Unhaunting The Hours (5 page)

I placed my phone on the table next to
hers, and she pushed a few keys to transfer credit from one to the
other. The screen on my phone registered the new wealth in my
account. As I reached for the cell, she put her hand on mine and
caressed my fingers, and grinned.

She said, “If you must know, I think
you have been very useful to us.”

* * * *

“
Memory front load. Record
Hex Prefix Bravo 1 Bravo 1 Echo 398…”

Spectrum might’ve given me fantasies,
but not like this. I stood on dock at the harbor. Snow fell hard
around me and the wind made my body feel as insubstantial as the
air. The sun rose over the ocean. A phantom ship, sails billowing,
skirted around modern vessels and approached the shore. Others
stood in a half circle behind me. I could move enough to even turn
to see them, and a single wire stuck out of my head and trailed
away behind my back.

“
This is where we all
begin.” said the teacher’s voice. “Waiting for our vessel to
transport us.”

“
It looks difficult.” I
said.

“
Only because you’re used to
the fractured world. But this represents your own mind, revealed to
you by the Abdera Cipher. Opening it is only as difficult as
mastering your own mind. It’s a challenge, but not
impossible.”

“
And
immortality?”

“
Each time you go under, you
imprint more of your mind on the machine.”

The images Spectrum gave me had been
like dreams, a disheveled pile of unconnected images. For
centuries, people had tried to gain insight from hallucinogens, and
tell the future with dreams. But they usually ended up like my old
school bully, counting the ceiling tiles, hoping the number might
add up to something meaningful. As I stood on that barren wharf,
that space inside my brain, I knew that Abdera could actually take
me somewhere. I could almost feel the Cipher’s presence, giving
shape to my tangled thoughts. And unlike Spectrum, which sometimes
tormented me with images from the past, Abdera made me feel as
though the past didn’t matter. At last, I could forgive myself, and
forget.

* * * *

Finally I awoke, with Balder standing
on one side of the hospital bed. The pain in all my muscles made me
jump.

“
How long?” I
asked.

“
Two days.”

“
It was Healing.” I said.
“It wasn’t my clone that got me; it was Healing.”

“
I know. We’re looking for
him.” He shrugged. “Guy lives alone. He used to live with his old
man, but he died of cancer some weeks ago. As much as I hate to say
it, I sort of understand the hole he’s in.” Balder put up his
hands. “Not that I’m making excuses for him. But you know, each one
of us is a sad SOB, when it comes to it.”

Balder was trying to distract me. I
wondered if he’d watched the memories my dreams had replayed to me.
Then I felt my arm tingling, and when I looked I saw a swarm of
tiny red insects crawling on my elbow. I found myself gazing at
them, pondering their philosophical meaning. Yes, they seemed to
gather into a pattern. They wanted to impart a message, some nugget
of buggy wisdom.

“
George?” said
Balder.

I looked up, then back again. They were
gone. This was the worst part. Balder’s device, and whatever
Healing stuck me with - they aroused all those half-dead neurons
that had been tied into Abdera’s server. Only the program wasn’t
there, and the neurons called out to a vacuum. That had been what I
needed the Spectrum for, especially after I first quit Abdera: I
needed something to supply me with images, a whole mythology even.
It was like food. Now I was off both Abdera and Spectrum, and these
bastards had woken the beast. This wasn’t going to be
fun.

Balder held up a little paper
bag.

“
We got the thing he put in
your jack. Do you know what this is?”

I shook my head. “It was all just a
mess. It put me out cold.”

But now I knew. When I left Abdera, I
left a piece of myself there. It was a bit like tearing my hair
out, and taking pieces of my scalp with it. Healing had retrieved
some of the lingering scraps, and forced them back into me. It all
came back, all the isolation and torture of my childhood, and the
Spectrum habit it drove me too, and finally the day I joined Abdera
to chase both demons away. And the single biggest crime of my past,
the one that paid for my neural implant, the one I’d thought would
ransom me for good. The day I sold my DNA into slavery.

I reached a hand toward the
bag.

“
Can I have it? It’s a piece
of me.”

Balder hesitated. Then he tossed it on
my chest. “What the hell. It’s worthless to me.”

Looking at it, I thought of the image
I’d seen in the homeless shelter’s basement. In the end, there was
only one man, and a phantom shape with something in its
hands.

I said, “You found me with an old
man.”

“
Yeah. He was dead. Had been
for a while.”

“
And the other
one?”

“
There was no
else.”

I focused on the memory. The second one
had been sleeping, with a hat pulled over his face. A green
military cap. And beneath the brim, I’d seen a rust-colored beard.
Then I thought of the bloody sweater.

“
The dead woman you told me
about.” I said. “The one that gave you the matched DNA and the
mismatched prints. Do you know who she was?”

“
Yeah.” He said, and
produced that embarrassed grimace of his. “Yeah. I’m sorry about
your friend, George.”

I faded out. I heard Balder’s footsteps
as he left.

* * * *

I startled awake, with spit on my chin.
I looked down and saw the bugs migrating to my fingers. I grabbed
my fingers with the other hand. They were strong and slender. They
were also bruised, from the kids in the alley. And that mob agent
who bought my DNA seemed to like them. Wait. What was I trying to
say? In order to fix the price, that woman tested my mental skills.
A lot of it had to do with spatial acuity; I figured that much out.
I was good with thinking in spaces, but the only good it had done
me was a bottom wage job handling a theater spot light – and an odd
way of looking at the world. But she must’ve been looking for
something.

I scratched my hands; the red insects
made them itch. Damn imaginary insects.

“
Okay, George. Concentrate.
Why were you worth so much cash to them?”

The night Mrs. Brown fell, the medic
had said something strange. He’d said I was crazy to do what I did.
I’d thought it was because I’d stayed with Mrs. Brown in the dark,
but it was really because of what I’d done to her. I’d set her leg,
and I hadn’t even thought of it, and the medic had said I was
stupid but lucky. But what did it matter? The jimmy butchered her
anyway. But think about that.

“
You’ve got to be kidding
yourself, George. You can’t be serious.”

Just think. Healing had said the
butchery was a good job. No, he’d said it was a clean job. Would
that imply surgical precision? My clone altered his own face. And
all sorts of people with money needed surgeons in the back alley.
It was even better if those surgeons were untraceable slave labor.
I opened my fingers and closed them. I’d told Balder that my
experience in Abdera had inoculated me from the bizarre. I hoped I
was right.

I found a pen in the bed stand drawer,
next to a Gideon Bible, and I shoved my food to the side of my
dinner tray. I drew a grid on the paper placemat, and labeled the
days at the top. I drew my own schedule in the calendar, and then
the days I’d seen my clone. My pen hovered over the squares. I knew
it had something to do with Molly. The phone call. Somewhere, there
was some part of the butcher that was me. Forget the police psych
profilers; some things started making sense to me. Why else was he
at the shelter the same day as Molly, but not on the day that
Balder checked? What other day was that? Well, there was only one
other option, given the days Molly worked and that Balder only knew
it was a clone three days ago. Yes, this was the right way to
go.

I drew in what I knew of Molly’s
schedule, from what I’d overheard and from the days I saw her at
State U and the days I’d followed her. I took a guess that the
clone followed me on the train other times, even if I hadn’t
noticed him before. The intersection of my own crazy schedule and
Molly’s regular one meant that there were few gaps. I checked my
watch. There was only one gap today. Now it was a matter of where
they both were. I paused and thought. All of this was a hell of
leap, and what I was thinking now was even worse. But what of it? I
had nothing to lose.

* * * *

I ignored the bugs and struggled from
my bed. In the corner, I found my clothes and changed into them. I
went to the door, but then I stopped and thought that maybe Balder
had posted a guard. I looked back at the room. There was no one
else there; this was a private room. Of course, there had to be a
reason for that. I went to the window and looked down. I was only
on the second floor, above a loading dock. There was a tall truck
backed up to the dock, and a man closing the doors. I rushed back
to my bed stand, grabbed the paper bag with my memories inside it,
and stuffed it in my jeans pocket. Then I opened the window, just
as the driver was starting the engine.

Down I went, hitting the roof with a
thud, and sliding across the top as the truck lurched forward. I
managed to grab hold of a ladder and I jumped off as the truck
stopped before turning onto the main road.

My entire body was bruised, my eyes
were half blind, and I was covered in insects – but what the hell?
I lurched down the grass strip by the side of the road.

I knew where I had to go and what I
wanted to do, but first I had to get someone’s permission. I wasn’t
sure what compelled me, but in a few minutes I found myself on the
chapel steps. The door was covered in graffiti. It said, “The Berm
Butcher Worships Here.” I went inside, and found the reflective
floor shattered along the center aisle. I picked my way among the
broken pieces and walked up to the altar. Father Don was there,
applying glue to a piece of Saint John’s wooden nose, and fitting
it back where it belonged. I called to him, and he turned and
stumbled in my direction. I told him to stop, and I climbed up to
meet him.

“
You really don’t know a
thing.” He said. “Do you? There was a police officer here, and he
said he wanted to warn me. He’d found out that you had a
clone.”

The father wobbled to the altar top and
braced himself against it, knocking the communion pitcher off and
sending it crashing down the aisle.

He said, “Well, he told me you were
just as good as a killer, because your clone was the killer they’ve
been talking about in the news. He said it was only a matter of
time before you did the same thing.”

“
Healing did all this?” I
gestured at the damage.

“
A group of maybe five or
seven teenagers broke in after the cop left. I think they were
doped. They did all this. They caught me in my study.” He let out a
long sigh, and shook his head. He seemed near tears, and shrunken
despite his towering size. “They took my book, George. They took my
book and they tore it up and burned some.”

He faltered, and then he fell. I tried
to catch him, but it was no good. I kneeled down to where he sat on
the floor.

“
Father, I’m sorry.” I said.
“The cop, it was this guy from my old colony. His name was Healing,
and he attacked me the other day. And he must’ve put these kids up
to it. The police have been watching me, father, and Healing
must’ve known where to find a couple of kids who wouldn’t’ mind
harassing me. Or you – sorry.”

The father laid a hand on me and said,
“I’m sorry, you always asked me if you could read the book. But I
wanted to finish the first draft before I gave it to you. You see,
it was about all my doubt. I had so many reasons I couldn’t believe
what I had all my life. You understand; you of all people. But I
couldn’t exactly show it to you until I was sure I was right, could
I?”

“
No.” I paused. “This time,
I‘m really going to do something.”

* * * *

I stopped before the glass sliding
doors. I was hunched over, considering what I was about to do. Then
I rushed forward, the doors parted, and I entered the brilliant,
clean light. I surveyed the array of shelves before me, and it
seemed a daunting task. Then I glanced around me, at the people
wheeling their groceries around the isles. I looked for the man I’d
seen before, the one with the tiny tattoo on his arm, but he wasn’t
there. No matter, the butcher was here. I knew it. Of course, this
would’ve been one of the places that Balder checked, but if the mob
ran this place, they would’ve known Balder was coming. I weaved
through the isles, and then I turned the corner into the breads
isle, and I saw Molly. I jumped back and crouched in the previous
row. Okay, my hunch was right. Now I just had to find
him.

I looped through the middle isles, and
now I was really feeling a burning in my joints. People stared at
me as I went, and then they changed. They grew red hair and their
faces sunk in. They leered at me just as my twin had done that day
on the train. They were planning a way to capture me. And Major
Tuck came back for an encore. He cranked it, and I shuffled with
one eye closed, and I veered to one side, hit a stack of soup cans
and sent them tumbling to the floor. The shoppers stared me down
from under their green cap brims, and I spun around the corner.
There was a kid there with the store’s logo on his
shirt.