Captive Dreams

by Michael Flynn

  “Don’t worry, Ethan. He’s gone. I won’t let him hurt you again.” She hugged him and stroked his head gently.

  “What did you do to my son!” It was a loud, angry voice and Alma turned to see the fat boy clinging to the jeans of his mother. He was pointing. “She called me a name, mommy.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What did I do?” Alma rose and faced the woman. “I found your boy assaulting my son and I chased him away. That’s what I did!”

  “Impossible,” the woman replied. “His father and I believe in non-violence. We won’t even let him watch those awful cartoon shows.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.” Alma was aware of the other shoppers gathering at the two ends of the aisle. “All I know is that I found him yanking on my son’s—” Sudden panic: What do I call it? “—my son’s prosthetic.”

  “Prosthetic?” The other woman looked openly at what she had been eyeing surreptitiously. “What is it, some kind of boom box?”

  “No. It’s a sensory collator.”

  “You’re Seakirt, aren’t you?” It was another woman shopper, who had come up the aisle to eavesdrop. “I read about you in the Enquirer.” She turned to the first woman. “Her son is retarded, so she hooked him up to a computer.” Turning back to Alma. “It won’t work, you know. Computers aren’t really ‘thinking machines.’ All they do is crunch numbers.”

  “I know that. I—”

  But the first woman drew herself up. “You allowed a retarded child to roam loose in the supermarket? What if he had hurt someone! What if he threw some sort of fit!”

  Alma wanted to tell the woman that retardation was not like that. That being slow to process inputs and outputs was not the same thing as homicidal mania. But the woman was in no mood to listen. “It’s only a prosthetic,” Alma said, pointing to the computer. “Like your son’s glasses.”

  “How dare you compare my son to…that!”

  “Just remember, it was your son who threw the fit.” She grabbed the shopping cart in one hand and Ethan in the other and pressed past them. Behind her she could hear the whispers. “It’s just awful what she’s done to him.” “It isn’t natural.” “Computers are taking over everything.”

  When she checked out of the market, she told the manager to be sure to charge the other woman for the bag of candy her child had eaten.

  There were pickets in front of the Janifer Institute for Electroneural Medicine: several clumps of them wielding placards and eyeing each other as warily as they eyed the tall metal-and-glass doors. Alma hesitated as she stepped from the parking garage down the block and she put her hand down by her side to stop Ethan.

  “Whass wrong, mommy?”

  “Hush.” She backed up a hasty step and peered around one of the concrete support pillars. The protesters weren’t actually marching. Some were leaning on their signs, drinking coffee. The four police officers standing between the protesters and the Institute chatted with each other or rocked back and forth on their heels as they watched the sign-wavers. They weren’t expecting trouble, just nuisance; one more dull duty. The local Eyewitless Action News Team were already set up, but their cameras weren’t running. The technical crew were having coffee and donuts while the on-camera personality put the finishing touches on his hair. Curious passers-by, seeing the cameras and the protesters, had stopped and were waiting.

  For her.

  They were all waiting for her to show up, Alma realized. The protesters were going to stage something dramatic and visual for the evening news. If they got themselves on TV they would be real; their ideas would be worthy of attention.

  At least, those ideas that could be compressed to slogans and symbols and sound bytes. End the Cruelty, declared one sign, and what did that have to do with her? Another sign bore a red slashed-circle superimposed over a picture of a computer. And, yes, she had been getting a lot of that lately. Not from her friends and co-workers—they worked with computers themselves—but from strangers who felt duty-bound to tell her what was good for her. On a third sign she could make out the word “blasphemy” but nothing else.

  Alma hated them. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? Why did everyone have to tell her what to do? She backed away from the pillar. “Come on, Ethan. Let’s get back in the van. We’re going home. We’ll see Doctor Silverman some other day.”

  “Let me see,” he said, and stepped forward with his wheely. Alma seized him roughly by the shoulders and yanked him back.

  “Don’t let them spot you,” she told him. “They’ll come and scream at us so they can get on TV.”

  “Can I be on teebee?”

  “No. Stay with momma.” She turned toward the minivan, but Ethan shook loose from her grip and broke toward the sidewalk, pushing his wheely ahead of him. “Ethan!” She tried to shout and not shout at the same time, so Ethan would hear her and the protesters would not. But there must have been something wrong with the wheely’s audio circuits because Ethan did not pause. By the time he “heard” her it would be three seconds too late.

  Before he could turn the pillar, Ethan ran headlong into a man coming the other way. The man grunted and reached out and grabbed the boy’s arm. “Steady, there, fella,” he said. Then he stooped and rubbed his shin where the wheely had struck him. “You should watch where you’re going. You could hurt someone.” He looked up. “You must be Alma Seakirt. I thought I saw someone peek out from the parking garage.”

  He was a short, dark man, about 90% normal size. His features—nose, ears, hands, feet—were small, but of mature proportions; as if he were the product of a pantograph, a scaled-down version of a full-sized man. Somehow, that seemed to concentrate his energies, so that he projected an intensity that normal-sized men could not.

  Alma stepped toward him and yanked Ethan’s arm from his grasp. “Touch my boy again and I’ll call for the police.”

  He blinked and pulled his hand away, as if Ethan had suddenly become white hot. “Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m not a child mol—I’m not differently-motivated sexually. I just wanted to talk to you for a moment.”

  “Your timing is off. The cameras aren’t here yet.”

  “No one followed me. They think I left something in my car.”

  Alma had taken away two steps away, leading Ethan toward their minivan. She paused and turned back. “Why?” she asked.

  He flushed, an attractive coloring against the dark, curly locks of his hair. “Not all of us are publicity hounds. I don’t turn my convictions on and off for the cameras. I’ll leave the posing to Gerald and Inga and the others at National. My impression is that you don’t like confrontation, especially with a large group of activists.”

  “Is it.”

  “You had a judge issue an injunction to stop us from picketing at your home—”

  “My God, you don’t have to be a privacy freak for that! Everyone in the neighborhood was involved.” And she had taken some heat from the neighbors herself, as if it were her fault that protesters threatened to disrupt their quiet little corner of the universe. Only Doc Wilkes, a retired G.P. who lived six houses around the block, had been sympathetic, calling her from time to time with words of encouragement. “So what?”

  “So, I wanted you to listen to what we have to say.”

  She hesitated, resenting the trap of reasonableness. How could a fair-minded person reject anything without first studying it? Like those people who condemned movies they had never seen, or books they had never read. The ACLU had said that freedom of speech meant nothing if no one heard. And so by subtle steps the right to speak becomes the obligation to listen.

  But she noticed that the other hadn’t said that he wanted to listen to what she had to say. Be reasonable was always a one-way request. She had never heard of anyone pleading, Please let me be reasonable.

  “Is something funny?”

  She shook her head. How could she explain? She had no desire to plead her position to him and was not even sure what her position was. But he
was good-looking in a miniature sort of way and under other circumstances she would not have minded getting to know him better. “Sorry, I’d love to hear what you have to say, but I don’t want to hang around. One of your friends out there could show up looking for you.”

  “Where, then?” he asked, fast as a panther.

  “Where?”

  “If not here, where do you want to meet me?”

  Over drinks in a small, intimate bistro…? Lord, what was she thinking? And what would she do with Ethan in the meantime? “One on one?” she said sharply. “No chanting crowds? No cameras?”

  He nodded. “Just you and me.”

  Someplace where she could take Ethan along, like the public library? But if they met anywhere public, the vultures would gather. Someone would notice the boy, and the silent, whispering crowds would stare. And the picketers, cheated of their prey at the Institute, might well hear of it and be waiting, cameras and all, when she stepped outside. Mick had thought that the neural bypass would free her from Ethan. That was how much he knew! She wished he were here so he could see how wrong he had been.

  Her house? Oh, God, no. She didn’t even know this man. She was not about to put herself alone with him.

  So, they couldn’t meet public and they couldn’t meet private. Which let her off the hook.

  “I have a neighbor,” she heard herself say. “He might let us use his house.” She was as astonished as if a stranger had spoken, and could do no more than give him a time and an address.

  She watched him get into his own car, a small, gas-efficient foreign make. No surprise there. In a large car, a Caddy or a Lincoln, he would have looked like a child. She started her van and put it into gear. Why did I agree to this? she wondered. She took the back street exit from the garage so the people in front of the Institute would not see her or recognize her van. A glance in the rear-view mirror showed her that the little man was following. I don’t even know his name. This wasn’t right. Her life needed no more complications than it already had.

  Doc Wilkes was a comfortable old gentleman who seemed as much a part of his house as the vines and flowerbeds. The wrinkles on his face were concentrated around the corners of the eyes and mouth, and his eyes took in everything with lively interest. Alma did not know him well; he was mostly a voice on the telephone, or a friendly wave when he jogged by her house with his Walkman. Yet, when she went to his door and made her strange request, he did not hesitate to agree.

  Alma stepped inside to find herself surrounded by soft music: a quiet, bluesy tune she did not recognize. The sounds seemed to be coming from a room at the end of the hallway, but when she looked up she saw twin speakers in the wall. Doc Wilkes grinned. “It’s a trick you can play with digital recordings. Musical ventriloquism. I have speakers in every room. I can even make different instruments sound from different directions, or seem to spin around you. Hello, there, little Ethan.”

  Ethan peeked out from behind Alma’s skirts. “Hello?” he said uncertainly.

  “He’s a little shy around strangers sometimes.”

  Wilkes beamed and knelt in front of the boy. “I’ll bet you don’t remember me at all,” he said. Ethan shook his head, but remained silent. “Never mind. You can call me Doc.” He looked at Alma. “Who’s your G.P.?”

  “Doctor Khan.”

  He seemed startled. “Noor Khan? Is that a fact? I thought she had retired.” He shook his head. “Well, some of us last longer than others.” A strange, haunted look flickered briefly in his eyes. “Some of us last longer.” Alma wondered what ancient hurt had been resurrected. “Well,” he continued brusquely, “it’s not how much time, but how well we use it. Noor Khan is a good physician; better than I ever was. Has she put any meat on those bones of hers, or is she still as scrawny as a crane?”

  Ethan tugged at the old man’s sleeve. “Doc?” He pointed. “Who’s makin’ th’ music?”

  Wilkes turned his attention back to the boy. “It’s called Careless Love. Can you beat the time, Ethan? Like this?” And he tapped a slow, syncopated 4/4 rhythm on the top of Ethan’s wheely. Alma fidgeted.

  “Can I tell this fellow he can come in, then? I want to get this over with.”

  “What? You mean he’s cooling his heels out on the porch? Of course, he can come in.” Wilkes arose in a creaking of knees. “That was very good, Ethan. He’s much improved, Mrs. Seakirt. Much improved.”

  Alma paused by the door and looked back at him. “In most ways.”

  She could see that he wanted to ask her what she meant, but he did not press the point. “You can use the living room, off to the left there. I’ll make myself scarce. If I stick around, your friend is liable to ask me what I think, and if he does, I’m liable to tell him.” He chuckled. “I’ll take Ethan out to the kitchen, if you like.”

  “No, thank you. He’d be too much a bother for you.”

  “No bother at all.” Doc took Ethan by the hand. “Come with me, Ethan. We’ll play some more games with the music. Hum along with me. Dáaa da dá da dáa d-dáaaa…”

  Alma watched them go. Ethan would be all right. Doc was a doctor, after all; even if he was retired. And she would be right down the hall if Ethan needed her. Her feelings, as she opened the door, were a curious blend of anxiety and anticipation.

  His name was Vinnie Patterson and he thought she had done the wrong thing.

  “No one has the right,” he explained earnestly, leaning forward over the coffee table that separated them, “to profit from cruelty to others.”

  She shrank back from his intensity into the high-backed, upholstered wing chair. “What cruelty?” she asked, remembering the placard she had seen waving in front of the Janifer Institute. On the table before her, her barely sipped coffee slowly cooled. Doc Wilkes had offered them both a cup but, when he turned to Vinnie, the man had responded with a short dissertation on the rape of the Brazilian rain forest. What must it be like, Alma wondered, to live a life in which every act was a political act, even the drinking of a simple cup of coffee. For all Vinnie knew, the coffee had been grown in Colombia, not Brazil.

  But there was probably something objectionable about Colombia, too.

  “What cruelty?” Vinnie unzipped a black, vinyl carrying pouch and rummaged inside. “The surgery that you put your boy through was tested on animals, wasn’t it?”

  “Chimpanzees.” Alma remembered Silverman telling her that.

  “Yes.” He handed her an 8x10 glossy photograph. It was black and white, not quite in focus. A chimpanzee, lips pulled back from its teeth, mouth open in what had to be a cry, stretched its arms through the bars of a cage. The pleading eyes stared out at Alma. She looked back at Vinnie.

  “Torture,” he said. “Innocent animals tortured so that a few white males could become rich and famous.”

  “So that my son could function like a normal boy.”

  “The mentally challenged have the right to their own lifestyle. Would your child have a right to use this technology if it had been tested first on Jews? Or on blacks?”

  “What? Of course not. That would be horrible.”

  Vinnie leaned forward again, as if he were prepared to leap across the table. “Then why do you think you have the right to use technology tested on other living creatures?”

  “But…They were only animals.”

  “Only animals.” Vinnie shook his head. “Alma, a rat is a dog is a pig is a boy.”

  She reared back. “What does that mean? How dare you compare my Ethan to a rat!” Her mother had done that, she remembered. Beatrice had called Ethan a lab rat.

  “No, no,” he said. “I don’t mean that Ethan is no better than a lab rat. I meant that rats—any living thing—has rights. That we humans are not entitled to use them as things. ‘Anything that has eyes has a soul.’”

  “Potatoes?” She couldn’t resist teasing him, he was so earnest. “Laced shoes?”

  For a moment, she thought she had offended him. His lips tightened and pulled back at the corne
rs. But then, abruptly, he laughed. “Yes,” he said, “as a matter of fact, shoes do have soles. Potatoes, I’m not sure about.” She laughed with him.

  “Sometimes,” he continued, “we can take ourselves too seriously and forget how to laugh. But—” And the laughter bubbled away like flattened soda. “—would you have cracked a joke if we had been discussing women’s rights instead of animal rights?”

  I might have, at that, she thought. “No,” she said.

  “It’s always wrong to impose human ideas on nature. And it’s especially wrong to use them in research in some sort of mad quest for immortality. There are more benign ways of doing the research. Epidemiological studies. Computer models.”

  “That sounds pretty good, young fellow.” Doc Wilkes stood in the doorway with a steaming coffee pot. “Animal rights. I never knew anyone in the medical profession who wanted to mistreat animals. Hell’s bells. If the animals were mistreated, the test results wouldn’t be valid. If ethics fail to show the way, self-interest will do.” He walked to the table and glanced at Alma’s still full cup. “Gone cold,” he said. She looked away. For some reason, Doc made her feel uneasy.

  “Rights are a human notion,” she heard him tell Vinnie. “There are no ‘rights’ in nature. Does the lion honor the lamb’s rights? Or vice versa? No, sir, she does not. So what entitles us to impose our human ideas of rights onto animals?”

  Vinnie stared at him. He opened his mouth and closed it. Then he said, “That’s a trick argument. Inga has shown that it is immoral to—”

  Doc waved an irritated hand. “Save your moral judgments for church. Don’t try to force your beliefs on the rest of us.”

  Alma suddenly realized why Doc’s presence made her feel uneasy. “Ethan!” she said, suddenly rising from the chair. “You left him alone in the kitchen!” She turned to push past him and her knee banged the coffee table, knocking the china cup over and sending a flood of cold coffee across the glassed top. Behind her she heard Vinnie’s voice.