Memorymakers, p.9
Memorymakers, page 9
“No games.” Squick flipped the amoeba-cam in the air, and it buzzed into flight, a pale red glow to him. “You still see nothing?”
“Am I . . . supposed to imagine? You threw something?”
“No games, I said.”
“I hear buzzing, like a fly.”
“Aha! Just like before, when I was in your house?”
Thomas nodded. “Invisible insects?”
“Bugs of a sort” came the response, and Squick felt his mouth shape into a sardonic smile. But it didn’t hold. “Only Ch’Vars can hear their sound.”
“Only what? Can we get back to the games? Please, Mr. Squick?” More fear than before in the eyes, and in the boy’s tone of voice.
“You are not Ch’Var. I see that in your eyes.” But Squick wondered if the Nebulon count in this boy might be so low that the red of Nebulons didn’t show in his irises. This fieldman had never heard of or encountered a Ch’Var with such an extreme condition, but he thought it possible. According to stories long told among his people, the irises of ancient Ch’Vars were ruby red. Then over millennia, a fading, a washing away.
Ruby eyes! What a sight they must have been!
“What are you talking about? What’s a Ch’Var?”
Squick glowered at the boy and said, “And your sister claims she hears the grating of my eyeballs. Even Ch’Vars do not hear that, if such a sound exists. Yet in all ways our senses are superior to Gween senses.”
“I don’t know what you—”
“Shut up! You don’t need to understand! Strange children. Come here, strange one.”
The boy’s chin quivered and he didn’t obey. He appeared ready to cry.
“Here! Now!”
Thomas shuffled over, made whimpering sounds.
Squick touched the tear ducts of his own eyes, felt the icy flow of Nebulons, and within moments the ancient, memory-seeking organisms entered the boy’s body through Thomas’s eyes to his brain.
The boy slumped to the floor, and a scream issued from him, a high trill that sent Squick backward several steps.
The child was in a prenatal position, not uncommon in extraction cases, but the muscles of his throat convulsed, discharging volleys of shuddering screams into the room. The terrible sounds filled Squick’s body, blocked thought, and he ran back to the door, fumbled with the lock mechanism and thrust the door open.
When he was in the corridor with the door closed, Squick still heard the screams, and still his body was invaded with sound, unabated in intensity.
He touched a signal button on the underside of his belt, and Peenchay came, wearing a vapid expression.
“Sir?”
“Shut him up,” Squick yelled.
A horrible smile consumed the Inferior’s features.
“Not that way,” Squick snapped. “Drug this one. Keep him alive, but get him away from me! The noise is unbearable! Put him in a basement room where I won’t hear him. Don’t just stand there, idiot. Do as I say. And don’t harm the boy. Hear me?”
Peenchay’s eyes flashed in momentary anger, and Squick wondered: Would you eat my brains given the opportunity? I think you might, idiot Inferior.
Frozen fear permeated Squick’s bones. He shuddered, envisioning Peenchay in a murderous frenzy, tearing into the brains of Gweenchildren, ripping out the gray, pink, bloody matter within their skulls and stuffing it into his mouth.
And one of Peenchay’s ghoulish descriptions came back, the way he said he tasted sweetness just before he filled his mouth in his abhorrent way—sweetness in his saliva before the taste of Gweenmeat—gushing saliva. Gushing, stinking saliva. And the flavor of the meat, he said, matched the saliva.
Now Peenchay took on the bowed expression of a subordinate sorry for an infraction. Squick reminded himself once again of the assistant’s great loyalty to him, and the feelings of uneasiness began to subside.
Peenchay carried the boy away, and a semblance of peace returned to Squick’s body. It wasn’t the same as before, however. He doubted he could ever forget the screaming of Thomas Harvey. Gweenchildren had screamed occasionally during extractions, and especially when Peenchay got to them, but never anything like this.
I’ll let the boy rest and try again later. An extraction only.
He thought of the Harvey girl, of her embidium. Perhaps I’ll extract from her first. . .
Squick went to his private apartment two levels up, intending to rest and clear his thoughts for determination of the best course of action. In the quiet of his room, in a caressing darkness that sank around and upon him, Squick felt frigid, flowing Nebulons in his eyes and just behind the eyes, Nebulons that danced against and through the implanted Gweenboy embidium he carried in his brain.
He’d been happy with the implant at first—the melding of Gween and Ch’Var had been exceptionally smooth—and life had been better then. But lately, more and more over the years, he realized he felt fragmented and confused. His body and mind were unclear battlegrounds, with warring parties pulling at him . . . and a suggestion of programming, of something he didn’t wish to do. And the warring parties, the forces on these hazy, blended fields of combat, were as fuzzy as the battlegrounds themselves. Mental, physical and spiritual powers washed together with ancient tradition, tumbling and flowing in a wet glue of Nebulons.
The face of the boy within flashed: wild hair and jagged, uneven teeth. He was ferocious, riding a long, lean Ch’Var hound.
It wasn’t merely a matter of Ch’Var against Gween, of his Ch’Var body rejecting the embidium implant, though he was beginning to surmise that this may have been part of it. Implant rejections were rare, and if they occurred they usually occurred soon after the procedure, within months. But some rejections took longer, many years.
Gradually the frigid flow of Nebulons coursing through Squick’s body became warm, a soothing temperature, and he felt anesthetized.
Thomas lay in moisture, warm like the fluid of his mother’s womb. Eyeless heads floated in that fluid, and the boy was one. His mouth moved but made no sound, and he tasted blood from his gouged-away eyes.
It was reddish dark in the womb, the redness of blood, and his body formed into a red-irised eye, a single eye about to be born. The taste of blood intensified, and in a torrent he drank of his own fluids, to his fill and beyond. He emerged from the womb, and the eye that was Thomas fled across a desert expanse, into the teeth of poisonous sands borne on a storm wind, sands that were lethal pellets penetrating the cells and tissues of his existence.
He spiraled through the Earth like a stone from the sky, dropping away from the desert storm. Somewhere children were laughing, and he saw a girl swinging a baseball bat at an object that dangled before her, at an animal, a pig. The pig was alive but constructed of paper and glue, and when the girl hit it the pig split asunder horribly, releasing gory gifts from its innards.
These were not toys or candies or bright baubles. They were snakes and body parts and puddles of slime and eyeballs, all writhing and smelling of sewage. The children gathered them anyway, laughing and squealing with delight, and they ate the stinking things, stuffing them down one another’s throats.
He saw Booger, his old friend, if indeed he’d ever been a friend. Booger who liked to smash things. Booger’s face leaned close, and he could see the gap between Booger’s teeth, with those thick, chapped lips opening and closing like the mouth of a giant, ugly fish.
“Hi ho, Tom-Tom,” said Booger. “Come to play? Remember all the fun we used to have? You had the toys and I smashed them. Wow, those were the times. Let’s do it again!” And Booger’s mouth opened so wide that Thomas could see the flabby pink flap at the rear of his throat.
Thomas was one of the eyeballs scooped up by the children. He entered the black tunnel of Booger’s throat and tried to prevent a plunge downward, but with no feet, no hands, and something slimy covering his body, he could only speed through darkness and obscenities to land in a pit of steaming, burning bile. Within his nightmare he blacked out. Or thought he did.
In a vision within a vision he saw an information booth before him with desks and computers on the other side. A single pair of eyes floated before one of the desks, green eyes with a ghost of gray face surrounding, a face so hazy that it could barely be seen. Then he saw another pair of eyes, darker and surrounded by a halo of gray hair. Recognition hit him.
“Panona, Nonna!” he cried to the bodiless faces. “It’s me, Thomas. Help me!”
“We give away a free case of orange soda with every purchase,” the brown eyes that were his grandmother said.
“The way out is not the same as the way in,” said the green ones that were his grandfather.
The sets of eyes, each from their hazes, gazed upon Thomas with great tenderness and sadness.
Beneath the information sign hung another, and it read, “no questions.”
Chapter 9
“How curious that Nebulons flow from tear ducts!”
—A trainee, to Director Jabu (from the Director’s notes)
Mrs. Belfer stood, sullen and uncommunicative, in the center of the Harveys’ living room. Her face was flushed, red wig askew. Near her, Victoria Harvey smoked a pink nicotine tube which she inhaled and exhaled in short, rapid bursts as though she were short of breath. A long blue and white scarf hung over one shoulder, and she tugged and smoothed the scarf nervously, trying to arrange it properly.
“Where are they, Mrs. Belfer?” Dr. Harvey said, picking up the alcohol stench of the housekeeper even at the distance he stood from her. “We come home from our trip and my kids are gone. Where are they?”
He flipped on a floorlamp, chasing evening shadows.
“I told you,” Mrs. Belfer mumbled in a thick voice. “Your phone message said they was goin’ with you. I don’t know nothin’ else ‘cept they was with their grandfolk yesterday.”
“I never left a message,” Dr. Harvey said. “You didn’t check for them last night?”
“Didn’t see no reason to, after the message. They mighta been here, I dunno.”
“Stop talking about a message, dammit!”
Mrs. Belfer wrinkled her features into a gargoyle expression, shrugged her shoulders and stumbled out of the room.
“Come back here,” Dr. Harvey demanded. When she didn’t, he said to his wife, “That woman is fired. She’s a liar, a drunken derelict and a lousy housekeeper.”
Victoria tugged on his sleeve and said, “But darling, she’s explained everything she knows. Don’t do anything rash. She’s a big help to me.”
Dr. Harvey tried to retain his composure, watched through the living room window as a streetlight flickered on.
“Darling?” Victoria said.
He wiped perspiration from his face with a shirtsleeve, and with measured words said, “Something’s terribly wrong here. I’d better call the police, like Mom and Dad suggested.”
“This isn’t an emergency yet. Nonna and Panona saw them less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“Well, I’m damned worried. This is a big city and-”
“I specifically told them to stay home today,” Victoria interjected with a tug on her scarf. “They probably went somewhere this morning and lost track of time.”
“God, I hope they weren’t out last night.”
Victoria’s voice softened and her quick, nervous gestures smoothed to fluidity. She collected herself into an attractive package: chin out, breasts high, skirt straightened, scarf in place. Her lavender eyes opened wide until they appeared childlike. “Sweetheart . . . Patrick . . . I know you love Emily, but she does have some serious problems. That’s why we send her to a therapist. She’s a difficult child. I’ve tried to get close to her, tried to give her love, but she resents me, pushes me away. She’s full of hatred. And her wild imagination . . . invisible bugs and other things. I think we need to talk about maybe . . . mmmm, uh, getting her into a facility.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She needs more care than a therapist can supply. Round-the-clock care, a year or two in a place where they can watch her and give her the kind of help we both want her to have.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like it here because of your incompetent parenting, Victoria. I’m tired of hearing you say she’s crazy. I think she’s a fine girl, and she’d be more normal if you let up on her. Maybe you’re the problem, not her.”
The stylish eyebrows arched, like the spines of cats. “Incompetent parenting? Where are you when these kids need you? Off in some hospital or talking about going to operate on Mexican companeros. You’re needed here.”
“Don’t try to dump it on me, you selfish, spoiled. . .”
She stared bullets at him.
“As far as Mexico goes,” Dr. Harvey said, “all those people who need me so desperately are going to have to wait. I can’t leave with all this happening.”
“And I suppose that’s my fault?” Angrily she snuffed her nicotine tube in the oxygen-vac of an ashtray.
“We’re wasting time.” Dr. Harvey lifted the telephone receiver and pressed the police button.
Victoria was an angry whirl of skirts in the hallway as she moved swiftly toward the kitchen and back porch. She yanked open the door of Mrs. Belfer’s room.
Bottle in hand, Mrs. Belfer lay sprawled across her bed, eyes closed. The room was cluttered with dirty dishes and clothes, and her red wig lay on a lace pillow beside her like an exotic pet that might suddenly rise on tiny feet to snap and snarl at an intruder.
“What the hell are you up to?” Victoria cried. “What are you trying to do to me? Where are the kids?”
The woman on the bed roused herself to a seated position. “How do I know? What do you care? You got the doctor all to yourse’f now. Ain’t that what you wanted? Mr. Rich and all his money, with no one to spend it on or leave it to except poor, sweet Victoria.”
Victoria felt the muscles of her mouth tighten. “Look here, you drunken bitch, don’t play funny with me. You’re only here because I allow it.”
“Ha!” screamed Mrs. Belfer. “Don’t threaten me, Miss Goodie-Sweet. I hold the gun, not you.” She paused, a poignant moment, and her eyes danced wickedly. “What if I was to walk right up to your husband and say, Doc, did you know I used to work for Victoria’s folks? Yessirree, I was the cook when they lived in that great big mansion on the hill. Before they lost all their money payin’ off their daughter’s liability suits and bills. I know all about Miss Goodie-Sweet, the spoiled sorority girl. And I know all about her parties when her folks was gone. Naked boys and girls playin’ nasty little games. I got my hands on nice videotapes of those parties. Triple-X stuff.”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
“And I’d say, Doc, Miss Goodie-Sweet and her friends wasn’t so stuck up in them days. Once in a while they’d even invite a poor kid over for a good time.” Mrs. Belfer caught her breath. “Remember, Victoria? The skinny little girl you invited up for a swim? The kid that drowned? And all you naked rich kids standin’ around laughin’ and makin’ a videotape while the kid yelled for help? I got that tape hid real good, Vickie-Sweet. Real good.”
Victoria’s eyes were dark with rage. “You have a permanent job here, a permanent home thanks to me. All it costs you is silence.”
The bottle touched Mrs. Better’s lips, and she tipped her head back, inhaled deeply and took a long drink. In a moment her gaze returned to level, and the bleary look in her small, blue eyes cleared a little. “Wouldn’t that make a good story in the society column? Local doc’s wife—”
Victoria’s hand shot out and snapped across the side of Mrs. Belfer’s cheek. “Keep still about this, or you’ll be still for a damned long time. Understand, bitch?”
Mrs. Belfer giggled, lifted her finger in an obscene gesture and fell back upon her bed. As Victoria watched through narrowed eyes, Mrs. Belfer closed her eyes, cradled her bottle and began to snore loudly.
Chapter 10
My brother spoke to me, but without moving his lips. The message was in his eyes, and I understood it completely.
—Recollections of Emily Harvey, Twenty-second edition
For a while after Squick left her alone, Emily stared through the semidarkness at the door handle. She thought she’d heard a lock click when the door closed behind him, but she comforted herself with the thought that the mechanism normally made such sounds, that she wasn’t locked in this room at all. She could turn the handle and leave any time she wished. But what if it wouldn’t open? She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.
Emily was distracted and fascinated by the contents of the room, particularly by a row of big, cherubic-faced dolls. Their bland, innocent features gave her an odd sort of reassurance, a sense that nothing could go wrong with them around.
But her gaze flickered between the dolls and the door handle. It was an oversized, round handle, sculpted to resemble a ball of yellow yam. A tiny gray and white kitten with an end of yarn in its teeth was sculpted on one side of the ball, as if the yarn were a planet and the kitten an inhabitant.
A chrome machine on her left resembled a soda fountain unit with a row of flexible white spouts on its top edge. The mouth of each spout was formed differently, and from each mouth dribbled small amounts of a substance that looked goopy and reminded her of soft ice cream or cake topping, each dribble a different color. A blue and yellow sign on the unit read, “the artful looper,” and beneath that Emily found instructions in very small print for making “art loops.”
Tentatively she pushed one of the spouts and white, spaghetti-shaped material oozed out and bobbed into the air. According to the instructions, the substance was lighter than air. Emily bent over and read the balance of the written material. With one hand she grabbed the loose end of the artificial spaghetti, looped it around and completed a circle by detaching the other end of the substance from the spout. The goop was only a little sticky to her touch, but adhered to itself nicely and hardened in a few seconds.
