Head Full of Mountains (8 page)

Crospinal squeezed his eyes shut tight, mouthing the words, best he could. Part of the ceremony, of the desire. His stomach churned. He wanted to believe in a nicer place.

“I wasn’t always this way, son. I know the steps I’ve taken led me to this place, where I raised you, and taught you. We can bring it all back. We can achieve it.”

Nutrients hissed back and forth in conduits. Chemicals and information he was not searching for flowed. Crospinal did not open his eyes. He tried to keep fragile frameworks in place, structures upon which to build his vision, which he painstakingly scaled to move beyond his pain and insecurities, beyond grinding days of ennui.

“Ash gives way to moisture. Grey darkens, takes on the scent I exude, here in my pen.
Ozone.
A storm’s coming. With the storm, winds, but not scorching winds, nor do they carry sand, or ash, but a coolness, soothing the land. When I was a boy . . .”

Crospinal might open his eyes at this point, to see some metal tool, or even a small, dumb machine—the purpose of which might remain a mystery to both of them, when they later inspected it—coming up through the floor, or falling from the ceiling. Sometimes the pen itself modified, subtly, pushing back against encroachment. Hard edges delineating from the face of a wall, as if pushed from the other side.

“I woke from a nap, smiling. Basked in the breeze, a harbinger of change, of youth, of freedom. Ash is crumbling, washing away. Because it’s raining now, and not the ridiculous oily rain that drips here, in great drops, marking the tiles dark, like a blight, nor like the fountains in the garden, but drops with the power to revive, to give life. The ash is washed away. Through the skin of the soil, green shoots appear, tiny shoots with two leaves each, lifting up into the air.

“Other plants sprout nearby. These are larger, providing shelter for new growth.
Real trees
. Lightning splits the sky. This is a land of growth, of health. When you sit up, lifting your eyes to see what else the lightning has brought, the rain cools your face, and your hands, upraised to the sky. Water soothes your tongue, washing dust from your skin forever. Ahead of you, there’s a forest. The ocean is at the end of the road. You can hear it. Beyond, above the trees, cleaving the line between land and sky, breaking it down so you’re free to travel between the two, and rise up, are hills, which gather to reveal the line of mountains, capturing your breath, pulling you up, to disperse you, to bring you home. . . .”

The haptic collapsed. Pinworms had moved quicker and quicker, a writhing mass, accelerated, alongside time, spilling forth from the cage of bones. Flesh was gone altogether.

“
Osteomalacia
. You’ve had this since you were born. Rickets. Before you were born, even. I knew you suffered while you gestated. I tried to supplement your diet, Crospie, tried to get additional vitamins. I tried so hard. But there’s not much for me to work with here. I did the best I could and I know it’s not good enough. But you’re alive, Crospie, you’re here with me. You’ve retained a large amount of knowledge. You’re a testimony to civilization.”

Was father also crying? Silent, he had turned away. The conduits at the back of his head rolled against each other and obscured his profile.

“It’s okay,” Crospinal lied, feeling awkward (and the tinge of a growing, perverse sense of power). “I
know
. I mean, I figured as much. About dying, I mean. We can’t go on forever.” He tried to smile. “Nothing does, right?”

But then came the barrage, the litany of disease: hyponatremia; anemia; effects of low oxygen. The sour skin ailments of pellagra. Bronchitis. Pneumonia susceptibility.
Cancer
.

Who could smile now?

Insistent prodding under his arm caused Crospinal to groan when he wanted only to rest, to be left alone, hopefully forever. He wanted to sort out his own memories, once and for all.

No apparition could be responsible for this intrusion. Not much could actually
poke
him. Fox? Or Bear? Hadn’t they stepped out? If only he were able to open his eyes, or form words, he could make the intruder cease this affront and return to the relatively peaceful depths of slumber.

Crospinal’s legs, as always, were sore. But there was other pain, too, not just from his knees, or wrists: his head was sore—had he fallen?—and his chest, which was unusual.

Something large moved, far away.

Had father died?

The prodding relented for a moment. He could not rest any more, not the way he had been, not in oblivion.

Yes. Father had died.

A sharp prick, through the sleeve of his uniform, directly into his skin, and darkness rose to enclose him once more.

Flares shot through his body, exploding along the ridges of his spine and in the crevasses between the twisted loops of his brain. Partitions had sequestered or maybe even amputated whatever was needed
to understand
. Some had broken down, others had a way to go.
Now
he came awake. Shards of light had been waiting; they eagerly stabbed his eyes.

Prone, in a very bright place. Dried blood raked across his naked belly. Below that—

Struggling to breathe, to control rising panic, he saw that his uniform had been uncoupled, tricot pulled wide open, chestplate split, exposing his thin white chest—

And, from the waist down, he’d been consumed by a shiny canister.

Pushing frantically at the plastic rim to free himself, but his arms were weak and his hands remained clenched in futile claws. The canister would not budge. Sleeves and mitts intact, thankfully. When he tried to wriggle free, his entrapped legs would not move. Not at all. He could not feel his legs. Pushing down again, with the heels of his hands, but he was trapped tight and his legs were unresponsive.

“Please,” said a soft but insistent voice. “Stay still.”

At his groin, mounted on a flange at the mouth of the canister, a glowing plate—symbols blinking in red—made absolutely no sense. He had never seen these indications before, nor could he tell where the voice had originated from, though it was from a localized source, like a comm, or a mouth.

The icon twisting above where his groin should be was of a large worm, with crow’s wings, curled around a rod.

“What are you? Come out so I can see you.” Bands of muscles tightened in his torso and back as he tried to pull out again. His legs remained numb and useless. He strained, and craned, to see what had prodded him, and spoken, but to no avail on any count. “
Let me out!”

“Take a deep breath,” the voice advised.

From behind the canister.

Crospinal did what the voice said. He did feel marginally better, though his compliance irritated him.

“You need to rest.”

From where it had been hidden, at the foot of the gleaming canister holding firm to his deadened legs, emerged a sleek, grey . . . rat. Sitting back on its haunches, peering at Crospinal with red eyes. Not much bigger than his open hand, when he’d been able to open them, but the eyes—

No. Not a rat
.

“Get me out of this thing,” he said. “Did you open my uniform? I’m gonna die of some infection. Could you seal it, please? And get me out of here.”

The elemental returned his stare but did not respond or assist.

“This is shit. Clearly there’s something wrong with you. Get this thing off my legs. I can’t feel them.” Crospinal was wondering why he had thought of the elemental as a rat in the first place: the limbs were clearly fine rods of titanium, the fingers lengths of another delicate beta alloy whose name he could not recall (though the haptics about metals and plastics and composites had been nightly for over a year), and the voice came from a small comm.

Thumbs had been designed, in an opposable manner. The face was remotely rat-like, with those red eyes and a muzzle-shaped protuberance—no doubt to accommodate the artificial neurons, which would have to be squeezed pretty tight into an elemental this small—but any similarity to a living beast ended there. For his confusion, Crospinal blamed grogginess, but was beginning to suspect that processes and patterns of his own thoughts were changing, and for the worst, now father was gone. This was clearly an elemental, with an independent personality. More sophisticated, perhaps, than Fox or Bear.

“Can’t you talk anymore? You seem advanced but you’re not doing what I ask. What happened to my legs? And close my uniform.”

Now the metal rat read him. Crospinal felt the pressure sweeping inside his body, nowhere near as intrusive or as blunt as those he had endured in the pen, when his caretakers checked him out, but enough to take serious and rile him. “Hey,” he said. “You should ask first. It’s just rude. What are you looking for?” Trying to sit up, to prop himself, but his arms had grown tired altogether of obeying his errant will and remained inert at his side.

“If you keep moving,” said the elemental, “you’ll need to be sedated. You’ll tear something. I don’t want to restrain you.”

“You already have.” Indeed, when Crospinal attempted to wrench his body free one more time, not much of anything moved, except for the surges of pain, like steel filings blooming in his guts. “Can’t you just let me out?” He suspected he might cry soon, though he really did not want to. “I can’t feel my legs.”

“Because your legs,” said the metal rat, “are broken.”

“
What?
”

“But the bones are knitting nicely. So stop fighting.”

Crospinal had stopped. “My legs are broken?”

“Both femurs snapped by a large fragment, flash-hardened, spinning laterally. Two fractures on the left, one on the right. The second fracture was compound. The bone severed your femoral artery. There were other injuries—punctured intestine, mild concussion—but your fractures were the most grave.”

“What are you saying?”

“You don’t understand me when I talk?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then what? Don’t get excited. You seemed—I thought you couldn’t understand, that’s all. That’s what you said. An inner lock closed. Whatever was blocking it must have shifted or moved on. I extricated you from the wreckage and dragged you clear. Lucky to be alive, as they say. Only a few minor procedures left. Soon you’ll be right as rain.”

Rain?
He frowned.
With the power to revive, to give life . . . 
“What does rain have to do with anything?”

“You don’t know that expression? Right as rain means you’re going to be fine. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re in the clear. The debris has been dealt with already, but I haven’t moved you yet. I was waiting for you to wake up.”

“That’s crow
shit
,” said Crospinal, testing the swear word again for reaction, though there was none apparent. “You just woke me. I felt you, poking me. You weren’t waiting at all. What procedures have you done to me?”

“You know about operations and shit like that?”

“I’ve been in haptics.”

“You want grisly details?”

“I can take it.”

“Well. Skin grafts, for one. For your burns.”

“I’m burnt?” What he could see of his smooth chest seemed pale and bony and ineffectual, but undamaged. How many years since he had looked upon it? A few damp hairs, flat, copper-coloured nipples, like stains. The thin strands that connected the chestplate to his lungs were intact, but stretched into a web: both halves of his tricot had been opened, like a ribcage. He did not like to see his white skin, for skin was vulnerable and weak. Where the flange of the device trapped him, there were no visible burns, either. He looked at his hands, still in their mitts, though the Dacron was further damaged. His sleeves were frayed, too. “At least close me up. I can feel germs crawling all over me.”