Bathing the Lion

by Jonathan Carroll

  She told the others what he’d said. The four exchanged glances, uncertainty in their eyes, all of them wondering who was going to move first. The dogs had stopped baying but both were panting now as if it were a hundred degrees in the room. D Train leaned over and once again started frantically licking the side of Kos’s face.

  “All right, what the hell—I’ll do it. I’ll go first.” Bill Edmonds walked to the cloud and without hesitating stuck his whole arm in.

  Jane rose on tiptoes and put both hands against her chest. “What do you feel?”

  “Nothing—it’s just … colder in there. Noth—wait a minute—now I feel it. There’s … Yes! I’ve got something now.”

  “Something like what? What do you mean?”

  In Vienna, Kaspar listened intently to this exchange through the bad speaker on his cell phone. He sat on the bed looking at his very own cloud halfway across his room. He’d lied to Vanessa but it was necessary—he needed her to convince the others to do what he said.

  An Aurora Cobb could be hugely dangerous because they contained every tool a mechanic needed to repair any situation. In the wrong hands, however, those same tools could also cause irreparable damage or horrific suffering. But Kaspar had to chance it now because time was so short. The one thing he had gleaned from the shared dream was that, like him, the others had all been mechanics before they were human. He had to believe any former mechanic, even those with wiped memories, would still have retained some kind of instinctive, primal, or even blood recall necessary to choose the correct tool for them inside the cloud.

  He remembered the first time he’d seen an Aurora Cobb. It appeared out of nowhere and despite the fact he and his fellow apprentice mechanics had been well schooled on what it was and the things it contained, Kaspar was still enthralled and frightened to see a real one in front of him. He could only imagine what it was like now for the four in Vermont who, as humans, knew nothing about the cloud or what it could do. The one good sign, however, was Vanessa recognized it although she didn’t remember anything about it except the name and its potential danger.

  Kaspar sighed, lost for a moment in past memories. Someone on the other end of the phone was speaking. He cleared his head and listened.

  “What did you find, Bill?”

  “I think it’s a … it’s a figure, a little statue.”

  Alarmed, Kaspar asked, “What is it? What did he take out? Describe it exactly.”

  Dean took a while to answer. “It looks like some kind of little wooden figure. I think it’s one of those Japanese netsuke figures.”

  Almost simultaneously both Kaspar and Bill Edmonds said the same thing: “Keebler.”

  “It’s Keebler—I can’t believe it. This belonged to my wife!”

  The figure was two inches high. It was a Japanese sumo wrestler carved out of a tagua nut. Originally ivory colored, some of the paint had worn off here and there so one of the wrestler’s eyes was blank while the other was detailed in black.

  Edmonds held it out on an open palm for the others to see.

  Kaspar shouted, “Put it back!”

  Phone pressed to his ear, Dean wasn’t sure he’d heard Kaspar correctly. “What?”

  “Tell him to put it back. Put it back in the cloud right now!”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “That figure is what’s called a white key. It’s dangerous and works very fast once activated. Tell Edmonds to put it back in the cloud, reach in again, and take out something else. Dean, he’s got to do this. He’s in real danger.”

  “No.” Everyone watched Edmonds when he spoke. “I won’t do it.” He’d heard the telephone exchange between Dean and Kaspar. Bill didn’t know how it was possible, but he’d heard every single word they’d said to each other over the telephone and this was his answer: No. He wasn’t going to put Keebler back. His wife, Lola, had loved the silly little thing. She’d owned it for years. Its stern frowning face, stubby thick arms held rigidly at its sides …

  When she bought it at a junk shop in Boston Lola had said it was going to act as a talisman to protect them from all spiriti cattivi. At first Edmonds thought the phrase meant “cat spirits.” They had a laugh when she explained it meant “evil spirits” in Italian.

  But Keebler was neither netsuke nor talisman; it was a white key. Mechanics used them to open and release the fatal darkness contained in every conscious being. Fatal darkness, fatal sadness or hopelessness … soul toxins contained in a secret chamber of every heart no being knows exists until it’s opened and they flood out. Suicide invariably follows. Mechanics used suicide throughout the universe to solve a whole host of logistical problems or perilous situations. Fast, accurate, and efficient, the act was supposed to be voluntary, but “assisted suicide” via white key was used without compunction when necessary.

  “He won’t put it back, Kaspar. He says it belonged to his wife.”

  “Tell him it’s a plant, a fake—they planted it in Edmonds’s house on purpose in case … I can’t explain this stuff over the fucking phone. Take it away from him and throw it back in the cloud yourself. Do it, Dean. Do it or else he’ll die.”

  It was too late.

  Because they stood closest to Edmonds, the dogs saw it first. Both animals looked at the man and saw the change in his expression as he smiled at the small figure in his hand. But his smile slipped from fond to fragile to fatal in seconds.

  Bill Edmonds’s mind was inundated by a torrent of memories evoked by seeing his wife’s netsuke again. Memories, milestones, mistakes, and moments shared with Lola sped through him faster and faster—some forgotten, some remembered, some cherished and beautiful, some painful. Most had been lost until the moment he took the Keebler figure out of the cloud. For a second, half a second, he remembered Ken Alford talking about his pocketknife named Vedran and how the only way to do justice to a lost love was to try and remember everything possible about the life you’d shared with them. Had Edmonds dreamed Ken Alford and their bus ride together, or had it really happened? Did it matter?

  Memories mobbed and mugged his mind. A chaotic seething unsortable mass of pictures, sounds, smells, and long-forgotten recollections that had made up a contented fulfilling life with his adored Lola. How could he have forgotten so much of it? How can you go on living without the person who created and shared such a blessed life with you?

  A brutal sadness came from encountering these countless forgotten memories. It swept over William Edmonds like a monstrous merciless seventy-foot-high ocean wave of loss and regret. The effect of them coming at him all at once made Edmonds feel the real full impact of losing his wife and it killed him. Drowned by grief, his heart said no more and stopped.

  At the instant of his death Edmonds vanished. Whenever a mechanic (active or retired) died, all trace of them instantly disappeared no matter where they were. That included all memories others had of them as well. All memories, records, recordings, photographs, possessions … even relationships—anything and everything linked to them vanished in an instant. If they’d been married to a non-mechanic and had children, the surviving spouse would suddenly, seamlessly be married to another being with no memory of ever having been with anyone else. The same held for the mechanic’s children. From one moment to the next even other mechanics who knew or worked with them no longer remembered anything: a clean sweep.

  The three people remaining in the Corbins’ living room looked at each other to see who was going to be the first to put their hand into the Aurora Cobb cloud and, according to Kaspar, find something inside that could help them to understand what was happening now. None of them remembered anything about Bill Edmonds or what had just happened to him.

  “Dean? Dean, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Kaspar, I hear you.”

  “You have to do it. One of you has to do it.”

  “All right.” Dean turned off the phone and dropped it back into his pocket. He walked forward and stuck his hand into the cloud. Instantly feeling some
thing, he wrapped his fingers around it. But his hand jumped right back out of the cloud. Not because of fear, but because the thing in his hand squirmed.

  “What the hell is it?”

  It was black, shiny, and moved. It squirmed like a fish just pulled out of the water. It didn’t actually go anywhere but wriggled frantically back and forth on the floor where Dean had dropped it the moment he had it out of the cloud.

  The three human beings and two dogs watched it move, the dogs captivated, the people revolted. D Train thought it might be good to eat and stepped forward with the intent of gobbling it down. Just in time Dean grabbed the dog by the collar and pulled him back. D Train naturally thought it was because the humans wanted to eat the twitchy thing themselves. He hoped they’d leave some for him and Kos when they were finished. If Kaspar had been in the room he would have told them it was food—mechanics’ food—the same kind the three blond women had eaten the day they visited him in the store.

  Jane said, “I’ll go next.” She made a wide berth around the moving black thing on the floor and put her hand into the cloud. She kept it there five and then ten seconds, not finding anything. The look on her face was intent but not frightened or nervous.

  “Something…” She pulled her hand out. It was empty but she said warily, “Something just went up my fingers. I don’t know how to explain it. But something definitely happened in there, I felt it; I can feel it in my arm now.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know—it’s not bad. It’s … something came in through my fingers and went up my arm. It felt cool at first, like a breeze passing over my hand. But there’s absolutely something…” Jane frowned and her whole body went taut. She looked at the hand that had been in the cloud and flexed the fingers. She glanced at Vanessa, then down again at her hand. Her eyes were all wonder. “Oh my God!”

  “What?”

  “Holy shit!”

  “What?”

  Jane raised both arms straight out to the sides, wiggled all her fingers, and started laughing. She looked at her arms—left right, left right. She shut her eyes tightly. Opening them, she burst out laughing again.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Without answering Vanessa, Jane Claudius bent down, picked up the black thing on the floor, and bit into it. The move was so shocking and unexpected both Dean and Vanessa gasped. Still smiling, Jane watched them while she chewed. Silently, merrily, she chewed and chewed and eventually swallowed.

  The phone rang again in Dean’s pocket. He didn’t hear it. Jane took another bite of the black blob. The thing jerked in her hands when she bit it. Horrified and nauseated, Vanessa slapped a hand over her mouth.

  The phone rang again. Jane pointed a finger at Dean and said out loud, “Kaspar?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “It’s Jane—Jane Claudius.” Abruptly she switched to a language neither Corbin had ever heard before. On the other end of the phone in Vienna, Kaspar recognized the words but in the same way an American recognizes Italian or French when it’s spoken without comprehending a single word.

  “Jane, I don’t understand what you’re saying. I know what language it is but I don’t speak it anymore.” He was shocked to hear her speak the secret language mechanics only spoke among themselves. Because his powers had been revoked upon retirement, Kaspar could no longer understand it. Even more amazing than hearing it again here on Earth was the fact Jane the bar owner spoke it. Where the hell did she learn it? Naturally he hadn’t heard it since he was retired. When the three blondes, Crebold, and Grassmugg visited him they all used English. But not now—Jane Claudius had spoken pure Mechanic.

  She switched to English. “What do you mean you don’t understand? You’re a mechanic.”

  Kaspar couldn’t believe she knew this. “Was—they took everything away when I was retired. I don’t have powers anymore.”

  “But you remember everything; I know it.”

  “Remember what?” Vanessa demanded to know.

  Jane signaled for Vanessa to be quiet till she was finished talking to Kaspar. His voice filled the room when he spoke although the telephone remained closed and turned off in Dean’s pocket.

  “I remember everything but I have none of the powers anymore, Jane. Where did you learn the language?”

  “When I put my hand in the cloud something came into me. It moved through my body. But these words come and go. I understand them and then I don’t; it’s like they flash on and off in my mind. Sometimes they’re there and I understand, sometimes nothing—”

  Kaspar quickly cut her off. “Stop—don’t say anything else. Don’t say any more about what you know or can do now. Not till we’ve figured this out, Jane. These things are volatile and extremely dangerous if you use them the wrong way. They can kill us all. Really, they’re powerful. Don’t even try to speak the language if you’re not sure of what you’re saying.

  “I’m going to touch the cloud here in my room now. Let’s see what I find inside it. Maybe it’ll help. Don’t do anything until you hear from me again.”

  While Kaspar spoke, Kos sidled sneakily toward the black thing on the floor. Coming from a Greek island, the dog had eaten lots of fish in his life and loved it. This wiggly thing looked like a fish, which meant good eating. The humans and D Train were all paying rapt attention to Kaspar’s disembodied voice. D Train was always delighted to listen to his master, although he didn’t understand a word the boss said.

  Glancing over at the group once more to make sure no one was watching, Kos swooped down, snatched what was left of the black thing in his big mouth, and bit into it.

  In a daze, Jane let what was left of the udesh slip from her hand onto the floor. Her consciousness was going through an infinitely complex transformation from human back into mechanic. Otherwise she wouldn’t have missed what the dog was doing. By the time she saw it and shouted, Kos had already swallowed twice and was on his last few chews before gulping down what was left. Dean and Vanessa didn’t know what the black stuff was but were sure the animal’s eating it was not a good thing.

  People like to believe dogs smile. Maybe it’s true—maybe some do when they’re happy. But when Jane saw Kos smile now, she stepped between the dog and the others, glaring at him as if he were her enemy. At the same time she yelled, “Kaspar! Kaspar, are you there? Kos ate the udesh. He just ate the whole thing.”

  What she said was not “udesh,” but that’s how it sounded to the Corbins.

  Kaspar answered immediately. “Then get out of there! Get everyone away from him. I don’t know what happens when an animal eats it. Anything’s possible.”

  He’d seen it happen before and it was horrifying. Udesh is mechanics’ food. If any being other than a mechanic eats the stuff, the best that can happen to them afterward is immediate death. The worst are the effects on them if they survive. Kaspar had twice witnessed survivors. Despite the many extraordinary, often awful sights he had witnessed in his long career as a mechanic, those two experiences left scorch marks on his memory.

  While Jane tried to figure out how to handle Kos, her entire being was processing changes beyond measure. It’s simple to erase what a mechanic knows, but restoring the knowledge properly and precisely is complex.

  What none of these four people knew because none of them remembered him anymore was they needed William Edmonds’s help now. As a mechanic his specialty had been as a troubleshooter. He would have known exactly what to do with Kos.

  Because Kaspar could do nothing at the moment about the situation in Vermont, he walked across his hotel room to the Aurora Cobb floating by the window. Despite a very real concern for what could happen when he found something inside the cloud, Kaspar touched it anyway. He knew there might be something inside that could help them all now. He also knew the courage needed for this action came from the onetime mechanic in him. Because it’s easy being brave when you have nothing to lose. The human being he’d become would never have been able to do it. Part of the joy
of being human came from the things he’d grown to cherish and gather close to his heart in this life. His friend Remco had said we need to be able to walk away from things, no matter how much we love them. But what happens when the “thing” you love is life itself?

  Earlier at the café, Crebold was correct in comparing mechanics to ants in a colony. They are genetically programmed to do specific jobs. It doesn’t matter if a job entails danger, conflict, or even certain death; ants do whatever their job is without thought or hesitation. Because work and the survival of the colony are the sole purposes of their lives. Mechanics are no more afraid of work or death than ants are.

  Over the course of his years on Earth, Kaspar had experienced emotions he’d never known before—longing, lust, joy, fear, anger, and surprise being just a few of them. The sensations they evoked in him were both cherished and bewildering. After all this time as a human being, he still could not decide if such feelings made existence better or worse. But things like passion and dogs—irreplaceable.

  Plunging his arm deep into the cloud, his fingers immediately touched something. It moved. It was alive and fluttered frantically like a trapped moth in his cupped hand. Squeezing it, he immediately felt its spit-warm sliminess and recognized what it was in seconds—a switterbug. Kaspar had used them before but only when all else failed. They disgusted him as they did most good mechanics. Switterbugs were truly a last resort—the kind of nauseating creature only someone like Crebold at his worst used with no hesitation or compunction whenever it was convenient. Yet another reason why no one liked Crebold.

  Kaspar flicked this one off his fingers like snot back into the cloud. He wanted to wipe his hand on his shirt to get all trace of the vile thing off but didn’t. His shoulders gave a disgusted shiver.