Punktown: Shades of Grey (14 page)

A soft thump awakened him. He lay staring at where the ceiling was lost in blackness above him. In a dream, it had been a ceiling of breasts like stalactites (sta-
lactates
? he thought), a rain of milk dripping from their nipples upon him, and he about to drown in the glowing white pool rising into a sea around him.

He propped himself up on one elbow, groggily reached out to the bedside light, which revealed to him the sight of his Phlotus doll lying in the center of the floor. When he had returned to his tiny apartment, he had set it down on his bureau, a good ten feet from where the doll lay.

Before he could even shudder, he saw the doll move. It lay on its belly, and it was now plainly—if slowly and strenuously—dragging itself across the worn, dirty carpet in the direction of the single window, as if attracted to the lights twinkling beyond the pane.

Was that it, then? Had his first doll escaped in this way? Drawn to the window, the lights,
the
illusion of fulfillment they promised?

Loring did not ponder a course of action, but on impulse scrambled out of bed and took up a baseball bat he kept close by in case of an intruder. He then lunged over to the doll and swung the bat down on it with all his strength…again…again. Panting, he tripped backwards away from the thing, which now lay flat and motionless.

For several moments.
Then, the doll slowly raised itself up a bit, lifted its tiny head, and resumed its slithering progress toward the window.

Loring fought the urge, born of bald fear but also partly a brute reaction to having his will challenged, of launching a second attack with the bat. Another idea came, still spitefully violent but also in its way scientific. He took the chance of turning his back on the doll, whisked into the kitchenette and found a steak knife there. He returned to find that his prize had picked up its pace; it must have dragged itself up the dusty curtains, for when he next saw it the thing was wriggling onto the
window sill
. There its progress was halted, as he watched it press its head ineffectually against the mesh screen.

Stealing up behind the thing, Loring reached out with the knife and prodded at the
doll’s
back with several darting, anxious lunges. This toppled the doll from the sill to the floor, and Loring followed through with a jolt of courage—dropping to hands and knees beside his victim and pinning its body flat with one hand. He then pressed the knife against the back of the doll, and sank all his weight into sawing with its serrated edge.

He thought he felt a feeble squirming beneath his pinning palm, but in a moment he had cut deeply into the doll and the blade grated on a hard core like bone. Again, panting like a vigorous lover, Loring danced back from the prone figurine, half fearing and half desiring some ghastly, dying convulsion.

For two or three beats, the doll lay still. But the head cranked slowly up. The arms stretched out. It dragged its half-bissected body forward…toward the window with its dreamily stirring curtains.

The room’s light was dim, but something glinted in the doll’s cleft back, and Loring towered enough over it that he looked straight down into the wound. It would have been hideous to glimpse the damp, glistening flesh of a live salamander inside that rubbery sheath. But worse still, there was no salamander inside. There was a thin black spine of bendable wire embedded in the bogus flesh…and no more.

The revelation terrified Loring. And yet, there was another, unexpected reaction; something like a numb awe.

Awe, that this flesh he had seen poured and baked inside the Temple might not be bogus, after all. More awe, still, if it was indeed bogus. Whatever the case, Loring came to a new decision. He went to his bed. Dumped his pillow from its case. Then, he fetched the bat again…but used it only to guide and poke the doll into the pillowcase, which slowly pulsed and undulated like a dying organ as Loring carried it outside.

When he dumped the doll out on the sidewalk, he jumped back as if he had just released a bag full of tarantulas. And in the dim light the doll did look spider-like as it began scrabbling slowly off the sidewalk and across the street. Loring began to follow.

Several times, when it started into the yard of one of the old houses on this tree-lined side street, he had to repeatedly kick it and push it along with his foot to force it in another direction. This was difficult, as the doll was very set on its destination. But at last, they came out onto Beaumonde Street, a block from Oval Square, which had to be the destination of his homonculus. So far they had met no pedestrians, but immediately there was a woman ahead of him, watching their approach. She wore a g-string and high heels, her artificially bountiful breasts exposed; the blue-glowing implanted fibers that swirled and spiraled around them made her naked orbs look cold to the touch. She started cooing to him but he declined with a shy, impatient murmur, afraid to lose track of his companion…though, in calling after him, she offered to service that, as well. She said that those Phlotus dolls squirmed inside a body very nicely.

It would want to get back inside the Temple, he imagined. In there, would it cast itself into some pool of molten rubber, to be reincarnated next time as someone else’s traitorous toy? Did they all feel this mindless impulse of migration, or was it only his dolls that wanted to abandon him? He resented the thing. You’re supposed to be mine, he thought at it, as if they were telepathically linked, or of the same mind. But he had set it free—out of pity, he supposed. And more than the curiosity he felt in following, he felt some strange obligation to see it safely back to its chosen home.

The doll crossed Beaumonde Street, whooshing with traffic even at this hour, and Loring cringed as several hovercars passed directly over his misshapen child, causing it to tumble and roll in their wake, but it would right itself and continue stalwartly along. One wheeled vehicle actually struck it, however, and Loring lunged into the street, nearly being clipped
himself
as he scooped the doll up in his hands. But when he reached the far side it was already moving again, resilient as it was, though its head was now half flattened and one of its dark green eyes had been popped out. It paddled the air, this action causing the wound in its back to work open and shut like lips mouthing a secret message to him.
Again he set it down
,
again it guided him onward
. Spirit guide, he thought.

When they reached the end of the street, however, it did not cross the next to pass into Oval Square. Was it confused, now that the carnival lights had darkened for the night, the music of the Temple silenced, its incense no longer carried in the air? Instead, the doll turned the corner and continued on that way. Loring did not endeavor to change its direction, because the doll did not really seem to be disoriented. It had not hesitated at the corner, had not faltered in its course.

Down this dark, urban tributary, a group of youths milled in shadows on the sidewalk, and Loring tensed up inside…but he was not so much afraid of being hurt as he was afraid of being detained and losing sight of the doll…or of the doll being picked up and harmed. He had encountered a few other people along the way (the doll moved slowly and already more than an hour had passed since they’d left his apartment), but no one had accosted him yet; the most someone had said since he’d met the prosty was the observation that it was a strange little dog he was walking. It might not even have been a joke.

Yet as he and his doll neared the group, he saw that they weren’t youths—but a small knot of Phlotus…maybe the very ones who owned and operated the Temple of the Sea of Milk. They weren’t smoking, weren’t drinking, and if they had been chatting they weren’t doing that either, now
;
with a shiver, he thought that it was as if they had gathered here solely in anticipation of his arrival. They all watched Loring and his doll approach as if with mute reverence, and parted to let them pass. Loring looked expectantly over his shoulder at them. He had expected the doll to stop amongst them, but it hadn’t, and he had expected the Phlotus to say something to him…to explain this to him…but they didn’t, only turning to watch the man and his miniature move away from them until the group was again lost in shadow.

But as he faced forward again, Loring felt a wash of realization. Now, as the doll reached the next street, bearing less traffic, and crossed it.

Across the street was the outer campus of old P. U
.—
Paxton University. And the doll had known the way as easily as he would have, but he had not anticipated this.

They moved onto the grounds, across neatly trimmed grass damp with night dew, foregoing the paths lined with slim trees. Beyond, the outer buildings of the college loomed dark and grim, like a fortress wary of his invasion. Moth-like, the doll seemed intent upon a distant softly glowing object that Loring knew all too well. Unerringly, the doll pulled itself through the hissing grass in this direction. Loring saw the fountain clearly now
;
he and Nettie had sat more than once on the benches that ringed it.

In the midst of all the water that sprayed and fell back into its basin, there was a holographic film loop of a beautiful young girl made up convincingly to look like a mermaid. Her hair billowed as if she hovered under the ocean, her arms waving as if in slow motion. Her eyes passed unseeing across Loring as he neared her. As always, he admired her delicate naked breasts, small and dainty enough that one might imagine colorful fish nursing upon them. Nettie’s breasts were small like that, but perhaps he had feasted too greedily upon them.

His approach had disturbed a young couple on the other side of the fountain; he hadn’t noticed them before. They rose and began strolling off down one of the paths. Loring turned to watch the students go, guilty that he had intruded upon their romantic solitude, yet oddly satisfied that he had banished them. A small splash caused him to look back around.

Loring experienced a slight panic when he saw that his pet had pulled itself up to the fountain’s edge and slipped into its pool. He saw the thing paddling darkly under the surface. Then, as it passed under the foaming spot where a jet of water rained back into the basin, he lost sight of it. He was almost tempted to take his shoes off and go into the pool after it.

But he caught sight of the doll again. The mermaid had briefly darkened, as the doll must have passed in eclipse in front of the lens that projected her apparition. The doll had reached the center of the pool, where there was a black hole that was obviously a drain. As Loring watched, the doll put its head into the hole, and began to squeeze the rest of
itself
in after.

For a moment, it seemed stuck. Again Loring was tempted to wade into the pool…not to pull the doll out, but to help push it all the way in. But the doll worked its way through, and slipped into the orifice out of sight.

Loring was left standing there, alone, the mermaid a slow cavorting illusion, seducing him but unaware of him all at once. Would his doll dwell forever beneath the school, in its dark guts,
never evicted, never at a loss for a home, never in need of occupation
? Or had it passed into a new world, been reborn?

Loring turned from the mermaid to begin his walk back home. He felt tears coming to his eyes like water splashed on him from the fountain.

He missed his doll.

— | — | —

HYDRA

Art shot himself in the head.

It was a singular suicide in that he was able to watch himself die without pain; indeed, he enjoyed watching. But from the look in his mirrored eyes, he knew his other self did not share his sentiments. At first, his doppelganger showed shock at their confrontation. Then, fear and agony blazed in his eyes as the gel bullet struck him and spread its corrosive plasma. Like a photograph, Art’s double burned away, bubbling black at the edges where a delicate purple fire flickered prettily. Within a minute, only a sizzling pool of grease remained, still casting a slight violet glow.

Art hid away his small gun, grinning down at the stain, no more than a shadow of his double. He then moved out of the kitchen into the rest of the apartment, to see how his double had lived.

Art’s retainer, Balser, had seen to all the details. The Teeb Family, the most powerful syndy in Paxton (called Punktown by its populace), had handled the illegal cloning. Each clone had been given sufficient artificial memories to believe he was the particular identity he was assigned, and not a clone of Artemis Lerna. This clone had thought he was a security guard named Bill Kansas. Art smiled at the holo portrait of Bill’s imagined fiancée, supposedly away at school on Earth. In actuality, she was a hooker for the Teeb clan.