by Andrew Post
Icy blue eyes full of rage sized up Thadius, then me. When she took her first good look at me, the hardness in her face faltered. Her lip curled. Was she second-guessing what she was here to do or just disgusted? She hadn’t seen me during the raid on the Siren House, but I’d seen her. I’m sure she was experiencing what I had that night. Like looking in the mirror.
“They said it might happen,” she said. Behind her, the bent slab of metal she’d used to ride up here splashed into the water. She took a step forward. “But I didn’t think you’d be a scratcher, of all things. I would’ve thought everyone in my lineage, regardless of versh, would have the sense not to get mixed up in that detestable business.”
I had to remind myself she wasn’t really my mom. Instead of going to garage sales and hunting down cassette tapes and CDs, this versh’s Suzanne Kline probably spent those years being indoctrinated in the ways of the Regolatore. Had the harvester implants painfully installed, got fitted for the gray cloak, got a spike of pride and quiet joy when she first put on the hood. Not Mom. Smock Mom.
“Don’t do this,” I said.
Thadius calmly flipped the screen out on the harvester rifle, aimed it her way. “Listen to your daughter.”
“She’s not my daughter.” Smock Mom paid no mind to the harvester rifle. Her focus was locked on me. “But I’ll admit, this is very strange.” Was that doubt in her eyes?
“Please,” I said, this time utilizing my whine that worked on Mom. “Please don’t do this.”
Smock Mom didn’t like begging, I learned immediately. Her face twisted. “Do you know we tortured that poor girl to death trying to get information out of her? Unnecessary killing is against our ways, and you forced our hand by letting that woman step forward in your stead.”
“I didn’t ask her to do that.”
“That was you, then? Up in that room above the balcony behind the tinted glass?”
I nodded. “I wanted you to take me, not her.”
Smock Mom took a deep breath, glanced over her shoulder.
Three Smocks emerged from the kitchen door, dripping wet, one cradling an arm. Apparently, they hadn’t been granted such fine equipment as Smock Mom’s and couldn’t do that levitation trick.
Alternamom looked back at us, this time focusing on Thadius with indifference. “Put that repulsive antique aside, Fat Man.”
“I think I’ll keep it right where it is, if you don’t mind,” he said through gritted teeth.
He was a good actor, but not that good.
More drenched Smocks, some of them bleeding, ambled up the catwalks and stairways. They surrounded us, a gray robe at each side of the octagonal helipad. I heard the click and low hum of several harvester implants warming up.
“Injured?” Alternamom asked, gesturing at my crutches.
“Disabled,” I answered flatly.
She sighed. “Well, that makes me feel better about having to do this. That proves the separation. We might share hypothetical genetics, but no offspring of mine could possibly grow up to be lame.”
Could I still change her mind? “Mom, listen. We don’t want to hurt anybody. We—”
“Normally when we’re assigned to a versh in which we might face an iteration of ourselves or our progeny, we get reassigned. I was directed to this borough in spite of the parallels I might encounter. Because I’m that firm in my faith, I wanted to see what soulless thing was over here, walking about with my prededication-ceremony numeral. See if maybe I could pluck her out, use her for a biological strip mine when I become an elder.” She grinned—same Mom grin, crooked and toothy with those two front teeth slightly overlapped. “So where is the Suzanne Kline of this versh?”
“She’s dead.”
She frowned. “Shame. I would’ve liked to meet my lesser twin.”
“You’re the lesser one,” I said, done trying to appeal to what good side she might have. “The Suzanne of this versh was full of love, understanding. She was the most generous person I ever knew. You’re an insult to the woman she was.”
Her lips drew back from her teeth. Mom never made a face like that—ever. “You little shit.”
Above, blue. A low thud shook the helipad below our feet. A shape sped from the sky at incalculable speeds. A human shape. It rocketed down through the thunderheads, slammed into the helipad, and left a sizeable dent in the asphalt. The figure stood, turned, his long cloak swirling as he thrust one arm out: one Smock vanished. Another twist: another gone. Clifford had harvested a quarter of the Smocks surrounding us before they thought to react.
The Smock who’d once gone by Suzanne Kline screamed, “The Betrayer!” She threw out a palm at Clifford.
He ducked, crouched, leaped, spun in the air, harvested another Smock, and landed. He spun again, recompiled a rusty mass that looked like a crushed car, and sent it rocketing into another Smock and down to Lake Superior. I heard someone rush behind me and turned to see a Smock before Clifford dematerialized him.
In the mayhem, Clifford pried a nanosecond to face me. He looked into my eyes from behind his horn-rimmed glasses, shot me a quick smile, and said, “Hey.” He did a backflip, somewhat unnecessarily I thought. In midspin, he shot out sideways to harvest another Smock.
Even with the carnage going on around us, I couldn’t help but think one thing.
Boom, romance?
The sparkly thought was short-lived.
Thadius blasted his own harvester at a Smock charging at us. The aim was bad, so only half the man got taken up. The other half flopped onto the damp asphalt, blood gushing. With a second shot, Thadius quickly harvested the rest of the Smock.
“Get the Betrayer,” Suzanne shouted, tugging her hood back down over her face. “What are you doing? Harvest him!”
Clifford took another of her peons, then another, easily dodging their shots.
She stamped her foot, hissed, and hopped up onto one of the planters. Her knee-high boots sank into the muddy cucumber patch. With a flick of her wrist, the planter loosened from its bolts and went airborne like a magic carpet under her feet.
“Let’s get out of this,” Thadius said, ducking and pulling me by the shoulder. In the excitement, he must’ve forgotten I couldn’t crouch and walk. The rubber tip of my crutch skidded out, and I fell hard.
Thadius gushed an apology, swept an arm around me, and awkwardly held me upright, my feet barely off the ground. He charged us back toward the barracks side of the rig. His other arm kept the clunky scythe rifle trained ahead, zapping up one Smock before he could get a bead on us.
Clifford couldn’t fly like Suzanne, but his hands shot bursts of air that propelled him into impossibly high leaps. His coat fluttered up around him, and his scarf became a bright red-and-black plaid ribbon trailing behind him, reminding me of the neon scribbles of Darya’s light-pen.
As Thadius carried me away from the helipad battle, Clifford and Suzanne engaged in a fight, spiraling high, exchanging blows—missing each other time and again.
Inside the dining room, Thadius tossed down the harvester rifle, set me down, shoved the door closed, and spun the wheel to lock it. He whipped around, picked up the rifle, and peeked out the porthole. “I have no idea how he found us, but I’m glad he did,” Thadius said. “Look at them go.”
Sitting on the floor, I could see through the door’s porthole as the two struggled to turn each other into transportable dust.
Thadius turned around, his moustache an upside-down V. “I left your crutches out there.”
“It’s all right.” My clothes were soaked through with rain, and it was easy to slide across the floor. I pulled myself up on a bench at the table, facing Thadius across the room. He held the scythe rifle with two hands, the harness now looped over his neck, the buckle snapped tight. The barrel moved my way.
“I’m going to try to get us out of here,” he said, his voice low, “and I don’t mean any offense by this when I say it, kiddo, but we’re not going to be able to move that quick with your crutches out
there. And I’m not running to get them while they’re doing that.”
The end of the harvester looked like a perfect circle. The lenses deep inside the metal cuff gave off small flashes of energy.
Thadius flipped up the viewer screen to take aim.
“But what are we going to do? Once you harvest me. Are you going to take my rowboat back to Duluth?”
“If Clifford hangs around and hears me out, I’ll ask him to take me somewhere safe. You’ll be safer in here.” He indicated the canister screwed into the bottom of the rifle. “A smaller target at least.” A dry chuckle.
I looked at the barrel again. “Wait . . .” was all I managed to get out.
I saw his finger twitch. A click of the machine activating. The rifle lurched in his hands.
You ever have some jerk pop a balloon right next to your ear? Imagine that, but on both sides of your head, right at both ears. That’s what it felt like. You feel yourself make that embarrassingly big spasm, and then you chase that jerk down, right? For me, instead of the anger, there was just . . . nothing.
* * *
But then, something.
I was still in the dining room, the world fading in as if my eyes were recovering from a camera flash.
Thadius was there, staring at the bench. He lowered the rifle, turned it over, unscrewed the canister from the underside, and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “I sure hope this works,” he said, patting his pocket. He set the rifle on the table.
“Uh, I’m still here,” I said. “It didn’t work.”
He went to the door, looked out the porthole.
I moved closer. Wait.
I looked down. There was nothing below me: no body, no arms, no legs, no crutches—no anything. If I had a heart, it would’ve had an attack right then. I had no body.
Later, I would learn that this happens sometimes. It’s also what happens to people when they die very suddenly. It’s too much of a shock to their . . . soul, spirit, consciousness . . . whatever. The soul stuff sticks around. Too shocked to accept what happened.
I know what you must be thinking. Trust me: it’s weird for me too. But it happened. And as much as I’d like to tell you I was able to flit around to Duluth or fly a thousand miles to my childhood home or look over all those watery miles of the Great Lakes for Dad, I didn’t get the chance.
I went through the wall. Outside, Clifford and Suzanne continued their fight.
Suzanne spotted Thadius in the window, summoned some metal she’d harvested, and struck Clifford in the chest with it. Clifford’s midair leap was thrown off trajectory, and he spiraled off the rig. He landed out in the lake with a violent, foamy splash.
Suzanne charged toward the dining room and harvested the door right off its hinges and stepped in.
Thadius backed away, tripped over his own feet and fell.
She came in after him, readying her palms. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you share something with the Betrayer. Favoritism between versh twins can’t be helped for those of smaller mind.”
One invisible blast after another sucked up pieces of the floor as Thadius dodged and rolled away. He went under one of the long tables, the same Squishy hid under when I first met him. Suzanne drew nearer, harvesting chunks out of the table. Thadius made it to the kitchen, stayed low. All this time, I was screaming for him to run, for Suzanne to stop. They couldn’t hear me.
Thadius picked up a full can of creamed spinach from the pantry and hurled it over the counter at her. She reached but missed, and it collided with the side of her face. In a fit of rage, she drew back both hands and thrust them out together. A tunnel appeared in the rig floor, layer after layer of steel vanishing. Floor after floor down was revealed. Before long, water was visible. She did the same thing again, screaming in rage. Some weight-bearing portion of the rig struck—and the entire place leaned.
Suzanne seemed to understand she had put herself in imminent danger. She turned to leave—and collapsed in on herself. Gone.
In the doorway, soaking wet, was Clifford. “Old man?” he called into the kitchen, shaking his hand to close the harvester socket.
“Over here.” Thadius struggled up beside one of the sharp-edged holes. The length of his forearm was gashed and bleeding.
Clifford helped his versh twin to his feet. “We’ll patch you up once we get to safety. This place is coming down.”
Thadius stumbled again, and a canister started to lift from his pocket. Time slowed. It slipped from his hand as he tried to catch it. It hit the floor, took a hop, landed on its side, and rolled. It kept rolling as both Thadius and Clifford chased after it. For reasons I couldn’t explain or begin to understand, I went with it. The fixins hit the rim, sailed over, and bounced through the openings floor to floor. Down through the rig I fell, glimpsing sunshine—open air and sky. A small splash as the canister hit the surface of Lake Superior. Like Squishy with the wrench tied to his ankle, I was dragged underwater. But my hearing wasn’t muffled, and I didn’t fight to catch a breath. It wasn’t even cold. Down, down, down.
The canister hit the bottom alongside a shape wrapped in a sheet and coiled in thirty feet of heavy chain. I didn’t want to be here at first. But settling in next to the canister, I felt okay suddenly. Like when I was little and Darya and I shared a bed and in the winter, she’d get up before me sometimes and I’d curl into the warm spot she’d left.
Mom was there. Not the Smock known as Suzanne but my mom. Dad too. Squishy, bobbing at the end of the line he’d tied to the pipe wrench, was nearby. His body as well as he himself. He looked regretful, but it was in this way that read as bashful. I guess when you die, you let it all go. I did, at least. I wasn’t mad at him anymore.
Mom and Dad were okay. They looked like they did in pictures of them when they met: just young trendoids.
“Cass,” Mom said. She didn’t look like a ghost. She wasn’t pale or scary or wearing rags. She was in her knitted sweater she had worn all the time, the same we dropped her into Lake Superior wearing. She just looked like Mom, except comfortably underwater, sitting on a mossy rock. Dad, in his raincoat and boots, was next to her, his arm around her.
I asked Dad what happened, why he was here.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m fine now.” He put an arm around Mom and gave her shoulder a squeeze.
She took hold of his fingers and gave them a squeeze back. “We love you,” she said.
Dad smiled, that big bushy beard parting for his toothy grin. “Yes, we do.”
“Very much.”
“I love you guys too.”
“Be safe, wherever you’re going,” Mom said.
“What?”
She pointed up.
Thundering through the water, like a comet trailing a million bubbles per second, Clifford charged down face-first. His eyelids squinted behind his glasses, his scarf a red streak pointing straight up. He braked by shooting his hands harvester-side-down. He spun, swung his arms a few passes to get to us—to reach the canister where it’d fallen between all of us. Mom, Dad, Squishy, and I all watched as Clifford fought his own buoyancy to get . . . just a little . . . bit . . . closer . . .
He got his fingers around it, grabbed it, and stuffed it into his pocket. He whipped around and put his palms down to take off. I lost sight of Mom and Dad through the blast. I waited to see them once the water was clear, but I wasn’t given the chance. Everything went white, just as white as the fixins inside the canister in Clifford’s pocket.
Track 28
2 BECOME 1
For a while, I could still feel the bubbles cascading up my cheeks, getting caught under my nose, under the rim of my eyebrows. It tickled, felt like a thousand tiny fingertips. Soon, it felt less tactile, each stroke dissolving into long breezes.
I opened my eyes.
A ceiling, dotted in dust and cobwebs. The hum of a space heater or furnace grate. Warm air swirled about me, down my frame, and . . . found my toes.
It was like the
breeze was sentient, weaving in and out through each toe, around my ankle, curling up and around one leg, then the other. I could feel it.
I sat up.
The ringing in my ears was gone; the sour taste of sickness that started when my knee was infected was now gone. I was in a bed, in a strange room with brick walls and old furniture, candles burning here and there.
But none of that matters. I cast the sheet draped across my middle aside, flung my hands down to my feet. My hands were bandaged for reasons beyond me, but I didn’t care right then. I pawed all over my legs. Sensation, both in my hands and my legs.
“No way. No freaking way.” My smile grew.
“Take it easy,” a voice came. Thadius. But he didn’t sound right. I looked up. No. Clifford. He stepped into the room. He wore a V-neck shirt and a pair of destroyed jeans—no scarf this time.
I realized how little I was wearing and pulled the sheet over my bare legs. I had on a long-sleeved shirt I didn’t recognize and underwear.
Clifford dragged up a rugged, wooden chair, sat, elbows on knees. “They’re new. Don’t want you skinning a knee on your first attempt.” He pushed his glasses up. I noticed one lens was cracked.
“What happened? Where are we?”
“We’re at my place.”
He’d left the door open. I could see the wallpaper in the hallway, the sconces with flickering candlelight bulbs. The library smell was present here too.
“We’re at the Siren House.”
“I don’t call it that, but yeah.”
The walls were upright, the floor flat. Nothing was broken or burned. It hit me. We’d jumped vershes while I was still fixins. I reached toward the curtains to look outside. What would it look like, being in a different versh? Would the sky be red? Would there be flying cars? Would the sidewalks be crowded with both humans and multiheaded aliens? As much as I wanted to know, I stopped to study my reaching hand. Then the other one. Both were wrapped in mittens of dressings.