They landed with a plop. As she rummaged around figuring the pieces out, an explanation for all the strangeness fell to the ground.
It was her phone, the one borrowed from the abbot when they arrived. She sat with a thump as she held it in her hand. Helen had spent the entire time in the lake without it. Was still spending time without it. The chain was broken. With no way to repair it, Helen would be spending more time without it.
Her integration was complete.
It was a graduation far more important than the one after she’d finished at the academy.
“Helen? Is everything all right?”
The light-headedness, the way her skin felt, and the funny tastes in her mouth were all minor synchronization errors. She concentrated, and just as Mike had told her, found herself unable to manifest in realmspace. Her real self was still there—she could feel the threads pulse and quicken—but for now, Helen couldn’t consciously control them. Without an explicit interface she didn’t know where to start. Worse, it could be dangerous to try. Mike said he’d destroyed dozens of realms relearning how to manifest.
“Helen?”
“I’m fine, Ozzie.” She climbed back into her clothes. It was amazing how natural the control of her host had become. She walked around the bushes to find Ozzie sitting on a rock that formed a perfect natural bench on the pond’s shore.
He looked like a puppy that’d seen a new toy. “I’m so glad you’re not hurt.”
She sat down beside him, far enough away to keep from triggering his touch anxiety. “Me too.”
This was isolation. Mike said that this period, after the integration had completed but before she learned how to control her real self again, would be the closest she would ever come to being truly human. It was strange to be pinned to a single spot, cut off from the rest of the world, the rest of humanity, able only to communicate with people close enough to hear her speak.
He asked, “What happened?”
“I had my first dream. It was a nightmare. I thought the monster had come back.”
“Had it?”
Awake and fully integrated, Helen realized the truth. “No. Mike was right. She’s gone now. But the nightmare knocked all my monitor routines offline. My integration unbalanced, and I lost synchronization. I needed to even the sensations of my outside body to get it back. That’s why I used the pond.”
“Fascinating.”
Helen recoiled when she realized he’d moved to within a few centimeters of her. “Ozzie? What are you doing?”
“Don’t you feel it, Helen? This attraction?”
She scooted away, but he kept coming closer. “Attraction? Ozzie are you insane? You can’t be touched!”
“But I can learn. Kim’s trying to learn with Mike, did you know that?”
Helen was running out of bench. “She was raped with touch, Ozzie. I could never do that to you.”
“I know, but don’t you see? We’re just like them, but better. Opposite in every way, but we’re Chinese. We have the strength to persevere, to lead. I’ve thought about this from the moment I met you.” He switched to Chinese. “Fang Hua, please grace me with your scent, with a drop of dew from your lips.”
He puckered up and dove at her face, grabbing at her left breast as he did it. Helen slapped him as hard as she could, and then fell off the stone bench, landing flat on her back. It happened so fast she had to take a second to rewind it all in her head.
Ozzie screamed.
She got up as he writhed on the ground, holding his face. “You bitch! You hit me! Shit, it burns!” He screamed again, wild and strange as it echoed through the woods.
“Ozzie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were going to do that.”
He rolled over and she was stunned. He had transformed completely.
His voice dropped an octave. “Be glad we are alone now. If you had done that in public, I would have you killed.”
“Ozzie, what are you talking about? What’s wrong?”
“You will regret that, daughter. I will make sure of it.” He stood, still holding his cheek, his face pure rage.
She remembered conversations with Kim, about how touch not only caused people with her condition unbearable pain, but also genuine madness.
“Ozzie, calm down. You’re not yourself. The breathing! Remember Kim’s breathing!”
He threw a rock that hit her shoulder. The pain bloomed, and she cried out.
“I do not need to breathe, bitch.” He found a chunk of bamboo the length of a sword and spun it with much more skill than he’d shown this afternoon. “I need to beat some respect into you. Stay where you are and this will go much easier.”
“Ozzie you’re out of your mind!”
She ducked as the stick slammed into a tree trunk beside her.
“No, I’m not. We have a future, you and I. With discipline and training, we will have a very long, loving future.”
Helen ducked again. What were minor sync problems at rest had become major ones as adrenaline pulses amplified them. His next swing connected across her back, sending her to the ground.
She had just enough time to roll away from the next swing aimed at her head. The branch hit the rock of the bench and shattered. Ozzie shouted wordless rage while Helen stumbled to her feet and fled into the woods.
Knowledge unlocked in her body, another thing Mike had told her about. After the main integration completed, she would experience a series of what he called unlock events as the muscle memory of her host settled into her consciousness.
Apparently her host’s former owner knew how to run through the woods at night. Helen made much better time than Ozzie. His insane ranting quickly faded to a scary noise echoing in the night. Eventually she climbed high into a tree and sat there as his voice faded to silence. Helen had no idea where she was.
Her whole body shook as the adrenaline wore off. Helen was lost in the woods, cut off from everything. She hadn’t been in love with Ozzie or had even been attracted to him, but Helen had thought of him as a friend, one of the very few she had. That was gone now. She couldn’t trust sleep anymore. The snake mother lived there. Who knew how many times Helen would have to find a pool to keep her dreams from killing her. She couldn’t reach out to Mike because she couldn’t control the part of her that was real. All she had was this dumb lump of flesh, a body that could be burned, torn, or destroyed.
The way Ozzie looked as he hit her brought the tremors back.
For the first time in her life, Helen was utterly alone. She pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed until she thought her ribs might crack.
Chapter 36: Spencer
Someone was singing in a faint, high voice. He didn’t recognize the wordless melody. When he tried to pick out the tune, what happened came rushing in. Spencer gasped and sat up, trying to figure out where he was.
The room was rustic. His dad owned a bunch of old rental properties, and that was what this reminded him of—a run-down house. The floor was made of bare wood planks; the walls were plaster with peeling paint. A picture of Chairman Mao hung above the door, and a single window allowed sunlight to stream in. He was lying naked on a bed in a corner, covered by a smooth white sheet and a blanket.
The singer turned out to be a cute Chinese girl, dressed in worn but clean Western-styled clothes, sweeping the floor. She set the broom against a corner of the room and walked over to him.
“Where am I?”
“Wu Hang village,” she replied in English. Her accent was heavy, but he could understand her. “This is my brother’s room, but he’s away in Chengdu now, working in a factory. Are you all right?”
No, he wasn’t. Sitting up unleashed a storm of aches and pains. He checked under the blanket; there were bruises everywhere. One of them was a black mass that went halfway down his left rib cage. He immediately pulled the sheet up over his naked chest, unaccountably embarrassed.
“Where’s Shan?”
Her face turned sad. “Your friend? I’m afraid he’s dead.
We found his body a little farther downstream from you. He hit his head.” She called down the hall in Chinese, and a masculine voice answered, followed by stamping feet. The man who appeared in the doorway was much older than the girl.
Hello, dad.
He walked to the bed and asked the girl a question. She answered, and then turned to him. “My father wants to know your name, and where you’re from. You’re the first Westerner to visit this village in a very long time.”
Spencer gave them the basics, slowly. Breathing around his bruises sucked.
“How did you end up in the river? Did you fall in?”
He was still trying to absorb the entire situation. Shan had betrayed them; Tonya had been left behind. Shan had died in Spencer’s arms.
“Sir?”
“Yes, I fell in. We were running, escaped, from the mountains.”
“Escaped from who?”
“I don’t know really, some sort of slavers.”
Dad got very angry after the translation. This was no quiet peasant type. If he were a realm player, Dad would be the kind who got a not to be messed with star in his file.
“He’s not mad at me, is he?”
“No. The bandits have been causing us a lot of trouble lately. Father has been trying to gather the leaders of the local villages together to fight them, but nobody will listen to him. Father thinks now that they’ve attacked Westerners, maybe that will change their minds.”
“Could you please tell him thank you for me? And I was wondering where my clothes were?” It was awkward sitting in a bed, naked, in front of a pretty Chinese girl while her father ranted about building a posse.
She had a nice smile.
“Your clothes were badly damaged by the river, but we have others that should fit.”
Make that a very nice smile.
Dad took a step back. Spencer had a good idea what he was saying just by the way his finger wagged back and forth between them. He waited for the translation anyway.
“Father is honored by your thanks and hopes you will heal quickly.”
“That’s all he said?”
She stared at the floor. “We are very traditional here. Father requests you respect this.”
“It sounded like he was threatening to cut my balls off if I touched his daughter.”
That got her to laugh. Spencer wouldn’t have believed she could get any cuter, but he was wrong. Dad didn’t appreciate it one little bit. There was quite a bit of back and forth. He tried to pull out one of the Chinese phrases he’d memorized back home.
“China is a wonderful country.”
It stopped both of them in their tracks. Dad acted like he’d just seen a monkey talk, which was probably what he thought had happened.
The daughter recovered first. “What did you say?”
He told her what he’d tried to say. When she translated they both laughed. Dad reached out to thump Spencer on his shoulder, threw another warning finger at them both, and called down the hall. An older female voice answered, and a woman Spencer presumed was Mom bustled in with his clothes. As soon as Mom was in the room, Dad waved and left.
“I am the only person in the village who speaks English, so I will be your interpreter. Father politely asks that you respect our traditions.”
“By not touching his daughter. Got it.” Her blush was just as cute, but having her mother in the room put a solid damper on things, which was probably the point. “What’s your name?”
“My English name is Sharon.”
“And that was Mister...”
“Our family name is Liu.”
“Well thank you, Miss Sharon Liu. I’m Spencer. If you wouldn’t mind please letting me get dressed? I’m pretty sure Mrs. Liu doesn’t want to see me get out of bed.”
Her mother scoffed after the translation and said something that made Sharon cringe. “Mother raised a son as well, my older brother. She says you do not have anything she has not seen before.” And with that, Mrs. Liu ushered Sharon out of the room and shut the door.
The house turned out to be the same strange mash-up of old and new as the last village he’d visited. Spencer had to walk through the master bedroom to find the kitchen and dining area; the latter couldn’t have been more than a year old by the new smell of it. Mr. Liu talked furiously on an old-fashioned cordless phone while Mrs. Liu shooed Spencer into a chair. She plopped a plate of what seemed to be noodles and chicken in front of him. The spices made the inside of his nose burn. Sharon sat down across from him, and Mrs. Liu set a plate down in front of her, too.
She scolded Mr. Liu into ending his conversation and settling down to…well, that brought up another question. “Is this breakfast, lunch, or dinner? How long was I out, anyway?”
“Breakfast,” she said as her parents sat down. “We don’t know how long you were in the river. Because of your friend’s condition, Father thinks you weren’t in it very long.”
Spencer managed not to cough at the spice kick. He was getting used to Sichuan cooking. Mrs. Liu saw his eyes water, though, and she laughed.
“Mother would like to know what you think of the food.”
Spencer blinked the tears away. “It’s very good. This is much better than what I can get in a Chinese restaurant back home.”
Mom beamed; he’d said the right thing.
Mr. Liu talked to him, and Sharon translated. “Father would like you to come to a meeting with him after breakfast. He wants you to tell your story to a group of headmen from nearby villages. He thinks this time he’ll finally be able to convince them to act together and stop the bandits.”
“I hope so. They still have my friend.”
*
Spencer thought he’d end up telling the story to a few old farts, but there had to be two or three dozen men gathered in the village square. More arrived every minute. They were far from the meek peasants he’d seen in old Kung-Fu films. Just like back home, it seemed everyone drove a pickup truck with a gun rack in the back. Nothing military, but in the right hands hunting rifles were every bit as effective as an AK. These men looked more than able to use them.
When Mr. Liu forgot Sharon was translating his ranting speech she simply couldn’t keep up with him. Spencer took the opportunity to lean over and ask her, “Where’d you learn to speak English?”
“In a realm class at the local school. Our teacher lives in Australia.” Her accent went from enchanting to bizarre. It took him a second to figure out that “Goo on ya may, puh slimp onnah balby” meant “Good on ya mate, put a shrimp on the barbie.”
“Wait, you have a realm connection here?” He wasn’t in the middle of nowhere; he was one call away from the monastery.
“Not right now. The military has commandeered all the satellite feeds, and we don’t have a fiber-optic connection.”
“What about regular calls?”
“Is the number in China?”
The only person he could connect to was Mike, who was still stuck on the other side of the Great Firewall. “No, it’s in the States.”
“We don’t have international dialing activated. The government probably won’t allow it now.”
“Why not?”
“You really need to pay more attention to the news.”
As if. “Sharon, you have no idea what kind of week I’ve had. What’s going on with your government?”
“The Indians think we’re sponsoring terrorists, blowing up bases, wiping out villages in their country. Hundreds have been killed, maybe thousands now. We’re not doing it, but nobody is listening to us. The country is very worried. The military has mobilized. There’s talk of bringing back the draft. My brother may end up in combat.”
“With India? Are you kidding me?”
Mr. Liu chose that moment to introduce Spencer.
He was from a microscopic speck in southeast Arkansas, only sixteen years old. These were tough Chinese farmers, and they were expecting a story. A speech, even.
He’d have to send his drama teacher a b
ig bottle of whisky for not giving up on him last year. Spencer knew he had a gift for improvising, but it took practice to make it work consistently, to have people laugh and listen for the right reasons and at the right time.
He went slowly and chose his words carefully. Sharon’s English was good but he was sure phrases like country second and dumber than a box of hammers would trip her up. Simplifying wasn’t the same as sanitizing though, and when he got to the part about how Tonya had to be left behind, they grumbled and looked at each other grimly. This sure beat the hell out of a bit part in last year’s production of The Wiz.
A few hours later, they were in a funky, country-fied Chinese mission control. The village might not have a live realm connection, but it did have Baidu Earth. Once they figured out which monastery Mike, Kim, and Ozzie were at, it wasn’t that hard to work out the rough area where the slavers were.
“They must be using logging roads,” Sharon translated for one of the farmers crowded around the shared display.
Mr. Liu replied, “The boy said ATVs. They may not need to use them.”
A different man said, “I hunt out there from time to time. The country is very rugged.” He turned to Spencer. “You’re lucky to be alive. Only Westerners are crazy enough to float that river, and they use boats.”
“Well, I guess I’m just crazier than most Westerners.” Laughter filled the room through the smoky haze. He didn’t have to beg for cigarettes out here. Hell, Sharon had one.
“It’s still early,” Mr. Liu said. “These men use chain gangs, so they only move at a walking pace. If they followed that trail, they would’ve camped here.” Mr. Liu touched a spot on the topo map, the only flat area along that section of the trail. “Mr. Laong, we can ambush them, yes?”
Sharon kept taking drinks of water between her translations, and he liked the way she smiled at him whenever her father got busy arguing with one of the other farmers.
Before Spencer knew what was going on, he was bundled into a pickup truck and driving out into the wilderness. Sharon sat next to him. He put his knee against hers and she didn’t even flinch. Finally, he was having fun in China.
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