Memorymakers, p.7
Memorymakers, page 7
I’m on top of a building, she thought, and dismissed the idea at once as impossible.
The shape on the grass stirred and groaned, rolled over and faced her.
“Thomas,” Emily mumbled. She ran on unfamiliar legs toward an unfamiliar Thomas, an older Thomas.
He gazed at her, and after a blur before her eyes he was as he had been before—green eyes, brown hair, tall and slightly chubby. She looked down at her own body and saw that it was as it always had been—a slender torso attached to short, slim legs. Emily sighed with relief.
Her brother stared at her with widened eyes. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. Outside somewhere.” Her answer sounded feeble, and she tried once more. “Looks like a park.”
Thomas shook his head as though he wished to dislodge something clinging to his scalp. He flailed his arms about and tried to explain his dream. “I flew through the sky . . . past the stars.”
Emily hugged her body to keep from shivering. “I did, too!” she exclaimed. “And the Chalk Man came for an instant. I think he tried to save us from . . . this, whatever it is.”
“You really think so?”
“I’m sure of it. This time he was a friend.” She sucked in her breath. “It’s funny, like I was on the edge of communicating with him. Closer than ever. If Victoria ever heard me say this . . .”
Thomas’s forehead creased in a frown, and he shook his round, baby face from side to side. “I always thought you made the Chalk Man happen,” he said. “Not on purpose, but because you needed him. I don’t know exactly why. What if . . . ” He cleared his throat. “What if our minds did this one together, kind of reinforced each other and transported us somewhere, like right here?”
“You always make me feel better about things. Even when I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
She tried to review the events of her dream, seeking a point where it broke off, where this cold, hard reality came into being. She needed to grasp some sense in their predicament. Emily wished her grandparents, with all their wisdom, were here to help.
Thomas hugged his knees close to his chest and rocked back and forth.
It was a language of fear that he spoke with his body, Emily sensed, though he didn’t speak it. She and her brother possessed a kinship that went beyond an ordinary brother-sister relationship. They communicated their needs to each other in effortless ways. Since the day Thomas was born, Emily had felt a particular affinity for him, as though he held a part of her she could never share with another human. They had never discussed their relationship; there seemed no reason to do so. It existed, and that was sufficient.
A motherly streak arose in Emily, and she wanted to comfort her brother. But she knew he would resent such behavior, for while younger, he was almost an inch taller than she and professed a fear of nothing . . . usually. After all, it was she—Emily—who still worried about monsters in her closet and Thomas who chased them from her mind.
Emily studied her brother’s worried expression. She didn’t know how to help him.
“This is odd-to-the-nth,” Thomas said.
She agreed. Unusual events occurred in the world on a daily basis, Emily knew. Television and grocery-store tabloids told the tales. Like the one about the man who disappeared in a flash of lightning. One moment he was alive and talking, and the next he was engulfed in a fireball. Photographers took pictures and the photos revealed only a smudge of black on the ground where the man had stood. Where had he gone? To a place like this?
Fragments of Emily’s dream lingered at the back of her thoughts, but made no sense. A great longing engulfed her and hung heavily upon her spirit. All inner joy seemed to have fled, replaced by an unfillable emptiness. She felt. . . what? Older. Unquestionably so, in a flood of sensations. She held out her hands and turned them this way and that, as though they held the secret to everything. She ran them across the grass and felt its coarse texture. It wasn’t real grass after all, but an artificial variety made to look and smell authentic. Yards of artificial grass.
“Fake grass,” she said, and she saw that it extended in every direction, up to the edge of a high cement wall that went all around.
An object sped toward them across the grassy plain, a rectangular box suspended a short distance off the ground. As it drew closer, Emily made out decorations along its sides: stars and moons and complicated designs that wound and twisted and appeared to be not only part of the box but part of the air that surrounded it, one melding with the other.
The box came to an abrupt stop a few meters away and settled softly upon the ground. It was large, much taller than Emily, and for a long time it sat there without movement or noise. It was an intimidating presence, and she found the wavy designs bore a dim resemblance to eyes and mouths and teeth.
Then tendrils crept a short distance from the surface of the box, snaked around and retreated quickly, rearranging themselves once more into designs—different designs than before.
Thomas pointed. “Look what it’s doing.”
The box lid lifted in a quick, jerking motion. A creature came up, with a smiling goat face and a tall fur hat that writhed like a living thing. The goat face bobbed from side to side, and a pink tongue lolled from its mouth.
“Jack-in-the-box,” Thomas said, and his face glowed with interest.
“More like a monster-in-the-box,” observed Emily, fascinated and frightened at the same time.
The creature held its smile and doffed its hat, then zipped away its face and became Mr. Squick.
Thomas, mouth agape, asked, “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“The goat face.”
“Endomine is playing tricks on your mind, child. How do you feel? Nice sleep? Endomine is a great tranquilizer.”
“What do you mean?” Emily demanded.
“I drugged you. Had to, you see. You slept here all night.”
Squick shrugged. “Didn’t hurt you, did it?”
“I saw a goat face, too,” Emily said. “How is that possible?”
“An unusual effect of the drug,” Squick said.
“Where are we?” Thomas asked. “And what’s that funny-looking box you’re in?”
“Where are you?” Mr. Squick chuckled. “Why, you’re here, of course. I came in this carrier”—he pointed to the box—”in order to entertain you. One of the qualities I understand about children is their sense of humor. Humor: It’s more than a quality, it seems almost a need. I’ve tried to accommodate that need. But apparently it’s wasted effort.” He shook his head. “Can’t change the past, but can change the future. Come along with me now.” He gestured toward the carrier. “Come on. Come on.”
“We’re not getting in that thing,” Emily said, but she was unsure of her brother’s feelings. He seemed deeply interested in the vehicle.
To Emily this plain of false grass might not be home, but it had become familiar and in a peculiar way comforting. It was, she believed, a path home, a rope that held her in place. Nonna or Panona or their father might find the clues that led here, might rescue them.
Nonna’s words came back, from a hike they’d been on: “If you’re lost in the woods, remain in one place and await rescue.” In Emily’s fertile imagination the blades of artificial grass became a great forest of trees.
She heard a noise, an indeterminate, hostile sound, and Squick’s mouth became a ridge of anger. His body hunched over, twitched in an alarming manner, and seemed to expand taller and wider until he loomed over them like a great, furious cloud. Fright squeezed Emily, almost made her whimper. But she made no sound. She watched his eyes blink furiously, and was sure she could hear that strange little grating sound she had heard before.
“Get in the damned box,” Squick ordered. “I’ve had enough of this game.”
Robot arms reached out from the box, grasped the children tightly in rubber grippers and stuffed them into the warm, dark box interior.
Squick’s voice, heavy with anger, crackled through the darkness. “Get this through your brains. Here you’ll do things exactly as I say.” The voice softened. “If you cooperate, it won’t be so bad.”
Emily lay beside her brother at the bottom of the box on something that had the texture of cool glass to her finger touch, though to the rest of her body it felt soft and yielding and warm. She couldn’t arrange the sensations logically in her mind, but they persisted nonetheless.
Overhead, Squick sat on a small platform and stared straight ahead, grim-jawed. He breathed loudly several times, a wheezing, and called down to them, “Here we go.”
There was a faint rumble of sound and then nothing. No vibration or jiggling or clattering or any impression of movement.
“Are we moving?” Emily asked Thomas. “I can’t feel anything.”
“I don’t know.”
“I hear his eyeballs when they move. Can you hear them?”
“Heck no.” And Thomas’s face took on a peculiar, disbelieving expression reminiscent of Victoria’s.
Squick’s malevolent laughter ricocheted against the walls of the box. Then, as though he’d experienced a change of heart, he looked down upon the helpless children, smiled benevolently and said, “I want you to consider yourselves my invited guests, to be cherished and treated politely. Sorry if I frightened you back there. I’m a little tired, and my tolerance for children gets low at times. Just doing my job like always, day in and day out.”
An exit door opened on the vehicle’s side, and Emily felt herself propelled outside by rubber grippers onto a ramp that dropped her to the artificial grass. Thomas came close behind, the same way.
Emily’s legs no longer seemed like regular legs, but more the way she imagined a doll’s might feel, made of plastic or fabric and useless for locomotion. She took a few tentative steps. Artificial grass still lay beneath her feet, but now a number of live plants in boxes and pots were apparent nearby that she hadn’t seen before, and a small, shedlike structure stood in their midst.
“Come, little one,” said Squick. He seized her hand and squeezed it until she almost cried out. “I’ve things to show the two of you.” He pulled her toward the structure, which had a peaked roof and two swinging doors.
With his other hand he held Thomas, and they bumped through the swinging doors into the interior of the shed, a small, bare room. Squick touched something on his belt, and the wall before them opened like a mouth. “Slide into the mole tube,” Squick commanded. “Down we go!”
And he leaped onto a wide, dark slide, still holding onto the children. The slide was slick and smooth under Emily’s bottom, and she sped into darkness. Around and around they spiraled, traveling steeply downward. Emily felt warm, clammy air against her face.
A terrible sense of fear and foreboding came over her, and she wished she hadn’t been forced to take this ride. Mole tube? she thought. What is a mole tube?
“Ooh!” Thomas squealed. “This is fun!”
“Coming up to a landing,” Squick said presently. “Stay on your feet!”
Emily’s feet hit the floor before she could think, and though she stumbled, Squick kept her from falling over. She couldn’t see anything.
“Now walk,” Squick commanded. “Onto the ramp.”
The ramp went down steeply but not as much as the slide, and around and around they walked. Emily became afraid of bumping into something and pulled back. She groped ahead and to the side with her free hand, touched nothing. It was pitch black in the tunnel, and Emily could no longer see the man who held her hand. Nor could she see Thomas.
“Quit lagging,” Squick said.
“But it’s dark,” Emily protested. “I can’t see.”
“I can see enough for all of us.”
“Do you see with magic?” Thomas asked, and he sounded not in the least afraid. The question surprised Emily, for Thomas had a scientific mind, she thought, and he didn’t believe in magic.
“As you wish” came the cryptic response.
Emily was jerked forward, with such strength that her arm ached. She scurried to keep up, but the fear of running into something had not disappeared.
She heard the shuffling of their shoes on a hard, smooth surface and identified Thomas’s steps—a rapid, echoing patter—then Squick’s less frequent but heavier sounds, and finally her own, a patter lighter than Thomas’s. Were they on concrete, or maybe hard-packed dirt? She couldn’t tell, couldn’t recall any details of the surface from the tunnel entrance.
Squick breathed heavily at her side, and she heard the clicking and grating of his eyeballs. Might he be a robot, one that could see in the dark? Such strange red eyes. But his hand felt warm and human, a little moist. Or was that perspiration from her own palm?
For an instant Emily thought she heard a whistle tone singing through the air, high and clear. She couldn’t pick out the sounds of Squick anymore, only the pattering steps of Thomas and herself in the darkness.
Malcolm Squick shivered as he recovered from the tugs and pulls of disunion. He was in two places at once, via a technology Gweens could never duplicate or begin to understand. Poor, disadvantaged Gweens! This Inventing Corps technology, associated with amoeba-cams and stealth mass-shifting methods, enabled him to divide the tangible spectra of his body into two sensory realms—leaving at least one of his five bodily senses in each realm.
This time he left only his sensation of touch in the tunnels with the children, and though he could not see, hear or smell them (and could not taste them had he wanted to), he felt their hands gripped in each of his own.
He set this division into motion with a precise whistle tone, one limited to the Ch’Var auditory range. Squick could activate the Divider from anywhere inside or outside the branch office structure, without limitation of range, and as with other Ch’Var technology, he didn’t concern himself much with its workings. He knew only that it was a mechanism built into the building, originally designed to aid fieldmen in escaping from Gween authorities as necessary. It included an automatic system that warned a fieldman of approaching police, wherever the fieldman happened to be.
If not overridden by a fieldman’s conscious effort, the Divider split a fieldman “four and one,” leaving only his sense of smell behind while catapulting the body, brain and other four senses to the nearest safe location. The body and brain always went with the majority of senses—with that grouping of at least three senses. Those senses remaining behind, though without body or brain nearby, functioned nonetheless, transmitting sensual data from the original location to the new one.
The system had never failed.
In this disunion Squick had split himself by conscious effort, and the particular whistle tone he selected specified the division of his senses, body and brain. So, while guiding the children through the entrance tunnel, he was simultaneously in a tiny, windowless room deep beneath the surface, ready to ship his embidium orders to the Director. A yellow panel dominating the wall opposite the door would open at the appointed time.
Squick stared at a tray of embidium vials that held purple liquid—those extractions he’d made in recent days. He zeroed in on Thomas Harvey’s vial, identifiable by its vial number, and saw the familiar stringy red glow of the Nebulon-encased embidium.
He considered withholding Thomas’s embidium, but Jabu knew of the extraction from the transmission to headquarters. Jabu couldn’t know he had the children, however, for they’d been kidnapped after the transmission of the Seven Sacred Questions, with answers.
Squick wondered if he should warn the Director this embidium was different, or that it might be different. Or should he just ship it? It would be interesting to see if the boy’s embidium, this unusual extraction, could be implanted, therapeutically inserted to give a recipient happy childhood memories. If it didn’t take, Jabu wouldn’t necessarily say anything. Rejections occurred occasionally for unknown reasons.
To hell with warning him. The boy’s fluid clouded when I tested it, so I’ve done my job, and now it’s up to Jabu to follow his own damn steps.
Squick had no knowledge of the implant procedure, only that certain careful steps had to be followed by the Director.
But this embidium might be unlike any Jabu had ever handled; it certainly was a first for Squick.
He felt a child’s hand trying to pull away—Emily’s—and he gripped it harder.
He knew he should say something to the Director about this extraordinary extraction, that he should speak up before the shipment was made. But something told Squick to keep his silence. He’d taken the Harvey children on impulse, out the side door of their home into his chameleo-van and away. It hadn’t been thought out, wasn’t logical. Did another force drive him to take the children with him in violation of procedures? He couldn’t be certain. But now these children were entirely within his control.
A shudder passed through Squick.
He tried to convince himself his preoccupation with these children wasn’t the loathsome, unspeakable type he feared so much. This seemed to emanate from some other driving force, a powerful, more compelling urge than any he had ever known. Something akin to the Nebulons, he thought, and on a vast scale. This urging would not be denied. It did not tickle him or nag him. It demanded his full attention.
In secrecy he would attempt another extraction from the boy, this potential goose with golden eggs. An unlimited supply of embidiums would be interesting, and if Squick controlled the source . . .
I’ll have to hide these children somewhere, he thought. Jabu could spot-check me at any moment, and the risk of that seems higher with what I’m sending him now.
The yellow wall panel slid open, revealing a small red cage.
Squick released Thomas’s hand, and in a blur of hand speed the fieldman lifted the cage top, set his tray of vials inside and reclosed the cage. When his hand was clear, the yellow panel slid shut. Once again he grasped Thomas’s hand. Squick didn’t know how the vial shipment system worked, only that it did. Director Jabu’s headquarters were linked to this and all other field buildings in a mysterious way, one of the secrets that only the Director and his prized Inventing Corps knew.
