Street Freaks

by Terry Brooks

  “But he drives like he’s not afraid of anything.”

  “Oh, sure. But wars aren’t won by driving fast. You have to kill people. The scientists who made him and the other test-tube soldiers were told to produce killers; that didn’t happen.”

  “So why is he bitter about that? Seems like he should be happy. Does he want to be a killer?”

  Holly smiles sadly. “What he wants is to be needed. What he wants is not to be a discard. He can’t get past the fact that this is how things are. Doesn’t matter that we’re all in the same boat. Doesn’t matter we don’t think of him that way. It’s enough that he does.” She shakes her head. “He’s always trying to prove himself. Always trying to make up for some imagined failing.”

  Ash doesn’t quite understand, but he doesn’t know T.J. well enough to press the matter.

  “There’s probably something more to all this,” Holly allows after a moment. “But if there is, T.J. isn’t talking about it.”

  They are quiet after that, sitting together companionably, watching T.J. and Woodrow. Ash tries to imagine what it would be like to be either T.J. or Holly—the one with no parents, the other with parents who gave up on her. Both living in engineered bodies, both living with enhancements to their physiques and suffering emotional problems as a result. Holly hasn’t said this is true of her, but he senses it is. There’s anger that lurks just below the surface of her confident, snarky self. He remembers T.J.’s reply when he said that Holly seemed very strong.

  You don’t know the half of it.

  He probably doesn’t. There’s probably a lot he doesn’t know about all these kids.

  Which is reinforced when Holly says, “Jen, T.J., and I have to go out later. We’re leaving you with Woodrow.”

  “Okay,” he agrees. What else is he going to say?

  “You’ll bunk in with Woodrow and T.J. while you’re here. We’ll show you your bed before we leave. We might be back late, so don’t wait up.”

  She waits a moment for his response, and when he doesn’t provide it, she nudges him hard.

  “Sure,” he answers quickly.

  “That’s what I thought you said.” She rises, gives him a look, and walks off.

  Ash stays where he is until dinnertime, thinking over his decision to take up temporary residence at Street Freaks. There aren’t that many choices to begin with, of course. He can stay put and wait for the mysterious Shoe to appear. He can leave and go to his uncle Cyrus. Or he can grab onto some nebulous third choice that maybe, possibly, improbably might miraculously prove superior to the other two.

  But staying put is the only thing that makes sense at the moment. He wants to feel secure, and while finding his way to Uncle Cyrus might seem a more logical choice, he can’t quite convince himself it makes sense. Maybe it’s the distance that exists between his uncle and himself, a distance of more than miles and years. If there had been shared holidays and vacations, vidmails exchanged, vidchats initiated, regular visits of some sort, it might be different. But his uncle hasn’t seen or even spoken to him since he was maybe ten. He doesn’t remember the last time his uncle or father visited each other. Wouldn’t you expect brothers to try to get together more often than once a decade?

  But it’s also about wanting to see what Jenny Cruz can come up with. She seems to believe she can gain access to protected BioGen files, an impossibility on the face of things. But he would have said that about standing up to Achilles Pod too, and she managed that quite handily. So why not give her a chance?

  He eats dinner with the others, but he doesn’t talk much and they choose to leave him alone. Even T.J. lets him be. After dinner, everyone but Woodrow disappears through a door that opens underneath the second-floor stairway, locks clicking into place as the door closes again. The bot with a real boy’s head, this strange combination of flesh and metal, pays no attention. Instead, he invites Ash to sit down and talk while he begins putting together a new computer, the parts laid out all around him in meticulous order.

  “We build our own at Street Freaks,” he says. “Well, mostly me. I do the actual construction. I have a talent for it. Jenny does programming. Hand me that bit of wire, please. No, the larger one next to it. The red one with the yellow band. Yes, that one. Uh-huh.”

  He is focused and intense. His head bends close to his work, his flexible limbs twisting this way and that as he maneuvers various pieces into place and fastens them. Circuit boards, chips, and tiny bits of metal and composite materials that have no meaning to Ash are obviously no mystery to the bot boy. Ash watches silently, fascinated at his dexterity and sure-handedness. Woodrow pauses now and then to glance over and smirks when he sees the look on Ash’s face.

  “You’re wondering how I can do all this without a real body, aren’t you?” Woodrow shrugs. “You get used to it. I have artificial limbs, but sometimes it seems like I can still feel things. Like I’m still flesh and blood.”

  “How does your brain communicate with your body?” Ash asks. “If you want something done, how do you . . . ?”

  Woodrow smiles. “It just sort of does. I think about what I want to do, and my body does it. I suppose it’s pretty much how it works for you—only my body doesn’t feel anything.” He shrugs. “It’s weird, I know.”

  He goes quiet again, his mechanical digits moving dexterously to fit parts in place, tiny wires and screws.

  “I had parents once,” he offers finally. “A mom and a dad. I remember them. They died in an accident. Right after I turned eight. I lived with an aunt after that, but I didn’t like her much.”

  “Were you always like this?” Ash asks. “You know.” He makes a gesture in the general direction of the boy’s torso and appendages.

  “Uh-huh, I was born like this. Metal body and all. First of a kind.” He pulls a face. “No, I wasn’t always like this! Don’t be stupid.”

  “No, I meant, do you remember how it was before?”

  Woodrow shakes his head. “Not really. My body started to wither when I was ten. A wasting disease, the doctors called it. They had a more scientific name for it, but I forget what it’s called. My body just started to shrink. It just gave up. Everyone thought I was going to die. My aunt even said I should prepare myself. How do you do that, I wonder? Prepare to die. Is there a way to do that? I sure couldn’t find it.”

  “But you didn’t die.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But you didn’t get better.”

  “No, I got worse. The only reason I’m still alive is because my IQ is off the charts. I had something of a reputation by then in certain scientific and medical circles. I was tested early and often, and some of those who tested me thought I was worth saving. In the end, they could only manage it by making me like this. Half of one thing and half of another.”

  “They saved you, but they let you work at Street Freaks?”

  Woodrow laughs. “No, they saved me, and I ran away. Well, wheeled away, actually. My running days were all done by then. I just waited for the right moment, and off I went.”

  He seems so cheerful about it that for a moment Ash doesn’t know what to say. A preteen boy dying of some unnamed wasting disease gets turned into a bot with only his human head salvaged. And then he decides to run away from the very people who helped him?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Woodrow says. “But being saved doesn’t always turn out to be as beneficial as you might think. Once I was turned into this, I was looked at differently. All of a sudden, I was considered valuable property. The specialists who turned me into a bot boy did so to save my brain. The rest of me was just a necessary add-on. Anyway, they intended to benefit from their efforts. It became apparent early on what they had in mind. They wanted me to behave like a regular bot would—to do what I was told and not argue. They didn’t think of me as a boy anymore. Guess that was because I was more bot than boy by then. I didn’t feel that way inside, but they never cared much about my feelings.”

  Ash leans back and exhales s
harply. “You must have been scared out of your wits. And really angry.”

  “That would be true. But as the old saying goes: All’s well that ends well. It all worked out.”

  Ash finds Woodrow’s equanimity astounding. He knows he would not be so forgiving. But listening to the boy speak of it makes him feel a little embarrassed that he is spending so much time worrying about his own situation. Woodrow has had a tougher time of it than he has.

  “So how did you end up here?” he asks.

  “The same way I escaped all those doctors and scientists that wanted to make use of me. The Shoe.”

  “He brought you here?”

  “He did. I’m still not sure how he managed it, but I’ve been with him ever since. He found a way to keep me, to stop all those mad scientists from taking me back. Except for not being able to go out much in public, my life is pretty good. I like what I do, and I like my friends. We’re a family.”

  It is the second time the word “family” has been mentioned by someone at Street Freaks, and once again Ash feels it is the right word. One way or another, all of them have been recruited by the Shoe, brought to Street Freaks, and given a place in a world that doesn’t like or trust differences as extreme as what Woodrow and the others represent. It reminds him a little of what he shared with Faulkner, Beattie, and Willis4. They had been a family too. Not a normal family but a family nevertheless. Not as advanced as the boys and girls of Street Freaks, but they had shared his home and given him someone to hold on to after his mother died and his father retreated into his work. They had provided him with a sense of security, and he had never thought of them as anything less than family.

  “What’s the Shoe like?” he asks, wanting to stop thinking about what was lost.

  Woodrow cocks an eyebrow. “Hard to describe.”

  “Like a father?”

  Woodrow goes back to work on his project. “Once you’ve met him, you can decide for yourself.”

  Moments later, a side door unlocks and a girl walks into the garage. For just a moment, as she passes through the beam of light cast by a streetlamp shining through the building’s windows, her face is visible. Ash catches a glimpse of short-cropped blond hair, exquisitely perfect features, and bright cerulean-blue eyes. She glances over but does not speak as she continues on and disappears up the stairs.

  “Hi, Cay,” Woodrow calls after her without looking up.

  There is no reply. Ash stares after her, thinking, Holy crap!

  “Who was that?” he asks, his throat tightening as he tries to keep his voice steady.

  “Oh, that’s Cay Dumont. She lives here too.” Woodrow tinkers with the computer parts. “Don’t worry. You’ll meet her tomorrow. She’ll be here at breakfast.”

  Ash looks up the stairs into the dark emptiness left in the wake of her passing. He saw her for perhaps two seconds, but it is enough.

  Whatever else she might be, Cay Dumont is heartbreakingly beautiful.

  - 8 -

  Ash wakes early the next morning. His sleep was sound enough that he didn’t hear T.J. come to bed, but the other boy is there when he looks over. Woodrow, it turns out, doesn’t use a bed; he sleeps standing up. He is parked in a corner of the room with his head supported by a neck pillow and his eyes closed. That portion of the early-morning sky visible through the windows is still dark, moon and stars hidden behind a screen of clouds.

  After taking a minute to register where he is—because at first he is uncertain, at least until he sees T.J. and Woodrow—Ash climbs out of bed and dresses in the clothes he was given yesterday during his makeover. He uses the bathroom down the hall, looking at the stranger in the mirror for long moments as he applies soniclean rays to his teeth, trying to get used to his new look. He decides quickly enough it will take some time and effort.

  Still only half awake, he goes downstairs into the kitchen and prowls around until he finds some orange juice in the refrigerator and some bread in the pantry and makes this his breakfast. He thinks it will be enough, but he is hungrier than expected and wolfs down everything.

  After finishing, he sits there for a time, waiting to see if anyone else will appear. No one does. So he gets up and walks out into the bays, looking around in a darkened space lit only by a bank of dim lights that run the length of the back wall and barely penetrate the gloom. He starts thinking about the girl from last night—Cay—even though he is fully aware he should be thinking of other things. He is pondering the quixotic nature of his instant attraction to her when he notices a pale light coming from the office Jenny Cruz occupies. Through the interior windows, he sees her sitting in the dark at her desk, studying a computer screen filled with images of documents.

  When Ash knocks on the door, she looks up and beckons. He enters and stands there for a moment, looking around. Everything that disappeared during the confrontation with Achilles Pod is back in place, restored as if by magic.

  “We’ve had some practice dealing with unexpected visits,” she offers, noting his surprise.

  “Weren’t you afraid out there? Telling Achilles Pod they couldn’t come in?”

  “Once, I would have been terrified. But I’ve had some practice with being scared, and I know from experience how to deal with it.” She paused. “Did you sleep well?”

  He sits in the chair across from her. “I slept okay. It was weird waking and not knowing at first where I was. How long have you been up?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t sleep much. I don’t seem to need it. Maybe it’s because of my condition. I have to sleep on my side because of the tanks. I have to be careful of the exterior ports. When I was little, I used to sleep like a normal person. But after the operation, I never slept well again. It’s all right, though. It was a fair trade.”

  “What sort of operation did you have? Do you mind my

  asking?”

  “I don’t mind. I’m used to it. When I was six, I developed a blood disorder. My blood was so bad it required constant cleaning. I was confined to bed twenty-four hours a day, every day, while a machine constantly washed my blood to keep me alive. This went on for more than a year. But then one day the doctors told me of a new procedure that would allow me to leave the bed and return to the world outside my room. If I survived.”

  “They told you that? If you survived?”

  “By then, we were beyond mincing words. My parents were desperate to find something to help me. They could see what was happening. I was growing more and more depressed. I couldn’t see the point of my life anymore. So I said yes. Any gamble was worth taking. The operation took ten hours. They installed ports in my body to circulate my blood—to pump it out and then in again. The tanks on my back clean it for me. My own portable blood washer. Everything is connected to my body sheath. I remove it only to wash myself. I have a spare if anything should go wrong with this one.”

  “It must have taken some getting used to.”

  “What took getting used to was moving around again after a year in bed. I couldn’t even walk without help at first. It took months of rehab. I learned how to move around in my new skin. I learned how to do everything in it. This was going to be my new life, so I had to make it work.”

  “They couldn’t just replace your blood?”

  “Sure. But my body would just turn it bad again. I know because they tried that too. They tried everything before they went to the blood washer.” She pauses. “Do you want to talk about your father?”

  Ash nods. “Did you find anything out?”

  “A few things. Your father was working on a special project when he died, something sensitive enough that BioGen locked out virtually everyone. Since I don’t know which people aren’t locked out and can only guess at their identities, I have to work my way into the records through the back door. But for something to be kept this quiet, it must be toxic.”

  “I told you he said it was dangerous for him if they found out he was trying to do anything about it.”

  “Well, I can’t tell if he was act
ually doing something or not since I don’t know what it is. But I think we can assume that there was some sort of involvement. BioGen works on all sorts of genetics-related projects. You know that, don’t you? Your father must have told you.”

  “He did.”

  “So it’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack. Your father helped developed Sparx, didn’t he—those energy supplements everyone takes? Supposed to help keep you positive and focused, help you work better? They’ve been offering something like that for decades, but Sparx are the first that actually work, and they don’t appear to have any negative side effects. Do you take them?”

  Ash shakes his head. “I don’t like medications.”

  He says nothing about ProLx, still unwilling to talk about it. It occurs to him suddenly that he hasn’t taken a dosage since yesterday after fleeing the high-rise, and he needs to take one again by midday. He still has a small supply, but he will need to find a pharmacy before it runs out.

  “I was just wondering if your father ever said anything that might suggest what this secret project was. Did he talk to you about it?”

  Ash shrugs. “He never talked about much of anything work related.”

  “Did he ever suggest he might be talking to someone else? You know, to the media? Do you think he might have been a whistle-blower?”

  “He never said anything to suggest that.”

  “Well, anyway, here’s something else I found out. Since your father’s death, BioGen has gone into lockdown. They’ve closed their home office and central lab and restricted admittance to staff. Your sky tower home has been sealed off too. No one is being allowed in. L.A. Preventatives have closed off the unit to everyone, the building management included.”

  He stares at her. “Why would they do that?”

  She cocks an eyebrow. “Good question. What are they investigating that requires your home be sealed? There’s been no public report on what happened there. Everything has been about your father’s death and BioGen. So that’s what I’m looking into. The Shoe will be back later today. He might have information about your father that I don’t. I’ll make it a point to talk to him about it.” She glances past him. “I see that the others are up and about. Why don’t you go out and join them?”