Filaria (17 page)

And just because a girl had made a fool of him, hurt him, or quite possibly killed him, didn’t mean she
disliked
him, did it?

Meanwhile, where was he? And who was this woman?

Did he have a chance to score with
her
?

He looked her up and down again. Stared into her immobile face. She didn’t blink or move in any way. Pleasant creases radiated from the corners of her eyes. Eyes almost the same colour as her suit. More creases on her cheeks. A warm, full body. Older, yes, but radiating comfort, intelligence, and compassion. Phister, who had never known the identity of his mother (having been raised in the nursery with other children of the same age), hoped that this stranger — staring at him, stuck, as was he, in time, with her head cocked and that smile permanently on her face — might look at least
somewhat
like the unknown woman from whose womb he had spilled squalling forth.

But then the spell broke; the woman moved; his wandering thoughts crashed to a stop.

She said, “Are you ready? There are angry people out there. Not everyone’s thrilled, that’s for sure. Vanity to build decadent playgrounds while half the world is at war. That sort of thing. An elitist’s venture.” She reached out to adjust his collar. “Sour grapes, if you ask me, babe. And how could you let everyone in? Have you heard that recent complaint? There was an editorial in today’s Reform Gazette that said you should turn the whole project over to the government so they can use it as a refugee camp! I called them and explained as politely as I could that it’s not a charity project. They called it a theme park! A theme park! Can you believe it? You’ve almost single-handedly employed a large city’s worth of people.” She touched his face now. “I think I’m more nervous than you. Seriously, are there other ways we can help? Are you
sure
you’re prepared to do this?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, surprising himself. His voice sounded funny.

The woman’s eyes searched his own. He marvelled at their shine, their warmth. Suddenly she said, “I want to be with you, when we wake up.”

“We’ll be together.”

“But I’m going in like this, in my body, and you’re getting . . .
reduced
.”

“I’m sick. I’m breaking down. You know I am. Just think of it as moulting. I’ll get a new skin. We’ll be together again.”

“But I love this face, this body. I love
you
.”

He held her, and more words not his own burbled up his throat. He was about to formulate a profound response but all he managed to say was, “Oh Tianna,” before gritty familiarities rushed back: the moist smell in the air; the warm, ambient hum; the car. An old man, scowling next to him. Vines, pain, and hunger. Malaise and all his confusions rushed back to fill their resident spots like water into a gutter. He tried to close his mouth but could not.

There was that gang, encircling him, and the girl, once again showing a thin ridge of teeth from under her upper lip. Azure eyes sparkled yet she looked a little unsure. Taken aback?

She was breathing fast.

Phister knew that little time — if any — had passed. He also knew, with a twinge of shame, that he had already forgiven the girl for the pain she’d caused him, that he would fall for her, over and over again, if only for doses of her undivided attention.

Experimentally, he shook his head. The agony was not quite as much as he had feared. “Who the . . . What
was
that?” There was a tingling in his limbs and he was sure he felt myriad movements inside his veins, as if a miniature army were invading him, marching to certain victory.

“You tell me,” the girl whispered, eyes glittering. “Tell me
everything
that happened.”

“Where was I? And who was that . . . lady?”

“Lady? You went
somewhere
? What did you see?” The girl’s fingers touched the flank of the car. Phister’s eyes followed them. She sure had beautiful hands. He imagined those fingers resting on him.

“Your, uh, reaction,” she said, “was pretty
intense
. I mean, it’s supposed to . . . You, freaking out like that . . . The trick . . .?”

Over her shoulder, the others looked on, expressions also wide-eyed and somewhat shocked, incongruous on their previously tough faces.

“I did make
the hunter
vanish,” the girl continued, with a gesture, searching for words. “That thing, it’s a device, older than your car. But when most people see it, have it pointed at them, they have only a quick flash, nothing they can put their finger on.” A narrowing to those eyes, hardening the look she’d levelled at him. Behind her, glances were exchanged between a stocky boy and a slender girl in a white dress. “You’re different . . .” Her voice was cold. “So tell me now what you saw.”

To Phister’s surprise, bubbles of anger rose in him, making him feel stronger. “What you did to me
hurt
. I didn’t like that.”

The girl leaned in even closer, hissing with that sweet-smelling breath. “Tell me what you fucking saw.”

Expecting McCreedy to kick his shin under the dash, warning him to be cautious, Phister tried to remain brave. He replied carefully, “Not much. It was all pretty vague.” The old man did not budge. “Some lady. Her and me, in a quiet room.” And truthfully, as from a dream, details from the odd intrusion into his reality were fading; he could no longer recall the expression on the green woman’s face or what it had truly been like to feel confident and healthy in that other pristine time and place. He could not remember contentment. He did not need to lie about that.

Now McCreedy said, “Okay. Great gag. What about the fucking food you promised us?”

The girl wheeled on the driver, a blur of speed, one of those long fingers, heavy with rings, nearly touching McCreedy’s face. The fingernail was like a blade. Bracelets jangled loudly. “I heard you call me a bitch, you piece of shit. Lucky I don’t have you killed right here and now.” She took a breath, tried to smile again, but her aplomb had vanished.

McCreedy was not intimidated. He folded his arms over his chest and glared. “I need food. You told us you could get us some food. That’s why we’re here with you. Not for conversation or fucking parlour tricks. Me and the boy are
starving
.”

After a moment, the girl withdrew her hand. She let it rest on Phister’s shoulder, just as he had imagined.

“Well,
this
particular
bitch
has a name. It’s Cynthia. And I thank you to call me that from now on, since I’m about to be hospitable to you two. Since I am going to feed you. Since I’m letting you live.”

Old man McCreedy was the first to look away, muttering under his foul breath. He did not glance up again until one of the boys from Cynthia’s gang suddenly climbed onto the car. Then McCreedy threw the car into gear and the car resumed its bumping crunch over the vines and leaves that covered the floor here, moving forward at a slow pace; nevertheless, the boy onboard had to grab the seat back for balance. His face leered over Phister’s shoulder at his friends, who, surrounding the car, had started walking along with it.

On the move, the gang was one entity: bright, lithe, well-defined. Their gait was fluid, their grace animal. Muscles, hard and harsh. Adorned with charms — dangling, draped, or pierced through their skin — a quiet tune of jangling rose and ebbed about the vehicle as it trundled on, woven into the louder calls and murmured talk. Phister recalled another quiet tune. Mostly he watched Cynthia. He felt like he was levitating. By all rights, he knew he should remain cautious about what had happened, try to figure out what she wanted with him, yet his mind simply raced in circles looking for something to say that would not sound asinine to her ears.

The boy behind Phister started to rock, causing the car to rock, and now he called to his friends a guttural phrase that Phister did not understand; the friends laughed until McCreedy barked, “Fucking stop that!”

The boy stopped.

Yet soon another, and another of the troupe clambered onto the car, causing the suspension to sag under their combined weight. McCreedy grumbled. A girl who had been kneeling on the trunk jumped off and landed, both hands clapping down on the shoulders of a dark-skinned boy with long braided hair, while the others remained perched, grinning, and Phister began to wonder if, somehow, more spells were being cast upon him or if the original spell the rod had put him under lingered. In the moments since visiting that strange place and occupying that cool, clean mind, a power not his own seemed to be building in his limbs. He felt it lurking, growing, like a buzz. And images from another life flickered in and out of the periphery.

He shook his head to clear it. Maybe he had gone too long without food or water.

His fingers tingled.

Running suddenly in front on the car, a lean boy with a milky cast to his eyes and a bandage over his left calf leapt up and pulled tangled vines down from the ceiling tiles. The lights up there were mostly covered by the thick growth; lighting itself in the hall was green and diffuse. When Phister and McCreedy had rolled out of the pod and saw that they had
not
arrived at the basement, as they had been hoping, but instead on some overgrown
new
level — just before they’d seen Cynthia and her gang — Young Phister had plucked and tried to eat one of the vine’s bitter leaves. He had quickly spit it out.

Walking next to Phister, so he could see her profile and the alluring motion of her limbs, Cynthia talked in low tones with another girl, one Phister had not yet met. Short, plump, with heavy arms. Her cheeks shook with each step. He was unable to hear what the two were saying yet he was sure the conversation concerned him and his reaction to the strange rod. Clearly, as he’d first thought, Cynthia had been taken aback by the episode. The hunter, as she called the device, had done something to him she had never seen it do before. Which made him think either she’d just acquired it, or had been misinformed, or misunderstood its function.

But Phister was having a hard time focusing on the implications of this. McCreedy wasn’t much help. Watching the shape of Cynthia’s breasts moving under her vest, Phister found his mind wandering. Did people up here, on these levels, have hair elsewhere on their body, aside from their head? Did they have hidden sets of teeth?

He closed his eyes. Leaning forward over his shoulder, one of the two boys who remained on the car — a boy about the same age as himself, with stiff, wiry hair growing on his chin and reeking of stale sweat — said, “I know who you guys remind me of. I just thought of it. From that play we saw. You know, those guys, after they get sick. Remember, Bert?”

“Sure,” said Bert, the other passenger.

“They look exactly like them.”

Phister opened his eyes a crack as McCreedy spat up a hard chunk of some dark matter which had risen up from his lungs; it rolled off his lips, bounced from the car frame, and rustled in the leaves covering the floor.

“What did
happen
to you guys?” Bert asked. “I mean, your skin, your
scalps
?”

McCreedy seemed to be about to respond but was suddenly racked by a spasm of violent coughing. He could not stop for a long while, bending forward in the seat, retching and spluttering. The car, without the weight of his foot on the pedal, slowed down. Phister did not know what to do. One hand hovered over McCreedy’s back.

When the fit subsided, McCreedy sat up once more. But as he wiped at his mouth with the fingers of his glove — releasing the steering wheel for a second — the glove became stained, strung with blood-flecked phlegm.

“
Shit
. You okay, pops?” Nudging at Phister. “What’s up with your friend? Is he all right? You’re sure he’s not contagious?”

“Radiating sickness,” Bert said. “That’s what they called it. In the play.”

“Radiation,” corrected his friend.

Looking at McCreedy, Young Phister was forced to acknowledge that the old man seemed, at this juncture, nothing but tiny and frail. Not at all like the tough fucker Phister had left with on this expedition a mere few days ago. Truthfully, he could not imagine McCreedy even walking again, let alone fighting or showing any signs of being the crusty old bastard Phister knew from back home. Recalling Philip’s wails as McCreedy pounded on him brought a wistful smile to Phister’s lips. How fast a person could deteriorate, he thought. How fast a person could change. And, for the first time, he wondered if there really was something terrible happening to the driver, something aside from withdrawal.

Maybe something was happening to both of them.

“Is he already dead?” Bert asked. “I mean, is he dead?”

“Dead? I’m not dead. I’m sitting right here.” Yet McCreedy’s voice was thin and reedy, as if he were talking from another plane. He looked up from the mess on his glove to take the wheel again. The car gently swerved. “I’m as alive as anyone. So ask questions to my face, you little prick.”

“You ain’t as alive as me, pops, I can tell you that much. And I’ve seen dead people in my day — they pass through here sometimes, looking for whatever it is dead people look for. They seem healthy compared to you!”

“Leave him alone,” Phister said. He wished McCreedy could show Bert and his companion some of that lost energy, maybe grab the pair in headlocks or elbow them both hard in the chops. Knock their heads together. “Just leave him alone. Can’t you see he’s coughing up his lungs?”

“What kind of drugs is he on?” Bert asked.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday.” The boy put his hand on Phister’s shoulder. “I’m talking about dope. Him all fucked up like that. What kind of drug is it?”

“It’s, uh, it’s called moss.”

“Never heard of it. What does it do?”

“It gets you high.”

“Fucking smart ass.” The fingers tightened painfully. “Got any of this moss stuff on you?”

“No, we don’t,” McCreedy said. There was a loose rattling sound in his throat. “If we had any, I’d take it myself and feel less shitty. Now let go of him.”