Head Full of Mountains (3 page)

If he could break through, arid waste spilling in, the nothingness of the outside that he saw might sear his lungs to cinders and etch the flesh from his bones, bringing oblivion, freedom from torment, and relief.

His breath caught, shuddering—at least one more time—in his chest. The tricot rose and fell.

At one point, moments later, still navigating the tunnel adjacent to the blocked transfer tube, Crospinal got wedged. He wondered what the dogs would do, or not be able to do, if they could see him there, stuck in the wall. With his tongue he hooked his siphon into the corner of his mouth. He took a very small sip; water from his processor, wicked by the lining of his uniform, was distilled from his own waste. Since a recent lesson father might not even have meant to show him, but had done so as his judgement failed, Crospinal could not help but taste the bitter iodine.

After some amount of half-assed struggle, he managed to free himself and continue, on his way, back to the pen, where father was tethered, trapped, and almost dead.

Party number seven was a ceremony with no precedent. Held in the secondary sustenance station, just off the throne room. Dogs were represented, a full force contingent. Fox and Bear were there, too, and three wisps, which seldom appeared, drifting in the breeze that came through openings in the wall. One of father’s spirits carried a direct lightscreen, beaming a broadcast of father himself, back in the centre of the pen, looking healthy and young in his fresh uniform, unable to stop grinning from within the array of tubes and conduits and cables that connected him.

Ghosts drifted about, ebullient.

Father, though, was pretty out of it, on nootropics and such, coasting on their effects. Any mnemonic breakthrough was a cause for emotional soaring, at least temporarily, and soaring, as Crospinal was well aware, preceded a dive.

From the banks there was an image of a strange, pointy helmet, with stars on it, and another part of the haptic called
chocolate cake
, which had once been a configuration of pellets no longer available from any dispenser, with seven
candles
so real Crospinal almost believed father’s story that they would have been hot, if Crospinal were able to touch them. Details meant father was well-stoked. Fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing, Crospie grinned awkwardly and kept fairly silent. The outcome seemed inevitable.

Afterwards, father dispersed the guests, most of whom vanished instantly. The two elementals, made of metal and the hardest of plastics, lingered for a moment before turning and leaving under their own accord, without a word. Only the spirit carrying father’s image remained.

And Crospinal, of course. He could hardly vanish.

“I’m proud of you.” Father’s face, shining like ambients, the nutrients almost visible through the tight skin of his face. He was wearing the front plate of an amber helmet—all he could fit. “I might not tell you often enough, but I’m
very
proud of you. Look how well you’re doing, Crospie. Your legs are much straighter. Do they hurt today? You haven’t said in a while. You can get about quite well.”

Crospinal stood there, best he could, another absurd haptic called a
balloon
in one mitt and projections of icing on his face. Even at such an age, he knew there was more coming. There was always more coming. That’s what life was like. Implications and half-complete expressions, undefined expectations, ever unsure what exactly was needed, or what, in fact, was happening. He waited uncomfortably.

Father cleared his throat; tubes shook, back in the pen, where his body waited. The spirit carrying this representation loomed even closer. Smoke and mirrors, layers of illusions.

“You’ve passed many hurdles, son. You’re
healthy
. You’re
alive
. You’re
civilized
. Do you understand what this means, Crospie? Do you see?”

Crospinal’s stomach rumbled. “Not really. But I think so?” Yet he did not.

“One day, sooner than either of us thinks, we’ll have to part. You know that. Of course you do. And when you’re on your own, you’ll bring civilization with you, like a torch. Everything will be made available if you persevere against the dark. This is the year of action. The seventh year. A year of renewal, a year of hope. You’re a success, son, and you’ve made
me
a success. The past is inconsistent but the future will be
clear
! Today, I had images in my mind so lucid I could almost touch them. Look at what I found: the birthday party of a child! If you continue to listen, Crospinal, and
believe
, we can push the dark away together. But, for now, stick by my side, son. Keep your old man company. There’s much to learn and you’re not ready.”

Crospinal fumbled with the balloon string (which, like the hat, the candles, and his companions, was constructed from photons). He needed to go pee more than anything. He liked to hold off for as long as possible, only relieving himself while alone, and without any choice, because the catheter, when activated, made him queasy. He shuffled his feet. The apparition wavered. Crospinal’s legs were killing him. They always did. But he had stopped complaining, that’s all. Father’s representation continued to grin and beam. Even Crospinal’s eyes hurt.

The grand entrance—prodigal son, returned—was, needless to say, less effective than he would have liked: when Crospinal appeared in the opening to the central chamber—where father had bound himself to the gate, and called forth his throne, ensconcing them both—he was hot and out of breath (his regulator was on the fritz), and the neoprene fabric of his sleeves was smeared with stains. Rivulets of sweat stitched down his face, quavered by the shield thrown up by his collar, and trickled down his neck, where capillaries of his uniform kicked in to lap them up, but the old processor was stale and overheated.

Here, where father’s influence was strongest, the structure remained mostly right-angles, and metallic, with polymethyl beams cantilevered up from the floor grilles. The lighting was mostly ambient, but there were two rows of potlights, halogen, embedded overhead. Small objects and arcane devices that had fallen from the ceiling, or were pushed from the walls, littered the area by father’s feet, like offerings. The floor was strewn with artifacts—metals, and hard plastics—that father called
concrete ephemera
. Expelled, expectorated from the world. Father had claimed, when he was able to pontificate, that he, too, might once have emerged thus from within the structures of composites and agents of flux that surrounded them, immaculate.

Mostly the story began with a fade-in, father running, looking for a home.

Against the far wall of the pen was Crospinal’s daybed, and his prayer mat, but Crospinal did not want to look at them. Memories took away his energy and tormented him.

But what else was there?

He blinked.

Father slumped in his throne, face mostly hidden by the conduits and wires that drooped from his skull to fan out across the floor behind him, to the banks of the gate, which dwarfed him. They were silent, black, yet emanated age and omniscient, corrupted knowledge. Crospinal stepped across the threshold. The pen, as it did of late, stunk of rot, and piss, of decay and impending collapse. And
disease
. Folds of composite were growing over a control panel. The throne itself seemed to be sinking. He could discern father’s shallow breathing: there remained life yet. Father’s breastbone—a prominent ridge against the Kevlar breastplate of his tricot—moved. Gurgling fluids, nutrients in and out, cocktails from the gate, and information, kept him going. Though they were no contest for the ravages of disease and time. Now father’s legs were mere bones, the fabric of his uniform collapsed against them, bulbous knees rivalling Crospinal’s. Through the translucent boots, father’s feet were bloated and bruised, the skin split, weeping pus his own processor had long ago given up on.

Father slept.

Still broody from his visit to the harrier and the declarations his girlfriend had made (though taken aback, somewhat, despite his affront, at the incredible and perverse decrepitude toward which a life could sink), Crospinal was suddenly not sure if he would have cared had father died, though he flushed with guilt at the sacrilege of this thought, and immediately fell to his knees.

“By the order of all that is good, and organic, and by the benefits of reinstating the way things used to be,” said Crospinal, when the pain had driven away his terrible thoughts and he was able to speak: “I went beyond your range again, past the gangplanks—which are now almost entirely gone. I’ve been up the towers, and I’ve crossed over the rotating corridor. I looked out portholes at seventeen, and at ten, and I gazed a long time out the harrier. I told you about the harrier?” He closed his eyes, hearing his own voice:
And I tried to kick your stupid dogs and I was dumped by a beautiful manifestation whose existence you know nothing about and I doubted your words until the world trembled under me.

There were some confessions Crospinal had never made, and never would.

“I can tell the world is changing. Faster and faster. Out by the transfer tube, a big flake broke away, a
really
big piece. Taller than me. I don’t know if you can see that far anymore. There was toluene, and lights. Polymers made a panel. It’s nearly set.” He let his words fade, opening his eyes. Maybe father would take this news as another form of defeat, if it sank in, and get even sicker. Regulators that either fed him, or took essences away, sighed and hissed impatiently. Crospinal felt ghosts all around, spirits and such, fretting, expecting him to help.
Lift a finger,
they pleaded.
Do something. . . .

Small wonder he stayed away.

Dogs appeared, so to speak, either side. When Crospinal looked back up, father was staring directly at him. Dark eyes watched him, brimming with fear of the impending nothingness and resignation of its inevitability.

“You’re awake.” Crospinal’s heart thudded, a barrage of his own hopes and pain and guilt—

But there was blood inside father’s mouth, dripping down, and father’s gaze turned darker, lost focus, like dim lights dimming more. His head, looking tiny atop the padded collar around the neckpiece of his uniform, lolled. Tubes shifted. He had said nothing. Crospinal thought of his girlfriend yet again, of her misaligned gaze. Had falling in love with her been the betrayal that caused this demise? It seemed important to remember details of his relationship but details eluded him. A transfer of allegiance, away from father, making Crospinal the agent of this change? He ground his teeth together as a black clot slid and hung from father’s boney chin, the throat working, trying to swallow—

“Sometimes . . . I look around,” father whispered. “I don’t know who lives here, in this house.”

“What?” Crospinal leaned forward to hear better. “What house? What’s a house?”

“The furniture.” Father’s chest shuddered; tubes rustled; the clot broke free and fell to his chest, where it slid farther. The material of his uniform went to work, reclaiming it. “Furniture is upside down. But then I stare for a bit longer—because I can’t move from this spot—and I see the same thing. I
live
here. This is
my house
.” Showing red-flecked teeth and trying, unsuccessfully, to lick those dry lips. “No furniture is upside down, is it? Is it, boy?”

“Dad, there’s a helmet, in the dispenser at thin tree. I saw it coming in. A blue one, with a clear visor. Perfect. You know? Should I get it? I could put it on.”

“This is a nice place . . .”

“Dad? Would you like me to get a fresh helmet? And put it on?”

“I lost my way . . .” So quiet, almost a breath. “For the longest time I couldn’t conceive. There was a man, next door, when I was a child. But I’ve reached endtime now.”

“This isn’t endtime.” Though Crospinal did not believe his own words. What was he supposed to say? He did not understand. At times, father had known so much about the world, yet at others, like now, seemed to know absolutely nothing. Hard to imagine him as a younger man, in the state he had often described as newborn, in an adult body, with instincts to run, find a gate, raise a family. Haunted by his broken memories, he would call the pen forth, to rise into place around him. No haptics existed from before Crospinal was born, or, if they did, they had been kept away. He relied on instructions, ramblings, and asides. Struggling to understand everything these days, he wondered how father’s brief speech and signs of life could be cause for joy, for celebration, because Crospinal felt no emotion akin to joy, nor did he think, as his girlfriend turned away from him, and father was leaving him alone forever, that he would ever have the capacity.

“Son,” said father suddenly, but when Crospinal looked into the black eyes once more he saw no passing flicker of days past, no lessons, no guidance, no love, just the impending victory of darkness.

The world juddered. Maybe it was chuckling at them. Crospinal stood. His joints popped loudly in the silence and brought, at last, a flood of tears.

Father had begun to snore.

One of the first actions young Crospie had been asked to attempt, in that year, was to turn a brass dial in the wheelroom, directly behind the pen. The wheelroom was a chamber of hard, grey walls and polymethyl floor. This task had never been tried before—for obvious reasons. Touching the thumb pad of the contraption that occupied the centre of the wheelroom went all right: the blue panels activated, the way they should have, under the Dacron layer of his mitt, and the icon—an arrow—appeared. Yet the mechanism of the dial itself was seized pretty good or had not properly emerged in the first place. It would not budge.