Memorymakers (12 page)

And a dim memory came to him from moments before. He had seen Peenchay grinning at him from one corner of the cellar.

Chapter 15

“Obey our rules, or an Inferior riding a demon hound will eat the thoughts in your brain.”

—From a story told to Ch’Var children

As soon as Squick disappeared from view, Emily rose quickly to her feet. She’d read about passive resistance in a grown-up psychology book from the library, a book that Victoria had taken away from her before she could finish it. “Playing dead,” the author called it, “the defense of the weak against the strong.” A trick employed by some animals and insects—one that humans could apply when necessary.

She had briefly considered kicking Squick in the groin, to free herself as she had from the boy on the boat. But she had been close to shore when that happened, a distance she could swim. Here she didn’t know the way out, she didn’t know where Thomas was, and at least one shark swam these waters: Peenchay.

Ch’Var and Gween memories bumped together uneasily inside her head, unfocused fragments that gave her elusive sensations of power . . . sensations apart from the memories . . . sensations about the future, about Emily’s particular path into the future.

It was a triggering of Otherness from seemingly unrelated bits of data, from a collection of disjointed ideas that boiled about in her head and gave her a headache. In her first burst of awareness during Squick’s attempted extraction, she had learned that Ch’Var Nebulons had been destroyed, and she had reached for further understanding. But understanding crumbled, and she’d spoken of it to the puppets and the cherubic-faced dolls. Now something more was surfacing, in response to her reaching, stretching consciousness.

She wanted to know the purpose of this terrible inheritance boiling in her mind. Was it all from the Nebulons, or had latent memories been triggered, memories that had always been there? She felt alone, too young to be without guidance. But her chronological age seemed out of sync with the hoary Otherness, with the ghostly cloud that filled her brain and seeped into personal experience, subjugating all that Emily Harvey thought she was.

Thoughts of her grandparents and her father welled up. Would she ever see them again, would she ever return to those paths? Even with the obstacle of Victoria, those paths seemed simpler to Emily, almost idyllic, and they beckoned her.

She realized she hadn’t moved from the vicinity of the bed of tarps, and thought,
I’ve got to get away! Squick will return!

Hurriedly she slid through the lavender semi-darkness of the basement, stopping to peer from behind tarp piles, machinery pieces, posts and partitions. Odors assailed her, a mixture of dust and grease and something sour-sweet and unpleasant, decaying meat. She thought she heard a muffled noise and crouched beside a chair covered with faded, frayed upholstery. Her arm brushed against it, and she recoiled. Grease on her arm, the dead meat odor. She wiped the arm on a tarp.

Evil lived here, in every particle of air and surface, and that strange, eerie lavender color—stronger intensity off to her left—coming from beyond a partition wall.

She moved toward the light as if drawn to it, and a terrific surge of music pulsed through her body, a “tom-tom-torn, tom-tom-tom,” and she realized it was her own blood beating through her veins, expanding them and sending an urgent message.

Thomas!

From ahead noise drifted toward her: a soft shuffle, something being dragged across the floor. Imagination? She held her breath and listened. The noise repeated itself, and she tried to define it, to give it shape and substance. Something large dragging something heavy.

She took a few cautious steps forward. The basement was quiet, and she waited, watched. Nothing seen, and presently, nothing heard.

Squick had mentioned a sensor down here somewhere. Some kind of alarm system that wasn’t working right. Could she use that bit of information? Was it truth?

When she’d first arrived on the roof of this building, her view of surrounding structures had told her the building was many stories high. And later she overheard Squick say there were sublevels, secret levels beneath and between the areas traveled by Gweens, areas unknown to Gweens, the enemy race. When had she heard these things? Had she actually heard them or . . ,

The building seemed like a maze, a microcosm of the structures forming in her mind.

I’m somewhere beneath ground level,
she thought.

Wondering about the sensor and how well it worked, Emily measured each step she took until she reached two large wooden boxes set side by side. Here she crouched and used the slit between the boxes as a window. She could see around the partition now, and at the top of a wide wall she saw a gigantic Cyclopean eye, or what appeared to be an eye, an electronic oval of lavender and white within folds of dark metal.

Rising from her crouched position, Emily saw with surprise that Squick was lying on the floor, face up. His eyes were open. She sucked in her breath and held it momentarily.

Suddenly Peenchay appeared from one side, and without seeming to notice her he stood over Squick and chuckled, an ominous sound. She wondered at the Inferior’s purpose. Had he killed Squick? That thought curdled all hope of escape. If the man could kill his master, why not his master’s prisoners? A chill invaded her.

Inferiors . . . mutant Ch’Var subtypes . . . Inferiors—she hadn’t known this name previously, hadn’t been aware of it. The word swam atop her consciousness.

Peenchay scratched his chin, ran a tongue across his lips, shifted heavily from one foot to the other. His body seemed to heave and swell inside his yellow onesuit like a huge toad, and from one pocket he removed a thin, wicked knife that he brandished over the still form of Squick. In a rambling, singsong voice, Peenchay spoke to Squick’s body.

“Think you’re smart and
I’m
stupid. Isn’t that right, Meeeeester Squicko! You’re fulla shitto, fulla shitto! Who’s stretched on the floor? Not me, Squickaree. Rats in the sewer will eat you up. They won’t eat me, Squickaree. Into the disposal with you!”

He lifted Squick by the arms.

Emily pushed closer to the two boxes that concealed her and accidentally dislodged something. A small box thunked down, an echo of sound.

Peenchay’s face contorted. “Who did that?” he cried. “Is that you, Mr. Director?”

When there was no answer, he called out again. “Just liftin’ Mr. Squick here to get him some help. He doesn’t look good. You want me to leave him here for you to look at?”

Again, no answer.

Peenchay lowered Squick to the floor and made a hasty retreat to one side. He disappeared through a doorway.

Good,
Emily thought,
this gives me extra time.

She departed in the opposite direction and found the corridor from which she’d been carried. Some instinct, some dim awareness, told her Thomas was here someplace. How she knew this was a mystery, but her blood continued to pound the message: tom-tom-torn!

Several doors lined one wall, and she opened two. They were small storage rooms without much inside. In the third room she found Thomas.

He lay asleep on the floor, curled fetally with an arm for a pillow, rumbling in the chain of somnolence that she knew so well. Reassuring sounds. A collection of toy cars lay beside him, and he clutched one tightly in his hand. He was in dreamstate, his mind in an alternate gear, but the sounds were shifting subtly, almost imperceptibly, to unpleasantness.

“Thomas,” she said, and she shook him by the shoulder. “Wake up.”

He responded with a whimper, and Emily jerked him to a seated position. He seemed groggy but unharmed.

“Wow,” said her brother. “I dreamed in weird-a-rama. Horrible stuff. I’m sure glad you woke me up. I saw Booger, and he swallowed me, and—”

“Later,” she snapped. “We have to hurry. Don’t talk, don’t argue. Let’s go.”

With considerable effort she hefted him to his feet, and he stumbled momentarily. They ran down the corridor to the stairway Squick had brought Emily down.

Emily froze in her tracks, hissed: “Listen, someone coming down the stairs!”

The children reversed direction, back along the corridor and out into the room with the lavender eye. Squick still lay on the floor, a loose sack of bones, just as Peenchay had left him.

With a suddenness that palpitated Emily’s heart, Peenchay emerged from a doorway she hadn’t noticed before. For a moment before the door snapped shut behind him, she saw an array of sparking, colored lights.

Stealth-lock?
She thought, remembering Squick’s term for the chamber they’d gone through the first day here.
A stealth-lock on this level too?

A squat, troll-like form, Peenchay walked in a shambling fashion, arms swinging loosely at his sides, hands curled into claws, mouth open, eyes bulging. He moved with deceptive speed, and Emily’s panic turned to cold metal in her mouth.

“A way out!” she whispered to her brother. “That doorway, a stealth-lock!”

“The way out is not the same as the way in,” Thomas said. “My dream. Panona told me.”

The children clasped hands and backed toward the corridor.

“You could do something,” Thomas whispered. “We need to go the other way, past him. And someone could be behind us. You can do things with your mind when you want to!”

Emily’s breath came in deep gulps. “I don’t know what you mean.” But she knew exactly what he meant.

Peenchay saw them now, and his movements became more jerky and rapid, and a sucking noise came from his mouth.

Thomas said he heard footsteps and machinery sounds approaching in the corridor behind them, and after a glance in that direction he said two robots were coming, one that walked and one that rolled. Emily heard the sounds, too.

She experienced a core of fear, a dagger of pain that turned to a dull, useless lump in the pit of her stomach. And when she thoroughly understood that this particular fear, this particular path of her mind, was associated with death, the utter futility of their situation angered her. This was unfair, so unfair. She and Thomas didn’t deserve to die.

“We’re not afraid of you!” Emily shouted.

“Get the Chalk Man,” Thomas pleaded.

Deep, buried within Emily, the Chalk Man stirred. She concentrated her attention on him. “We need you,” she said. “Protect us!”

And the Chalk Man was born again: a tiny, dim outline against the lavender shadows of the basement, but easily seen by Emily, just centimeters from her face.

“I see it!” Thomas exclaimed.

The Chalk Man moved toward Peenchay and began to grow into a giant, white-etched figure, bolder and with more imposing lines than ever before. He looked back at Emily and smiled, exposing oversized teeth. She urged him on in thought, and with each effort of her mind he expanded as though the breath of her thoughts gave him nourishment, until finally he filled a large section of the basement between Peenchay and the children.

Through the gaps in the Chalk Man, Emily saw Peenchay’s toad body halt. He stared with dumb amazement at the apparition before him.

“Leave them alone!” the Chalk Man warned in a blackboard screech of sound.

Peenchay shook his jewels violently, and he rushed forward, beefy arms flailing.

The Chalk Man whirled around behind Peenchay, and before the Inferior could react, the Chalk Man’s mouth opened wide and he bent low toward the Inferior. With one gulp he swallowed Peenchay. The victim thrashed finitely inside the void of the Chalk Man’s stomach, struggled, scrabbled, scratched. Something bubbled and a great hunk of Peenchay dissolved. One moment he was a writhing toad, the next a lifeless blob. The blob bubbled back up into the Chalk Man’s mouth. The Chalk Man chomped noisily for a while, then spat out what was left of Peenchay: a flabby, aimless and legless piece of flesh with part of a head.

“You did it, Emily!” Thomas exclaimed, hugging her. “You really did it! I told you you could!”

Emily pulled free of her brother and grabbed him by the hand. “The stealth-lock,” she said. “Let’s go.”

As they ran close to the sensor, it flared to life and became a bright lavender eye, flooding the area in light. It gave off a screeching, whining yelp.

The Chalk Man darted toward the eye on the wall, and the chalky arms and body turned from white to red, forming a line of fire that reached out to embrace the sensor, snuffing its life. The sensor emitted a protesting crackle and a sickly flash of color, then switched off.

The Chalk Man doffed his cap, bowed and walked into the dead eye, where he faded from view.

Safe on the street, Thomas complimented Emily. “Colossal magic, Sis! Can you get us home, too?”

Emily smiled softly. “No, but we can catch a taxi. I’ve got some money, and if it isn’t enough, Mrs. Belfer can pay the difference.”

“If she’s sober.”

They found a taxi-signaling booth, and within moments a robot-operated car came for them.

Chapter 16

Homaal . . . its existence is my life. Its fire my heart, its ice my brain.

—Remarks of Jabu

The ember that was Jabu Smith sped through matter and antimatter, along an infinitely circuitous filament of fire. It sought the icy void within the flaming ball of creation, a place known in the hearts of all Ch’Vars—Homaal.

Only Directors and their invited guests actually traveled to this place, for only Directors learned the secret of ember travel, a mystical experience induced by certain drugs. None of this was an Inventing Corps gimmick—it preceded all of that—and by definition the place and the means of getting there would exist subsequent to invention as well, subsequent to the struggles of men.

It would exist into the infinity of moments.

Although Jabu traveled to and from Homaal and spent most of his time there, he did not know exactly where it was. But this did not bother him in the least, for in the vast scale of cosmology he knew not a single person, Ch’Var or Gween, who could say for certain where the Earth itself was.

One thing was like another, just as one thought resembled the one before it and the one that would follow. The icy void of Homaal within the flaming ball—frigid Nebulons flowing within the warmth of human bodies—these phenomena were along the knife edge of reality, where the juxtaposition of hot and cold, of life and death, of fear and bravery, of love and hatred, were commonplace.

He felt these opposites each time he journeyed to Homaal, and each time he left. He felt them now.

The great, flaming ball surrounding Homaal must have been the source of the ember that now constituted Jabu, he theorized. It had been a long-standing theory among Ch’Var scholars and philosophers that this ball of fire, if it existed, occupied the center of the Earth, for that seemed to be the closest known place that would qualify. But it might have been instead in the midst of Earth’s sun or within any other sun or planet in the universe. Or it might have been in some other place, an unknown place of sight and thought. The drugs did not reveal such things to him.

Jabu felt most comfortable with the center-of-the-Earth hypothesis, and he thought of himself now as a beautifully flaming meteorite or comet, his tiny ember a microcosm of what the larger ball of fire might have been at one time, before it began cooling and formed an outer crust. This was a fear-allaying thought, one that seemed true according to the visceral sensations it imparted.

Actually, he realized the ember might have come from afar, or it might have been in this place, (his center of centers, for all time. But if it was within the Earth, it was moving through the universe with the planet and its solar system. A moving center? Shouldn’t a center be stationary?

No, it didn’t have to be. But he would feel more comfortable if it were. It seemed less safe if it moved.

These concepts were mind-boggling to Jabu, and he considered himself deficient as a scholar or theoretician of such matters. He understood his weaknesses well. The more he considered the possibilities, the more he feared mental and physical breakdown, the stressing of fragile emotions that led inevitably to shittah. Still, the voyages had to be made, and with them went thoughts—rambling, stretching thoughts that one day might attain what they sought.

It would be a perfect joining.

The ember glowed hotter, as it always did when piercing the great fireball from whence it came. Jabu feared these times most, for it seemed to him that fire naturally wanted to merge with fire, that in one instance, the final instance known to this sentient, Jabu, the ember would not be able to extricate itself from a greater force.

He tried to think of other things in such times.

Some Ch’Var scholars said that Ch’Vars originated off Earth, but this was by no means a unanimous opinion. There were many divisions of opinion over many issues. Even when statements from Mother Ch’Var could be located, they were subject to interpretation and spirited argument.

Mythology held that Gweens preceded Ch’Vars on Earth’s surface. But this was not conclusive according to some, who believed this followed the design of the collective Ch’Var brain, to test the planet’s surface and develop important information before Ch’Vars formed themselves into human shape. It was well known that a thing could best be fully learned by doing it, however, so in this theoretical postulation the Ch’Vars could not sit back and watch too long. At some point they had to commit themselves.

Theories!
The Director laughed, a soundless howling within.

He wanted to scream in fear, for it seemed to him that he had been inside the great molten mass too long, that he would never pull free. Then he sensed coolness, and he felt like a fleck of orange sunset dust, turning gray and cold as the sun dropped beneath the horizon. He felt he should be happy at this, for it suggested he might be piercing the icy core of Homaal, entering. But something was different this time, an element out of place. Those Harvey children.

This speck of dust, this Director in an infinite line of Directors, felt not in control as he should have been. Even though he stood at the helm of the Ch’Var race, he was buffeted by it, and in turn the Ch’Vars were buffeted, even controlled, by forces greater than their own. Sometimes even Gweens seemed superior, and in this among all moments of reflection he found himself unable to place any order to the universe. There was an order out there, at least he thought there was, but maybe he felt this because so many people assumed it. Maybe it was all chaos out there in the distance, and in the foreground, and within his own being.

Cold, so cold in his body. A good sign, but still different than before.

“
Ch’Vars and Gweens, these are the races of mankind.” Where did he learn that? Too much data in his mind from unknown sources so that it could not be questioned, could not be analyzed, could not be turned inside out for its workings, for its fallibilities.

Ch’Vars and Gweens . . . mankind. . . of course, there had long been theories of alien races, of peculiar sentients that were like humans but unlike them. Was anything at all alien in the universe, or was this concept intrinsically parochial, one that betrayed foolishness, ineffectiveness and insignificance in the perspective of the observer?

He felt a maudlin sense of love for all living things in all places, a desire to embrace all knowledge and experience, and he guffawed at himself for this.

I
am only a man,
he thought,
despite my position. One more human among the countless.

He was inside Homaal now, a tiny cooling ember in a great frigid place, a spot of fire fighting for its brief period of existence, its birthright.

His mind was a stream fed by tributaries of experience, and in the final analysis—at least the final one he could imagine—all logic seemed to wash away into brilliant, mindless colors, into fiery, bursting supernovas and nebulas and pyrotechnics . . . and thence to greenswards and infinite, turquoise seas.

Homaal surrounded him, the known place that was an unknown place, and across the turrets of his fortress he saw little orange, purple and yellow succulent plants growing from the vast ice plain, as if the frozen white were a warm desert, as if the diffused orange glow beyond the pale, translucent sky were a nutrient-bearing sun. This was a sky that should not have been. He smelled jasmine borne on a cool breeze.

He shivered, pulled his insulcoat tight across the front.

The Director turned, and inside his fortress, beyond the glass doors of the balcony on which he stood, he saw Margaret Tung, head of the Inventing Corps, awaiting him. A tall, heavyset Oriental, she wore the blue insulcoat of the Corps, with a gold star cluster lapel insignia.

Jabu always left and arrived on this balcony, and though he never varied this he felt he could if he wanted to. He might arrive inside one time, or on the roof, or on a different balcony. But he always did it this way, the known way, for it comforted him most (if only a little) during the perils of travel.

This fortress was a place of strength and serenity to him, as he imagined it must have been for all who preceded him here.

As if in a dream, the doors opened without seeming to be touched, and he was inside, facing Margaret Tung. She was as tall as Jabu, and he tried to focus on her eyes but could not.

It was always like that here upon first arriving—the dreamstate—and for several moments he would feel like a somnambulist. Now as he gazed upon Tung while she awaited his words he felt an uncomfortable tingling in his brain, as if it were a limb with interrupted circulation, coming back from sleep. The olive pupils of Tung’s eyes became clear, and she was gazing steadily at him. A pragmatic woman, she had her own theories about Homaal, and in each of them she tried to rely upon pure science, upon the known. But ultimately, even the most scientific-wrapped theory she came up with was only that, a theory—flawed and unprovable. Mysticism prevailed.

We are magicians,
Jabu thought.

Jabu told her now of the Harvey children, of Thomas Harvey’s embidium that Jabu carried in his pocket, and of Emily Harvey’s wild assertions. He explained why she had not accompanied him, and said, “We must
to her.” But he heard a degree of hesitancy in his voice, and he realized he had acted impulsively, assuming that Tung would see the logic of his wishes. She was disturbingly independent, a woman who used her unique, essential talents as an inventor extraordinaire to get her way with the Director.

“Long have we known the importance of the Nebulons,” Tung said with an irritating regality, “and as they diminish, my Corps works feverishly to develop substitute organisms. My time is better spent here, continuing the effort. We are very close and should not break stride.”

“I understand your concern about the creative process, the way you don’t like to be disturbed in the midst. . . and I wouldn’t be making this request of you if it wasn’t important.”

“I must return to my projects,” she replied, a hard tone. “There is no point in me seeing the girl, for I can do nothing with her. If she did something to the Nebulons, the viruses, that is beyond my realm. I am laboring for a substitute, and the answer is linked to artificial embidiums. I have nothing to do with real Nebulons, with the Nebulons you say this witch has stolen.”

“But you must see her! You must try!”

“What is done is done, My Lord Director.”

Jabu wished he had the strength to force his will upon her, but in the battle of wills he had long ago given up any such attempt. Permitting Tung free rein had resulted in a number of astounding inventions that complemented the natural powers of the Directorship. He was grateful she had at least consented to the artificial Nebulon and embidium projects, but she should go an essential step further, acceding to his request.

Request! I should not be making requests of her!

He met her gaze, saw no defiance there, hardly any emotion whatsoever, only the intransigent look of an equal who had made up her mind and would not be deterred.

Her appearance before him whenever he called for her indicated that he might have a slight edge, but it was ever so slight, neatly imperceptible. Still he sensed this advantage and wondered how he might enlarge upon it, and as he stared at her he saw a shift in her eyes, a weakening.

Her eyes hardened again, and she said: “I must return to my work, mustn’t let inspiration slip. We’re close on both projects, maybe a little closer on the Nebulon project man on the embidiums. The Nebulons must be solved first, I believe, and from that the link to the other.”

Jabu nodded, though he began to envision an argument that might sway her, that Emily Harvey might hold a key essential to the invention process. But his words wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t form themselves into a logical order that he could convey.

He detected relief in
Tung’s
expression.

She turned and hurried away.

The frigid interior world known as Homaal was an ice plain that stretched as far as the eye could absorb in all directions around the ancient rock fortress Lordmother had built, which according to legend stood at the plain’s precise center. Jabu did his best thinking away from the fortress, far out on the ice plain, where the crispness of the air cleared his thoughts, aligning problems in neat orderings that allowed him to prioritize, dealing with the most essential first.

With his insulcoat secured tightly around him and the hood snug, he leaned forward on the ice-cycle, peering through the windshield. This vehicle speeding across the white plain resembled a motorcycle, but instead of tires it had two narrow parallel skids, with friction belts on the bottom of each that made purchase on slick surfaces.

He glanced back, and the gray stone turrets of the fortress were just above the horizon, with the main portions of the walls out of sight. Jabu looked forward again and spun a tiny finger gear on the handlebar, increasing the vehicle’s speed and causing wind to whip hard around the windshield, slapping cold air against his face.

How to deal with Margaret Tung . . . Such a stubborn woman, and though she would never admit it she had limitations, important limitations. She didn’t have all the answers, and sometimes Jabu pushed her to admit her ignorance. She didn’t know, for example, where the oxygen in this tiny, enclosed world came from. Always the admissions came slowly and reluctantly from her.

Jabu made another finger-gear setting and then another, until the maximum speed had been reached and the cold wind was fierce against his face. Soon the fortress could no longer be seen behind him. He brought the vehicle to a stop and swung a leg over to disembark.

From a carrier on the rear of the ice-cycle he removed a thick, soft tahnchair pad, which he placed on the ice and sat upon.

He gazed away, past a foreground of succulent orange and purple plants, into a nearly featureless distance. He had never gone farther than this, just beyond the horizon of the fortress, and neither had anyone he had ever heard of. Curiously, though it seemed illogical, he harbored no interest in what lay beyond, and he wondered why he felt this way.