Head Full of Mountains (6 page)

A small console nestled in a recess nearby, with two dark periscopes, through which the desolation outside was obscured by scratch marks, cracked thumb plates, of no use whatsoever, and a pair of very shallow holes. These were under a thick covering flap. The grip at the bottom was stunted. No controller resided here.

On more aimless days, Crospinal had sometimes visited—as he visited all the consoles he discovered ringing the pen, outside father’s range, seven or eight of them, but his girlfriend seldom appeared at this one. Several times he’d conjured the faint perception of a thin figure in a dark uniform, with a helmet obscuring the face, who lingered afar but did not speak or approach or even manifest very clearly. Mostly nothing. Invariably, Crospinal would end up beyond harmer’s corner, or grunting and hauling up the seven ladders, to the harrier lookout—which was where his girlfriend most often appeared, where Crospinal had fallen in love, and had had his heart broken.

But he went stumbling to this console now, as fast as his crooked legs could take him, knees flaring with agony as they popped and failed and locked, running along the gangplank, lungs bursting, thick fluid spewing from his nose and throat and crying like a baby. He fell, in his haste, and scrambled quickly back up, as if pursued. When he thrust his arms into the holes, the sleeves of his uniform nearly separated from the mitts, and inside the lining, skin scraped off both forearms.

“Hello? Hello? For goodness sakes, I need to tell you something.” He coughed, shook his head to clear the drool. Excitement threatened to burst veins inside him. “Hello?
Please
! I know you told me not to call you anymore. I’m not being needy or clingy but this is
important
.”

Elusive static, flickering behind his eyes. Motion he could not follow. Then the faint buzz in his knuckles, up his metacarpals, into his wrists. The hair on his body tried to stand on end, held back by spandex.

She was comin
g . . .

“Listen,” he said, before he even saw his girlfriend’s face. “I know where other people are. I’ve seen them. Other people.
Real people
.”

Now a body gathered—

But not his girlfriend. A woman, as old as father, maybe older, with high cheekbones and a thin, tight mouth. Certainly not his girlfriend. Wearing a dark uniform, and translucent helmet, some strange manifestation from within the walls of the world stood cramped with Crospinal in the recess.

Part of the woman occupied the same physical space as Crospinal’s lower half; where overlaps occurred, his muscles hummed.

“Who are you?” he said.

The woman glared, her face very close to his. The image of the visor almost touched his nose. He looked into her eyes and had the feeling that she could not see him very well, if at all: they were searching, moving. Her uniform was exactly the same kind as his girlfriend wore, with a stiff hoop at the neck and the array of pockets at the breast, unlike any uniform available from dispensers Crospinal knew. The helmet had a large comm link, with a pin mic, and a visible siphon.

“Is my girlfriend there? I have to talk to her.” Coughing up another glob of mucus, but letting it dangle, because he did not want to break contact. “Get her.”

“I can hear you,” the woman said, her tone flat. “You’re out in the bay?”

Her hair was pulled back tight, just like his girlfriend’s had been, but then again,
nothing
like that. A cowl, inside the helmet, extended translucent fingers in front of her mouth. The lines of age, even sculpted in light, were pronounced, harsh, the way father’s had become. She was old. He had to assure himself that no manifestation could touch him nor harm him. Not physically, at least. The apparitions she had brought with her, as faint as those of his girlfriend, spun like figments through the small station.

“Listen.” He tried to take a deep breath, to prepare for his speech, his prayer, but his lungs rattled, as if depths of water remained inside his body. “I don’t know who you are, but she needs to know. The dream cabinet. I’ve told her about it, I’m sure. The booth filled up. A dream like no other. Because I held the door closed, only it wasn’t water, it was thicker, and I could live in it. I could
breathe
it. Can you tell her that? Is she with you?”

“A stat? You were in a stat?”

His chest ached from all this speaking, and from drowning. He tried to slow down. “I need to see my girlfriend. One more time. Have you done something to her? I travelled across a sea—like the one my father told me about—wider than any pool could ever be. And there were creatures there. Bad ones. Not apparitions, or elementals. They were looking for something in the cabinets. And I saw my sister, Luella. She was sleeping under water, inside a filled dream cabinet.” He clenched his fists inside the holes. “One of the sealed ones. I saw her face through the visor. She looked like me, as if I’d been preserved, for years. Not living out here, with father, getting older. She had a helmet on, but the grey one, and a fresh uniform.”

“You’re an abomination. You speak like a passenger, you’re invisible, but you’re not on the roster. You don’t know Luella. That was a hundred years ago.”

“There’s people in the cabinets. Do you understand what I’m saying? Other people.”

“I can hardly hear you.”

“You need to listen.”

Her eyes seemed dark, like holes. The projection of her face slid apart and then back together again and her ghosts stuttered from sight.

“I’m father’s only son. And that’s why you need to listen. You
need
to help me. Didn’t you hear anything I said?” He was shouting now, trembling. “You won’t tell me anything? Or get my girlfriend for me?”

The woman’s stare became as cold as the fluid Crospinal had inhaled. He breathed hard through his nose. How could he be invisible? Behind the woman, in the realm of manifestations, a second person shifted, the thin specter, but not his girlfriend. Only now it occurred to Crospinal that he might have said too much, that this ethereal woman, who most likely projected from the same place, would not assist him; possibly, unbelievably, she had designs to attempt the opposite. Had his girlfriend not warned him?

“I see you now,” said the woman quietly. “I can just see you. An outline. You’ve been compromised. Polluted. You won’t come any closer to the hub. You won’t—”

Letting go of the grip, and pulling his hands from the holes, Crospinal cut the connection: the stern manifestation vanished from the recess, as did her faint companion, though her angry tones continued to echo as Crospinal, coughing and hacking, wiping at his mouth now, backed out.

Dogs chased him. A game, and he was laughing, but his bladder tightened every time one of the apparitions nearly caught him, and he thought about calling the game off time after time but never did. What could dogs do, with teeth of light?

That wasn’t the point.

Along oxbow perimeter—climbing in a slow spiral up the inside of oxbow’s walls—and from there into a long connector that dripped with composites, Crospie hobbled, and the dogs pursued, pretending to be slow, like him. Father said activity was good for his knees. He was reaching father’s limit. The dogs were fading, their energy interrupted and patchy.

Crospinal stopped, rubbing at his legs. He leaned against a railing and looked back. He was crying. The dogs panted, flickering in and out.

“Come back now, Crospie,” they barked. “Let’s go back, back, back!”

“I won,” said Crospinal.

“You did,” they agreed, wavering. “You’re faster. Stronger. You’re the strongest child. Now
let’s
go
back
.”

Their voices, too, crackled and faded; they were starting to whine.

Of course Crospinal was the strongest child, the fastest child. He was the
only
child. Normally, he liked to hear apparitions say these things, even if they were just father’s puppets, echoing father’s desires. He turned away. “I’ve never been down
there
before.” Indicating with his chin, and not for the first time, the entrance to a dim opening, a hallway subsumed nearly entirely by masses of shifting construction, which appeared no different than a dozen such openings, all leading away from the pen into parts unknown.

“You’d best not go, Crospie. This is far enough. One day, but not now. Let’s go back. You’re not ready, Crospie. Not safe! Not safe! We need to go back.”

“Back, back, back,” barked the others.

Because he’d faked a step toward the forbidden.

This was the year of independent thinking. His fifth. He was a big boy now. He could run faster than a dog. They didn’t need to pretend, for his sake. Sometimes, Crospinal wondered if father expected him to defy the rules, making the moments they spent together moments of criticism and judgement, and thus pushing him away. What other reason could the tensions and pressures be for? Each day was a test he failed.

Walking toward the opening, the end of a grate under his boots (part of him wishing the dogs
did
have a way of stopping him), he said, “I’m gonna do it. I’m leaving.”

“Don’t mess around!” The agitated barks did not sound right. “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

He stood in the mouth of the hallway and looked. Ambients surged within, detecting him. The passage went on and on, until the dimness obscured it. He heard fluids, dripping. The temptations and threats that father so often outlined and worried about hardly seemed in evidence: the hallway was quiet, softly lit.

Then, from within, came another sound, though he somehow heard it with more than his ears, in his whole body, calling to him, and his breath caught in his throat. The name had not been what father had given him, but an unfamiliar one, a name he’d not heard before, a name the world offered to him.

He looked behind again, to see if the dogs were implicated in this encounter, or what their reaction might be, but the dogs had been recalled and were no longer there.

When he returned to the dream cabinets, drawn there, the thick fluid still dripped from the edge of the grill, soundless. The strip of carpet remained darker green, with moisture squishy under his boots. The light that had accompanied him during his submersion was no longer evident. Shivers racked Crospinal. Aspects were shifting, he realized, more than just the eternal transfigurations of the landscape, more than the encroaching dark. He spat into his left mitt and let the spittle roil there. His breath was stale and cold, as if he were already dead.

Eyeing the row of cabinets, Crospinal considered his own for some time, staring, but going no closer, as if it might pounce. Had it betrayed him, or taken him some place sacred? The creatures were looking for him. He ducked under the strange girder and, from outside, slowly closed the door, felt it click into place. The handle, as always, fit into his grip, suggesting he should climb inside one more time, close his eyes, and dream. . . . 

All is forgiven, Crospinal. Won’t happen again. Sorry about that. . . . 

He let go and stepped back.

The idiot controller was nowhere to be seen.

As he approached the sealed cabinets, he wondered if the face he’d seen in the dream had truly been Luella’s. He’d glimpsed it for only a second, and through a visor, yet the idea that people were inside—if not his sibling—was powerful. Could Luella be inside one of these cabinets? Was this as far as she’d made it, when she left the pen? Perhaps he should not trust a dream’s allusions.

He placed his tingling hands against the surface of the secure door.

Elements of the wonder he had seen in haptics from childhood had still been in evidence on Luella’s face, even in sleep, even in that instant.

Grabbing the handle, Crospinal yanked hard, suddenly, trying to surprise either the closed cabinet or perhaps his own sluggish systems. Nothing happened, either way. Memories of his failed attempts at father’s list of chores mocked him. Always memories, always failures, always mocking. He tugged again, pulling the handle over and over but there was no give.

The chestplate made a strange sound, guttural and bass, and his processor hissed in response.