Memorymakers, p.6
Memorymakers, page 6
“I’m afraid we won’t be of much help to you,” she said.
Squick moved a little closer to the children. “Oh, but you will! So many details you can help with. You want to participate in the party, too, don’t you, Emily?” He looked at the boy and added, “Say, that’s a great T-shirt. Mind if I call you Tom-Tom? It’s easier to talk to someone when you know their nickname.” He patted Thomas’s cheek.
“Emily printed it,” said Thomas. “With a waterproof marking pen. Our stepmom hates this shirt.”
“I see you’re wearing it anyway.”
Thomas beamed.
“It’s the way children assert independence,” Squick said. “A necessary step.”
Thomas’s smile weakened. He looked puzzled.
“Adults always want you to do things their way, right?” Squick asked. “Never realizing you’ve got a mind of your own.” He paused a moment. “I’d like to see your room, Tom-Tom. It will reveal the things you like, give me ideas for the entertainment. All right?”
“Okay,” Thomas said, and led the way down the hallway to his room.
As Emily followed, she recalled that long ago she had decided Thomas had the disposition of a puppy. He loved everyone, missed people too much. Like he’d trusted his friend Booger, a boy who picked his nose in class and drew realistic skulls on his forearms in red ink. Booger was a square-faced boy who wore his hair parted in two places. He smashed Thomas’s toys, the toys that Thomas shared with him, because Booger enjoyed smashing things. Toys or people, it made little difference to Booger.
Her brother could calculate complicated mathematical problems, could read and understand his father’s medical journals and once, when he was five, he had constructed his own steam engine. But sometimes he couldn’t see things, things that were obvious to Emily. This Squick was a question mark, and Emily hadn’t quite made up her mind about him.
Upon entering the bedroom, Squick shook his head slowly from side to side. “Funny the things adults demand of kids, wouldn’t you say? Most children tell me their parents deny them their rights.”
Emily watched her brother show Squick his space books and science fiction anthologies, and thought how extraordinarily odd the man’s comments were. She didn’t like the easy familiarity of this caterer-salesman, or the fact that he called her brother Tom-Tom. It sounded too intimate, almost perverse. But good manners prevailed, and she made no comment.
Squick sat on the bed, briefcase open on his lap.
Emily cleared her throat and her voice rose. “I was just wondering: How did you know my name?”
“From computer files on our clients. Not enough information on file, though. That’s why I’m here today.”
“But it’s not my party.”
“You’ll be there, I presume, and as the birthday boy’s sister you’ll occupy a very important position.”
“Victoria might not like that,” Emily said.
“I’ll discuss it with her,” Squick said. “She shouldn’t ignore your role.”
“You’d do that?” Emily asked.
“I would.”
For the moment he seemed like a nice man to Emily, one who saw through Victoria. Emily stared at the samples in his briefcase without focusing on them. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked with a smile. “Or a cold drink?”
“Coffee’s fine. Black please.” Squick returned her smile. It was the toothy smile she’d thought insincere the day before. Now it seemed different.
“It’ll take me awhile,” she apologized.
“Don’t rush,” Squick said.
When she was gone, Squick asked the Seven Sacred Questions, firing them at Thomas in the hypnotic Ch’Var voice that had to be answered truthfully. Squick ran through them quickly. He asked for the boy’s happiest and saddest memories, whether he looked forward to each day, what he enjoyed doing most, what he thought of the people closest to him, what the best or worst things were about being alive, and whether he was afraid of anything or anyone.
Thomas’s answers came without hesitation and were concise, as required by the voice. They revealed to Squick’s trained ears that the boy had a positive outlook about the world and that he got along well with people around him, even with a stepmother who apparently could be difficult at times. The boy’s saddest memories concerned the loss of his mother. No longer could he remember her face, and this bothered Thomas a little. But these feelings were not enough to disqualify the child, since he had overcome them to a remarkable degree.
All answers went into the hand-held radio-optic transmitter and presently the screen read: “Embidium fits 32 orders. Extract.”
I’ll take the girl’s, too, Squick thought, without questions. She seems happy.
Squick had done this before—extracted childhood memories on intuition without the Seven Sacred Questions. Such decisions involved an inherent risk, he knew, but thus far he’d made no mistakes.
Jabu spoke of this on occasion to all fieldmen, however, hammering home the importance of following proper procedure. “Procedures are for a purpose” was his mantra. “Only employ your Nebulons after following prescribed steps. Nebulons must not be wasted!”
Once used for embidium extractions, the viruslike organisms could not be reused. They had but one function, Squick realized.
Of course, the holistically healthy Ch’Var body produced replacement Nebulons all of the time, especially in Squick’s body. If anyone could afford to waste a Nebulon, it was Malcolm Squick, fieldman extraordinaire. His rare physical prowess when it came to Nebulons bolstered him and diminished his fear of Jabu’s wrath.
The necessity of filling orders was instinctual in the Ch’Var race, and virtually nothing could interfere with the drive for completion. The fulfilling of an order was a satisfying experience, almost sexual in its intensity.
When Emily returned with a steaming mug of coffee, she saw Squick slip a small black device into his inside jacket pocket. She didn’t give it much thought, deciding it was probably a calculator, and set the mug on the nightstand.
Squick spread his wares on the bed: party favors, balloons and samples of food wrapped in elegant little packages. He opened a large book of photos, displaying a variety of birthday cakes, some in the shape of thunder beasts, some formed to look like clowns or acrobats or animal trainers, even one that looked like a spaceship. The colors of the creations ranged from an unusual yellow-green to deep violet-blue—entrancing hues with lambent rays of light that reflected firelike against the underside of Squick’s chin.
Emily didn’t like the thunder beast cakes and was glad when Squick turned the page so she couldn’t see them.
“Let me see,” Squick said. “You’ll be eleven, Tom-Tom. What about this for your tablecloth?” He brought forth a length of deep blue fabric, as a magician might pull an object from a hat. Silver stars glittered on its surface, glinting like suns in distant space, flickering and fading and flickering again.
“Weird,” Thomas exclaimed. “I like that one.”
“I thought you would.”
Squick began a monologue about his wares and services that filled the room with words. Words spilled down the hallway into the farthest corners of the house, and Emily began to feel drowsy. She sat on the carpet and watched Squick’s mouth, the incredible gyrations of his perfect lips. And she watched his eyes, the luminous, almost red eyes that made little clicking sounds when he blinked.
Thomas sat on the bed beside the array of wares, seemingly too many things to have come from one briefcase. He fingered a party favor, looked up, frowned and said, “I hear buzzing again.”
This child hears an amoeba-cam? Squick could hear the buzzing of stealth transmitters distinctly; one was in the corner of this very room, identifiable to his Ch’Var eyes as a pale red glow. He hadn’t studied the amoeba-cam reports on this household thoroughly, but recalled the conversations between the children about buzzing noises. Could it mean both children heard the secret frequency? It didn’t seem possible.
The fieldman stared into Thomas’s eyes. Detecting no Nebulon luminescence there, he reconfirmed this was not a Ch’Var child. It must be something else the boy referred to, though Squick heard no other buzzing. Might it be a different sound, one that only Gweens could hear?
Squick’s monologue continued, and Emily tried to focus her attention on it. His hypnotic words might have been mouthed by an alien, but she felt she understood chunks of thought, concepts of great significance. Yet if someone had asked her to explain his words at this moment, she would have been helpless to do so. They were a blur. Her head felt excessively large for her body, and she had a strong desire for sleep.
With his mouth turned in a foolish grin, Thomas said, “Odd-to-the-mega. My head feels like a watermelon. I think you put too much stuff in there, Mr. Squick.”
As Squick gazed upon the boy, he felt a familiar sensation coming over him—the hoary yearning that could not be denied. The boy’s eyelids were heavy, and he appeared ready to fall asleep. Squick shuddered, touched the tear duct of his own eye with a forefinger and felt icy fluid flow from the duct to the tip of the finger.
Nebulons! he thought, unable to restrain his joy. It was always like this, a feeling of rampant ecstasy at the accomplishment. Squick couldn’t imagine his life without the ability, and feared the mundane existence suffered by so many impotent Ch’Vars.
I am fortunate indeed, he thought.
He dabbed the boy’s right eyelid with a cold, wet fingertip. An ancient iciness of Nebulonia leaped from the fieldman to the boy, linking Squick with the glory and dimming hopes of the Ch’Var race. The subject shuddered as Nebulons slid around the eyelid into his eye, following labyrinthine passageways to the brain. Squick almost whispered the explanation—Nebulons, clever viruses seeking memory cells, embracing them and vacuuming them away.
Squick’s fingertip was warm now, and for a moment he looked away, toward the girl. Her eyelids were as leaded as her brother’s, and she struggled to keep her head upright.
The Ch’Var fieldman withdrew his fingertip, then held a glass container beneath the boy’s eyes and caught the flow of luminous purple and yellow fluid. When the flow stopped, Squick sealed the container and slipped it into his pocket.
He felt extinction beckoning, wondered if his Nebulon count would hold, if like the great ones he would keep it through very old age. Some lost it in their early or middle years, fading away or dropping off suddenly. Some never had it. There was no identifiable pattern. Sometimes people lived almost an entire lifetime without a solitary Nebulon, and inexplicably developed high counts in later years. So for brief periods the very old became teetering fieldman, taking extractions from Gweenchildren.
Flames before death.
“Mr. Squick?” A boy’s voice.
Squick came to awareness, saw the boy gazing up at him. A little unwiped fluid remained on the boy’s cheeks, which he wiped away himself with one hand.
“You okay, Mr. Squick?” Thomas asked.
Damn! Squick thought with a visceral sinking sensation. I produced Nebulons, took an embidium, and this boy should be in a coma. . . without his memories!
Perplexed and terrified, Squick removed the glass container from his jacket pocket. The container was full of swirling purple and yellow fluid, and he flipped open its lid, immersing his wet finger in the tepid liquid.
The solution clouded momentarily, indicating positively that the extraction had been made. But the boy continued to look at him. How? The girl stared, too, though she should have remained hypnotized from the words that filled all voids.
“Your name?” Squick asked, looking intensely at the boy.
“Thomas Harvey, sir. But you already know that. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, fine.”
Squick fumbled with the glass container, closed it and slipped it into a padded briefcase slot beside similar containers, some of which were empty and some of which had fluid in them.
“What are you doing?” Emily asked.
Squick thought quickly. “Special things.”
He brought forth a large piece of white tissue, and with it removed from another briefcase slot what looked like a piece of unwrapped red candy.
“Ver-r-ry special stuff,” Squick purred. “This candy is so special and so delicate, I don’t want to alter the flavor or aroma with chemicals from my skin.”
He extended the candy toward Thomas. “Smell this, Tom-Tom, and see if you want it at your party. It’s called scent-candy. You don’t eat it, you smell it. The nose and taste buds have a close affinity, as you must know from reading science. Lose one sense and you can lose another. This treat provides more joys than candy taken into the body the conventional way.”
He held it under Thomas’s nose.
“It’s different,” Thomas said. “I like it. Lots of flavor.”
“And you?” Before Emily could react, Squick knelt over her and let her smell the fullness of the candy, the most intensely sweet and delicious odor of ripe strawberries in her experience. Squick’s eyes became the red of the berries as they stared into hers, invading her, almost caressing her.
Emily could not tell hours from minutes. Somewhere she lay in deepest sleep, and something touched her heavily on one shoulder. She woke, feeling grumpy, with an unseen prodding and nudging against her. The air in the room thickened like gelatin, pushed in upon her and enveloped her. “Thomas!” she cried. “Are you doing that?” No answer came. She reached for the bedside lamp and flipped on the switch: it made a dull, discordant sound and red darkness overwhelmed her. “Thomas,” she cried again. “Quit teasing.” A thin, reedy sound returned to her from faraway. “I don’t know where I am,” Thomas answered. “Emily . . . Emily?”
The tapping against Emily’s shoulder grew agitated. Then it seized her sweater and pulled. Emily slid across the bed, through the thick darkness. With frantic hands she reached out to hold the bed post. But the thing that tugged was persistent and toppled her to the floor. She lay on the carpet for a moment, stunned, frightened and angry. Her emotions bubbled and boiled, and the Chalk Man appeared. His white hands moved quickly across the darkness, and she saw that he drew what appeared to be a gargantuan bottle with stubby wings. He touched the outline and it blazed into a line of fire that crackled and spat. For a brief instant Emily thought she could see a thing imprisoned within the fire, an object shaped like its firey-edge. A thing that opened its jaws, growled and snorted and extinguished the flames.
“It can’t be real!” she shouted, and as quickly as the Chalk Man had appeared, he began to fade. She reached out to detain him, but he vanished, and she wished he were back. Emily no longer feared him.
She was tugged again. She twisted, kicked and tried to free herself; she dug her heels into the carpet and felt the material beneath her feet grow thick and spongy. Then suddenly she felt no floor beneath her, and her body seemed to elongate, to stretch out into a thin string of her former self. Whatever held her was smooth and metallic and pulled her along at a tremendous speed.
“Let me go!” she screamed as she raced through the reddish darkness.
“It’s time to go, Emily,” said a soft male voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “Time to go.”
Chapter 6
This Squick is an obstreperous one. He shows inadequate respect, and at times I think I’d feel better not dealing with him at all. But his Nebulon counts are unsurpassed—higher even than my own. If our race is to survive, his type must lead. But he refuses to marry and sire offspring, damn him!
—“The Frozen Journal of Jabu”
She was only a filament, a golden thread ten thousand light-years long that trailed across the heavens and remembered its name. “I am Emily,” it whispered within the cells it called Brain, as though it wished to remind her of something she had long forgotten. Sight existed, though her other senses seemed to have disappeared or gone to sleep. As she floated, she could see the great star systems move like jewels across the universe. One of the jewels flared and died. Fourth of July, she told herself, Fourth of July, a time for the night sky to explode with beauty, bits and pieces of fire flashing through the darkness like a molten snowfall. And what was the Fourth of July? She couldn’t remember.
She drifted thus, lazily, without fear or sorrow. Memories crept into her thinking part and she dreamed soft dreams filled with the faces of those she loved and places she’d been. A particular face swam in front of her: Thomas. Where was he? On the surface of her tranquility a tiny crack appeared, just enough to alter the pattern of her being. Things clicked into place, opened and closed and revealed themselves.
Above her head the sky was a cool gray dome. Where had the red darkness gone?
She felt something and realized it was the fabric of her clothing against her hand. Only it wasn’t her hand. Her hand ought to have been small, almost square. This one was long-fingered and slender. She searched for the rest of herself and discovered that her legs had stretched and her feet were larger.
Disoriented, she raised herself to a seated position and saw that she rested upon grass. Ordinary, everyday, sweet-smelling grass that stretched outward in a never ending carpet and finally disappeared beneath the edge of a high concrete wall. Nothing marred this expanse of grass except a dark shape sprawled a few meters away. She thought she might be in a park, but noted an absence of swings or trees or flowers.
Emily stood, somewhat shaky, and walked to the edge of the wall to see what lay beyond. Its height obstructed her view, but there was a planter box filled with dirt beside it, and she used this to climb upward. On the other side of the wall there was nothing she could immediately identify, but for a few moments she thought about her geometry class. The scene before her was all planes and angles and vertical and horizontal lines. She focused, but it didn’t hold and she had to remember what she’d seen. Buildings, lots of them, a sensation of altitude . . . rooftops visible. Tall, modern structures in the distance, and nearby more buildings—squat, ugly, gray, separated by narrow alleyways filled with refuse.
