Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls (17 page)

Taking a card from his pocket, he slides it across to me, “Know it?”

I shake my head.

“That's Van Gogh's
Olive Orchard
,” he says with a sigh, “one of my favorites, and I've got it—there at least. When you see it, let it be a sign to you that you are able to talk and we'll have a chat. Got it?”

I nod slowly, still confused.

“Don't worry,” he smiles. “It'll be flipping great. In fact, why should we wait and let you get nervous? C'mon!”

He goes to the intercom and pages the doctors. There is
some brief discussion, then argument, but when he comes back to me, he is smiling again.

“We'll be ready in an hour. I'm to either send you to your room or keep you distracted. Your choice.”

I study him, reaching, sense no threat or hidden motive. Wanting a friend in this place, I smile.

“God Almighty first planted a garden,” I offer. “And, indeed, it is the purest of all human pleasures.”

“You want to garden?” Jersey asks incredulously.

“I am tired of four walls and a ceiling,” I explain, feeling a pang as I recall Professor Isabella using the same words. “I have need of the grass.”

“Okay,” he says, “but only the roof garden. I'm no jungle beast.”

I smile and if he wonders at my amusement, he does not say.

The roof garden is hot and humid, the air heavy with a thousand scents. Betwixt and Between puff their approval from where I carry them. We walk around on the gravel paths, looking at orchids pale and bright that evoke images of prom dresses and weddings. This continues for nearly a half hour, until Jersey is streaming with sour sweat.

I return indoors without protest, knowing cooperation is essential. Once we are in, I struggle for words to try and thank Jersey.

“Don't worry, Sarey,” he says, smiling mysteriously. “Don't fight for it. You'll be talking easy in just a bit. Now, sit quiet and I'll go and rinse off and be back.”

After parking me in his office and pouring me some iced
tea, he leaves. When he returns with Dr. Haas and Dr. Aldrich in tow, he has not only showered, he has changed into loose pants and a top similar to those that I am wearing. Patting the back of my hand as he walks by, he grabs a handful of wires and other gizmos and then motions us all through another door.

The annex is twice the size of his office and whereas the one is cluttered with gadgets and related debris, this room is nearly spotless. The walls are painted a restful shade of blue that in no way competes with the array of computer equipment that borders the four walls. The only other furnishings are four strangely sinuous chairs and a startlingly prosaic table.

I am given no time to frame questions or grow concerned. Dr. Aldrich motions me into one of the chairs, his impatience a blunt, musky thing.

Gingerly, I lower myself onto the weird stretch of ebony plastic and gasp when it conforms to me so perfectly that I tap the surface to confirm that I am indeed sitting on something.

Jersey glances from where he is arranging wires and electrodes on the table and chortles at my expression.

“Flip you, did it?” he asks. “Won't bug you with the details, Sarey, but that thing is so sensitive to posture and other comfort signals that it'll react to a fart.”

Dr. Aldrich makes a disapproving noise.

“Hey, that's scientifically accurate and necessary,” Jersey grins. “When a human is interfacing with the computer, minimal distractions are best. These chairs guarantee that there will be no physical discomfort and the other senses
will be dealt with during the hookup. Now, I want you to set me up first so Sarey can see what will happen to her.”

Dr. Haas makes as if to protest, but Jersey waves her down. “No, I'm the expert here. If you'd listened to me more in the first place, maybe Dylan wouldn't have…”

He trails off, suddenly at a loss. I look blank, as if I hadn't heard the last exchange.

Hurriedly, Dr. Aldrich steps into the gap. “Fine. You first. Then Sarah. Let's just get onto it.”

Although I listen as Jersey narrates the placement of various electrodes about his head and body, I only catch that they will capture some things and monitor others. I am more concerned about why—or how—Dylan died.

When my turn comes, I sit very still, refusing to jump, even though the cream they smear on my scalp is cold. Finally, as Jersey promised, we are each given something to drink.

Almost immediately, I feel a drifting sensation, similar to when I am falling asleep and believe that I am awake only to discover that I have been dreaming all along. The sensation is not unpleasant, and I let myself slip into dreams, coasting away from the annex of Jersey's office into the familiar, sleepy, swirling darkness behind my eyes.

When colors appear in the darkness, I focus on them with idle curiosity. Green-grey and grey-blue drift above a field of brown-gold. As I concentrate, they begin to resolve themselves into twisted trees against a stormy sky growing from a dry field. Nearly as quickly as I recognize Van Gogh's
Olive Orchard
, I realize that the picture is hanging on a wall painted a tasteful antique ivory. Beside the picture, a faintly proprietary expression on his face, is Jersey.

But this is and is not the Jersey I know. The omnipresent stench of sour sweat is gone. He is more attractive, flab turned into muscle. His bald head glistens as if polished.

“Welcome, Sarey,” he says, “to this cooperative hallucination. You look lovely—but you wouldn't know, would you? Look here.”

He turns and for the first time I notice that there is a full-length mirror with a silver gilt frame hanging on the wall. When I see my reflection, I gasp with surprise.

“I have my hair!” I say and then clasp my throat in wonder, for the words are shaped just as I had thought them.

Jersey laughs. “Yes. Guess you didn't like losing it, for all so quiet you were about it.”

I continue studying my reflection. My hair is not the only thing to have reappeared. When I reach to touch the heavy cream strands and reassure myself of their reality, I feel something tickle below my ear. Pushing back my hair, I see that my ivory wolf dangles in its usual place—it had been taken from me when I first awoke after my surrender and I had believed it forever lost. My clothing is unremarkable, jeans and shirt of the style that Abalone had given me.

Yet, although fully dressed, I feel as if I am naked. Casting around to fill the loss, I see Betwixt and Between sitting on one of the comfortable-looking easy chairs. Athena perches on the back.

Seeing me, Betwixt winks. “Can't do without us, now, can you?”

“You know it,” I say and then am instantly tongue-tied.

I cover for this by picking up the dragons and perching
Athena on my shoulder. She swivels her head to look at me and then begins to preen her feathers, chortling softly.

Jersey is gaping at me. “You brought them through! This is unprecedented! I didn't…”

He trails off and looks so uncomfortable that I reach over and pat his arm.

“I am a brother to dragons, a companion to owls,” I state simply. Then, afraid that the words will suddenly fail, “Where are we? What kind of place is this?”

Jersey regains some of his composure and saunters over to one of the chairs. Leaning back in it and picking up a daiquiri from what I had believed was an empty table, he sips and sighs happily.

“This place is in our minds, Sarey. Ours and the computer's. Mine, mostly, since I did the set programming, but yours, too, which is why you look like you want to and, I guess, why your friends are with you.” He shakes his head. “Does that help?”

“Not much,” I admit. “How come I can…talk?”

“Because you can think in a coherent fashion and because you want to,” Jersey says simply. “It was pretty obvious that you weren't just mimicking or reciting quotes at random, so it was a fair bet that if you were given a chance to say what you were thinking, you would be fine, and so here we are, chatting in a nice room.”

“Why?” I ask, marveling that I can shape the simple monosyllable.

Jersey puts his glass down. “Two words: Magical Thinking. Your ability is extraordinary, but you can't talk to tell
the doctors what you hear. So, I provide the bridge and over you walk.”

“Why?” Between asks, stretching his neck toward a nice succulent plant growing next to my chair.

Jersey pulls at his ear. “Did you say something?”

“No, Between did,” I answer, puzzled that he cannot tell—the little dragon's voice is definitely masculine.

“Between?”

“Between”—I point—“Betwixt. They're quite different people—from the neck up, that is.”

“Oh, boy.” Jersey grabs for his glass. “Sarey, I won't say if you don't, but I've got bad feelings about this.”

“Say?” I laugh. “To whom? And what? Are Dr. Haas and Dr. Aldrich watching us?”

“No.” Jersey relaxes some. “No way unless they link up with us and they don't do that too often. There are potential…side effects.”

I ignore his discomfort, enjoying this new freedom. Noticing a bowl of fruit on the table, I set Betwixt and Between down and they trundle forward and start decimating Bartlett pears. Athena seems content to sit on my shoulder for now.

“We aren't seeing exactly the same thing, are we?” I hazard.

“Probably not, not on minor details, but part of what the computer is doing is picking up what is most—important—to you and to me and creating a consensus reality from them. Self-image is really important, so that holds, same with what we're talking about, but the color of the walls or the style of furnishings wouldn't be shared unless it was
important that it was—like with the Van Gogh or that mirror.”

“I understand,” I say, restraining myself from trying to make it important for him to see Betwixt and Between gobbling fresh fruit on his coffee table. “Somehow, I doubt all of this is to let me have a try at the spoken word. You started to explain before—it has something to do with magical thinking.”

“Right.” Jersey looks unhappy for a moment. “You got the basics from Dr. Haas, I know. What you didn't get is that the Institute has been supporting its ‘research' through controlled use of magical thinking. It is almost too-potent stuff. I didn't know Dylan until—after—but he was something else even then.”

“After.” I lean forward. “After what?”

“Dylan had an…accident.” Jersey flushes. “Damn, Sarey, I can't tell you. Don't ask me about him—ask anything else.”

I am shocked; for a brief instant his image had flickered and he had become the overweight madman I knew. By the time he has control again, he also has my pity.

“Okay,” I promise, “I won't ask, but don't forget that I want to know. He was my brother and I loved him even if I was a kid when we were separated.”

“Family isn't all it's made out to be, Sarey,” Jersey answers. “Let's get off this. You asked about why the Institute wanted you so bad. Simple. Magical thinking seems to break the rules most of us live by. Things talk to you—right?”

“Right. Yes.” I smile. “You bet. Ten-four, good buddy.”

Jersey chuckles. “Okay. Now, most of this world is based around the simple concept that things don't talk. Security systems assume that codes and ciphers are safely hidden between our ears. Conferences assume that the places they are held can be made secure. There's an old story about how a guy told a secret he couldn't bear to keep to a hole in the ground and it would have been safe except that the reeds growing there picked up the words and whispered them to the world. You get the picture?”

“Yes.” I nod, remembering a code pad happily chanting, I got a secret! “I understand. They're using us to steal secrets.”

“Yeah.” Jersey smiles sadly. “You catch on fast. Street-smarts, but what can I expect with what you've been doing?”

I almost think he is going to say more, but he picks up his drink and sips the frosty thing. The level of ice never drops.

“So, Sarey, Dr. Aldrich had taken money to learn some things for some—powerful—people. Hell, dangerous people. And then Dylan—died—and he was up a creek without a paddle. Then Aldrich remembered you and when he sent for you, you had been discharged. There was sixteen kinds of bitchiness until you were found. Now I've got to get you acclimated and they'll pay off their debts and all.”

“And I stay here?” I ask bluntly. “Forever.”

“Yeah,” he nods. “I can't see how they'd let you go.”

O
UR NEXT SESSION IS MUCH LIKE THE FIRST
. W
HEN BEING
brought in for the third, my guard is reaching to ring for admittance when suddenly he stops. I am about to try and ask why when I hear the faintest sound of voices raised in argument. Stretching my hearing, I am able to make out the words.

“…endangering her!” The voice is Jersey's.

“No, I am saving her and us.” Dr. Haas is cool. “If she doesn't adapt to the interface quickly, our creditors will be very unhappy and if they get unhappy…Do I need to spell it out?”

“No.” I can almost hear Jersey shake his head. “But…”

The guard steers me away before I can hear more. When we come back five minutes later, Jersey is hooking himself up, his anger only subdued. Dr. Haas smiles her unfriendly smile and, with a few bright comments about the weather
(which never changes in our climate-controlled building), hooks me up.

Jersey is waiting across the white mist in the now-familiar room and barely gives me time to set down my dragons before speaking.

“Okay, Sarey, today we start work. This is something of a test. I'm going to show you a variety of items and you are going to tell me what they say to you. Got it?”

“You bet, boss.” I smile. “But how can I hear what not-real things are saying? Isn't this place all in the mind?”

“Yes, but Dr. Haas will be handing you the ‘real' object at the same time. It should work. It has in the past.”

I don't need to ask: with Dylan. Instead, I nod.

“Ready when you are, Jersey.”

The first thing he hands to me is a book. The cover and spine are blank, but this hardly matters. We'd already learned that I cannot read here any better than I can outside of the interface. Apparently, skills cannot be merely wished for.

Holding the book, I listen; the voice is soft at first, then easily understood, then even familiar. Tears spring to my eyes and I clasp the battered text to my breast.

“Oh, Jersey! It's
Mary Poppins
—the one my nurse read to me when I was small. I kept the book in my room and would listen even when she was gone. I thought it was lost!”

Jersey makes a note on a computer keyboard identical to one I had seen in the annex.

“Very good, Sarey. How about this?”

He hands me a small cedar block made of varitoned
shades of wood, polished to a high finish. I caress its smooth sides and admire its red-gold color. As I do so, I hear a soft giggle.

Betwixt and Between are busy eating a bowl of ice cream. Athena is chasing a moth by the ceiling.

The giggle comes again and I focus on the cedar block.

“Puzzle,” it giggles, “puzzle puzzle puzzle puzzle puzzle.”

I giggle, too, for its delight is infectious.

“It's a puzzle box,” I tell Jersey. “Let's see. To solve it…”

Listening to the happy noise and the occasional groan, I press on the wood strips and in moments have revealed a small cavity large enough for a ring or a small deck of cards.

Jersey applauds and writes down some more notes.

“Tired, Sarey? Or can you do some more?”

“I'm a little tired. Let me have a small rest and then I'll try another. Am I doing okay?”

“Just great.” Jersey leans back and reaches for a milkshake.

“Jersey, what were you and Dr. Haas arguing about this morning?”

He sputters into his shake. “How did you know?”

“The guard brought me by when you were—I heard.”

“But those rooms are soundproof. The guard looked in through the window on the door. I waved him off. You…”

I shrug. “I am brother to dragons, a companion to owls. Tell me why you were arguing. You said I could ask about anything except Dylan.”

“Well, that's not exactly what I said.” He pauses. “Think
about it. However, Dr. Haas has been mixing the drug that eases interface. I found she was going a bit heavy on some components in yours. We got into a fight and she reminded me of my place.”

“Which is?”

“Sarey, hon, you've lived in a fairly protected world. I don't know all the details, but you've always had people looking out for you. Not so for me—my computer work is my world and yet I've had funding troubles all along.”

Remembering his madness, I understand.

“The Institute came when I was down. They said essentially: ‘Hey, you can get in people's minds. We don't care about how or anything. We just want in.'”

“Wait, Jersey, you told me that the Institute had lost funding. How did they pay you? This couldn't be cheap.”

“Sarey, the ‘Institute' you're talking about is just one part of a much larger organization. I was working for them—research—and eventually they linked me up with Dr. Aldrich after Dylan's accident…”

He stops, aware that he's said too much.

“Accident?” I ask.

“No, Sarey, don't distract me. Now, what working with Aldrich was a chance at was legit research, y'know, with a big ‘L.' I only learned too late all the crap that was going down and by then I would have had to give it all up and I couldn't. Can't.”

He finishes and takes a long suck on his milkshake until the straw rattles against the bottom of the glass.

“Rested?” he says. “Let's try another.”

We work for a while more. Some of the items are easy—others more difficult. One says nothing at all.

When we come back from the interface, I am praised by doctors Aldrich and Haas. My score is perfect—even the no-reading had been right—a brand-new item with minimal associations.

Despite my pride, I feel very drained and let them take me back to my room in a wheelchair. There I fall asleep almost at once and dream cryptic dreams.

Upon awakening, I do not immediately get up, but instead roll onto my back, reviewing the past day's events. My concern about what happened to Dylan had been muted by the excitement of learning to interface, discovering speech, making friends with Jersey. Now it comes back in full.

What had Jersey said? I struggle to remember his exact word, “Don't ask me about him—ask anything else.”

I whisper the words, too softly for the monitors to catch.

Between hears and yawns. “What did you say, Sarah?”

I repeat myself, “Don't ask me about him—ask anything else.”

“Jersey said that, didn't he,” Between says. “Funny way to put it.”

“It's a puzzle,” Betwixt cuts in excitedly. “Must be or he wouldn't have told her to remember it exactly.”

“Don't ask me,” Between repeats slowly, stressing every syllable, “ask any-thing else.”

I sit up suddenly and the motion detectors turn on the room lights. Blinking at the light, I run a hand through my
nonexistent hair and wish for speech. Unable to explain myself, I hug Betwixt and Between and head for the shower.

My guards, I have learned, are not precisely the Institute's. Instead, they belong to the anonymous employer. Now that I have proven myself a cooperative patient, I am permitted to go around the building—although always with a guard in tow.

Now, I ignore the blue uniform stalking discontentedly behind me and pace the corridors, linger in the common rooms. Finally, in the dripping heat of the roof garden, I find what I have been seeking. In an ornamental pool by a stone fountain shaped like a leaping carp, I find Dylan.

Not Dylan, really, but a place where he went and where something of him still lingers just as my nurse remains in a favorite book or an artist in a painting.

The guard draws back to the shelter of a doorway within the climate control zone. Instantly, I understand why Dylan liked this place. He effectively could be alone.

Sitting on the edge of the fountain basin, I relax and let the random impressions form. The sweat beads under my wrap and rolls under my breasts, but I do not move. Slowly, less substantial than my reflection in the rippling waters, something is taking form. I reach out to it, confused by its silence.

There are no words, but I do find something: pain. The man who sat here was fighting pain of body and spirit that intertwined like the vines in the jungle around us. Fearing what I will find, I reach deeper.

My throat burns and I cup water from the fountain to cool it. The basin remembers another who did this, sputter
ing and choking each time with force enough to still the insects in the shrubs from their strident clamor.

Pain. A throat burned speechless? Yes.

The thing has told me all it can, but now I have some information to work from.

When I return inside, I study the guard. Surely he knows the information I want to learn just as Jersey does, but will be equally bound not to tell. The very walls must have answers, but they will not have noticed, not unless Dylan put his mark on them.

I carry my frustration with me, through my meal in my cell, through restless pacing and tossing and turning. No answer comes and when I finally sleep, I dream of the Jungle and its web of lines and hammocks.

I awaken with a contradiction screaming at me. Maddeningly, I see neither Jersey nor either of the doctors, so there is no one to whom I can talk. Feeling truly mute for the first time in my life, I circle the complex restlessly, prompting a comment from my usually taciturn guard about her not being paid by the mile.

The only thing I learn from my wanderings is a confirmation that certain areas, among them what I suspect were Dylan's rooms, are off-limits to me.

When I am finally taken to Jersey's computer annex, I can barely keep from urging them to hook me in. Jersey seems concerned at this, but Dr. Haas is pleased.

Dr. Aldrich enters just as the hookup is completed.

“Sarah,” he says, just before Dr. Haas hands me my beaker, “you must get this precisely right. A great deal depends on it.”

I nod.

He shakes his index finger at me. “Precisely right.”

Slurping down the liquid, I have only time to notice that the taste is somehow wrong. Then, without the comfortable sensation of drifting off to sleep, I feel myself being sucked out of my body. I am shifted and strained through something cold and impersonal, reduced to a strand of numbers, each screaming loudly for the others. When I see the grey-greens of Jersey's Van Gogh, I grab for them like a Cub grasping for a guideline.

My self begins to re-form, numbers becoming pulse and bone, skin, hair, eyes. Eyes that I open to find myself sprawled whole and gasping on the carpet of Jersey's sitting room.

He reaches down and helps me into a chair, offers me coffee.

I drink gratefully, notice that Betwixt and Between, staggering despite their four stocky legs, are nudging Athena to her feet. I pour them a pool of coffee to lap, not caring what it does to the table's finish. From under a lampshade, I find a moth that I feed to Athena.

Jersey watches curiously. “Feels like shit, don't it, Sarey? But I wouldn't bitch to Dr. Haas even so. Y'see, I did it.”

“You? What?” Words, I am learning, are not always a help.

“Babe, I've decided to come down on the side of the angels.” He winks. “That's you. Look, the whole trick to this interface of mine—well, not the whole trick, but one of the big ones—is in that potion you slug down. Does funny things to brain waves that let a properly set up bit of equip
ment read 'em. In a sense, Sarey, this ain't a virtual reality; it's real reality 'cause you know it is, right down where you are. Get me?”

“Sort of.” I rub my head. “You did that to me?”

“Yeah.” Jersey looks shamed, but only for a moment. “You see, the problem with my ‘potion' is that it really hurts to be broken down that way, even if you know you'll get built up again. Do it too much and it can drive you crazy. So I played around with some other things until I found a mixture that eased the transition without ruining the effectiveness of the first drug. One problem.”

“What?”

“It screws up the internal organs and is addictive as hell. Honey”—he looks me in the eyes—“when I perfected the telepathic interface, I really looked like you see me here. What you see out there is a result of the stuff I've been taking. Dr. Haas has been upping your dose—today, when she was distracted, I switched it for a more neutral one, but I didn't get the buffer quite right.”

In the pain and confusion, I had almost forgotten my earlier suspicions. “She hates me. Why, Jersey?”

“Hates you?” Jersey looks puzzled. “I think she just wants the project to go down fine. I don't think she hates you.”

“No,” I flounder. “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. I mean, things just don't fit.”

“Hey, relax, Sarey. What doesn't fit?”

“You told me that after Dylan died, the Institute tried to find me, only to learn that I'd been discharged from the Home.”

“Yeah, that's right. I remember Dr. Aldrich's cursing and
swearing when he heard. For a while there, he thought we'd have to use the third sibling. I got the impression that he knew where to find her, but that she wasn't as good.”

“Fine. But, Jersey, the doctor who insisted on discharging me from the Home was Dr. Haas.”

“You sure?”

“Could I make a mistake on something like that?”

Jersey shakes his head. “No, I guess not.”

An odd look comes over his face. “Time to work, Sarey.”

He reached into a chest by his chair and pulls out a small rectangular box of black plastic.

“This is a key box,” he says, handing it to me. “We have the box, but not the key. We want you to tell us what it is.”

Accepting the key box, I feel it carefully, finding that the four corners each depress slightly; one bears an almost imperceptible dimple.

A faint sigh of anticipation comes to me as I touch the corners. Glancing up at Jersey, I see his expression has not changed. The sigh then…I focus again on the black plastic box.

“There is an order in which these need to be pressed,” I say, more to myself than to Jersey. “If I get it wrong…”