Memorymakers, p.10
Memorymakers, page 10
She became immersed in creativity, and momentarily this soothed her concerns about Squick and the doorhandle.
Next she created eyes, a nose and a mouth, all of which she suspended in the center of the oval to form a face. She moved the loops around a little, and they remained where she wanted them, floating in midair. With more effort she made a body, a rumpled white suit, white shoes and white gloves.
“Hello, Chalk Man,” she whispered, delighted with the excellence of her work. “Talk to me, Chalk Man. I’m frightened here, and I don’t know what to do.”
She tried to imagine the Chalk Man’s mouth moving, answering her, but no sound came forth. The only movement she detected in her art piece occurred when she moved about and caused air currents to buffet the creature slightly, as a boat might do in the wake of another. She gave the creature a shove and it floated away.
“A stupid game,” Emily muttered, and her fears intensified.
The door squeaked behind her, and with that the Chalk Man collapsed to the floor, like a pile of spaghetti without any sauce.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and for a moment she knelt beside her fallen friend, as if it had been a real, living creature.
A shadow loomed over her, and she looked up into the red-eyed countenance of Mr. Squick.
“I’ve decided we need to become friends,” he said with a thin, ugly smile that Emily found frightening.
“I don’t like you.”
Squick knelt beside her, and Emily didn’t like the way he stared at her, the way his eyes were hard.
“I think,” she said, “that you are not a nice person. I want you to let us go home.”
“You don’t want to be my friend, then?” he asked, wrinkling his face as if in pain.
“You’d better leave me alone.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll kick you.”
Squick laughed, but uneasily. “What I have in mind won’t hurt you a bit. There’s a little secret thing my people have practiced for thousands of years. Wouldn’t you like to know about it?”
“No!” shouted Emily, and she scooted away from him to the other side of her fallen Chalk Man.
“Aren’t you going to ask about my people?”
“Where’s my brother?”
“Resting.” Squick’s eyes were a brighter red than usual and moist, his full mouth now a thin, terse line.
Squick trembled and dabbed one of his eyes with a fingertip.
Emily leaped to her feet and darted for the door. She tried to turn the handle, but it wouldn’t move. So she put all her strength into it, and this time something broke off in her hand. When she spread open her fingers, she saw the sculpted kitten, broken free from its world.
A strong hand gripped her shoulder, pulled her backward and Emily screamed. As she went over she saw the row of fat dolls staring down at her with unblinking, uncaring eyes.
Emily lost her vision to a freezing storm that inundated her eyes, drowning her in an ugly ecstasy that did not belong to her. All of her senses succumbed to the storm, and every cell of her body froze into dormancy. She was a block of ice floating in midair—and like the Chalk Man, unable to speak. Then the Chalk Man’s words crackled through the air, in Emily’s own voice. The ice broke, splitting into particles that rocketed to all parts of the universe.
“Lordmother,” called her voice, from thoughts not her own.
She was immersed within the great, pulsing heart of aliens who called themselves Ch’Vars. But they were human, much as she was human, and they walked where she walked, spoke her language, ate her food, and called her Gween. She sensed their thoughts, their pleasures, their pains, and within the depths of this illusion fused with reality, a presence touched her and gave her power.
“Move with me,” said the presence, “and I will help you.”
“I’m beginning to understand,” Emily said.
She emerged from the darkness, and her sight returned. Emily lay on her side without movement, peering at Malcolm Squick as he knelt nearby and dipped his finger into a vial of clear liquid. He did not look in her direction.
“I know something,” Emily said in a flat, low-pitched voice.
Startled, Squick glanced at her, then looked back at the vial and cursed. “Turn purple, dammit.”
“I don’t want to turn purple.”
“The fluid, not you!”
“Your Nebulons are dead.”
“Damn!” Squick hurled the vial across the room, smashing glass and splattering liquid on a wall. “What’s gone wrong here?”
Emily continued in the same toneless voice. “I’ve defeated them.”
Squick’s cheeks reddened, and deep, angry ridges split his features.
“Your Nebulon count is zero,” Emily said.
“You’re crazy.”
“I know your history,” she told him, and she felt herself coming out of a strange dream. Or had it been a dream? The images were slipping away, fading. Still, she understood that Squick was a Ch’Var with an unpleasant black fog that consumed him and concealed a monster beneath the surface. This Ch’Var, like some others, had done terrible things to children, unspeakable things. He invaded their brains, left them to die . . .
I see your filthy soul! she thought, and she wanted to be free of it.
Desperately, Squick went to one eye with a fingertip, then to the other eye. Terror consumed his face.
She reached into her troubled, fading dream and said, “From your Nebulons I know that Gweenchildren disappear, and you are among those responsible. The sleeping sickness explained.”
The man was trembling before her.
Emily felt her eyes blazing. “And I know you’ve tried an extraction on my brother, you bastard. He resisted you, too!”
Squick shot to his feet and backed up, staring at her with eyes that had lost their redness. He fumbled with the door handle, nearly fell into the corridor trying to get away, and slammed the door behind him. The door made its clicking noise again.
Emily opened one hand. The sculpted kitten remained there, and righting it upon her palm, she ran her fingers gently over the tiny gray and white object. Its surface alternated smooth and rough, smooth and rough, smooth and rough . . .
A vast storehouse of racial information had arrayed itself before her, and though it eluded her momentarily she realized with mounting excitement, I’ll never be like I was again. I’ve changed forever.
Had Thomas weakened the Nebulons during the extraction attempt on him, enabling her to go a step further? Perhaps, the girl thought, but she sensed more than this. Much more.
And she worried about her brother.
Squick, upset by Emily’s bitter words, paced restlessly in his office. Why the hell should he care if a Gweengirl insulted him? But he did care, in a way he didn’t understand.
He rummaged about in his desk for the chocolate nut bar he’d placed there earlier under his cash-expenditure book. A small, wild laugh burst from his mouth. My damned pacifier. . . that’s what it is and it isn’t here. Did Peenchay get into my stuff?
He stalked down the hall, through the stealth-lock and out into the Gween world in the downstairs lobby. Walt, the cigar and candy shop vendor, called to him. “How you doing, Mr. Squick?”
Walt’s round face was as smooth as a baby’s despite his eighty-two years. He wore a baseball cap over wisps of white hair, and a string tie secured with an elk-horn clip hung from his neck. He liked Squick.
The feeling was mutual as far as Squick was concerned, even if this guy was a Gween. Walt didn’t make demands on a person and on top of that he sold the best chocolate in town. His candy was imported from Paris and Rome and Amsterdam. In spite of his appearance, Walt was a connoisseur of fine confections, and people traveled long distances to fulfill their addictions.
“Well, here’s one of your chocolate addicts back for a fix,” said Squick. “Got any more of those good nut bars I bought yesterday?” He glanced at a newspaper Walt had spread open on the counter.
“Darn shame what’s happening to kids in this town,” said Walt. “I got fifteen grandkids myself. Glad they all live out in the country.” He reached under the counter and handed Squick his chocolate bar. “This one’s on me,” the old man said. “You look kinda low. Anything wrong?”
Squick muttered an abrupt thanks and turned away. As he crossed the lobby, he stuffed the chocolate bar in his mouth, wadded the wrapper and made a basketball shot toward a nearby trash can. He missed. Damn Gweens . . . damn . . . damn.
Chapter 11
The Nebulons are becoming nebulous.
—Dark Ch’Var wit, typical of the breed
With all the technology at his disposal, Director Jabu Smith had backups for backups and alternatives for alternatives. So it was with electronic communications, and when the beep went off in Squick’s ear, the fieldman thought at first it must be his sleep alarm.
A hazy image formed in Squick’s brain: Director Jabu, in a long yellow-and-blue-striped insulcoat, with deep circles beneath his eyes and more wildness than usual to his black beard. Irrationality there, and anger.
Squick thought he was dreaming, but became conscious of his eyes being open and charcoal darkness in the room. He closed his eyes, and the image of the Director grew clearer.
“With so many time zones involved,” Jabu began, “some of you are in bed. To those I say this is not a dream, and I assure others this is not a daydream.”
He’s using Amoeba One, Squick thought.
Amoeba One dispatched long-range transmitting units from Homaal that sought all fieldmen in the world, somewhat in the manner of amoeba-cams. But Amoeba One had unique features, and the characteristic buzzing he heard was lower-pitched, almost gravelly. He saw a bright ruby midair glow to his left.
Squick yawned and sat up, scrunching a pillow between his lower back and the headboard. With his eyes open, he saw Jabu as slightly translucent, and that suited Squick. It seemed like a minor act of defiance, keeping his eyes open to diminish the visual effect of the transmission.
“Stand by,” Director Jabu said.
Squick remembered something—the damned fire department inspection was due in two days, and he hadn’t recalibrated the sensor in the basement yet. Too many distractions, and Peenchay couldn’t be entrusted with the task.
Such inspections, like communications from Jabu, were an irritant to Squick, pesky pressures that forced him along certain courses of action, making him jump through hoops, molding him against his will. He resented anyone with power over him, longed for a situation where he might be in charge. If he were Director he wouldn’t have to put up with such annoyances.
He tried to visualize the world from the Director’s vantage, and suddenly Squick felt very small and very foolish.
The Director cleared his throat. “Some fieldmen have reported a . . . problem, and I want to hear from all of you now. Radio-op me on Channel 162 or speak into the flying transmitters about anything unusual at all. I can take your calls simultaneously.”
Should I tell him about my Nebulons? Squick wondered. He can’t be referring to that!
So Squick lied, and as he spoke into the flying transmitter he reported nothing out of the ordinary. All the while he wondered if he could still produce Nebulons, and this was something that could only be determined in the presence of a Gweenchild. For Squick and most Ch’Vars, the viral organisms flowed only if stimulated by an imminent extraction.
The image of Jabu disappeared and the buzzing dissipated, but Squick could not return to sleep. He needed to know about his Nebulons, but something told him he should avoid the troublesome Harvey children. Maybe he needed a normal extraction encounter with children in the field. He’d lay here for a while and then go to work as usual, leaving the Harvey siblings where they were.
“Shittah comforts you in life,” Squick thought. “Shittah comforts you in death.”
He shuddered, tried to discard the mantra from his mind.
Maybe I should have Peenchay kill them.
An uneasiness pervaded Squick now when he thought about the Harvey children. The strange extraction of Thomas Harvey’s embidium, and the second attempt, a failure, that left the boy screaming . . . then the failed attempt on the girl . . .
Nebulon production is a delicate holistic balance, he thought.
Each extraction attempt on the Harvey children had results more unusual than, worse than, the attempt before. Perhaps he had been unnerved by the sequence of events. And those strange comments from the girl. Where did she obtain her information? If a bluff it was a good one, with authentic-sounding fragments.
Her words rang like a curse in his brain: “Your Nebulon count is zero!” Squick felt faint. “Zero. . . zero . . . zero . . .”
As Squick lay awake, he planned his day. He would cruise for strays and call on children with impending birthdays, from the lists—familiar routines that would restore his potency. Then, brimming with Nebulons he would laugh in the faces of the Harvey siblings and spray them with icy, spurting Nebulons. Just before turning them over to Peenchay.
A desperate thought occurred to him, that the Harvey children may have been planted by the Director to develop information. If so, it would be a technique different from any known to Squick, but he didn’t rule it out.
Director Jabu was a clever man, unpredictable, and he had that powerful Inventing Corps with its secret workings. Maybe the Harveys weren’t human, Gween or Ch’Var; could they be bionic, transmitting data to headquarters, damaging data about Squick?
He had brought these children into his field office. Banned conduct. Against the edicts of Lordmother.
I haven’t touched them improperly, he thought. Not so awful what I’ve done. Peenchay’s actions are infinitely worse. But I’ve known of his deeds, have looked the other way. I’m an accomplice.
Peenchay seemed to enjoy killing children for his bizarre diet, and took advantage of every opportunity he could. But Peenchay, despite his gruesome misdeeds, had never directly disobeyed a command from Squick. Not yet.
Squick loathed the code of silence he and the Inferior had developed, for it imprisoned Squick within an ancient stream of criminally insane Ch’Vars. He deserved a different, more exalted lineage.
And Squick suspected he wasn’t the only fieldman tormented by questions about his mental health, for it seemed too remote a possibility to consider. Lordmother’s Way would keep him on the right track, keep him from becoming another Peenchay. He was proud of himself each time he followed Ch’Var Law to the letter.
He became aware of a feint burr of flying sound, and soon the sound dominated his consciousness and became a buzzing that roared in his ears.
“Fieldman Squick!” It was Director Jabu’s voice, and now the image of the Ch’Var leader appeared in Squick’s mind as before. “Tell me about the Nebulons!”
Squick gave a vague excuse to his superior, asked for a little time, a few minutes. Then without waiting for an answer, Squick stormed down the corridor to the game room in which he’d left Emily.
The magic that Emily had absorbed simmered within her, and she realized that if she reached for it too quickly or too soon, its power might overwhelm her senses. Slowly, ever so slowly, seemed the proper way of approaching the memories that stretched back tens of thousands of years. She entered the place within her brain that stored this gift, and she walked on a plain of ice—a small figure bundled in furs pushing against the bitter cold that swept across a barren landscape. She heard the voices of hunters ahead of her, from somewhere beyond her vision . . .
The hunters chanted an ancient song, a vaguely familiar, strident tune that ricocheted through Emily and frightened her.
The enemy approaches! she thought.
The words of the hunters’ song filled her, and she went with the words, unable to oppose them: “We are Ch’Vars, and for us the lit-tle Gween-child. Come, in the na-ame of Lordmo-ther!”
“No!” screamed Emily to the wind that tossed her words back upon her. “No!”
And Emily understood the depths of the hunters’ transgressions, the sanctioned and unsanctioned acts they committed. Even the sanctioned seemed terrible and outrageous, for what right did this Ch’Var Lordmother have to declare open season on the brains of Gweenchildren? By what right did they plunder?
“The flesh of Gween-child, so sweet but forbidden, “ the hunters sang.
“It’s all forbidden!” Emily shouted. “From now on, all your acts against my people are forbidden!”
My people . . . Gweens?
Something seemed awry to Emily, and as her words of protest to the hunters were carried off by an icy wind she realized the futility of resistance.
Ch’Var and Gween, she thought. I am like both but unlike both. How can this be?
In a terrible vision of searing, white-hot pain, Emily died under a hunter’s jagged knife.
Beads of perspiration covered Emily’s face. She tried to understand the vision but feared it, feared uncovering information that lay hidden, information she should not know.
The door to her room grated open, and Squick loomed over her. Emily saw another face behind the handsome, angry one he presented to her. The second face was a dim image, a narrow, mean little child countenance with bristly hair and sharp, poorly spaced teeth. Subhuman, it seemed. Emily concentrated on the image, and it solidified and pushed itself closer to her, held out its arms and hissed obscenities.
Startled, her mind withdrew. This child within Squick was not Squick, and she knew this with certainty.
“I want an explanation now,” Squick said. “What’s all the drivel you were bellowing about Nebulons, about killing them?”
“Exactly as I said, child thief. I’ve finished them off, finished you off. I’ve liquidated you, erased you. You’re impotent. Why don’t you go off in a corner and die, bastard?”
“Don’t mess with me,” Squick said in a low, threatening voice. “You’re teasing, and I don’t like that in a child, especially a female child, especially a Gween female child. I might have to punish you.”
