“Looks like we’re going to need more soap,” he said, “'cause you girls are very, very dirty.”
Later, the house empty apart from Walt who was preparing salad in the kitchen, Seb looked at himself in the mirror, marveling again at the way nothing seemed to have an impact on his appearance or mental state. He should look like hell, really, not like a poster boy for male grooming products. It seemed he wouldn’t have to worry too much about living a healthy lifestyle any more. Up to now, he had always tried to take care of himself. The rest of the band had teased him about the relatively early nights—“it’s not even 3am, man, where ya going?”—and the post-soundcheck run he’d always take before a gig. And he played it safe in other ways, never quite going as far as the others with alcohol, pot and pills he didn’t even know the name of. He had partied, sure, but he’d didn’t like to lose control. He remembered Mee—after their brief fling—telling him he should live a little more dangerously. “If you let yourself go a little,” she said, “I think you might find you have a real gift for hedonism, Seb Varden. Go out there and get yourself laid more, say yes more, don’t be so uptight.” He had looked at her gentle brown eyes offset by that permanently slightly-mocking smile and decided this might not be the time to tell her he thought he was in love with her.
“Come and get it,” called Walt from the kitchen. “You need your strength. Advanced training this afternoon.”
Advanced training turned out to be more than an afternoon’s work. Seb and Walt spent the rest of the day and all of the next working on the same thing. Walt explained what they would be doing after they walked out to the yard at the back of his property. The yard was a surprise. Seb was expecting fountains, Greek columns, a maze. Something. Not this, just a square, fenced off patch of dirt and nothing more, apart from an old punchbag hanging by the back step.
“No near neighbors,” said Walt, “so no awkward questions.”
There was a bench set against the fence on one side. They sat.
“This is not my area of expertise,” said Walt, “but I’m not bad at it. There are at least four Users I know who specialize in this, but even they are very careful about when and where. It takes a great deal of power and a hell of a lot of concentration to do it well. We’ll have to refill at Red Rock after a few tries.” He shot a look at Seb. “Well, I will, anyhow.”
Seb just nodded. He was a way off getting used to the idea of Manna at all, let alone the knowledge that he was carrying it—whatever it was—in his own body. Now he had a little time to relax and think, he’d half wondered why he wasn’t more scared about what had happened. He wasn’t an anxious person by nature, but the most laid-back guy in the world would surely expect to feel some stress about the events of the past few days. His usual calmness appeared to have been augmented by Manna, meaning he felt effortlessly present in each moment, aware of what was around him. It wasn’t that he was ignoring the past or the future, he just seemed to have it in perspective. And each moment opened up many possibilities, all of which seemed to be present in his consciousness without any real effort. He felt his personality had changed. He just wasn’t sure whether the change was good or bad, because there was no way to stand outside himself and make that call. He was different. But he was alive and that was enough for now.
On the bench next to him, Walt slowed his breath and Seb felt the hairs on his arms stand up as the Manna began to build. Walt’s eyes unfocussed and he gazed unseeingly into the middle of the yard. Then he brought his concentration to bear on a patch of dirt about six feet in front of them. The earth moved slightly, like a stew coming to the boil.
“Ok,” said Walt, speaking with difficulty, “ok. This is where it gets difficult.” His breathing got faster and Seb looked away from the dirt for a moment. Walt’s forehead was beaded with sweat, his nostrils flared as he concentrated. Seb remembered how easy it had been for this man to change his entire appearance—and voice—to become that of a middle-aged woman. How easy it had been for him to make that napkin move or make that beautiful paper shark in the car. But this was really costing Walt. His breath was coming in short gasps now and he seemed oblivious to anything other than what was in front of him.
Seb turned back to the scene in the yard. The bubbling dirt had risen in a column about five and a half feet high, millions of tiny specks of dirt roiling, spinning. Dust surrounded the swirling mass as its shape began to change, separating in places, stretching in others, elongating, compacting, becoming. Before long, a vaguely human shape became visible, like a child’s clay sculpture: a rude, elementary sketch of a figure, misshapen, lumpen, but unmistakably that of a person. The legs were thick and ended with feet too big for its body. The torso was barrel-like, no discernible change in shape between the broad shoulders and the thick waist. The arms were heavily muscled, ending in club like hands. It had no genitals. As the dirt slowed its swirling, Seb raised his eyes to the thing’s head. There was something resembling a face, but it was crude, hurried, frightening to look at. It had no hair, its ears were obviously not designed for anything other than rudimentary hearing, as they were holes in the side of its head with a lumpy curve of dirt behind them. The mouth, nostrils and, worst of all, eyes, were just also holes. As the shape settled, the dirt changed texture, smoothing itself out, lightening in color, becoming flesh. That was when Seb found it hard to look at those eyes - when the face had grown skin and become close to human. The eyes, or rather, the absence of them, the dark sockets where eyes should have been, stared back at him like an accusation. He shivered in the Las Vegas heat. Next to him, Walt held his breath for twenty, thirty, forty seconds. The thing in the yard was utterly still. Walt let all his breath out in one long exhalation and slumped back against the fence. He mopped his forehead with a napkin and smiled shakily at Seb.
“Don’t think I’ll ever get good at this,” he said. “I mean, look at the thing. It’s hardly gonna win any beauty contests now, is it?”
Seb hesitated before answering and Walt laughed.
“Look,” said Walt, “I’m not going to be offended by your opinion. I know what I’m good at, and this really isn’t it. But it’s a useful skill to develop and some Users can produce results that might be taken as human on a dark night, if you’ve had a drink or two.”
“What the hell is it?” said Seb.
“That,” said Walt, “is a homunculus. Say hello.”
“A homunc-“ said Seb. “A what?”
“Homunculus,” said Walt again. “Technically, it means ‘little human’. In the Middle Ages it was believed tiny people lived inside sperm and grew into adult humans. The same idea also appears in folklore and myths. Maybe the concept of pixies, gnomes and the like evolved from homunculi. I don’t know. We call them”—he gestured at the creature—“that because they are tiny in terms of their capacities. No brain, just some kind of residue of its creator. See for yourself. Ask it a question.”
“What,” said Seb. He looked at the unmoving creature in the yard. Short, misshapen and utterly still, that blank stare still made him nervous. He glanced back at Walt, wondering if it was a joke of some sort.
“Go ahead,” said Walt. “Ask him what his name is. Or her. Hard to tell. I was going for a he.”
Seb stood up and, reluctantly, moved a little closer to the creature. It looked like something out of a low-budget horror movie. Very low budget. He moved slightly to the left and flinched as the head moved. As he stopped, the head stopped. He walked slowly from left to right. The thing’s sightless eye sockets tracked him as he moved, the rest of its body still as a statue. Seb shivered involuntarily. It reminded him of an optical illusion he’d seen, where a cardboard dragon’s head appeared to follow you as you moved around the room. Until you got behind it and realized your brain had been tricking you into thinking it was moving. Seb moved carefully in a circle around the homunculus. No optical illusion here, it was solid. Flesh - of a sort. It looked pallid, clammy. Worst of all, as Seb walked past the point where a human woul
d have been unable to keep watching, the thing’s neck carried on twisting, sinews and muscles stretching like old rubber bands. When Seb came back to the front, the creature’s neck had gone through three hundred and sixty degrees and there was a corkscrew of twisted flesh where the skin had stretched and contorted. Seb stood still and felt his skin crawl as the homunculus slowly turned its head back through the same process in reverse, untwisting its neck to face forward and look normal again. Well, as normal as a crudely-formed semi-human with holes for features can look. Seb cleared his throat.
“Hello,” he said, hesitantly. “What’s your name?”
Five or six long seconds passed while the thing seemed to consider the question. Then the mouth stretched open a little. This movement was horrible in itself, as it looked as if invisible fingers had reached into the creature’s face and pulled open the hole where its mouth should have been. Then it made a noise, a kind of wet, grating gargling that was all wrong. The sound seemed to just form in the mouth and resonate oddly and artificially, as if the head was hollow. The voice had a slightly metallic, damp quality to it and—although it was probably inaccurate to ascribe feelings or emotion to the creature—it sounded like it was painful to produce.
“Aaarrr….iiiiiiiii,” it said. “Aaarrrr…..iiiiiiiieeeee.”
Walt coughed. “Er, he’s trying to say Arnie,” he said.
“Arnie?” said Seb. The creature nodded slowly.
“Aaarrrrr….iiiieeeee,” it said.
“Bad joke,” said Walt. “Actually, this is one of my better efforts. Until a few years ago, I couldn’t get any kind of voice. Beyond my capabilities.”
Seb realized there was something different going on. When Walt had made the napkin animal and the shark, Seb was aware of the control Walt had, the sense of a puppeteer and his puppets. This time, Seb could feel nothing like that. “You’re not controlling it?” said Seb.
Walt looked surprised. “Correct,” he said. “How did you know?”
“Just…feels different, I suppose.”
“It is different. That’s what makes it so hard. Homunculi are, to some extent, autonomous. They have a separate existence, of sorts. They can make simple decisions, but only along the lines implanted when they are created. This one is a kind of bodyguard template. If I was attacked, he would protect me. As my skills are limited, I keep things fairly simple. Arnie here can walk, but not very well and not quickly. But he’s broad and his body could easily block a doorway or a hallway. His arms can move fast enough, that’s where I spent the most time. Let me demonstrate. Arnie?” The lumpen head swiveled toward Walt’s voice. “Hit the punchbag.”
The homunculus turned and stumped across toward the door. Its steps were slow, heavy and cautious. When it reached the punchbag, it stopped, its massive feet planted a shoulder width apart.
“The big feet aren’t pretty,” said Walt, “but they give it stability in a fight.”
The creature’s right arm suddenly jabbed at the punchbag. It was, by far, the fastest movement it had made yet and Seb was taken by surprise. When the punch landed, the bag jumped backward a few feet and the ‘thwack’ was shockingly loud in the quiet heat of the yard. Arnie followed up with another couple jabs with its right, followed by a massive left hook which, if it had landed on human skin and bone rather than leather and sand, would have caused unconsciousness or—more likely—death. Untiring, the creature launched into a series of combinations, a flurry of punches throwing the bag from one direction to the other, dust flying.
“I’ve watched a lot of boxing,” said Walt. “Guess if you watch it enough, you start to pick up some of the moves.” Seb marveled at the way the creature was still throwing punches. He looked like he could carry on all day.
“He’ll run down eventually,” said Walt. “Homunculi have a short shelf life.” He called over to the thing still punishing the punchbag. “Hey, Arnie! Quit it, will ya?” the creature stopped immediately, its huge arms hanging by its sides. Walt turned back to Seb. “A few hours, no more.”
“And what then?” said Seb.
“From dust you came and to dust you shall return,” said Walt. Noticing the expression on Seb’s face, he shrugged and held out his hands, palm upward in a ‘hey, don’t blame me’ gesture. “It has no consciousness as such. Think of it as a wind-up toy. Set it in motion and it’ll do its thing until the clockwork mechanism runs down. Only in this case you can’t just wind it up again, because when it winds down it falls apart. You have to start from scratch.”
“Which uses a lot of Manna,” said Seb.
“Yep,” said Walt.
“So why bother?” said Seb.
“The autonomy,” said Walt. “Homunculi have one big advantage. You can walk away and let them do their thing. Give Arnie a gun and by the time he shoots someone, I can be hundreds of mile away. And a pile of dirt with a gun next to it hardly counts as evidence.” He caught Seb’s look. “Hey, I’m not saying I’ve done it. Not saying I would do it. Just saying it’s theoretically possible, is all.” Walt gave Seb a speculative look. “Ok,” he said, “your turn.”
31
Seb wasn’t sure how to start, or even if he wanted to. There was something about the semi-human look of the homunculus which gave him chills, even though he accepted Walt’s definition of it as no more conscious than a clockwork toy. He had felt this way before, years back. It was the time Jack Carnavon had snapped the arm off a GI Joe at St. Benet's. He knew it couldn’t feel anything, but somehow that didn’t make him feel much better. He remembered wincing. He made an effort to shrug off the memory.
Arnie stood stock still in front of the punch bag. Seb was intrigued by what Walt had created, and wondered what he might be able to produce himself. He had barely begun to explore the power he now had inside him. He was briefly surprised at how unconcerned he seemed to be. Everything had changed, the world was a very different place to the one he’d decided to leave permanently less than a week ago. Perhaps that explained the laid-back way he was dealing with his continued existence. He had said his goodbyes, made what peace he could with his past and his lack of future. He had taken his own life, rather than wait for it to be taken from him by a disease with no cure. Every day since then was an unexpected bonus. Even the fact that his personality seemed to have fractured in some way didn’t disturb his equilibrium. Seb2 could do the heavy lifting for now, he would just deal with life as it came.
Seb sat up, back straight, feet flat on the ground. He breathed as Father O had taught when he first learned contemplation. No effort to breathe differently, just stillness of posture and awareness of breathing. Soon, his breathing became quieter and began to deepen naturally. His heart slowed and his thoughts, drifting like clouds through his consciousness, began to lose their ability to hijack his attention, instead becoming background noise. The Bach prelude began to sound in his head as he looked at the dry dirt of the yard. Immediately, the earth began to move and he brought up the image of Arnie in his mind’s eye, trying to recreate the being Walt had brought to life. The dust swirled and clods of dirt rose from the earth in a miniature whirlwind, sticking to each other as they spun. Soon, a human-like form began to appear and, as the whirlwind subsided, Arnie’s twin stood before them. It grunted and flexed its muscles, in a macabre parody of competitive bodybuilders.
Walt laughed, as Seb made his creation perform an Irish jig. It was far more mobile than Arnie.
“Yeah, great,” said Walt, “but you haven’t let go. Cut it loose, let’s see what you’ve got.”
As Seb listened to Walt, he realized he could control the creature without giving much attention to it. He had never been good at multi-tasking before, looked like this might be one of Seb2’s upgrades. He turned back toward his capering monster and broke the connection, which felt like the mental equivalent of letting go of a kite on a gusty day. He felt it go. The creature immediately dropped to the floor, leaving just a small mound of earth to show for its brief existence.
“Hmm
,” said Walt. “Thought so. You were controlling it the same way you controlled my shark back in the car. This is different. You can’t be a puppeteer - you’ve got to give a bit of yourself. Don’t make a puppet, make Pinocchio.”
“Great, thanks for the detailed instructions,” said Seb.
“Hey, don’t blame me,” said Walt. It’s the same for all of us. We all do things differently, and a lot of what we do happens underneath the conscious level. I couldn’t explain it to you any better than I could explain how my brain sends a message to my arm and my hand, enabling me to pick up this bottle, raise it to my mouth and have a drink.” He took a swig from his beer in demonstration. “I mean, I could talk about nerves and muscles and synapses, but that wouldn’t help you any with the practicalities, would it? Remember, Manna works with you. Make sure you have a clear idea of what you want. Sid used to talk about focus, about ignoring the clutter. Best description I ever heard was from some Zen teacher who’d never heard of Manna. He talked about the ‘one-pointed’ mind. That made sense to me, making my mind one-pointed.”
“One-pointed,” said Seb. “Right. No clutter, pointy brain, here we go.” He turned back to the yard and let his mind return to the contemplative state. He was aware how fast this process had become. Despite having sat his ass on a cushion almost every day for the best part of two decades, he’d never found it easy. Now it seemed he could skip the twenty-five minutes it used to take just to get to where his thoughts weren’t in total control of his scattered consciousness. From mental cocktail party to stillness took seconds.
As his mind stilled, Seb had an idea. The Bach seemed to work perfectly so far, introducing structure to an otherwise chaotic and uncontrollable power. But Walt had said he needed to put something of himself into his homunculus if it was to have any independence. He let the first few bars of the C prelude sound in his mind as he brought the image of Arnie to the surface of his consciousness. This time, as the dust began to swirl and the earth moved into its whirlwind, he started to morph the music, improvising on Bach’s theme, adding a very simple countermelody of his own. It was an eight-bar sequence which resolved neatly, like tying a parcel with a bow and snipping the frayed ends from the end of the string. He broke the connection and sat back.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 24