Gojiro (37 page)

Over the Equal Sign

K
OMODO WENT OUT INTO THE IMMENSE
American night, behind the wheel of that pink plasti-car. First devised as a soapbox racer for automotive-minded Atoms to crack up in around Dead Canon Curve, the balsa-weight vehicle was in no way street legal, but it went 150 and that was all that mattered.

He found her where he knew she would be, on that strip of freeway across from the Desert View Motor Cinema. She was wearing the same fuzzy pink bathrobe she wore the first time he saw her at the Turret House. That same fear was on her face. She was in Hell, Komodo knew, still in Hell.

Komodo looked at her and understood what his parents had done for him on that exceedingly bright morning in Hiroshima; and how he’d unknowingly sought to repay their act of love in the Opening Sequence. They put him in a hole so he wouldn’t have to see. See: It. Their efforts were rewarded. His life had had its ups and downs, Komodo thought, but it had always been his own. Not for a single instant had he ever been in Hell.

He could hear her screaming now. “Out there!” she yelled, her long, white finger pointing east. “That’s where I’ve got to go. But I can’t get past here!”

In an instant he was beside her. “That’s why I’ve come, Ms. Brooks, to help you. To take you on.” He held out his hand, clasped her bony wrist. Then they were standing, facing each other. And it started up again.

“Ahhh,” Komodo said.

“Ahhh,” Sheila Brooks said. Closer, closer, across that gaugeless gap. But before their lips could touch, Komodo stiffened, pulled away.

A shadow passed over them. It was Billy Snickman, ward of a dozen foster homes, author of “Forget That House.” The wild boy stood beside Sheila and Komodo, an oddly cherishing smile spread across his exhaust-streaked face. Komodo knew that look. He’d seen it on Ebi’s face, only hours before she died, as she sat in the Traj Taj kitchen, watching her share a pot of tea with Sheila Brooks. “We’re just a family,” Ebi said then, so sweet.

“Ain’t supposed to be on now, you know,” Billy Snickman said in a soft voice, gesturing toward the print of
Gojiro vs. the Enigma-Inking Squid at the Rock of Knowledge
filling the giant screen. “Usually, show’s over at midnight. But not now. Not anymore. The fans got into the booth, chased the manager out. They’re gonna keep playing it. Until He comes.”

The sun was verging over the jagged peaks. Dawn was coming fast. Komodo hadn’t noticed before. But now he felt a tension in his head, a pile driver through his brain. The early morning light was diffusing the picture on the movie screen, bleaching it out. Gojiro was fading away, becoming a ghost. “Oh, no!” Then Komodo was pulling Sheila Brooks, dragging her toward the plasti-car. “We must go!”

* * *

She was asleep when they arrived at the edge of the Encrucijada, curled up beneath that silvery space blanket Komodo had tucked around her to guard against the desert cold. Looking into the Valley below, Komodo felt an awesome portent. The elements, so long assembling, were about to go critical in that ancient bowl.

“Where are we?” she groaned as he gently shook her awake. One glance at the Valley was enough to snap her neck back. “Oh . . . here.”

They made the rest of the way on foot, Sheila Brooks’s red designer galoshes against gnarled ravines, over the pinnacle rocks. It was the long way around, but with the sun now rising in the sky, they couldn’t risk cutting straight across. Komodo thought they were home free when they reached the salt flat. But then, no more than five hundred feet from the Chamber door, Sheila Brooks grabbed his sleeve and gasped.

The figure shimmered across the white ground like a mirage. Komodo breathed deep as the great scaly ensemble lurched closer, the reddish comb of its cranial dome stark against the blue sky.

“What is it?” Sheila Brooks screamed, clutching tighter.

“It’s . . . the Varanidid.”

“The what?”

“A myth, walking.”

Onward it came, claws glinting in the sunlight, across the rapidly heating sand.

“It’s looking at me!” It was so. The approaching beast’s eyes were fixed on Sheila Brooks.

Then, when it was close enough, it said, “You have returned. I knew you would when the time was right.” The voice was a rasp, a croak.

Komodo thought she would run, but she didn’t. She stepped forward, toward the Varanidid. “What are you talking about? I’ve never been here.”

“Yes you have.”

“Never—not until now.”

The Varanidid seemed unsteady now, but still it came ahead. They were almost face-to-face. “But . . . you came as you came before, over this same ridge. Walked as you walked before . . . to this
very spot
!”

Komodo said nothing; what was playing out was beyond his intervention.

“Don’t be upset, Leona. Today is a great day. After so long, you have returned.”

“Leona? I’m not Leona.”

“Not Leona? But you are. I can
feel
it.”

“Leona was . . . my mother.”

“Your . . .” The Varanidid reeled back; when it straightened up once more, the Echo Man was poking his wrinkled face from beneath the scaly mask. There was an unbearable silence as the Indian studied Sheila Brooks with narrowing eyes. Then, without warning, he shot out a clawhand, grabbed hold of her goggles.

“Hey! What’s the big idea! Lay off!”

The Indian would not let go. He pulled at the glasses until the heavy elastic came loose with a loud snap. The glasses flew from Sheila’s head, rose up into the blue heat of the Encrucijada sky, and fell back into the Echo Man’s hand. “Let me see your eyes.”

“Get away!” she screamed. But the Echo Man held her tight, peered deep into her face.

Then he released his grip, stumbled back. His Zardic regalia was askew now, ripped and hanging, his wrinkled head fully visible. He looked older, sadder. “Years ago, she came to this place. I always knew, someday, she would return. But instead, it is you.” A tremor ran through him as he spoke. No longer the mythic Varanidid, he once again seemed to be the fleabitten Nelson Monongae, just another whiskey-drinking Indian haunting the plasma banks.

But he recovered, straightened up. A light suddenly in his eyes, the Echo Man closed his leathery palm around the black vial hanging from his neck. With one sharp pull he ripped the rawhide strand. Then he reached over and placed the vial in Sheila’s hand, folding her long white fingers around it. “Your eyes are her eyes. See with them. See what she did not.”

Sheila Brooks looked down at her fist. “What is this?”

“Blood.”

“Blood? I can’t stand the sight of blood.” She opened her hand. “It’s
black
.”

“Blood from the earth.
His blood.
They’re stealing it, draining it away. You take it. Use it—I have kept it for you, all these years.”

Right then Komodo felt that horrible pounding in his head once more. Except it was worse now. “Gojiro!” He grabbed Sheila Brooks, and they started running, away from that Echo Man.

* * *

“My own true friend, I have returned! Ms. Brooks has accompanied me.”

Komodo called again, only to hear his voice once more reverb and fade away in the highest reaches of the White Light Chamber. There was no reply. He turned to Sheila Brooks. “Perhaps he has become shrunken once more, the result of the potion I described. Shrunken down and somehow wedged in an unforgiving nook or cranny. My own true friend! Indicate your presence, please!”

Sheila Brooks looked around in numbed stupefaction. With that transparent antirad protection suit taut over her fuzzy pink bathrobe and titanium lamé pantaloons, she looked shrinkwrapped.

A desolation overcame Komodo. So many times—across unfathomable gulfs—he’d followed love’s radar, arrived in the nick of time to snatch his friend from the brink. But now, his heart straining until it ached in his chest, he felt nothing.

It was a violation of their Promise, he knew, bringing Sheila Brooks into the White Light Chamber without first asking Gojiro’s permission, but what choice was there? Things were different now. The monster was right, they weren’t on Radioactive Island anymore. They were in a new world, with new rules. The Triple Ring Promise was no longer their solemn secret, between them and no one else. Others were involved now; who knew how many? He turned to watch Sheila Brooks stagger about the ghastly Chamber. There was so much he longed to tell her, so much she would have to know! But where was Gojiro? A mere glimpse of his great friend would explain so much of what he could not put into words.

That’s when she screamed. “Over there!”

Komodo wheeled to see the dodo. The unfortunate former extinctive was sitting in the middle of the Chamber floor, seemingly engaged in a poignantly vestigial nesting activity. The sad bird met Komodo’s gaze and emitted a deep sigh. Then it got up and waddled away, leaving behind a shiny pellet. That dodo had been sitting on a Goldplate Pill—as if it were its own egg.

Komodo was hovering over the gleaming capsule when it came to him. At first the sound was no more than a scratchy whisper from behind a thick wall, so faint he thought he’d only dreamed it. But then it came again, no less undeniable for its imperceptibility. Komodo’s mouth dropped open. “There is Quadcameral activity here—I can
feel
it! Oh, my God, Ms. Brooks. Gojiro—he is inside this Goldplate Pill!

“My own true friend, can you hear me? Please, come in. Acknowledge reception!”

Sheila Brooks was beside Komodo now, staring down at the pellet. “But, how . . . I mean . . . it’s so little and he’s so big . . .”

She extended her index finger. Then, just as he’d seen her push her extended arm through the parietal loam of that massive Quadcameral model, Komodo watched Sheila Brooks’s bitten nail travel through the dank air, toward that Goldplate Pill. When her fingertip touched the polished metal, her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Ms. Brooks . . . you sense it too!”

With a sudden spasm, she pulled away. “No! I dunno! Shit! Why’d that goddamned Indian have to steal my glasses?” She reached out for Komodo, grabbed him hard. “I’m begging you, tell me what’s going on here—I’m not a fucking idiot.”

Once again, the shame flooded in. He wanted to bring her into the Valley, to show her the man standing at its center, to somehow liberate her from Hell. But Gojiro was in trouble, and there was no time. He took her hand. “Oh, Ms. Brooks, if I had only been honest, forthright. It is to my great disgrace that I have not revealed this earlier.” He reached out, flicked on that bank of monitors. Blue-gray light filled the Chamber.

“Dad.” She took a step ahead, then looked back over her wingy shoulder. Help, she seemed to say-help me now. But Komodo could not help her, not then. Gojiro was inside the Goldplate Pill!

* * *

Komodo projected his Quadcameral overlays onto a ten-foot-square foldout Dishscreen. Years before, Komodo envisioned those transparencies as a first step toward a comprehensive mapping of the monster’s fabulous mentality. The plan was to chart the energy of each neural coupling, fix their positions as one might the constellations in the night sky. But the Quadcam was simply too big, too varied. Komodo’s astral-neural maps were pocked by empty spaces, barren patches, great black holes. Whole cortexial partitions remained unexplored. And, after the 90 Series incident, the task had been abandoned altogether.

Now, however, those woefully insufficient charts seemed the only chance. Gojiro was alive—the Quadcameral activity inside that Goldplate Pill proved that. If the still-viable sectors of the reptile’s brain could be pinpointed, then insight might be gained into his condition.

Connecting the Dishscreen to a keyboard, Komodo sat down and began to punch deck like a Dexi-driven dictaphonist. The music would point the way. It always did. To Komodo’s trained ear, each separate pair of neural connectors and its accompanying synapsial spark struck a distinctive tone. “The infinite symphony” Komodo called it, back in the Glazed Days. How thrilling it was to press his ear to his friend’s frontal plate and hear the majestic interplay—the low, earthy bass lines of the most ancient reptilian wards underpinning the skittish cadences of the limbic rock, those two blending with the allegro fleet of the neo-cort, all of it topped off by the angular clash of the uncharted fourth realm, that dissonant, offcentering careen of the New.

Now, however, the Quadcameral soundscape offered no ever-redefining swell, no dazzling aggregate of hue and timbre. The track Komodo heard was more minimal than a Tibetan trancer’s demo, nothing but a solitary Om, a lone high-hung hum. The tone penetrated, louder and louder, vibrating inside his head like a hardstruck, razortonged tuning fork.

That sound! He recognized that consuming, bell-shattering note. He’d never forget it. Once, he’d fixated on that same drone, tracked its soul-shearing pitch throughout that terrible descent into Gojiro’s head. Oh, appalling memory—how he kept going deeper into the Quadcameral’s sacred fourth tier until he found that single neural pair, short-circuited the electricity there. Could it be? That out of the great mentality’s boundless ensemble only one tone remained—that same pulse to which the 90 Series once adhered? Komodo sat stunned, attempting to make sense of things. How could that 90 Series coupling, receptor of those desperate supplicants, be back? Every indication pointed to the unregenerative nature of Quadcameral cellular material; once the cortical matter was destroyed, it did not—would not—grow back. He told Gojiro as much on that long-regretted day. Time appeared to bear out the prognosis. After the operation, supplications no longer swamped the monster’s mind. Never again had he been transported into the despairing consciousness of the pleading Atoms, G-fans, and the rest.

Until now. Until they came into the Valley.

Komodo felt chills when he heard that other noise. It had been there all along, thrumming low behind the tremulous tonality of the neural signal, but he hadn’t made much of it. There was no reason to. The sound was clearly external, a stray byte, not Quadcameral in origin, no part of the infinite symphony. But now it grew louder, dominant. That whoosh . . . the howl of wind roaring through a tunnel.