Memorymakers (11 page)

I
am old, but do I dare imagine?

“I want you . . . to accompany me to headquarters,” Jabu said. Fear and excitement threatened to overwhelm him.

“No!”

“You’re worried about the way I travel, the mysteries of ember travel? You’ve heard of this?” The girl did not respond.

“I assure you,” Jabu said, “it isn’t dangerous for you. I can take passengers.”

“I’m not going.”

“Shall I get Peenchay?” Squick asked.

Jabu shook his head. “Peenchay is afraid of her, petrified. You didn’t notice? “

Squick mumbled something, and peripherally Jabu saw the fieldman’s feet shuffle uneasily.

Jabu studied the girl’s narrow, delicately featured face. So pretty, so perishable. The eyes were the green of an ocean, mysterious and intriguing, concealing within them the contents of a universe.

“Well,
I’m
not afraid of her!” Squick said. He lunged for the girl, grabbed her collar and held an open hand by her face, threatening to slap her. “See? There’s nothing to be afraid of from this one.”

“This is no time for foolish impulses,” Jabu snapped. He saw no fear in the girl’s face. “Let go of her.”

Squick hesitated, and his face took on a strange expression. He stared hard at the Director, then did as he was told and moved away.

Through it all, the Harvey girl hadn’t flinched, hadn’t shown any defense. An icy stiffness to the face, dominated by sea-green eyes that were slow to move and absorbed everything. No details missed.

The gaze moved to Jabu, and he met it as long as he could before looking away. Had she seen through him, to his heart that pounded so wildly? Jabu took anxious, erratic breaths.

“Bring the robots?” Squick queried.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Jabu said. He sucked in his breath as quietly as he could. “Better to leave her here for the moment. Shouldn’t take her against her will, though it might be accomplished. The young mother is not physically strong in all ways, and there are unknown effects of my travel methods upon her. Correct decisions must be thought out, analyzed from every angle. I’ll bring assistance, the Inventing Corps.”

“Right, My Lord,” Squick said, the tone of a sycophant.

“I say to you, Malcolm Squick, and hear me clearly, you are to keep her safe until my return. You are not to harm her or her brother or cause these children to be placed anywhere they will be in danger. Your duty is to protect them. Understood?”

“You’re leaving me in charge, even though I—”

“If you’d rather I turned this over to Peenchay?”

“No, I didn’t mean . . . of course I can do better. Thank you, Director.”

“Don’t grovel. Give them toys, games. And provide art materials for the girl. It’s one of her special talents.”

Emily’s gaze twinkled gratefully in Jabu’s direction.

Jabu thought for a moment of the unprecedented challenge he would present to his brilliant Inventing Corps, and wondered what they could accomplish after all that had transpired. He tossed a withering glance at Squick, then set in motion the mechanism to leave.

Jabu saw himself through Squick’s eyes: the Director glowing bright ruby red, a glow that penetrated all clothing. Without flame the glowing compressed itself to a brilliant ember that flitted about in final inspection and finally disappeared into the puppet theater.

Chapter 13

“Gween adults are often more childlike than their offspring.”

—Section III, page 11, “Fieldman’s Handbook”

Victoria had spent much of the afternoon doing her hair and makeup, making everything just right, and in the dressing table mirror she admired the effect: Her black hair was arranged in a carefree style, with makeup applied so skillfully one would have supposed her skin contained no pores.

The telephone rang, and she lifted the receiver from the nightstand behind her, flipping on the video relay to project her image to the caller.

“Detective Caplan returning your husband’s call, Mrs. Harvey,” and he appeared on her pic-tel screen from his shirt collar up. He had a wide face and mouth, with the droop-featured expression of an undertaker.

Victoria blinked her eyes rapidly as she listened to him, and her lacquered nails tapped restlessly on the smooth finish of the dressing table.

“I can only repeat what I told your husband yesterday,” Caplan said, “when you first contacted us. We’ve listed your son and daughter as missing. Reasons unknown at this time. Kids get unhappy. They run away from home. We see a lot of this, too much. Your kids have only been gone for a short while.”

Victoria’s reply was harsh. “My husband is very upset with the inaction of your department. And because he’s upset, I have to pay the consequences for your ineptitude. You should have found the children by now.”

“We’re doing the best we can. The leads are scarce and—”

“Try harder.”

“I need more answers first. I realize you’re upset about the children, Mrs. Harvey, but I still have questions. Your housekeeper, for example. Yesterday you said she wasn’t up to speaking with me. How about today?”

“Mrs. Belfer doesn’t know any more than I do,” Victoria replied, trying to conceal the agitation in her voice. “She’d tell you exactly what I’ve told you. She didn’t know the children were missing until we returned home. Mrs. Belfer has not seen them since they left with their grandparents for a little drive the day before we discovered them gone. When she got up the following morning, she assumed they’d stayed overnight at their grandparents’ home. Now that she knows the circumstances she’s . . . gone into shock . . . very ill in bed.”

“That’s not quite the way your husband tells the story. He says she’s a drunk and a liar, and there’s some confusion about a message on the answering machine.”

“Oh?” Victoria said, feigning surprise. She wished she hadn’t turned on her pic-tel screen, for now the detective could study her expressions, every movement, the tapping of her nails. She stopped tapping, lifted her chin to the screen and adjusted the long silk scarf that hung across her shoulders.

“Now, why would you allow a woman like that to take care of your children?” Caplan asked. “I’m puzzled.”

“Mrs. Belfer is a fine woman! And as for the answering machine, I found no confusion over messages.”

“Someone conveniently erased the tape.”

“I know nothing about that!”

“Of course not. Look, Mrs. Harvey, I have a tough job to do, and I’ve got to talk with your Mrs. Belfer. Well, what about it?”

“Impossible.”
Bats in Belfer’s belfry,
Victoria thought, struggling to think of something funny to keep the edges of her mouth turned upward. Detectives noticed things like that, the little things.

“Then I can’t do my job. All right, ma’am, I’ll have another chat with your husband. He seems a lot more cooperative.”

“I just won’t listen to any criticisms of Mrs. Belfer.”

“That seems odd to me.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Who does she date? Anyone?”

“I don’t know any of her friends,” Victoria answered in the loftiest of tones. “She’s a servant, and I don’t permit her to have visitors here. I don’t know what you’re getting at, Detective . . . whatever your name is.”

“Caplan. Just trying to get the facts straight. Did the children have problems in school or with their friends?”

Victoria furrowed her brow, but just a little so as not to wrinkle it too much. “Well, Emily does see a therapist.” She glanced at her nails. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of my husband, since Emily is his daughter, not mine. He doesn’t like to hear unpleasantries about the girl. But she needs a lot of help. I mean, we all know that most teenagers, um, have difficulties. But in Emily’s case it’s more than the ordinary sort of thing. She has an overactive imagination, concocts bizarre, unnatural things. Just the other day she was talking about bugs in our walls that only she and Thomas could hear, and she had him believing it. Her therapist says her problem is ‘reverse patterning’ or some such thing. Anyway, she isn’t normal.”

“That’s all very interesting.”

He’s taking the bait,
Victoria thought.
I’ve got to get him off the Belfer kick. Who knows what that derelict might reveal to him?

“As I told my husband,” Victoria said, “I think Emily talked her brother into running away. He’s actually a much more cooperative child than she, and when his normal imagination is infected with her ravings . . . well, I think it’s dangerous to him. I’ve said many times that Emily should be committed to an institution where she can be watched, and now this.”

“Yes, ma’am. I see.”

“Thomas would never initiate any action to hurt others. Not that he isn’t thoughtless at times, most children are, but he’s not vicious. And he’s a follower.”

“But why would Emily want to take off like that?”

“Who knows what goes on in a sick brain? I’m no psychiatrist. The girl needs confinement. It’s obvious she’s dangerous to everyone around her.”

“I’ll look into that. Now, back to your housekeeper—”

“Can’t that wait until some other day? Next week?”

“If we haven’t found the children by tomorrow, Mrs. Harvey, I’ll be back to see your housekeeper, no matter how she feels. It’s that important.”

Damn!
Victoria thought as they ended the conversation and closed the telephone link.

In the mirror she saw her eyes narrow and change from lavender to purple-black. Her expression flattened, and her lips twisted into a hateful grimace. “Emily . . . Emily . . .” she crooned, “and dear Mrs. Belfer, my old ‘friend,’ headaches from both of you . . . headaches that must end.”

Victoria tapped her lacquered nails on the dressing table for a long time.

Chapter 14

“There will be an awakening and those who rule will fall.”

—The only unfulfilled prediction of Emily Harvey

Squick sat at the desk in his second office, deep within the stealth-encapsulated floors of the Smith Enterprises branch office, puffing his familiar Ch’Var hound pipe. His plans and hopes had been scattered, and were as far removed now from his grasp as intelligence from Peenchay.

The Inferior stood before him, shoulders hunched, gazing insipidly at Squick. A stream of slobber ran from Peenchay’s thick lips and dripped upon the floor.

“What should we do about this?” Squick queried. He inhaled deeply of the pipe, and its smoke comforted him only a little.

“Huh?”

“I put this to you, Peenchay. Save my ass, and yours. How do we do it?”

“I dunno.”

“Director Jabu expects too much of me. I can’t be what he expects. I can’t do what I need to do to become—oh, what do you care?”

“I’m not sure how to answer . . .”

“You know, Peenchay, Ch’Vars have to face a lot of the same everyday problems as Gweens. Building inspectors, taxing authorities, incompetent clerks, fanatics, airheads and neighbors who play their stereos at all hours. You know, I’ve never thought of Gweens and Ch’Vars like this before, and maybe I’m not much smarter than you.”

Peenchay shifted his weight uneasily.

The Director’s orders rang through Squick’s thoughts:
“Your duty is to protect them.”
Squick weighed his options, which seemed limited. He ran his fingers along the smooth teak surface of his desk, worked at an indentation on the edge.

This Peenchay looks like a wild animal,
Squick thought,
feral eyes, slobbering mouth, the images of raw Gweenbrain firing across the subhuman synapses of his brain. But he functions in his niche, better perhaps than I do in mine.

“What would you say if I told you this whole mess is your fault?” Squick asked. He set the pipe in a holder on the desktop.

“I dunno.”

Squick gazed at the small puddle of slobber on the floor and said, “You’re salivating.”

“Whuh?”

“It must be snack time.”

Peenchay’s eyes lit up, and like an obedient dog he awaited permission to go and eat.

Squick waved a hand, and his assistant trudged away.

Ideas began to percolate within Squick’s brain. He remembered seeing a strange expression on Jabu’s face as the Director spoke with Emily Harvey. So cautious Jabu had been, almost tiptoeing around her. And his eyes, the way he looked at her. With awe? Or fascination? Might it have been desire?

Does Jabu desire this child-woman?

And for a time Squick’s thoughts took much the same course as Jabu’s had only a short while before. There could be no child from such a union, from Ch’Var and—

But Emily Harvey is not a Gween! What is she, then? Our Director wishes to mate with her? Is that it? I’m sure I saw desire in his eyes . .
.
Emotion overcoming reason in the leader of all Ch’Vars? But there is logic in it, too, for what options are left to our race with our Nebulons taken from us? Jabu hesitated. He’s so cautious, hates taking chances .
. .
I’ll bet he’s thinking about it!

Squick, with all he had botched in his career, felt he was certain to receive a career-limiting reprimand from Jabu. Even if he guarded this prize hostage well, and even if Ch’Vars received their precious Nebulons back, Squick was to blame for their loss. And if the Director ever learned of certain indiscretions, and those of Peenchay . . . Squick didn’t want to face such a future.

He saw only one path to redemption, and he kicked himself for not seeing it sooner. Lordmother, how could he have overlooked it? Now his thoughts leaped like fire sparks. The girl was an alpha-mother, responsible for a new race. She would need to mate with a male.

Why not me?

“The little one is mine,” Squick whispered. “I’ll be the first male, the father of a new race!”

The fieldman reminded himself of the quality of his genes, and a new plan clicked into place. It felt right. Everything pointed in one direction.

How much time do I have? Not much, probably. One try may be all I get. But Jabu will return to the game room first. I can gain time by moving her.

He remembered the sensor in the basement that needed adjustment for the fire department inspection in Gween-accessible areas of the building, and a clever ruse shaped in his mind.

With his libido afire he burst from his office.

Keep the girl safe. It wouldn’t be safe to leave her in the game room while I tend the sensor. Peenchay
might get her. So she goes with me to the basement, to the dark, dark basement.

Squick laughed wildly, a great rolling sound that traveled the length and breadth of the corridor, caroming off walls, floor and ceiling. The laugh surrounded him, and he ran with it.

On the floor in the game room with a doll in her lap, Emily heard Squick coming. She heard him before he made his decision to leave the office, before he laughed. Her heartbeat quickened, and her muscles tensed and twitched with the knowledge that he would appear. She concentrated on the music of her body, and the rhythm of her heart slowed, the spasms in her muscles ceased.

Within moments she heard the door squeak open and saw Squick looming in the semidarkness.

“I’m going to take you with me,” he said. “I’ve got to do some minor repairs to the sensor, our alarm system, and I’ve been instructed to watch you . . . protect you. The only way I can do that is to keep you in sight.”

Emily wasn’t comforted by his weak smile, heard irritation in his voice and something else there she couldn’t quite define. She tried to direct her attention inward, to pry away and inspect Squick’s secret thoughts. She had done so momentarily after his attempted extraction, and gazed into his rotten, demented soul, a soul that reflected the evil of his race. But now it seemed an elusive task, like old memories she couldn’t retrieve.

A great mass of racial memories flooded her—Gween and Ch’Var—and individual memories, felling stars against a black sky, points of light that flashed by and disappeared before she could take hold of them. Only one thing stood out clear mid bright before her—the Nebulons. She knew they were the path to complete knowledge.

Two kinds of humans on Earth, two ways of being, and she had weakened one of those ways. Beyond that her knowledge was fuzzy.
“Ch’Var! Ch’Var!”
voices shouted within. This Squick was one, and Peenchay another, a mutant subtype, and Jabu stood out above all others. He was the leader, the responsible one.

“I won’t go with you,” she said to Squick bluntly.

“I can leave you here with Peenchay. Is that what you want?”

“I’m not afraid of him.” But her inner voice said,
“Fear both, for both are monsters and they mean you harm.”

“Don’t fight me, little one,” Squick said, holding a half smile. “I’m probably the only friend you have here, the only person who can look out for your welfare. You may not want to trust me, but what other choice do you have?”

“I have my brother. Where is he?”

Squick reached for her arm and yanked her to her feet, causing the doll to fall from her grasp. Emily struggled against his strength, but found herself dragged forward and through the door, out of the room that was beginning to seem suddenly like a sanctuary, a place where evil couldn’t reach her.

“I’ve got to hold onto you, little one, to keep you safe.”

Emily stumbled alongside Squick, and he kept her on her feet when she started to fall in the corridor. The door to the stairwell slid open, activated by Squick’s body heat, and he noticed that it went up early, when he was farther away than usual.

He dragged her onto the steps and kept her upright, and they began spiraling downward, reaching landing after landing. They exited on the lowest level, and immediately Squick pulled the girl’s slim body against his own, front to front.

It surprised him that she did not try to struggle free, and he held her tightly, felt each contour of her body against his own. Lordmother, she was lovely, but only a child, not a woman. His urges threatened to drown him, to bury him in the abyss that he feared. He stared for a moment into her sea-green eyes. The cold of deepest ocean water, a coldness reminiscent of Peenchay’s. Couldn’t she be a little kinder?
Lordmother, help me,
he cried silently.

Beyond her he saw the lavender lambency of the sensor coming from behind a partition wall, a dim glow from the weakness of the device, from its needed recalibration. But that could wait. This could not.

Keep the girl safe
. . .
protect her
. . .

Squick’s grip tightened further, and he felt his physical power over her. When he saw the soft, sweet cheek that she turned from him, he was tempted to place his lips against her smooth skin. He shoved his face against hers and kissed the child-woman with the North Sea eyes. Still she did not resist, and his free hand explored her body lightly, almost delicately, as a lover might do.

He felt her shudder.

Be careful,
he warned himself.
This is not yet a woman. But almost.

His mind battled with his mind.
You can’t do this. You’ll be dead. Jabu will kill you.
And the girl? Did he really want to hurt her? Feelings welled up within him that he thought had died long ago. What the hell was happening to him?

Compassion was an emotion he’d bottled up and discarded. It seemed to have existed long ago, before the implantation of the embidium he carried within him. The wild boy with jagged teeth. The carnivore. Who had the boy been? It didn’t matter.

Squick laughed at compassion. It had no value in this hard world, none at all. Only the strong survived. The strong wrote history, controlled the planet. Ch’Vars! He was a survivor, spawned by his ancestors, and he would spawn strength, a strength that would be remembered for all time.

“We are the superior race!” he shouted. “And I, Malcolm Squick, preeminent. You’re not too good for me!”

She turned her face toward his again, and he saw that her eyes were closed. Perhaps she’d decided to cooperate after all. So he loosened his grip on her, and she slid without utterance to the floor.

Lordmother, what’s happened?
Squick thought.

The girl appeared to be in a coma. Had he held her too tightly or frightened her? Could she be dead? He didn’t see her chest moving, and the cheeks were pale. Her skin felt clammy too, but the eyes—closed. Didn’t people die with their eyes open? Always? He didn’t know.

Filled with panic, he was afraid to touch her for vital signs. Sweat covered his forehead, and he wiped it on a sleeve. His hands felt funny, numb and cold, as if they belonged to someone else or a corpse.

He called for a robot and had it carry her down the corridor into the storage area of this basement level, nearer the sensor.

Afterward, Squick paced back and forth, trying to gather his wits. In one corner of the basement a pile of static-free tarps in varying sizes had been piled, tarps that were intended to cover various computer, office machinery and robotic parts stored there. That was Peenchay’s responsibility: cover the items. But it looked as if the Inferior hadn’t worked in this area for months, and parts scattered about the cellar remained unprotected, exposed to dust and deterioration.

Still, Squick felt the Inferior’s presence. It smelled of him here. Rotting flesh.

A brief, vagrant thought crept across Squick’s mind, that he ought to bury the girl beneath the tarps, walk away and let the weight of the material suffocate her. If she was alive now. But what would he tell Jabu afterward, that Peenchay did it?

The robot waited nearby, a unit that resembled a squat, rolling dunce cap. A red light on its pinnacle blinked slowly.

Squick had it arrange a few mini-tarps into a temporary bed for Emily, and she was placed upon these. When the robot was gone and a pall of quiet filled the area, Squick moved to the girl. Terror overwhelmed him. He had to do something he was afraid to do. He had to discover if she lived.

“Emily,” he whispered, and then louder, “Emily!”

She didn’t respond, and he slapped her face, shook her and shouted at her. She neither stirred nor moaned, and he felt not a flicker of life in her skin.

Now he touched the carotid artery on her neck. The faintest throbbing there gave him hope, but only a little and not enough. He had failed again, this time more miserably than ever. The historical record would be unkind to him.

He fled the basement, hit the stairway at full speed and took two or three steps at a time. But the stairs seemed endless, and finally, fatigued, he stopped on a landing to recover his breath. Squick’s breath came in deep, slow gasps, his heartbeat slowed, and a vision came to him.

Something pursued him at tremendous speed, a monster as big as a planet, and he could not elude it. He remained mired in one spot, unable to go up the stairs or down. A creature rode the monster, a tall boy with bristly hair and dead eyes that stared at him with furious hatred, mindless hatred.

One avenue of escape emerged, and he took it automatically, a trigger in his mind, a bowing, a submission.

GUTA-FLUT!

The sound was unlike the way it had been described in Ch’Var lore. It was richer, fuller, more resonant, and he savored the serenity it promised.

GUTA-FLUT!

Thus shittah suicide was set in motion from within, the physical response of the Ch’Var to untenable situations, to insurmountable problems. He bowed in his mind, the ritual gesture. The delicate Ch’Var nervous system was breaking down, spinning upon itself, consuming itself.

Squick screamed aloud, though he was sure no one heard him and no one cared enough to help him. He was in the first stage of ritual shittah, consumed by a mind that eats flesh, a mind that eats mind. He heard himself sobbing and wailing, but the sounds came from an immense distance, throbbing more faintly than the pulse of Emily Harvey.

“
Oh shittah, shittah, shittah . . . ”

His conscious self writhed with futile anger, and he felt his bodily systems winding down, accelerating in a direction they had always had, a direction they had been pointed toward since birth. With dull amazement he realized that he lay supine somewhere, as helpless as the girl, with a giant lavender eye high on the wall above him.