Flux (3 page)
The men’s voices were a vague murmur in the mid-morning heat, too distant to be made out clearly. Still crawling, Nellie had begun to back away when the approach of a second vehicle sent her flat to the ground. The dry earth throbbed as another van passed and pulled up beside the first. As she watched, a man got out and called to the others. Then he opened the back of the second van and crawled inside. Nellie’s stomach growled, but all thoughts of heading off in search of lunch disappeared as she saw a small child lifted from the back of the van into the arms of a waiting man. The boy was around five years old and obviously sedated. Blinking, he stood where he was placed, displaying no interest in his surroundings. Next a young girl appeared, followed by two others, until four children stood in a quiet line—three girls and one boy, all under the age of eight.
Nellie’s heart thundered and she was suddenly wired with fear. Bright rooms ... she was remembering bright rooms in the Interior, soft straps that trapped her arms and doctors and machines that brought many kinds of pain. Pain was a story. In those bright rooms of long ago, she’d learned to take pain and set a girl inside it, then give her something to do—crawl into an underground cave, mount a backyard swing and pump herself above the trees, or turn her into a free-winged bird—anything that would take that girl of pain and send her so far away, she would vanish into nothingness.
The bright rooms of the Interior, and what had taken place inside them, had faded years ago to a fuzzy blur in Nellie’s head. No matter how she struggled to remember the details she couldn’t, but now as she watched the children and the birdlike machines, she recognized the doctors of her memories—different men perhaps but the same kind of pain-makers, the same evil intent. Taking the hand of the five-year-old boy, one of the men led him to the centerpoint between the three birdlike machines and placed a wire-mesh helmet on his head. Then the man stepped back, leaving the boy alone, his eyes
fixed in a dull stare, his hands relaxed and dangling as if there was no danger, as if the fear stiffening the hair on the back of Nellie’s neck had nothing to do with him, his life, its possibility.
One of the men held up a small device that emitted a series of electronic beeps, and the boy’s eyes closed. Slouched and nonchalant, the men smoked silently. Beside them the line of girls stared listlessly at the ground. Only the tall blond grass moved, swaying in the wind, whispering sweet-scented incantations to the Goddess. Without warning Nellie felt her mind buckle and give way, dropping her into a roaring darkness full of strange wild stars that pivoted around a central point. As she watched, radiant lines of energy connected and a central star blazed. At the same moment an electric current shot between the birdlike machines and the five-year-old boy stiffened, his eyes flying open, staring at something Nellie couldn’t see. A wave of iridescence passed through him and he vanished, his wire-mesh helmet thudding to the ground. One of the men started toward it, but another called out sharply, pointing to the laptop. The first man paused, waiting until the man with the laptop nodded, then moved in and picked up the helmet.
Crouched like a spitting cat, Nellie watched as one of the girls was led among the machines. Like the boy, she stood dully as the helmet was placed on her head and the man stepped back. Again the blond grass rustled, whispering between worlds; again Nellie’s mind buckled and she watched strange wild stars align as the birdlike machines hissed and another child vanished. The next girl was led into position, and the process repeated. None of the children protested—they seemed barely alive, drugged too heavily to whimper on their own behalf.
When all four children had disappeared, the men dismantled the machines and placed them in the back of the first van. Then they climbed into both vans and drove off, passing so close Nellie was certain she would be seen; but the vehicles continued on, leaving only the wavering scent of exhaust and a flattened area of grass struggling to lift itself, inch by broken inch, toward a thin blue sky.
Chapter 3
N
ELLIE LAY A LONG
TIME beneath a bleached canopy of rustling grass, watching it ripple in the slurred rhythms of her brain. Ants crawled up the inside of her pant legs; a tiny red spider ran across her stomach. Gradually she began to stir, then sit up, feeling the oddness of her body as if she was a stranger to it, as if she’d been absent a long time and had just returned in order to relearn its meaning. Slowly the shifting pieces of her mind floated together and she was once again Nellie Kinnan, twelve years old and without a mother, and the men from the bright rooms had been here, right in front of her, wracking their evil on the bodies of innocent dull-eyed children. She remembered being that dull-eyed, she remembered the machines that had towered above her, their gleaming invasions of pain.
Getting to her feet, she followed the van tracks to the flattened area of grass where the birdlike machines had stood. With precise venom, she spat on each tire mark. Then she knelt, placing her palms on the blurred footprints the children had left at the center point between the machines. A coldness sang through her and she wanted to pull back, but forced herself to remain crouched in position, sending herself as far as she dared into the vibratory trail
emitted by the children. Like a long ago thought, she could feel their passage to some distant place, their crossing abrupt and full of pain, tearing at the veils of vibrations that separated the different levels of reality. They were still alive, she could tell that much, but the vibrations they’d left in their wake throbbed with fear, and their destination was obscured. Grumbling and muttering, Nellie tossed handfuls of dirt over the place the children had stood, trying to cleanse the small vague footprints. No words could give meaning to this terror, no words could take it away.
DORNIVER WAS AN HOUR’S WALK
. Moving quickly, Nellie steered clear of the main road that led to the city center, ducking into the undergrowth whenever she approached one of the shacks that dotted the area. Though she knew most of the local residents by sight, she’d never spoken to any of them. No one who’d seen her in the past sixteen months knew her name, though the Skulls had nicknamed her ‘Bunny.’ She’d read enough discarded magazines to know what that meant. “Nellie Joan Kinnan,” Nellie sang low in her throat as she approached the city’s outskirts. “Nellie Kinnan, Nellie Your-Mother-Loves-You Kinnan.”
Dorniver was a rambling sprawl that had grown out of itself like a tumor or a plague. Each building pressed against its neighbor in a vaguely menacing fashion, roads veered like quickly told stories, and the electrical system was so frequently on the blink that many residents relied on kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. It hadn’t taken Nellie and her mother long to learn Dorniver’s basic rule of survival: depend on nothing and no one but yourself. Each municipal department operated within a larger system of bribery and fraud that extended throughout the Outbacks, the city’s tiny police force accepting payment from the same variety of sources as the City Hall clerks. Most of these sources could be tracked to a competing network of gangs, but some led directly to the Interior. Nellie’s first lesson in the relationship between the Outbacks and the Interior had come several days after she and her mother
had arrived in Culldeen, one of the neighboring Outback cities. They’d been standing in a slow-moving checkout line at a corner store, and when they’d finally reached the till Nellie’s mother had asked, “Could you give me directions to the city housing registry, please?”
“Now what d’you want that for?” the dumpy middle-aged clerk had asked, shooting her a narrow glance. Cigarette smoke wreathed her head. Though it was mid-afternoon, she was wearing pink sponge curlers and a brilliantly flowered, short-sleeved housecoat. Fascinated, Nellie had watched the huge blankets of flesh fold and refold above her elbows.
“We’re new here,” Nellie’s mother had responded quietly. “We’re looking for an apartment to rent.”
The clerk had nodded, her eyes flicking across their bandaged wrists. “Take my advice, dearie,” she’d advised bluntly, ringing in their purchases. “Go to City Hall and you’ll be selling your soul to the devil. You’ll never get their noses out of your ass and they’ll be sniffing from a long ways off, if you take my meaning.”
Nellie’s mother had taken her meaning, paling noticeably.
“Best just to walk around and look for signs in the windows,” the woman had said, handing over their bag of groceries.
“But I haven’t seen any For Rent signs,” Nellie’s mother had said wearily. “We’ve looked everywhere.”
The woman had given a slight grin, then glanced around the store to see if anyone was within earshot. “What you’re looking for,” she’d said quietly, “is a susurra. A small blue flower. If a house has rooms for rent, you’ll see a potted susurra in the front window.”
They’d located rooms within half an hour. Several months later, when they’d moved to Dorniver, they’d found much the same system in place, the local inhabitants presenting an impassive, almost stupid, face to city bureaucrats and outsiders, all the while entertaining a complex level of insider communication through coded phrases, gestures, and objects placed casually in a
window. No one who knew anything volunteered contact with city officials. More business was done through barter than the common currency, and only the naive used credit cards. Technology was viewed as a means of surveillance and avoided wherever possible. This applied even to the hospital, whose connections to the Interior were well known, and most utilized the services of neighborhood witches and healers. School attendance was erratic at the best of times—colleges and universities existed only in the Interior—and the majority of students dropped out in favor of part-time jobs long before they’d reached the legal age. Mail was delivered only to those who purchased post-office boxes, as street signs were constantly disappearing, and many of Dorniver’s residents refused to display numbers on their houses. Census takers faced an impossible task. Inhabitants pressed for information were likely to grow hostile, send a child for the carving knife, and stand silently stroking the blade until the census taker backed off in the interests of his or her own throat.
It was an atmosphere that suited Nellie—wary, silent, and sharp-edged. Arriving at the city’s outskirts she headed into the Waktuk district, Dorniver’s oldest suburb. Experience had taught her that flux was strongest here. Even on the days no stars sang in her dreams, she could spot turbulence bubbling to the surface through sudden gusts of light from windows or doorways that had nothing to do with the city’s unreliable electrical system, or in the face of a passerby that momentarily blurred and took an entirely different form before regaining its usual features. Fearful Outbackers called this a ‘doubling’ and wore the root of a nevva bush on a chain around the throat to ward off those moments of flux that allowed curious entities from other levels of reality to temporarily merge consciousness with someone in this one. Others raved about the visions the experience brought them, claiming they found themselves flying with angels or fused with the energy of stars.
Slipping carefully through the mid-morning throng, Nellie watched for signs of flux—a display of oranges rolling off a table,
a cat bolting from a doorway, a curtain in an open window to her right that rose on a gust of wind while its partner hung flat. Gleefully she noted the window’s location at the side of a house, set back from the street and partially obscured by a doogden tree. Ducking behind the tree she waited and soon felt the ripple of flux leave the curtain and enter her body. With a delighted giggle she rode a rush of changing sensations as her body began to shift rapidly through an astonishing array of forms—demon, gargoyle, two-footed reptilian, strange-singing bird, star, and angel—culminating in a figure of light that seemed to be made entirely of small crystals.
Finally the surge of energy left her and Nellie found herself once again in the body of a twelve-year-old girl, standing beneath a limp set of window curtains. To her left, the street scene progressed as usual. No one seemed to have noticed her rapid-fire shapeshifting experience, but most Outbackers preferred to put on blinkers when flux entered their lives, grabbing at the hunk of nevva root around their throats and muttering incantations to the Goddess. This was both sad and stupid, Nellie had decided. Sometimes, as she passed from one shape to another, she could have sworn she felt Ivana’s delighted laughter rippling through her body. The Goddess didn’t mind Her children exploring flux, Nellie was certain of it, though the idea of being doubled left her less keen.
Imagine something from another level sticking its snout through yours so it can take a casual look around,
she thought, shuddering, and reminded herself to dig up a hunk of nevva root as soon as possible.
About to head back onto the street, she glanced to her right and froze. Just on the other side of a small hedge stood a corner store, and there on its sunlit wall a shadow was shifting in and out of itself, unattached to anything solid. Peering through the hedge, Nellie gasped softly as the shadow stepped free of the wall and solidified into a casually dressed man who carried signs of the Interior in the heavy-lidded watching of his eyes and the trained nonchalance of his shoulders. Everything about him said
Interior Police, violence waiting for release
. Nellie had never seen an agent of the Interior step out of a moment of flux, hadn’t realized they knew anything about manipulating the molecular field or traveling the levels. Spinning on her heel she darted into the crowded street, giving the fluttering hand signal as she went:
Interior Police. Beware, Interior Police.
Everywhere hands took up the signal, a silent nervous system rippling outward:
Interior Police in the area. Red alert, red alert.
Halfway down the block, Nellie ducked behind a parked car and peeked over the hood. From her position she could see the Interior agent stroll casually past the store’s front steps and out into the street, oblivious to the hands that fluttered and gesticulated on all sides. From this point onward, wherever he went Outbackers would be tuned to his presence, watching him from the back of their heads. Everywhere the rippling hand signals would precede him, without a word he would be identified:
Interior Police, beware, beware.
