Made Men (6 page)

“A
ll of them do, so we
must.” Rickard remained nude, but replied with a click of acknowledgment,
hissing lightly at his pile of clothing, then sat on his cot, slowly pulling on
each item, grim and determined.

Unaccustomed
to clothing himself, Ryker understood his twin’s hesitance.

The feelings of socks were particularly
disconcerting
.

Ryker
needed his toes to help him experience his environment and felt a bit smothered
by the footwear, but to set an example, he ran in a quick arc on the floor to
sell the idea. Traction gone, he slipped, landing flat with a
plop
. Rickard flicked his inner lids
closed, watching.

“Except
these. We’ll leave these.” Ryker slipped off the socks.

They
ran drills and found reasons to remove their shirts and pants next. The short
white pants seemed natural for reconnaissance, so they left those on.

An additional layer to protect their
genitals could never hurt.

So
outfitted, they padded down the tunnel, up the stairs, and slid aside the panel
to explore.

Hearing
a dangerous squeak two aisles away, they dove back inside their nook, peering
through a slit from their dank, black hollow as a woman rolled a device with
wheels about.

Fortunately she seemed preoccupied
.

She
placed books with precision on the shelves. Her actions appeared linear.

Had she already sorted the books on the
cart somehow?

Each
book seemed to have a definitive spot. The twins hunched on the metal grate,
the top stair which led—depending on which way they pointed their faces:
down to their open-doored cage, or out—to the rest of the earth.

They wanted out.

Blinking,
nostrils flared and throats expanded, ears swiveling, they tracked the
librarian. Systematically, she neared.
When just a row away,
her back to them, Ryker slid the panel more open.
They eased some of the
books at their feet back onto the shelf behind which they hid, further
concealing the gap behind the wall.

Turning
back to her cart, the lady’s face was visible for a moment between shelves.
Ryker felt his chest buzz; Rickard agreed, purring too, yet looked startled as
well.

It was a sound they’d not made before.

She
was more beautiful than the goddesses from the storybook. Riveted, they gawked.
With long legs and a trim waist, her odor came from unexpected
places—defining, imprinting for them how a woman should smell. When she
had finished her tasks, the overhead lights winked out with large
clunks
. The long-legged woman’s
footsteps softened, each tap of her shoes yet more distant. A faraway door
clinked
shut and the jingle of keys
assured them of her departure. Although Ryker felt compelled to explore, he was
disappointed to see the librarian go.

Again,
they popped from the tunnel. The visual dam of books on the low shelf showed
significant
wear
.

Wolfgang Bähr moved them hundreds of
times.

Silently,
Rickard followed him, soft light shining from dozens of see-through rectangles
spaced along the walls. Together, they climbed shelves, digging their hard,
clear nails into the wood like owls to inspect books, carefully replacing each
afterward. Each book they handled was now a
known
book. They would understand the common system soon, but after two minutes, this
was what they knew: the second aisle from the tunnel, on the top shelf, the
seventeenth book from the end was
The
History of Pork, Husbandry, Challenges, and Feed Considerations.
Fourteen
aisles from the tunnel, a left turn was mandatory. On the first shelf around
the corner, the second book on the right was
Siddhartha
by
Hermann
Hesse
.
That aisle was short.

Fifteen-strides for
bipeds their size.

At
the end of the aisle was a large and immobile wooden table with small doors
that opened in the middle. The doors had two-way hinges and springs. Many small
drawers were organized in rows. They discovered a wooden box with assorted
clothing, broken glasses, and a single small shoe inside. Wider, taller drawers
faced chairs. Some of the larger bins were locked.

R
ickard opened one of
the hundreds of small wooden drawers. It slid easily on greased metal runners,
smelling of graphite and glue and paper. Thousands of handwritten cards were
inside.

Here was a clue to the system.

Rickard
walked to an aisle to study the annotation printed neatly on a plaque on the
endcap then hurried back through the small doors like a tiny trail-dusted
cowboy thirsty for knowledge. He studied the plaques on the drawers next, slid
one open, and flipped through the cards in the rear third of the drawer. Then
plucked out the correct card like a magician, holding it aloft for Ryker—

Hesse, H.;
Siddhartha.

His
brother nodded, rummaging through the larger drawers.

Had he found something to eat?

He
held something white, wrapped in paper. Already, Ryker had taken a bite of the
item, yet held it in his mouth, appearing unsure … not chewing. Rickard bit
into the block next.

Not food, but close.

Suddenly,
he felt immensely thirsty. It was bitter. He re-wrapped the white bar of soap
as Ryker slid open several of the smaller drawers to survey their contents.

Small utensils for
writing?

He
touched a tip. It didn’t draw blood, but did leave a black mark on his
thumbnail.

Yes, for writing.

He
took one, tucking it into the elastic band at his waist. Next they studied a
tiny bent piece of metal, likely galvanized steel wire. Passing the inch-long
thing back and forth, Ryker made two medium glottal clicks.

He knew something
.

Pushing
through the little saloon doors, he disappeared but returned in just moments,
holding a book on metallurgy they had discovered on their way to the
circulation desk. Rickard clicked once, low, in appreciative contentedness.

Fifth aisle from the
tunnel, halfway down on the right.
Top
shelf.

Ryker
inspected the book’s binding. Eyelids fully open, he pulled Rickard by the hand
to the appropriate drawer, quickly locating the small card. The cards showed
where in the room—using the aisles and shelves as landmarks—the
books were kept. Muffled by the thing he’d popped in his mouth a moment
earlier, Rickard’s click of approval revealed his secret. Ryker searched his
face, moaning a low warning. He handed his brother one of the small brown
squares. In consistency, the substance was similar to the bitter white block,
but had a much superior taste. For a moment, they only chewed—eyes reflecting
pleasure—then Rickard returned the remainder of the substance neatly
inside the foil-backed paper he’d discovered it in. The chocolate bar was added
to the pile on the counter next to the odd shoe and the broken eyeglasses.

The One Who Was Different needed it.

Next,
they pulled two small white cards from the drawers at random:

Hoffman, ETA.
The Devil’s Elixirs
(1815)

Holderlin, F.
Hyperion
(1797)

The
desk was central to many aisles. Each aisle, they now knew, had the key to its contents
inscribed on the end-plaque. They stayed together. In four minutes they had
their books, moving steadily, mentally and physically warming up, learning
silently from each other. Up a central staircase were more aisles. After a
cursory search through the upstairs books, they climbed a shelf on an outside
wall to push their faces against a clear rectangle of light.

People milled outside.

Hundreds
of persons streamed by on foot and inside cars and trucks. Others rode
bicycles. Rickard sucked at the sweet chocolate that had stuck to his teeth,
watching for something he recognized: a horse or Medusa.

Was Persephone in Hades now?

Rickard
felt doubtful about an Icarus sighting, yet searched anyway for the sea through
the glass. Ryker’s hand flicked out. He’d captured a spider on the metal
windowsill. He didn’t share his find, but when a fly bumped against the glass,
Rickard snatched it quickly. Leaping from the fruitful ledge, they continued to
explore and found a bathroom with many sinks. Eerily, none of them dripped.

“They
are white,” Ryker muttered, amazed, dangling his hand in the water inside one
bowl.

None were the austenite/chromium/nickel
composite they were familiar with—their own toilet—down the stairs,
through the panel, the right, the left, through the open door to their cage,
second wall on the right.
Books were
good; they held answers.

There
were reflective surfaces too, which initially made them both hiss, but it was
not small, dark-haired trespassers come to fight or claim their food.

It was
them
.

They
studied their own faces for a
while,
noting slight
differences from each other that only they could.

As
hours passed, they carried stacks of books to a heavy metal coil along a
wall—one of many. The devices emitted a glorious wealth of heat, but no
light. Outside, the light faded, then slowly returned as they wondered, their
chins on a windowsill. Pinks and tones of red rising, reflecting—a visual
loudness they could never have imagined. As the sun broke the horizon, they
gasped, purring. Tears ran down their cheeks.

“Oh,”
Ryker offered. No other word would do.

 
A sudden noise echoed through the canyons
of books, reflecting from the surfaces. Bouncing from wood and metals and
plaster and Bakelite and glass and plastic and leather and paper.
Then another noise.

A voice.

They
skittered down the stairs to the desk, retrieved the shoe, the squares of
sweetened cocoa solids, the broken eyeglasses. Then galloped down the aisles,
leaping and snatching the book on metals, the
Holy Bible
,
Hyperion
,
The Devil’s Elixirs
,
Siddhartha
, and
The Metamorphosis
. Ryker dove into the tunnel. Rickard shoved their
books into his brother then slid, headfirst, after him.

They
offered the pile to The One Who Was Different. He less read than glanced at
each page as he let the sweet squares of chocolate melt on his tongue. In four
hours the books were committed to memory; he already knew much of the material.
They felt for the first time in their lives—a yearning. They—the
not-quite-boys but not-quite-wood-frogs nor golden-crowned-fruit-bats;
not-quite-Cuban-crocodiles and not-quite-but-a-little-of-several-other pieces
and parts of marsupials and tardigrades and bacterial proteins; super-soldiers
who wouldn’t suffer from exposure or need daily food, who never would require
normal amounts of oxygen or REM sleep and who could learn at inhuman rates of
speed yet blend in with humans just the same—waited, yearning.
To press their faces to the crack of light.
To watch a
person’s feet click past—in shoes—from behind the panel. Listening
to the foreign voices, they dreamed of more squares of chocolate. They returned
to their cots for the clothes, which each practiced wearing while they waited
on the grate, the top stair before the panel.

It was a thing humans did.

April 1, 1962, 5:08
PM
:

G
one.

Ryker
heard none of the movements the pure people made—the natural humans,
unadulterated with amphibians or reptiles or marsupials.

Those with normal IQs
.

Both
the people who worked there in the library and the visitors returning books or
carting a few
home
, who had paused to loiter or dream,
had left.

The
three of them listened a few moments more. Ryker glanced at his twin, who
clicked agreeably. The taller boy shrugged, his arms across his chest in the
cold, chin tucked against his bony chest. He slid the panel fully open. Clammy
but deft, the twins pulled the books on the low shelf into the tunnel, tired
covers stacked at their feet on the stairs. Today they all wore clothes, which
softened their bodies. Ryker felt like a purposeful moth, craving heat and
light.

The ill-fitting fabric flapped too much.

The
One Who Was Different squinted, his pain obvious. Each novel stimulus, for him,
was a necessary evil.

Ryker
slunk low, headed for the librarian’s desk, Rickard at his heels. No chocolate
lay hidden, but there were cough drops. Each twin took one. Closing the small
tin, Rickard presented the remainder of the hard, red lozenges to their pale,
warm-blooded companion. He popped one into his mouth, starving; his
practicality trumped his disdain.

The best
feature of
the pants were
the pockets.

The
useful, utilitarian flaps reminded Ryker of the pouches he and his brother
guarded their genitalia within. A physical trait they had inherited from a
South American opossum that fished, by feel, at night in the jungle.

They
re-shelved the books they had taken that morning—all but the Bible … the
violent stories (the star of most was also a fisherman) had been repurposed.
The stiff pebbled leather and the stout red thread they had teased from the
binding would accompany them everywhere. The book now served as shoes.

It was the best leather at hand
.

Today
they each wished to appear, just boys. Shoeless boys were interesting.

They couldn’t afford to be interesting
.

Sliding
open one of the many hundred small drawers, the thinnest boy appeared nearly
opaque. Ryker could see the bulge of red lozenges through the human boy’s cheek
and his heartbeat in his neck. With skin so pale in the bright light that his
soft fingers appeared translucent, he tugged a card free from the tightly
packed bin then glanced around as though his neck were stiff, perhaps to note
how the nearest aisles were marked. He replaced the card.

He understood the system already.

They
led him to a window. Now three faces peered outside into the vastness beyond.

With
a fragile voice, their human boy spoke. “It is time.”

T
he service door led to
a tight alleyway in a large shadow. Ryker eased the door closed, placing an
index card folded in quarters to keep the latch from engaging. Creeping
forward, Ryker led. Rickard took up the rear, glancing left, right, up, back.
The ground seemed the only predictable constant. At the corner, they paused.

The final, safe pool
of darkness
.

Unsure
how to proceed, Ryker froze, edging his face out slowly, not certain how his
differences would be received by passersby.

“Go,
now,” the boy said. Still, he paused, ears on the move, mouth open,
throat
-pouch pulsating discreetly. When The One Who Was
Different fell in step behind a large woman with bad hips, they followed; her
scents were of yeast and fried onion and coal. She was stiff and stooped,
unlikely to turn suddenly to see the trio drafting her. Ryker and Rickard
followed, adopting the shrewd boy’s act.

They were simply her wards; clawed hands
in their pockets, out for a stroll.

They
passed a shop that sold hats then a butcher’s. A cheese shop reeked of enzymes
and hormones and wax, rennet and ozone. Ryker felt the cadence of steps become
a pattern and risked a glance at the sky. Immediately, he felt dizzy. His
brother looked too. The movement ran contrary to instinct.

Too linear
.

Forcing
focus, Ryker watched for things to avoid, ignoring the pull of edibles. The
woman paused, so they all did. Ryker strained to see the ceiling.

There wasn’t one. One couldn’t simply
jump to swallow the sun. It was much too high.

Past
the next corner, the direct sunbeams temporarily blinded them all, though their
sturdy
not-mother
had anticipated it and trundled on
ahead. The One Who Was Different curled his limbs around his head as much as
his bones would allow. Rickard helped him back to the shade of a building, but
when their ward reached for the cold stone wall with his ashen fingertips,
trying to ground himself, he withdrew his hand just as fast—scorched yet
again by the structure’s texture.

He was miserable.

“Take
my elbow,” he commanded, “and follow the next woman. You must lead me. We don’t
have a choice.”

Ryker
didn’t follow the next woman.

She smelled wrong
.

Hers
were smells that would incapacitate their delicate friend.

The next smelled better.

He
fell in behind the familiar, younger woman in sunglasses. She wore a sleeveless
dress beneath a light, short-sleeved coat with a belt. Her brown head hairs
were curled, and she smelled like the soap in the drawer that they’d shared.

And of other things
.

Of
nylon and alum, gardenias—estrogen and licorice, progesterone and mint.
She bounced—the parts of
her which
seemed like
they should.

She was easier to follow.

Rain
pattered them as they crossed the street: fat sky-drips from a gray/black anvil
far above. Ryker fought the urge to stop and drink, trailing instead the
quick-footed woman who had opened a book to shield her head hairs beneath an
old awning that buckled its painful applause for the sudden storm. For seven
steps, the words “King James Version” were temporarily water-tattooed behind
Ryker’s damp left foot.

The
youngsters followed close. Calves bunched into upside-down valentine hearts as
she ran; her heels splashed along. Ryker wondered at her confidence—she
moved in such a straight, long line.

Efficient? Yes, however, each person
nearby must anticipate where she’d be next … why did no one snatch her up? She
smelled like a prize to him.

They
scrambled behind, her gait prancing. Crossing a street, she ducked into a cafe.
Following, they crowded just inside the fogged-glass door. More than a dozen
people clustered in the small anteroom, pretending to study menus while waiting
for the thunderstorm to pass.

Gracefully,
their lady shrugged off her coat. Unlike the others, this was the librarian’s
actual destination. She stepped this way, then that, apologetically bumping
into the loiterers—none of whom seemed to mind. A red-cheeked hostess
with thick parts recognized their comely, unaware friend, and ploughed through
the dripping crowd to retrieve her.

She was a paying customer.

Barking
at some soaked young males leaning against the wall, the bullish fireplug
sprung to hang up her patron’s sodden coat. The displaced men only yielded
their space for that moment, closing behind the large woman, a force of nature,
like water behind a wading ox. It appeared they, too, could smell their
librarian.

Each glanced longingly at her bottom
.

Ryker
felt his jaws
clack
,
ready to fight, but the stocky hostess’s round face eclipsed his plan. She’d
locked eyes with him and smiled.

What did she want?

The
bulky German stood tall on her rotund legs, a fleshy island in the cramped
space. Using the tips of her toes for elevation, which seemed impossible, she
asked their librarian something. Then both women peered down at them. With a
mouthful of gleaming white teeth behind bemused, pursed red lips the shape of a
bow, their
not-mother
beamed at them with her eyebrows
raised.

Had she asked them something?

It
seemed so. Her head was tilted.

She had exquisite forehead muscles
.

It
hadn’t occurred to Ryker that anyone would try to speak with them.

Her lips moved again
.

“Your
parents?” she asked. “You three aren’t trapped here alone, now …
are
you?” Ryker turned to his twin, but
Rickard appeared stunned also; he only gazed at their perfumed librarian with a
small smile, the skin at his throat pulsing lightly—like an infatuated
spring peeper.

“Just
now, they are parking our car. Thank you, Fräulein.”

The One Who Was Different had known what
to say.

The
hostess bared her teeth, a big brown-toothed smile, and barged headlong through
the idle, damp bodies like a locomotive, their
not-mother
in tow.

“Should
we leave?”

The
One Who Was Different nodded. “Yes.” He pointed. “Grab that first.” Past a man
who smelled of sheep, a sleek, black raincoat hung on a hook just over the
man’s shoulder, beside their not-mother’s jacket.

A coat for a lady
.

It
would fit their librarian—their
not-mother
.

It was just larger than her skin
.

Rickard
wove through the mass of adults, grasped the fabric firmly, and with a tug
popped it free of its hook. He rolled it, then tucked the elegant item beneath
his arm and headed for the door.

Back
on the sidewalk, Ryker wondered at the simian aversion to water.

Was there simply discomfort in being
wet, or did moisture somehow damage humans?

As
Rickard led them across the street, Ryker took up the rear, risking a look
straight up to feel the drops impact his eyes. Then he opened his mouth to feel
the wetness on his tongue.

It tasted better than the faucet
water—mineral-rich and natural.

They
paused beneath the awning for their soggy mastermind to regroup. Hands clamped
over his ears, he shivered violently. Rickard unrolled the coat and draped it
over the boy’s shoulders outside of the store full of cheese. Ryker saw a man
inside hand some colorful small papers to the proprietor. Like tiny pictures,
the bills seemed familiar. Was it money?

They had money. Inside the leather bag
with the Luger and the journals, the stamped envelope with Josef Mengele’s
South American address and Wolfgang Bähr’s West Berlin address. The stack of
bills was nestled against the velvet roll of surgical instruments.

Moving,
Rickard led them past the butcher shop—Ryker felt his mouth
water—then the window displaying dry hats. A man inside with long silver
sideburns and a very white shirt with no visible stains watched them pass as if
the rain might kill them. Soon, they turned down the alley. Rickard towed their
boy by his elbow, so Ryker leapt ahead to open the door and pocket the folded
index card that fell from the latch.

Placing
The One Who Was Different before the nearest radiator, they pulled off his wet
clothing and found a chair with arms for the pale boy to sit in. When his
shivering slowed, Ryker sped, urgent to retrieve some money from the tunnel to
buy cheese. The human boy needed calories.

He had no energy left to shiver.

R
ickard placed the
stolen black raincoat behind their cold companion, draped it over the back of
the chair and around the arms to create a heat pocket, then gave his shivering,
dripping patient a cough drop and basked happily in the thermal glow as he hung
their steaming clothes on the metal. When Ryker returned with the cheese, the
pale boy was up, opening drawer after drawer to flick his warmed fingers over
the tops of the small white cards—just lightly enough to turn—to
read each one.

A nanosecond later,
the next.

Rickard
considered the ceiling of the library. He had so quickly tolerated to not
having one and disliked the flatness of it hovering overhead. He realized that
the smells from the books were similarly concerning; each held an attractant.

The paste
.

Loamy—slow
smells of decay, the inedible paper teased him. Stomach groaning, he regarded
the bag of cheese on their librarian’s desk. Ryker unwrapped it with plodding
ceremony, so he took a moment to explore their surroundings to avoid a fight.