Head Full of Mountains (11 page)

When the instructions telling the canister to remain cohesive changed, the sides peeled away from Crospinal’s body with a low hiss; the upper portion rose and he was lowered gently to the floor by the remaining framework. All this time he had been trying to force his fingers under the waistband of the device, but the release, he knew, had not been the result of his efforts.

Against his back, the armature angled downwards, to help him stand. Fragments of the canister drifted, piecemeal, recalled into the ceiling; the station filled with the stench of recycling.

As his weight transferred to the soles of his feet, Crospinal knew he had changed. Not intangibly, not the way father’s death had changed him, or the way knowledge of death, or heartbreak had changed him, but
physically
, corporeally. Putting his hands down, he felt his thighs, where the bones ran true, from knee to hip. He was
taller, straighter—

Crospinal fell back into the support. The shaking in his body rose, uncontrollable, and he tried to move his hands over his legs again, to confirm the impossible, but was palsied with awe.

“My legs,” he said. “My legs . . .”

The controller did not respond.

Levering up from the structure again, Crospinal took a step forward. Even the clench of his hand against the counter was stronger. No clicks when he straightened his leg, no popping from his knees—

A poor-quality haptic bloomed around him and he was somewhat immersed. (Though he could still see vague outlines of the station’s furniture: the console; the counter.) From some other place, the metal rat watched him.
From someplace safe
.

“You fixed my legs.”

The elemental grunted. “That’s what I do.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’re crazy. You had an episode. You recall? You became aggressive. You do not play very nicely. I won’t be sharing the same space with you again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You won’t get another chance. I was an ally. I was helping. You have no idea what you’re up against.”

“I’m not dangerous.”

“Let’s be philosophical about this. My curiosity overrode my ability to make a decision based on logic. I even repaired parts of your stupid costume when I couldn’t get a dispenser to show up. Changed your filters. Blocked the methylphenidate in your nerve cells, so your dopamine levels will seek equilibrium. And what thanks did I get? Please leave now. Just go.”

“You fixed my legs . . . ?”

The elemental remained silent for some time. Wherever it was, ambients dimmed. “Communicating with you has been exceedingly difficult,” it said. “I know you’re not to blame. I know some addled passenger taught you how to get dressed, everything, yet I’ve strained myself adapting to your primitive dialect. Your thought processes are stunted. When I called you a Neanderthal, I meant it. You’re worse than a trained monkey. I was patient and generous and even excited about my role. I thought the nightmare might end. Now I’m just disappointed. And damaged. You broke me into pieces. I don’t want to waste any more time. Leave my ward now, please. Good luck out there.”

Crospinal had been touching his naked chest with mitts that felt smooth and cool and tingly against his skin. Pulling his uniform back into place, making sure the tendrils that fed the regulators did not get caught, folding the sides into place so the seals engaged, he marvelled at the ease with which his own limbs moved. Having decided that perhaps the missing ingredient was resolution for all that still ailed him, he asked, “Was a part of me taken out? Did father cut something out of me? You must know. You scanned me.”

“I’m not telling you anything else. You’ve been rude and evasive and cruel. Now please leave. I won’t ask you again.”

“Maybe I was—”

The haptic of the metal rat collapsed, leaving Crospinal alone again, standing on his new but unsteady legs.

Against the surface of a small data orb, like the ones that drifted through the abyss—hardly larger around than his head, spinning a metre or so above the old composite tiles he had paused upon—Crospinal caught a glimpse of his face. Dark, hollowed eyes returned his gaze, reflecting a distortion more than the result of the orb’s spherical surface and the halo of energy driving it. Startled, he tried to follow the orb, to recapture the sight—to make sense of what he had seen—but running had never been easy and now the act was downright unsettling: he tottered, off-balance, too high. Absence of pain was also disturbing, in a strange way, a lifelong companion vanished. His knees did not pop, nor did his bones grind together. He did not rock from side to side.

Lurching a few clumsy strides, Crospinal stopped, breathless, to watch the data orb recede, heading abruptly toward the distant ceiling, where he lost it, drifting amongst the polymer mists and encrusted structural beams as it continued on its unknowable mission.

He rested after the failed sprint, catching his breath, hands on his new knees. Despite his increased stature and improved posture, Crospinal felt dwarfed in these surroundings: the cathedral-sized auditorium he had been crossing humbled and reduced him to a state of insignificance: the world, though able to sustain, also seemed profoundly detached from any concerns he might have, despite what father had told him.

Within clenched fingers, he literally felt the differences the metal rat had initiated in the shapes of his bones. Rubbing his mitts against the sagging material that had, until recently, been stretched to the limit by his gnarled patellas, he wondered if the tiny elemental truly had been benevolent, as it had claimed, operating on him with his best interests in mind, or had it done something less than helpful inside him?

He straightened to continue, aimless and pensive, across the tiled floor of the massive chamber. Ambients were at mid-range but he could see no walls, in any direction. The tiles, large and brown under the soles of his boots, were uniform, and he could imagine the entire world, including the pen—before father arrived—once like this.

Since leaving the recovery ward, Crospinal had come across few familiar features: no consoles or cupboards; no banks; nothing but a few flat tubes, with buried traces of plastic, and a cluster of sealed senders. No devices at all, save the vanished orb.
Lots
of open area.

At least the engines thrummed, fundamental under the floor. He heard them, though not as frequently, as if they might be operating farther away, or in a different realm altogether.

How much more than father’s cancerous body and his phalanx of apparitions had vanished with the explosion? Where was his girlfriend? Was her physical body somewhere, tethered to some remote gate? Would she live forever? So many hours he had spent with her, while she listened to his complaints and explanations, his questions and opinions. Or she’d whisper responses father would never say, abstract details that may as well have been in another, picturesque language.

Father had told Crospinal that the world, and everything in it, was created for him and his sister.

But that was the pen.

Now father was dead, the pen was gone, and the world had transformed.

Could other boys be setting out from other pens? Maybe standing at a console he might never find, calling manifestations through holes of their own?

The world was
not
made for Crospinal.

Father had been wrong.

Or, worse, had lied.

Plucking at his mitts until he could peel one off, tendrils popping free, Crospinal pushed up the sleeve and held the clinging insulation aside to look at the anemic skin there. The delicate scars mapped his forearm, bulging slightly, and reddened. He imagined his girlfriend, had a clear vision of her sharing a small cupboard with another boy, in another part of the world, a part Crospinal would never find. Maybe a boy who looked just like him but did not say the depressing things he said whenever she had acquiesced to appear. Maybe she was talking softly to him now, or laughing? Could she and this other boy figure out a way to make contact, skin against skin? He jammed his thumb into his bare wrist, as if to erase the marks. Unpleasant feelings were growing inside him. He did not like the direction his thoughts were taking. He tried to breathe.

Another boy? Was this possible?

He made a tight fist. Staring at the tendons as they moved, and the way the inflamed scars rolled over the stringy muscle beneath his skin, he fixed his sleeve and pulled his mitt back on, fastening the seams by rubbing them against each other. Feeble attempts of the Dacron tried to clean the follicles he had briefly exposed.

Another boy might be the reason his girlfriend had told him not to call her to a console anymore. Another boy might also be the reason she was nowhere to be found, and even why he was exiled to this quiet expanse.

Jealousy burned within the confines of his tricot. He had not known this ugly sensation before, or its name. He looked up again, toward the distant ceiling, and was surprised to witness a murder of crows passing suddenly overhead. One cried out, dipping lower, cawing, and he took this as a warning.

Crossing over a stretch of spongy tiles, to where a series of harder, older flooring began, Crospinal mounted a gentle slope; he must have been on the slow base of a wall, an incredibly large wall, which loomed somewhere up ahead—though from where he had paused, the distant rise was nearly invisible and might even have been an illusion.

How high could a ceiling get? The abyss, at the catwalks, and the distant girders visible over the dream cabinets, would be as lost here as he was.

Continuing, he came across a cluster of carbon tubes so big in diameter that they rose out of sight. Had he perhaps shrunk? Upon closer investigation, the cluster revealed a neatly concealed periscope, similar to the one at the bottom of the pyramid shaft, behind the throne. There were eyepieces and portholes in and around the pen, varied shapes and sizes, and through each the identical view, yet discovering new lenses always caused a moment of adrenaline in his veins. The familiarity, too, in such a landscape, was a rush of relief. Would he see mountains? Grabbing the handles, and pulling the eyepiece toward him, he waited a beat before putting his eye against the plastic—

The landscape of ashes, baking under a red orb’s glow, stirred by dead winds. Shimmering, the orb was rising.

Father had told Crospinal the world would continue without his presence. But where were the dispensers? He took a hit from his siphon. The periscope was the only device he’d found. Enough water in the reservoir for a day or so.

When he died, who would be left to learn the truth?

Crospinal thumped his loose hand against the eyepiece. There were no changes outside. He saw the expanse behind him, reflected in the lens, and he saw his own face, too, peering back. Any startling change he thought he’d seen previously in the orb was muted. He just seemed like Crospinal now, a little older, a little taller, a little more alone.

He tried to clean the lens with his sleeve.

Father’s death had not stopped the world, and Crospinal’s death, when it happened—which was inevitable—would not herald endtime either.

There was another boy.

Crospinal knew this now, with certainty; a punch, a cold draining.

Somewhere in the world was another boy.

He stared for a moment longer before releasing the handles of the periscope, which clapped back into place and sank. He had not eaten since the operation, though he suspected the elemental had taken some efforts to sustain him, or give him energy when he was unconscious. He said his own name aloud, shouting it, addressing the expanse beyond the porthole. If no one else was left to say his name, maybe then the word would fade and the other boy gain the advantage. Crospinal could not recall what the world had called him, that day in the back halls, at the perimeter of father’s range, with the dogs barking incessantly and flickering out, but it seemed important now. Had the crow been calling to him, too?

The gradual curve of the wall’s base increased until the slope finally became undeniable, and difficult to negotiate. More and more clusters of carbon tubes ran roughly parallel to the floor, which was already, by this point, far below. Drifting banks of polymers caused him distraction: there was construction afoot, or would be soon. Higher up, ambients indicated a shift, an addition or texture to the composite. Curtains swept across. Not far from the cluttered portion he clung to, the vertical expanse extended into clouds so distant he could see no details or discern scaffolding there, no evidence of hard lines.

Over his shoulder, in the distance, a darker mass had accumulated at the horizon; Crospinal predicted a squall of some magnitude. Rains were not enhanced water, like water from spigots, or in the pool, but untreated, oily accretions, trapping inorganic compounds that drifted through the atmosphere and gathered in the upper reaches; he did not want to get caught in such a storm. Not here. Clouds like this—real clouds—gathering in smaller rooms around the pen (which he had thought at the time were
immense
) had sent him scurrying into the covered safety of enclaves or local cupboards.

Climbing obliquely, Crospinal tried to keep focused on what his feet and hands touched. Since being revived, in spite of his transformation, he felt he had plodded, almost blindly, without truly registering where he was headed or where he had come from. His thoughts now were stilling.

Using the stems of tubes as handholds, and placing his feet carefully on the shallow ledges in the formations, he found he was surprised again and again by the abilities of his new limbs, by his latent power.

He came to a narrow, slotted opening. The icon of a daybed, rotating slowly, rose before him. This was a sustenance station of sorts. A resting place. Relieved that he had managed to find or call forth this place, he said, “Hello?”

No controller came to greet him. No response. No thumb plates, either, to validate his prints.

So he just entered.

Light bloomed.

A small station. No holes, no console at all. Crospinal felt his heart sink, and was again surprised, this time by his own reaction. There was a standard food dispenser, with standard pellets and a water spigot. Daybeds, off to one side. The station smelled . . . new.

Along the far wall shimmered the energy of a bank, and for the first time he saw how similar the sheen was to that of a drone, or a data orb. Or the paladin, in the metal rat’s haptic. There was no recess for a gate here, not of any capacity. Nonetheless, a smart room, with all the amenities.

If these accommodations were not for Crospinal—if they’d remain when he was gone, and existed before he arrived—then who, he wondered, slept here? Who was the food for? Luella? Or the boy who had stolen his girlfriend?

He touched a small table, which, sensing his heat, drifted out.

He sat on a stool.

“Hey,” he said. “Got a voice? Hello?”

No answer.

The daybeds were identical to his own, back in the pen. Made, of course, covers crisp and ironed. The sight suddenly had enormous impact upon Crospinal and he just sat there, staring, trying not to cry again. When he got up, and was finally able to take a step closer, dust crackled and vanished with a brief aura of blue sparks as a cleansing surge passed over the mattress from head to foot. Covering his eyes, Crospinal had felt a brief quiver to be standing so close. He wished a dog or two was with him, by his feet, rambling on and on, or just panting, because electrostatic made apparitions crackle and the dogs would whine and sputter and run madly back to father. He smiled at the strength of his reverie and managed to swallow.

Holding his mitt out, under the beak of a timid spigot, he accepted a small cup filling with water as it dropped into his palm. He looked around again. The station was clearly functional, at some capacity, despite its silence and lack of controller, but maybe that was the way stations would be from now on. He drank four cups of water and held the empty in his fist until the molecules dispersed. There was invigoration, inside him: each cup catered a little more to what ailed him.

A haptic source, hidden in a small alcove; a set of battery chargers behind the main table. There was a uniform dispenser—like the one at harmer’s corner, maybe somewhat bigger—staying low, between the daybeds. Crospinal approached, thumbed the plate, and withdrew, after a moment, from the damp nest, a fresh and moist uniform.
Perfect.
Made expressly for him. Lifting the newly baked material to his face, and holding it there, still hot, he breathed in the smell of fresh nylons and neoprenes. The processor was humming already against his cheek, wanting to be worn, to meld with him.

Then, from the already congealing soup that would become the next uniform, like a shimmering skull, or a rising orb over windblown ash, the top of a pristine polycarbonate helmet presented itself, slowly, in offering.

“One’s ready, Crospie. One’s ready.”