomy. Squick smiled, this time with sincerity. There was something exciting about Gweenwomen. Forbidden fruit, taboo stuff. He licked his lips nervously. You didn’t marry a Gween, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t appreciate one. This one exuded the right pheromones, as the scientists put it, the proper chemistry to stimulate a response in the opposite sex—Gween or Ch’Var. “Hello there,” he said. “Have you heard about the pool party tonight?”
“I’ve baked a cake for it,” she answered in a little-girl voice and looked up at him with large, blue eyes. For a moment Squick saw in her features the race of the child he’d just dumped in an empty field. A small depression settled over him like a cloud, and he decided to skip the party. Anyway, tomorrow was going to be a long day, another extraction to make. Maybe more than one. This risk-taking was beginning to drain him. What if Gween authorities finally caught up with him?
Shittah loomed.
Chapter 3
A Ch’Var cannot reveal the secrets of his race. If he attempts to speak them, his throat constricts and parches dry and hot so that he is unable to utter a sound. If he attempts to write a secret, his arms and hands cease functioning entirely. And when he falls asleep the next time, as he must, a form of shittah is set in motion. Secrets have never been lost.
—From a story told to Ch’Var children
In an elegant house near the condominium complex where Squick lived, sunlight hit Emily Harvey’s green glass desk lamp and threw a shadow against the wall. Above the shadow, ghostly, smokelike shapes from the interaction of sunrays with bulb and glass heat waves curled upward, as if the lamp were afire. Such fine and delicate creatures those undulating nether forms seemed to be, Emily thought, as if they had secret energies of their own.
It was the third day of Emily’s Easter vacation, a time for relaxation and thought gathering. But only for a few minutes. Part of her attention waited for the shrill cry from her stepmother that would call her to the kitchen for chores.
The doorbell rang, and Emily found herself at the front door gazing up at a pleasant-faced man in a gray and black tweed jacket. He held a briefcase in one hand and a peculiarly carved wooden pipe in the other. He tucked the pipe into a pocket.
His eyes glittered with excitement—they were dark, almost red. “Good afternoon, young lady. I have a gift for your family . . . free. No obligation to buy anything. Is your mother home?”
“I’ll get. . . her,” Emily said, thinking how false the word mother sounded.
She went to the kitchen, where her stepmother, Victoria, busily slammed unwashed dishes into a pile. The family had a live-in housekeeper, Mrs. Belfer, who didn’t cook and refused to do much of anything in the kitchen. Emily had once estimated that Mrs. Belfer slept at least fourteen hours a day. Several times Emily had seen the housekeeper enter by the back door, paper bag in hand, a bottle of brandy or wine protruding from the top. Mrs. Belfer, a plump woman with fat cheeks, tiny hands and feet, and a great thirst, frequently poured herself drinks from the family liquor cabinet, though Emily had never heard her stepmother complain about this habit.
“Start filling the dishwasher,” Victoria said the moment she saw Emily.
“A man to see you,” Emily announced, her tone guarded. “Says he has a free gift for us.” Long ago the girl had decided that no matter what she said to Victoria it would be wrong. It always was.
Victoria Harvey, a tall, well-developed brunette, held her body in the manner of a modeling-school graduate, at an angle with chin and hips thrust forward. Across one shoulder she wore a long, multicolored scarf which she pulled at nervously. Victoria’s eyes were lavender, and she had perfect teeth behind perfect lips that smiled the perfect smile at everyone but Emily.
The perfect lips parted. “Couldn’t you have said I wasn’t in? I wish you’d use your head, if that’s possible. You know I’m on my way to a fashion show. Free gift? I’ll bet. Another salesman. I’ve told you a dozen times, I can’t be bothered with them.”
Emily looked away, and her stepmother brushed past.
The stranger must have possessed charms beyond those of the average solicitor, because moments later Emily saw him seated on the living room couch with Victoria, engaged in lively discussion. Behind them a three-dimensional aquarium video showed tropical fish swimming silently through an underwater garden, and to one side a fireplace video crackled.
Victoria ‘s stuff, Emily thought. Artificial, like her.
Emily had once dreamed that Victoria replaced her with a videotape, one that said, “Yes, Victoria. Yes, Victoria,” over and over again.
When they were younger, Emily and her brother, Thomas, had often eavesdropped from the hallway. Crouched behind a railing that separated the hall from the living room, they had watched their parents entertain guests—discussions of divorces, new cars, failed love affairs, marriages, stock options and land values, all stirred in a pudding of intriguing sound, with new words that had to be looked up. Today Emily could not resist the temptation to eavesdrop again, though it troubled her conscience just a little. What fascinated Victoria so much about this particular salesman, enough to make her late for the fashion show? It was almost a sacrilege for Victoria.
A large potted philodendron on the living room side of the railing partially concealed Emily from view. It was from this spot that she crouched and watched.
The man in the tweed coat smiled at Victoria. “Thanks for giving me the opportunity to make my presentation, Mrs. Harvey.”
“Call me Victoria.”
“Such a lovely name. And I’m Malcolm Squick of the Smith Corporation—catchy, isn’t it? Squick of Smith. Our computer profile shows you have a birthday boy here, and we’d like to cater his party gratis. That means—”
“I know what it means!”
They exchanged smiles, and he glanced at an index card in his hand. ‘Thomas Harvey lives here, doesn’t he?”
“How did you get his name?” Victoria asked. “Our phone’s unlisted.”
“Perfectly legitimate. There are lists for everything and everyone these days. You’d be surprised.”
Mildly annoyed tone: “Still, it does seem . . .”
The salesman’s smile broadened and seemed to disarm Victoria. She paused in mid-sentence and said, “You’ll cater at no charge? Did Thomas win a contest?”
“It’s the way we advertise our catering business-random selection of people, free services to a few.”
Victoria placed a manicured finger against her lower lip. “Is it word-of-mouth advertising? We’re supposed to tell our friends about you?”
“Exactly. Your son is quite fortunate.”
Victoria smiled her perfect smile. “As you can see, I’m too young to have an almost eleven-year-old child. Thomas is my husband’s son, not mine. And the older girl is his, too. I don’t allow them to call me mother. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
I’d never call you mother anyway, Emily thought.
Squick leaned toward Victoria. “To tell you the truth,” he chuckled, “I thought the girl at the door was your younger sister.”
Emily shook her head and grimaced.
Victoria caressed her hair with a well-manicured hand. To Emily she looked like a department store mannequin—and so did he. They appeared to pause in mid-sentence, mouths frozen open, with eyes that held no light. The vision frightened her.
Emily glanced away, and when she looked back, the mannequins had come back to life. “I see that Thomas’s birthday is the Friday after next,” Squick said.
“We plan to have the party on Saturday.”
“That can be arranged, Victoria.”
Squick’s tone seemed insincere to Emily, and that crisp, toothy smile so similar to Victoria’s. On the surface he looked distinguished and friendly, but there were nervous little twitches around the edges of the mouth and a hard stare to the dark, luminous eyes. Freezing coldness there that bothered Emily, the way they moved around and seemed to take everything in . . . the way they flitted toward the general area in which Emily concealed herself, as if he knew she was there.
She could almost hear those eyes, if such a thing were possible, grating in their sockets. Of course, she could never voice this thought, especially to Victoria. It would only provide the woman with another excuse to pounce and accuse Emily of having a sick, overactive imagination. And that tale would be carried to Emily’s father, adding to it other stories of Emily’s “mental problems,” stories that forced Emily to see a therapist every other Thursday afternoon. Victoria had set that up rather neatly.
“What will you provide?” Victoria asked Squick.
“Everything. You needn’t worry about a thing.”
She’ll love that, Emily thought, for their live-in housekeeper wouldn’t be of much help. Mrs. Belfer hated parties about as much as she hated cooking. What an odd housekeeper, with less chores to do than Emily or Thomas. How could that be? Victoria never raised her voice to Mrs. Belfer, either, and it all added up to a puzzle that simmered inside Emily’s mind.
Why had her father married Victoria? Couldn’t he see beyond surface beauty to the evil beneath, to the plotting, vicious ways, to the lies and outright distortions? Apparently he could not. As Emily thought of this, she amused herself by envisioning Victoria fat, pimply and in a straitjacket. Fabulous, exquisite Victoria with monster zits glutting her face, zits that drove her insane. The picture made Emily feel better, though it changed nothing.
She stared for a moment at the wall nearest her and projected her own full-color image upon its surface. Though she crouched in the hallway, her image stood erect, a short, slim girl with only a few body curves, straight brown hair, a somewhat narrow face and oversized green eyes. The image was a recurrent trick of her mind that she didn’t understand. She tried not to discuss it with anyone except her brother, who told her it must be a matter of physics. At an early age she had discovered that other people did not possess the same ability and could not see their own reflections on walls or sidewalks or sides of buildings. And since no one could see hers, it sounded crazy to mention it. Just as it was crazy to think she’d turned Victoria into a mannequin a few minutes earlier, or inundated her with pimples.
Despite her imaginings Emily felt like an adult caught in a child’s body, a circumstance that made her essentially voiceless, unheeded in a world run by adults. She believed Victoria’s inane chatter was listened to merely because of packaging.
